Marshall Jefferson’s early influences are going to surprise you. The pioneering house music legend spent his teenage years listening to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Rush!

“Yeah, man. I was a heavy metal kid,” laughs Jefferson. “That’s what I grew up with. I loved the energy and the power of the music. I loved the way you could immerse yourself in the sound.

“And I might have stayed with metal if my hormones hadn’t kicked in. Ha ha! I got to, like… 16 or 17, and I suddenly began to notice that all the shows I went to were full of guys. Long-haired guys, guys with beards, sweaty guys… In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘I’d quite like to meet some girls, too, but that ain’t gonna happen at a Deep Purple show’. So, I started going to clubs, and that was the first time I became aware of anything that you could call dance music or electronic music.

“I guess I outta say a big ‘thank you’ to Mother Nature!” he laughs.

Bizarrely, Jefferson thinks that it was all those years he spent listening to songs like Paranoid, Whole Lotta Love and Smoke on the Water that actually helped him to create a unique sound when it came to releasing his own records.

“Obviously, I was living in Chicago at the time, so I was aware of what was