Dunkley — who billed himself as “The Living Jukebox” — was resident DJ at two prominent venues of the period: Friars, the club in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, which hosted breakthrough performances by Mott the Hoople and David Bowie; and The Roundhouse in north London, where he spun records at memorable all-day Sunday concerts .
Hawkwind’s lengthy shows included contributions from a naked dancer with a 52in bust, Stacia Blake; the poet Robert Calvert; the sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock; and the psychedelic light-show operator Jonathan Smeeton. Dunkley performed the duties of MC during an ambitious 1972 tour called “The Space Ritual”.
The tour got off to a bad start. Dunkley arrived at the first date — at King’s Lynn Corn Exchange — to find that the group’s soundcheck had been interrupted by a raid by the drugs squad. Fearing a “bust”, most members of the band fled.
Dunkley recalled: “Everybody left apart from [the synthesizer players] DikMik and Del, who were still noodling away. The [sniffer] dogs came on stage and DikMik and Del let loose with the subsonics. The dogs freaked, totally. They didn’t have a clue what was happening and were unable to find a thing.”
The rest of the tour would have proved memorable — had anybody been in a state to remember it. “Thank God we got it captured on an album,” noted the bassist, “Lemmy”. “ It was hypnotic. It was like Star Trek with long hair and drugs.”
Dunkley’s calming presence helped the band through many on-the-road scrapes. Hawkwind’s manager, Doug Smith, credited him with resolving a weekend-long wrangle with tax officials in Indiana when the group were placed under house arrest and their equipment was impounded over unpaid import duties.
Andrew John Dunkley was born in Birmingham on July 13 1942 and brought up at Burgh-le-Marsh, near Skegness in Lincolnshire. On leaving school he studied accountancy in Stoke-on-Trent, but was diverted into the music business in the early Sixties as a club DJ and then as road manager for the Midlands rhythm and blues band The Spencer Davis Group.
By 1969 Dunkley was resident DJ at the newly-opened Friars in Aylesbury, also spinning the sounds at many benefit gigs, including events for the underground magazine Frendz and the west London Greasy Truckers organisation, appearing on the live album of the same name in 1972.
He was installed as regular DJ at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse by the promoter John Curd and maintained his working relationship with Hawkwind by joining them on their 1974 American tour, “The 1999 Party”. During Hawkwind’s sets he added to the aural assault by tinkering on a synthesizer or playing records backwards, a decade before rappers began to scratch and sample vinyl music.
Unlike many of his generation, Dunkley’s career survived the incursions of punk. He became the favoured DJ of The Stranglers, and was part of the bill during their sell-out five-night stint at The Roundhouse in 1977. When touring in France with the band, he prevented a serious incident from escalating further by summoning their manager, Ian Grant, to Nice at 4am, after the New Wave act had been jailed for inciting a riot during a performance at the city’s university.
In the 1980s Dunkley moved to New York, where he was manager and DJ at the East 15th Street venue Irving Plaza. There his selection of eclectic music (from his collection of 12,000 albums and 3,000 singles) earned him the nickname “The Human Jukebox” from rock critic Robert Christgau. “I try to avoid the music everyone else is playing,” Dunkley told New York magazine in 1984. “I always throw in something to keep the crowd on their toes.”
During this period he was an instigator – along with his fellow expat the CBS Records executive Howard Thompson – of weekly “curry nights” for visiting members of the British music business. Entry was gained by production of a two-litre bottle of Suntory beer and the undertaking to tell at least one good joke.
Dunkley also worked with the Chicago-based record label Wax Trax before returning to Britain and settling in Finchley, north London. Latterly he was an IT manager at the database publisher AP Information.
He continued to play music publicly in later life, in 2007 compèring and acting as DJ for The Stranglers’ appearance at The Roundhouse.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8542803/Andy-Dunkley.html
Andrew John Dunkley was born in Birmingham on July 13 1942 and brought up at Burgh-le-Marsh, near Skegness in Lincolnshire. On leaving school he studied accountancy in Stoke-on-Trent, but was diverted into the music business in the early Sixties as a club DJ and then as road manager for the Midlands rhythm and blues band The Spencer Davis Group.
By 1969 Dunkley was resident DJ at the newly-opened Friars in Aylesbury, also spinning the sounds at many benefit gigs, including events for the underground magazine Frendz and the west London Greasy Truckers organisation, appearing on the live album of the same name in 1972.
He was installed as regular DJ at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse by the promoter John Curd and maintained his working relationship with Hawkwind by joining them on their 1974 American tour, “The 1999 Party”. During Hawkwind’s sets he added to the aural assault by tinkering on a synthesizer or playing records backwards, a decade before rappers began to scratch and sample vinyl music.
Unlike many of his generation, Dunkley’s career survived the incursions of punk. He became the favoured DJ of The Stranglers, and was part of the bill during their sell-out five-night stint at The Roundhouse in 1977. When touring in France with the band, he prevented a serious incident from escalating further by summoning their manager, Ian Grant, to Nice at 4am, after the New Wave act had been jailed for inciting a riot during a performance at the city’s university.
In the 1980s Dunkley moved to New York, where he was manager and DJ at the East 15th Street venue Irving Plaza. There his selection of eclectic music (from his collection of 12,000 albums and 3,000 singles) earned him the nickname “The Human Jukebox” from rock critic Robert Christgau. “I try to avoid the music everyone else is playing,” Dunkley told New York magazine in 1984. “I always throw in something to keep the crowd on their toes.”
During this period he was an instigator – along with his fellow expat the CBS Records executive Howard Thompson – of weekly “curry nights” for visiting members of the British music business. Entry was gained by production of a two-litre bottle of Suntory beer and the undertaking to tell at least one good joke.
Dunkley also worked with the Chicago-based record label Wax Trax before returning to Britain and settling in Finchley, north London. Latterly he was an IT manager at the database publisher AP Information.
He continued to play music publicly in later life, in 2007 compèring and acting as DJ for The Stranglers’ appearance at The Roundhouse.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8542803/Andy-Dunkley.html
I knew Andy D. as a teenager in England and have all sorts of photos of him, his sister and us getting up to mischeif! He was a lovely, fun guy - I remember him with a smile and am so sad to hear he has passed away - found him too late here online. No mention of family. Feel sad. Found & lost all the same day!
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