HE WAS THE CREATIVE FORCE BEHIND M PEOPLE, AND THE LEGENDARY A&R MAN WHO SIGNED THE LIKES OF CALVIN HARRIS, BLACK BOX, KASABIAN AND HAPPY MONDAYS. CLASSIC POP MEETS ONE OF THE DECADE'S GENUINE PIONEERS

FELIX ROWE

Mike Pickering has had more costume changes than a Bowie tribute act: illegal raver, resident DJ at Manchester’s iconic Haçienda club, Factory Records A&R man, record label director, Mercury Prize winner, and platinum-selling recording artist. Oh, and he also discovered (and still works with) the most commercially successful DJ ever to grace this earth – that’s Calvin Harris, by the way. But as he explains, he’s still that Mancunian kid in Woolworths searching for the perfect pop song.

Where does this obsession with new music come from?

I was always the lad at the party who wanted to take his own box of 7" singles. I was a Northern Soul boy, Motown, then punk, preceded by Bowie and Roxy Music. But I’ve always been into electronic music. We were at Factory, because we had a great love of Kraftwerk, all the German stuff. I was playing electronic stuff coming out of Chicago and New York for a long time, before ’88. But I always thought house music was going to explode because it was a blank canvas –a four-four beat you could do anything with. Some, like me, made pop songs, and some made underground tracks which are wonderful, like the Chemicals.