From Record Shop Floor to Platinum Plaques: How East London shaped Danny Donnelly

It is not often you sit down and talk with an artist and entrepreneur who has opened a door to one of your favourite actresses, who has featured in an iconic film that has bridged African culture with Americanism. Letitia Wright, yes, the Black Panther star, who was part of a cinematic movement that saw Gqom, a subgenre of South African house music, feature in a Hollywood blockbuster, was discovered by Danny Donnelly’s film production company. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the wealth of stories that make up his extensive career.

Danny Donnelly is the founder and owner of record labels and music brands that have shaped British dance music. Suburban Base Records was one of the pioneering labels in the rave, jungle, and drum and bass scenes. He owns the multi-platinum selling album brands Pure Garage and Euphoria. Euphoria ran as the most successful Saturday night in Ibiza for eight years running. Pure Garage spawned Pure R&B, Grime, Tech House, and Deep House. “I have just received my 100th platinum plaque,” he says, almost in passing, as though it is simply the latest milestone in a career that shows no sign of slowing down. Now, as Executive Producer of Mega Mega, he is joining forces with curator Katherine Green to create an immersive exhibition celebrating Romford’s club culture and dance music contributions from 1989 to 1999. The music that shaped his career is finally getting the platform it deserves right in his hometown.

But before the platinum plaques, before Ibiza, before Letitia Wright and movie production, there was a teenage boy in East London, hunting down second-hand records and listening to pirate radio.

“From a young age I was a music fan, a geeky collector really. I loved hunting down second-hand record shops, listening to pirate radio, getting into the more obscure.” This was before the rave scene. It was about collecting rare, older records, funk, soul, hip hop. By 14, Danny was playing at blues parties around East London and on pirate radio stations across E15 and E3, immersed in a world he was arguably too young for. “I was too young to be going out really, but I was really into the scene.”

His ambition was modest. He simply wanted to work in a dance music specialist record store. He applied to all the main ones: City Sounds, Bluebird, the cool shops of the time. He didn’t get the job. “I didn’t get my job in my dream store, so I created my own.”

He left school at 16 without going back to find out his results, took a part-time job in a record shop that he describes as his “sixth form college,” and by 17 had secured a bank loan with a guarantor to open Boogie Times Records in Romford. 

The record label followed naturally. To compete with the specialist shops in London who had exclusive records, Danny started pressing his own. “A couple of people would come into the shop with demo tapes, and we’d press up 500 copies for them and give it an exclusive to our shop for the first few weeks of its life and then distribute it to other shops.” These white labels through Boogie Times Records grew into Suburban Base, a standalone record label born from necessity and timing.

“I went into this never thinking I’m going to run a record label. As a kid I thought that was like an impossibility. Who owns record labels?” The answer, it turned out, was someone exactly like Danny. The rave scene was exploding. His friends were pirate radio DJs. “We were giving them exclusives; our songs were getting battered on pirate radio and all of a sudden our songs are going into the charts. There wasn’t any great science to it other than just learning on the job very quickly.”

Though his specialism became dance music, Danny’s heart was always in funk and soul. “That’s why you used to hear a lot of that being sampled in early jungle tracks and in the garage scene. It was me and kids like us that were hip hop heads and soul fans. That’s how breakbeats were introduced, that’s where the samples came from.”

The environment that shaped him stretched across East London. Born in Stratford, his family moved to Romford, but he always lived between the two. His dad had a business in Stratford, keeping him rooted in that East London world. Blues parties, sound systems, pirate radio stations. “You might play a soul set, or a hip hop set and then the next person is playing ragga or lovers rock. That’s the environment I grew up in.”

What emerged from that environment was something that changed music globally. American house music arrived in Britain and became something else entirely. “When it came here it became our own. We put our own spin on it, from London to Manchester to Bristol.” At the crossroads of the late 80s and early 90s, rave music splintered into something extraordinary. Techno. Progressive house. Hardcore. Jungle. Drum and Bass. Each genre forming its own identity, its own movement. “Would there be Grime without the Garage scene? Would there be Garage without Drum and Bass?”

It wasn’t glamorous. “People had to run around on rooftops to set up a pirate radio stations. And breaking into warehouses to put on a party. You’re doing it out of necessity because you love the music and you want to get it out there.” That same East London world produced Alexander McQueen, who grew up streets away from Danny in Stratford. “You’ve got these moments that are influenced by the cultural environment, the diversity. And that’s what seems such a shame now, when there are so many people trying to create division where diversity should be embraced.”

That’s why Mega Mega matters to Danny. Romford is where his career began, and he wants the world to know what it gave to British music. It is a story he has already started telling. His documentary Bass Impact, available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV, takes you on a journey examining how, with its start in illegal raves and warehouses, pirate radio and bedroom producers, this underground genre became a multi-billion-dollar Grammy-winning industry with its presence felt in film scores, commercials, computer games, most modern pop productions, and most recently, an Armani advert featuring Kendall Jenner which incorporates Underworld’s Born Slippy, whose iconic lyric ‘Mega Mega… going back to Romford’ also influenced the exhibition’s title.

“Anything I can do to inspire the next generation to succeed is incredibly important, to show that success is possible for someone who left school at 16 but had the passion and motivation to pursue what they loved. For me, that was music.”

The 100th platinum plaque is remarkable. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Danny Donnelly is that he is still motivated by the same thing that drove a teenage boy into second-hand record shops in East London decades ago. The love of the music, and the need to share it.

Danny’s listening recommendation
Sonz of a Loop Da Loop Era – Far Out