Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2015 | Page 33
INTERVIEW
Putting on your
Sunday
Best
I
t’s been an incredible 12 years since Bestival burst onto the Island scene
with its unique, fun-loving mix of music and entertainment. With the 2015
event now in the pipeline, and promising such crowd-pulling names as
Missy Elliott, Duran Duran and the Chemical Brothers, we caught up with
founder and legendary DJ Rob da Bank for an insight into his background and
early musical influences. Exclusive interview by James Falconbridge.
Playing trumpet in your dad’s brass
band was probably not the coolest thing
to be doing as a youngster growing up
in Portsmouth and Southampton in the
1980s – but for Rob da Bank, it was
just one of the building blocks in what
turned out to be an eclectic musical
education.
Rob – known back then as Robert
John Gorham – also took piano
lessons, and his most prized
possession was an old record player
which rang out with the sounds of
everything from the Beatles to jazz
and classical music, and then, as
he got into his teens, the Happy
Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and Stone
Roses.
“All that gave me an amazing
grounding in music” he says. “Playing
in the brass band meant that I could
read and write music from the age
of nine, and then at about 14 or 15, I
got into John Peel on the radio, and
started buying records at Our Price in
Southampton and Portsmouth”.
Looking back, he reckons that he grew
up in a “golden era of music” in the late
80’s and early 90’s.
He had his first set of decks at the
age of 16, and landed his first DJ gig at
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