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DJ Times: What drew you to DJing?

Questlove: If anything, I think, I was always one. I took the backwards route to get to it because as a kid my parents found that it was easy to subdue me—not with a pacifier or games, but with anything that rotated. Anything that spun I was drawn to.

DJ Times: Grandmaster Flash had a similar story.

Questlove: Really? So, from me you’d get absolute silence. At one point, they were worried because I’d go to the record player and watch it rotate, but there wouldn’t be music playing. I was also obsessed with label design. A lot of my go-to records, at least until the age of 10, were definitely based on how I liked the design and the logo, the label rotating. If I didn’t like the label, I wouldn’t give it a chance.

DJ Times: You were traveling with your parents, who were working musicians, so your introduction to music was different from most.

Questlove: I spent a lot of hard time in my dad’s band organization. When I was six, I was doing navigation for gigs. When I was eight, I was doing lights in nightclubs. Now you can’t get into clubs because they’re strict about being 21, but back in the ’70s… [laughs] I was climbing ladders, cutting gels, working the booth. And some clubs were a little weird about me being in there at 1 a.m., so they’d let me hide in the DJ booth.

DJ Times: Did you go through the records?

Questlove: Well, there was a place called Cahoots nightclub in Valley Forge, Pa., and that was the first place I saw a setup – Technics 1200s, the records, the whole thing. This was 1977.

DJ Times: So, a Bozak mixer?

Questlove: Yeah, definitely, it was the first model. And occasionally, the DJ would let me suggest which record to play. “Hey, man, play ‘Knock on Wood’ by Amii Stewart,” that kind of thing.

DJ Times: Deep in the disco era there. Tell me about the Philly DJs you grew up with. What was that scene like?

Questlove: During the early ’80s, most Philadelphia areas had a lot of block parties. Luckily, I lived in the area where a lot of pioneering DJs were. There was a crew called Astro Funk and they would throw neighborhood parties. Occasionally, Jazzy Jeff would play block parties. There was a promoter in Philadelphia named Bobby Dance and he was a pillar, the standard that you, as a DJ, wanted to reach. But he threw a lotta lotta lotta parties I wasn’t allowed to attend.

DJ Times: What about radio?

Questlove: Radio was also an important factor. Lady B had a show on WHAT-AM. That’s where I first heard Cash Money, Jazzy Jeff and DJ Cheese. Philly was well-represented in getting its fill of hip-hop culture, unlike other major cities where it was like an underground, covert operation happening. You had to mail tapes. Like my Down South cousins, I mailed tapes to them, things I recorded from the radio on weekends, commercial radio and college radio.

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