AUTHOR | DJ | MUSICIAN

Gary McPherson was born on 24 November 1962 in Golden Grove, in Southampton’s St Mary’s Street area. The only child of a single mother, he learned early to rely on his imagination. It became a companion, an escape and eventually the raw material for his songs and stories.

His upbringing was difficult, but it gave him an instinct for lives lived beyond the polished version of Britain: street-corner humour, survival, loyalty, bad decisions and the strange ways people find to keep going. Those experiences would later feed into both his music and his writing.

Gary moved to London as a teenager and, through one of those accidents that can change a life, found himself living on the same street as Mick Jones of The Clash. In time, Gary—then known professionally as Gary Stonadge—joined Mick in Big Audio Dynamite II.

As bassist and co-writer during The Globe period, Gary became part of a band mixing rock ’n’ roll, hip hop, dance music, samples and sounds gathered from everywhere. The success of The Globe carried the group around the world, including major tours with U2, Public Enemy and Paul Oakenfold.

After leaving Big Audio Dynamite in 1998, Gary moved deeper into DJing. As Dirty White, his sets ignored the usual boundaries: roots, rock, reggae, hip hop and soul alongside house, garage, blues, country, gospel and anything else that made sense in the moment. In 2006, he toured America as a DJ with Paul Oakenfold.

Rotten Hill Gang began with that same instinct. Gary and rapper Reds started with two turntables, a microphone and a shared appetite for music too unruly to remain in one genre. What began in West London bars gradually developed into a band.

André Shapps brought musicianship, production experience and a connection stretching back to the BAD years. Mick Jones played during the early days. Martin “Mallett” Hallett, formerly the drummer with Transvision Vamp, gave the music muscle and swing. Hollie Cook and Annie Bea added voices capable of making the roughest songs sound beautiful. Annie brought in Fi—Fjokra—a musician so naturally gifted that Gary describes his arrival as “like signing Lionel Messi.” Gus Robertson joined later, bringing another edge to the guitars and the live sound.

It was a remarkable collection of characters. It was also, at times, almost impossible to keep together. Its members had families, tours, records and projects of their own. Jewellery designer Stephen Webster even stepped in to manage the group for a time, but talent, friendship and chaos do not always fit neatly into a business plan.

Gary stepped away from music in 2020, but he did not stop creating. He turned increasingly towards writing and published his first novel, The Palermo Stone, in 2024—a dark, fictionalised world informed by street life, experience and the knowledge that people are rarely entirely innocent or completely beyond redemption.

As Gary puts it, the story is not simply about sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. It is about getting yourself out of the holes you have dug for yourself.

In September 2026, Rotten Hill Gang played its last show with the original line-up. Reds had decided to leave the country, with no plans to return to London. Without the partnership between Gary and Reds—the two people who had stood behind those first turntables—the original story had reached its natural ending.

By then, Gary had already begun writing the next one. RealHomeGrown takes the records, friendships, mistakes, humour and hard-earned instincts of a lifetime and turns them into something new.