Biography
Tony McGuinness played guitar (Fender Jazzmaster) with English indie band Sad Lovers & Giants, with whom he released five albums, between 1981 and 2002.
Towards the end of his time with SL&G, McGuinness was also a highly successful marketing director for Warner Music Group, winning awards for his campaigns for Madonna, Seal, Simply Red and Mike Oldfield. While working at Warners, McGuinness shifted away from alternative rock towards electronic dance music. He worked as A&R for a number of dance artists, including William Orbit and Hysteric Ego.
Tony McGuinness and his brother Liam teamed up to create electronic dance music under the alias Nitromethane since the early 2000s. While still working at Warner, Tony was asked to remix Chakra's "Home" by an A&R colleague.
Tony approached Anjunabeats (Jono Grant and Paavo Siljamäki) to work on the remix together. The result, their remix of "Home", was an instant hit, ruling the dance floors and topping the dance charts for many weeks. The collaboration led to the creation of Above & Beyond, consisting of McGuinness, Grant, and Siljamäki.
The inspiration for the name Above & Beyond came from a web page belonging to an American motivational trainer coincidentally named Jono Grant. Jono had the poster stuck to his wall. The slogan used by the motivational trainer was "Above & Beyond," and when the group was searching for a name to use for their Chakra remix, the slogan stuck out from the poster, giving a name to the new group.
Teaming up and working as Above & Beyond, their next most significant output was a remix of Madonna's "What It Feels Like for a Girl" during the year 2000. This track was approved by Madonna, and it was released on Warner Records.
Since then, Above & Beyond have gone on to become one of the most successful UK production and DJ groups in the world, with a number of high profile remixes for Dido, Delerium, Ferry Corsten and others, productions under their own name (their debut artist album, Tri-State was called "Brilliant" by DJ Magazine and earned 5 stars) and as OceanLab. As DJs they currently rank Number 8 in the official DJ Mag Top 100.
Above & Beyond's second studio album, Group Therapy, features Tony's first ever vocal single with Richard Bedford on the track "Black Room Boy".
Read more about this topic: Tony Mc Guinness (English Musician)
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