If you look back on the parties of your youth, it’s likely that at least a few of them would have happened in a church hall. Potentially with some combination of cake, jelly and ice cream, and definitely with your mum. What might not have been so standard, however, is a DJ who is barely half your age.
Well, this was the reality for anyone who booked Will Manning while he was growing up. Now a double award-winning DJ, a radio/TV presenter, and voice-over artist, Will started out in Gerrards Cross, which he describes as “essentially a high street with way too many charity shops and some cul de sacs.” Despite these less than inspiring surroundings, at age eight he started running ‘mobile discos,’ four-hour pop DJ sets at parties for the local 15-year-olds.
“I remember being nine and getting a booking for an 18th. It was insane,” he tells me over Zoom from his Capital Breakfast radio booth where he’s currently doing the morning shift.
“I was never nervous,” he says. “Despite being a tiny little boy, I felt that because they were paying me, I deserved to be there.”
With this attitude, Will continued to get bookings and ran ‘Discomania’ successfully until he was 18 – and realized he could get paid the same to do a set in a club for a quarter of the time.
However, despite leaving Discomania behind, this time was formative, and would help Will learn about new genres he would eventually play around the world. Starting out, Will just used to crossfade from one Samantha Mumba album to a Steps compilation, but soon he managed to buy a £1,000 CDJ with the money from Discomania – not a bad feat for a 12-year-old.
“After that, I just kept expanding my kit,” he explains. “That’s how I got into hip-hop and dance music. The genres have evolved with my technical skills.” One skill he wasn’t really practicing, however, was being on the mic and stayed pretty silent apart from the occasional ‘happy birthday’. “I hadn’t really found my voice yet,” he tells me, which makes sense seeing as it hadn’t even broken.
However, for Will, despite his successful radio career, speaking about music has never been the ultimate goal – rather his main focus has always been the music itself. He was obsessed with learning about other genres, and his knowledge further expanded while playing clubs alongside N-dubz, Ironik, and Chipmunk, and learning from the other people on the lineup. “I would hear mixes and then go home and figure out how to do it,” he explains.
A little before this, Will had landed his first radio job at 1xtra. A producer found a video of him mixing on Facebook and asked for a demo, and soon enough he was sharing a building with his heroes. Unfortunately, this didn’t last for long and Will was soon fired. “I was so passionate about the music, I just wasn’t very good at communicating it,” he explains. “No one wants to hear a 15-year-old from Gerrard’s Cross talk about hip-hop music because they’re like ‘ ‘what do you know about it’”?
I tell him that I’m impressed that a 15-year-old boy could communicate at all, let alone chat to a nation. He laughs and says “I thought that if I was just passionate enough about the music then that would be enough. But it wasn’t – you need the whole package. Which I think I now have, hopefully. Or, I’ve just got really good at blagging it.”
However, this was merely the beginning of Will’s radio career. After gaining some much-needed life experience, he was rehired and now is one of the UK’s most well-known radio hosts. However, his passion for music has never been diluted, and that’s his passion for making music – not just playing it.
When I speak to Will, he’s still reeling from the release of his first track ‘Don’t,’ a club-ready anthem about a breakup.
While he listened to many demos before deciding on what would be his first release, ‘Don’t’ was actually the song that dominated his first-ever studio session. “It’s like a little baby I fell in love with,” he says laughing.
Considering where it ended up, it’s interesting to note that ‘Don’t’ was originally a ballad. “It was slow, heartfelt, I could feel every word,” explains Will. “But I also thought it deserved to be a club record; I could already hear the hands-in-the-air moments – even in the stripped-back version.”
When Will first played his record label the song, they apparently responded: “This is great, it’s Ayia Napa, it’s Magaluf,” to which Will replied: “Can we aim a little higher than Napa?”
To get the track beyond Napa ready (Ibiza?), Will had the privilege of getting feedback from potentially the industry’s greatest soundboard: Calvin Harris. They had met while Will was interviewing him for a chart show and had stayed in touch ever since. Will and his team actually thought the song was nearly ready when they sent it to Calvin, but after his notes, they decided to push the release back – “we wanted to make it perfect for Calvin,” says Will.
Since the track has been out, Will’s been sent sound bytes of it playing in all types of venues, from a bar in Dublin to a friend’s pre-drinks before going to a club, to a car stereo while on a drive. “It seems like it can work anywhere!”, he says.
And it’s this versatility that Will’s striving for in his wider career also. “Diplo can play a country festival and then go on to play an underground club in Shoreditch, that’s where I want to get to,” he says.
And how is he going to reach his goals?
Well, apart from manifesting them through a page on his notes app entitled ‘things I want to do,’ which I promised I wouldn’t talk too much about to avoid jinxing it – he’s going to release loads more tracks. “I want to show people my range,” he explains, “and then we can see what happens.”
“I want to get a big banger out in 2024 – and be like, new year, let’s go,” he says. Considering his early success and what seems to be an inevitable rise in the music scene, I bet those 18-year-olds are now bragging about the nine-year-old that once DJ’d their party.
