Pete Tong

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is DJIT Big Clubs on Stage on
the Radio, d M entrepreneur Pete Tom Hi, Bob okay, Pete,
thank you. You're now doing these stage shows. You even
sold out two old two's with Abisa Classics. Tell me

(00:32):
about that. Yeah, basically, it's um It's started by me
getting invited to curate a prom The Proms are a
series of very famous season of classical concerts that have
been running in the UK for well over a hundred
years at the Royal Albert Hall, and they wanted to
do something a bit more contemporary. They were worried about

(00:52):
their audience kind of getting older and older and older,
and they wanted to kind of engage with the younger demographics.
So they reached out to BBC Radio One, where obvious
I've obviously been forever, and they said, you know, how
about you guys curating you know, coming up with an
idea that might work as a classical concert. So they
asked me as a bit of a kind of veteran

(01:12):
broadcaster there, and it happened to be an anniversary of
of me taking Radio One down to a b through.
It was like the twentieth anniversary, I think, in so
we came up with this idea of um, you know, curate,
you know, putting together a seventy minutes show. That was
the slot we were given. UM. And I thought, because
I've been there but not exactly that exact time here,

(01:34):
I thought the proms were outside of the problems inside
or the proms are predominantly inside the Royal Album Hall.
And they happened over the course of a month actually,
and it's pretty much every night, two shows a night,
and they might have done some think standalone things outside.
So anyway, I've never done anything like this before. This
was definitely outside my skill set. UM. But I was

(01:55):
introduced to Jules Buckley, who was a kind of contemporary
UM you know, UM orchestrator and conductor, and he worked
hand in hand with a with a kind of forward
thinking you know symphony orchestra called the Heritage Orchestra, and
they'd work with like the likes of the Basement Jackson
Goldie UM, someone that I was quite close to. So

(02:17):
you know, we we you know, we had this blind
date on the phone and we talked about the idea
and I I kind of got into it with him
how how it would work, and then I this, just
how long ago this was. This was January of the
year we did it, and we had six months to
plan it. And I basically thought, you know, why don't
we play a minute of each one of like all

(02:38):
the greatest records of all time and you know, dance
records and the Betha classics. And he said that would
take me like five years to to not take for
the sixty five players in the orchestra. So we cut it.
I cut it down to like twenty tracks. I mixed
it together in my studio and I gave it to
him and he started to, um, basically take these tracks

(03:01):
from the original form and then work out how an
orchestra would play them, and um. The interesting thing was
what was quite groundbreaking is I was able to get
him to mix tracks together, so we were going to
play everything live on stage, nothing on tape. Nothing. He
wasn't following any records I was playing or anything like that.
But we were able to do these segments, like fifteen

(03:23):
minutes segments where we worked through like five tunes, but
it would be seamless, and even with tempo changes and
everything like that. So we did this show on the
thirty first of July, I think it was twenty nine,
did July UM at the Royal Albert Hall. It was
an appointment. It was a one off thing that we
were going to do. But within about halfway through the
first song, five thousand people in the Royal Albert Hall

(03:45):
stood up started going crazy clapping and we looked around
at each other, went some some magics going on here.
So we got to end at the show, went backstage.
It was like, oh my god, what just happened there
because literally the entire audience didn't sit down for seventy minutes.
They just went mad, and we had we had kind
of down tempo, chill out moments in there as well,
but they still stood up. Just to be clear, if
you only had seventeen minutes seventy seventy, excuse me. So

(04:09):
we got backstage and was like, oh my god, you know,
like this was amazing. We've got to do it again.
But everything in terms of the proms and the BBC,
it was all kind of funded and underwritten, so it
was like no nobody really ever got a bill um.
But so it took a while to plan how to
take this show out on the road and it took
about eighteen months UM. But we announced some shows the

(04:31):
following March and we sold them out in a day
and we had one oh two on sale and we
worked out there as people don't know that's essentially yes,
it's like it's like the big arenas here, like Staples
Center or something like that, and we worked out there.
If we sold the lower bowl, we didn't know, like
eighteen months later what the demand would be like. UM,
but we sold it out. We sold the whole place

(04:51):
out in a day, and then we were like, oh
my god, we got to do another one, but I
think Justin Bieber was playing the next day and like
someone else the day before, so we couldn't get a
string of dates. But we ended up at the end
of sixteen with a with a show in Birmingham the
O two and then one match to all all arenas,
sold them all out. UM made a record that year
UM basically going back in the student into the Happy

(05:14):
Road studios actually, which was amazing, and we recorded the orchestra.
We recorded that set with you know, we redid it,
UM did it as a proper record. UM. The album
came out went to number one went gold on the
pop chart. It was so we were off to an
amazing start and here we are UM at the end
of we just did nine arena shows in the UK,

(05:34):
including to two sold out oh two. So it's um,
it's it's me up on stage with with sixty five
incredible musicians and Jules Buckley playing a selection of you know,
electronic music, dance music that spans back years UM. And
for me, it adds. It was it was really about

(05:54):
adding gravitas to these compositions. I think in the in
the annals of musical history, you know, dance music producers, DJs,
we have a bit of a chip on our shoulder
because we're not taken seriously like the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame and all that stuff. MS and and
it to me it was like, well, this music that
was made in Chicago, New York, Detroit, you know, in Berlin,

(06:15):
in London, all all over the world, you know wherever,
um we can show that you know this one finger
wizardry that was done by these Detroit guys back in
the late eighties where they had a button on one
of the early Roland keyboards that says strings and they
played you know this incredible string part that we to
actually be able to go and do it with a

(06:36):
you know, a massive orchestra. Um. It just lifted people
and I think that's that was the magic of it. Okay,
So since there are no nothing on a hard drive,
we used to see tea what do you actually do
on stage? So basically um on the light. On the
live performance side, I'm I'm actually also playing along with him,
so you'll see me up there with with a bunch

(06:58):
of turntables and sheen and some drum pads and basically
there there are elements like weighty kind of wishes and
bangs and electronica in a lot of these productions that
an orchestra can't play. So I'm often spinning in a
like a stem um of of some electronics that actually

(07:19):
the that they can't provide that kind of adds euphor
I'm adding kind of euphoria, and occasionally I'm adding um
extra um percussion hits and stuff like that, and then yeah,
a lot of clapping. Okay, So what's the press? And
I'm kind of playing like the m M right right,
what's the press been like? Because you know there's so

(07:40):
much press in the UK and it can be vicious.
Now it's been it's been incredible. I mean I would say, um,
touch would um, it's been great. It's it it's I
tell you, I'll tell you what it is. It's it's
it's it's experiential. It's it's the orchestra. Is there a
back up? Is there? You know? Lee? Are there leasers?

(08:02):
What are you doing? Yeah? So on the there's a
two versions of the show, the A list version, which
is the one we've just done through the arenas. Um,
we've built a pretty big production. It's it's it's the
idea is we take people to a Betha for one night.
You know, we either taken them back because they've got
great memories of it, or we're taking them there for
the first time because they've never been there. So, um,

(08:23):
we've built, it's evolved over the five years and it's
got a little bit more dense and layered as we've
picked up material um and worked out what ideas work
and what ideas don't. So um, yeah, we what's going
on up on screen on on screen um compliments what
we're doing on stage. And as I said, not not
this year, but the year before. It starts with a plane,

(08:46):
you know, flying over the audience and we take you
to a bether for one night. And we've we've had
you know, departure boards up from the airport. We've done
all sorts of tricks and and and the show climax
is by this pretty special journey, um through the night
through a beether and then a bit and and dealt villa. Yeah,

(09:06):
the classic shot in a bee the old town um
rises up behind the orchestra and like it gives me
goose bumps talking about it. But that's like the emotional
like punch um. But we're always I'm always looking at
I mean for the first you know here, I am
like in my sixtieth year. I've been deejaying pretty much
since I was fourteen years old, and um, you know,

(09:29):
to be able to do this, I mean this, I
just didn't see this coming. You know, this was not
written in the book. You know. I always had a
day job to kind of compensate for my you know,
the way my DJ was going. And so it's it's
been fascinating so be able to be able to do
this stuff on that scale. Um, I'm learning a lot
and it's a lot of fun. And you know, you

(09:50):
see you you see the technology on stage that you know,
Metallic could take out or you know you two or
Coldplay or Kanye or someone um where as deviling and
we I can, like a couple of years later after
they've done it, I can kind of afford it, so
we can get a little bit of that. So we're
always like looking to push the envelope a bit in
terms of every year as the as the show goes on,

(10:12):
we we get a little bit more funding and we
can add another trick. Okay, so you are the driving
business force. It's basically your show. Well it's it's it's
my name at the top of the poster, but it's
a collaborative effort. It's I'm actually I'm talking about the
quick and I'm talking about the business end. I mean,
does everybody else you know the orchestra, They basically show

(10:33):
up when it's booked, But in terms of talking to
an agent, manager, etcetera. Picking out dates, is that all
fall on your head pretty much? I mean, um, there
there is a there is a little We formed the
company as a partnership which is me and Jules Buckley
and um Chris Wheeler, who's the principle of the Heritage
Orchestra and my management company actually, so a lot of

(10:56):
the everything else apart from the show tends to all
on me and my management um. And when it gets
to actually doing the show then and all making making
the records, it's very much me and jewels um and
and yeah, yeah, the orchestra turn up to play at
certain sessions. When it comes to actually doing the show,
obviously the orchestra part increases because we couldn't do it

(11:19):
without them. So and we have guests, you know, we
have a lot of guests come on. So we'll take guests, vocalists,
We've had, I mean, we've had um everyone from you know,
John like what I wanted to do because it's because
it's just it appealed initially to the kind of relapsed raver.

(11:41):
So it was it was quite that way if you
were an eight, if you were eight in the eighties
and you were going to like the clubs for the
first time in the raves, you know, all through the
kind of rise of the big clubs in the super
clubs in the nineties in the UK. You know, you
the interesting thing is by two, you know, the late um,
you never stopped loving the music. You you didn't really

(12:04):
want to grow older, but you've got families, you've got jobs,
you have got older. You don't want to go out
till four in the morning anymore, but you do come
and see peakes On and relive this this thing. Um so.
But I but being with my A and R head On,
it was like, I've never really looked backwards and done
celebratory greatest hits things, so I've always been trying to
push the envelope forward. So for me it was very important.

(12:24):
You know, we'll have classic artists back, but I wanted
to have young contemporary artists performing these old songs. So
from the get go we had John Newman, Um, we
had Air Maginade hartnett Um, you know, but I have
had Candy Statin, I have had Seal. We just had
Maxi Jazz from Faith Fus come out and join us
performing his own song, which was kind of took the

(12:47):
thing to a whole new level where you start having
the original artists whose music we are playing then come
back and perform with us. So um so it's a
it's a mix, you know, okay some of this so
but we had but you know, Becky Hills almost joint.
You know, she's a massive kind of contemporary singer in
the UK and she's done every tour. Beverley Night is
a veteran of you know who went on to be

(13:07):
a big star in the theater. Actually she's she's come
back and done it with us. But but then there's
always be the young ones as well. So okay, so
any shows booked for the future, well, the next UK
tour is already on sale, so that's. Um, We've got
one big date at the isle A White Festival next
year talking about glaston Read that might or might not happen,

(13:27):
and then what our arena run again, He's already on
sale for December. We did do it at the Hollywood
Bowl here a few years ago. Um, it was very
expensive thing to do. Um, and we haven't quite yet
worked out the model of how to bring it back
to America. That's challenge. But let's just say forgetting the economics,
working out the below the line stuff. Just talking about

(13:49):
the audience, do you think there is an arena audience
other than in Los Angeles and New York for this show?
We're we're were were working on it now, I think, um,
I my gut feels it's more like an installation that
maybe it's a celebration of the American electronics story from

(14:09):
the late nineties all the way through to two now,
and maybe it's home is more like something like Vegas.
That's having said that, you know, there is this um
you know, like k CRW do at the Bowl, you
know where they do that kind of it's funded by
that kind of season ticket model where people bring their picnics.
I mean I got educated to this a couple of

(14:30):
years ago that there is actually a circuit of those
places like the Hollywood Bowl. You know. Mark Geiger was
telling me, um that you can do that. You know,
probably could do nine, ten, twelve of those around the country.
So we're looking at that as well. Well. I guess
what I'm asking is most people agree that this sound
started in Detroit, but it is never once it was
picked up by the UK and Europe, it is never

(14:52):
really faded. We're here, it's going up and down. So today,
if you because you're a world wide guy, what is
the level of the music in the varying territories? Um, well,
I think it went from zero to a hundred over
the course of these the you know from from the

(15:13):
late eighties. Obviously in the the UK it peaked quickest.
It became mainstream, it moved the needle um in the charts,
in the pop charts, it moved the needle in the
major label business, and then it kind of started to
kind of collapse in the two thousand's and the rest
of the world started to pick up on it. You know,
the French got stronger, the Swedes got stronger, the Germans
got stronger, and Low and Behold by coming into two

(15:36):
you know, mid two thousand, five, six, seven eight e
d M. You know, the roots of DUM kicked in
the US and then the whole financial value moved over here.
So you know that again in major labels had hits
with Vichy and David Gettum Vegascot on board and paid
money that was astronomical. It was bigger than any fee

(15:56):
anyone had ever seen before, anyone in the world. So
we've gone through and that's peaked now but and and
and Vegas is still there, but it's not all consuming
like it was between two thousand and eight and two
thousand and twelve thirteen. So UM, you know, only the
strong survive now in Vegas, Like the biggest pop stars
are the most current pop stars in the electronic world.

(16:19):
But the and but the other right, the the other
rising value right now is um all the underground guys
that kind of that became superstars in a Betha are
now traveling around the world and they've got a slightly
different model. They're not really having hits, um, but they
are bringing huge value to their live shows from an
experiential point of view, and especially on the V I

(16:41):
P and the table scene. So that's all moved from
gathering around, you know, kind of David Getter to two
starting to gather around like Tail of Us and Solomon
and Black Coffee and people like that. So that's quite interesting. Um.
But I think the general thing with my record company
hat on and my agency hat on is that, um,
it's it's actually on the rise again. It's actually the

(17:03):
the the the economic value around electronic dance music is
going back up again and on a global level, and
it's time for a new generation. And it's some it's
pretty positive. Okay, So you're the major labels by the
way back into dance music big time, you know, rightly
or wrong. The the investment is flying back into dance

(17:24):
music because for the for the first time now the
obviously the streaming numbers are actually getting to a significant
level where you know, the pouts are bigger again. So I,
you know, you know my history with Roger Ane's London
Records f r R, I was, I was there at
the beginning and where you know where we were having
bidding wars in the nineties, you know, a hundred grand
for this, two hundred ground for that. It went crazy

(17:45):
and that, and you're seeing that again now in the
last twelve to eighteen months that those numbers are back out.
There are again major labels are battling each other to
get the rights to you know, the MEDUSA record or
you know, okay originally from the UK, but you live
in l A now, yeah, how long? Um, numerous reasons.

(18:07):
One one, I already always had too many jobs and
there was never a good time. You know, there's never
a good time to emmigrade. I think when I was
at London Records, UM, I had my first number one
record in America because I had signed Shakespeare's sister. We
had a record called Stay Um. London Records US had
opened guy called Peter Copkey and it's still run by

(18:31):
Roger Rams, right, Roger was running the whole thing, but
Copy was the head of the US and Osman was
in the mix as well with him, and they were like,
you know, you're you're the future of the label. Come.
You know, now is the time to come to America
and you've got a number one records. That would never
be a better time. But I got onto Radio one.
I had my first child in so that kind of

(18:52):
kai bosh that UM, and then I I got basically
my my I got remarried. My my second wife used
to live in l A. UM so she always wanted
to be American or that she's Brazilian, but she she
was in that she lived in l A when I
met her and UM, and then got deeper into this
WMME relationship, and you know, the center WM at least

(19:13):
back then was Los Angeles, and I thought, you know,
with the d M blowing up in America, and it's like,
if I was going to make the most of the opportunity,
now was the time. So it was. We went through it.
We only I told my mom I was coming for
a year. How many kids? How many kids do you have?
I've got four and two step kids, so six between us, okay,
and how many were the first wife family of the
second wife. They're only two ways to only two lives, okay.

(19:37):
So the first wife three kids, okay, So the first
three three kids. In the second one you have one
together and you have two step kids. So what you
know if you had your first kid in What are
your kids up to? They're all in music actually amazingly
and I never really pushed them into it. Um, they've
kind of done it by their own designs. And my eldest,

(19:58):
Joe um, goes by an name of Joe Hurts as
an artist, didn't take my name, which I quite thinks
quite cool. And he is kind of making futuristic kind
of R and B soulful bit of electronic influence. Um,
he's doing pretty well. He's got good Spotify numbers, good
Apple numbers, and so he's he's doing that. He's writing,
producing for other people and being an artist himself. And

(20:20):
he lives where he lives in London, and he is
now here's the interesting. But he's managed by his sister
who's a couple of years younger. So my daughter as
a manager, and she she got an intern job at
a sony label years ago and then just grew and
grew and grew on her and another guy from the
label ended up leaving and forming their own um label

(20:41):
and management company and plugging company actually called Juice Box,
and they run events. So she's doing that. She DJs
as well, and they've employed my younger he's twenty one,
and now he's like running like training under her and
doing loads of stuff as well. The three of them
work together. That's quite And does everybody get along? Yeah?

(21:02):
I mean the first wife said the first wave ever
get remarried. No, that's okay. So uh, let's ask a
general question for the uninformed. The uninformed looks at dance
music and they hear all the different genres house, chill,
I could go on and on. Can you do your

(21:22):
best to explain those different genres? Yeah, how she can
dance to chill? You can chill to have about that?
Bob okay, I go that. But there are obviously a
mob where there's deep house, there's a million other genres
and subjects I got. I was always a little bit
um spiky about genres because they get they get mishandled,
you know. So I don't know if it's if it's good,

(21:45):
it's good. If you like it, you like it. I
don't know, so, I mean, I guess you have to,
you know, label stuff, but I don't like the next
question is going to be what's what's happening next? No? No,
actually that was not going to be the next question.
If anything, I was going to go backward, and I
ultimately will, but I guess I will ask a question
a different way. Amongst our fans, are fans into the

(22:08):
different genres? Where do you find that certain people are
only into you know, drum and bass or chill or whatever. Um,
drum and bass tends to be a more of a
narrow thing. Um. Back in the day, you didn't used
to um the drummer bassed crew were very locked into

(22:29):
a certain thing. I mean, I I think things are
changing now. I think um. I mean I come from
time late eighties in the rave era and like going
into the early nineties, we played a bit of everything
and we're all our eyes all all the guys back then.
Eyes were opened by those trips, early trips to a
Betha where we saw a guy called Alfredo play all

(22:50):
you know, Chicago House, Detroit House, Italio House, German house
and Techno, and then he'd play in excess you know,
need you tonight. It fights six in the morning with
the sun rising, and everyone you know, like off their
trolley and I was like, this is amazing. They used
to play he'd played like the coolest most obscure underground record,

(23:10):
and then he'd play Stockaching and Wortman's production of Mandy Smith,
who was Bill Wyman's underage girlfriend. And we again it
was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And Chris,
you know, get another good example, you know, five underground
records and then m Josephing Chris Rear. It's like and
that was the blair E spirit. So we and we

(23:31):
all came back to London and Manchester back then, and
we also opened these clubs and we started doing the
same thing. You know, we get to the end of
the night and played depeche Mode or Chris Rear and
it would be ironic, but it was really cool. So
I like, you know, and we used to play a
bit of jungle, and we used to play a bit
of everything. And then something happened where everyone's got in
their lanes and if you ever stepped out of your lane,

(23:51):
you got smacked. Over the head. So, but I'd like
to think now with a younger audience that have kind
of grown up on Spotify and Apple streaming services, as
they start to step into clubs for the first time
because they're old enough and if they're curious to come
that they are actually they're a little bit more all
over the place because they've had because they didn't have
to buy the records exactly. I'm more I'm more concerned

(24:15):
about when I was thinking coming up here. My pet
subject really at the moment is like everyone's talking about
monetization and music, and like, you know, especially in the
electronic area, there's there's been a couple of great podcasts
on Resident Advisor about, um, you know, the fact that
the you know, these super these underground DJs or commercial

(24:36):
DJs are getting you know, tens of thousands, some cases
hundreds of thousands of dollars and pounds and euros to play,
but the music they're playing, the musicians whose music they're
playing are getting nothing, you know. Um, And that's there's
a real disparity there. Um. So that's that's a that's
a big issue out there in the electronic world. But

(24:56):
also and something that we're going to talk about big
time at I MS this year here. But I think, um,
the other thing for me is like, where is the
future of the curators? You know, I come from you.
My hero was John Peel. Um my my um my role.
I guess some you know, five plus years at Radio
one has been as you know, that's been an amazing

(25:17):
platform to be a curator. But in the world of
streaming and where the streaming services are basically the curators
and they seem to run popularity contest is where did
where does a curator in the next decade find his voice,
you know, to move the needles. There's so many questions
and streaming and we can address us. Let's go back
to the beginning. So you're in your sixtieth year, so

(25:40):
you're born in nineteen sixty. Where they grow up? Um,
I grew up in Kent. I was born at the
same hospital as Mick Jagger a few years later. Not yeah,
a few years later, but he reckons we're related by
the way. I finally bumped into him after all these years. Okay,
so you're in Kent. How many kids in the family,

(26:01):
just me and my brother, So it was too boys, um,
and we grew up in a We were born in Dartford,
which is a town where we grew up in a
village in the countryside. Um, and we I went to
boarding school and I was super young. Um, my dad
was busy, My mom was stressed. What did your father
do for a living? He was a well in English,

(26:22):
it's a funny name for it, called a turf accountant.
But he was a bookie, so he was in the
betting business. So he was have to ask because when
I first encountered your name, I thought it was a
stage name. But it's really your name, it's really my
name tongue, and it's not I'm not My dad didn't
run Chinese laundries. Would you have any idea where the
derivation is? Yeah, he he um. He did a search

(26:44):
and he's passed away now, but he told me that
it was actually it was all down to Saxon Anglo
Saxon Viking blood and there was a lot of tongs
in Scandinavia with like spelt like tongue or with a
name on the end, and it wasn't really Chinese at all. So, um,
with all these adverts you see now, like for DNA
and like the family tree or should My wife said

(27:06):
to me the other night we should do it again.
I don't want to do it. I don't want to
find out that I'm gonna die. Never mind all the
crazy relatives. But your brother is older or younger? Younger
four years younger? And what is he up to now?
He's he's in the UK still and he Um, he
works for a cable company putting cables under the ocean,
keeping us connected. Okay. And how close are you to him? Um?

(27:31):
Not that close? I mean, but close because we've always
come together, but it's not like we speak every day
now okay. And does he ever ask you for money?
Personal question? Um? I can answer you because he hasn't. No, No,
he has. And have you just given him money because
you were successful? No? Okay? How about your kids? Your

(27:55):
kids will sounding like they're doing. Are you the type
who says, hey, they have to find their own way?
Are you going to support them till they find the
wrong way? Or how does that work? A bit of both.
I think I've done a lot of learning in life, um.
And I've done a lot of work on myself on that.
And I think you're going through divorces really really tough,
and as the man who leaves the house. You know, Um,

(28:15):
you're torn all over the place in terms of doing
the right thing and the kind of guilt trip and
then you know, what do you do when you're with them?
You know, and you you kind of over you definitely
overcompensate at the start. But we've got a really good
balance now and there and they are growing ups now,
so it's you know, okay, but are they still on
the pay roll? Um no, No, one of them actually

(28:37):
actually does work for me a bit. So my oldest
does actually great that they find the wrong way I stop. No,
they don't know, they all, especially my daughter, Um, she's
quite entrepreneurial. But my son actually does work for the
BBC a year. He helps actually behind the scenes on
my show in terms of some of the engineering and
stuff like that. So so you go away to school

(28:58):
what they call on the UK public school? How old
are you when you go super young? Like ridiculously was
I was like seven or eight or something and I
went to boarding school and I can't I kind of
blanked out a lot of it. I have fond memories
of some of it, and then apparently I was very unhappy.
And how long did you stay there UM till I
was old enough to get the train on my own.

(29:19):
And then so I think till I was about thirteen. Well,
then I was old enough to get I could there
was because it actually wasn't that far away. Some kids
bored because you know, they board in Scotland because they
live on the south coast. But I actually lived very closely,
you know, twenty miles from the school, maybe not even

(29:40):
that UM. So I was a weekend border so I
would board during the week and go home at weekends
most of the time. But I was so when I
got to twelve or thirteen, I was I was old
enough to do the train journey on my own. Until
did you stay at that school? Yeah, all the way
through till um what they called a levels eighteen. Then

(30:01):
I never went to UNI. I was straight into UM.
You know, I was a pretty studious student until I
was sixteen. I got all my exams, and then I
was definitely a more distracted UM student in the last
two years because my music thing was starting to happen. Okay,
your father was a terrific account you were, I know,
I like terrif ac count I've read before, but I

(30:22):
wouldn't been able to pull out my reran. Were you
were aware of that? Yeah? I mean I was actually
my best subject at school was maths. So he I
would work in the back office of his bookmakers, which
is all legal in the UK, well as long as
I wasn't out front. Yeah, so I was being a
bookie in the UK legal where you had you had

(30:44):
tracked bookies and you had shot books. You have to
have different licenses, so you could be a bookie at
the track for the dogs or the horses. Um, and
that was a certain type of license. And my dad
didn't do that. He didn't he didn't do it for horses.
He did do it a little bit for dogs racing
gray hounds, but um, I I would go so on
the big race days like the Derby and the Grand National,

(31:06):
um and the Choltenham Gold Club, I would often go
in and work at the back office, probably when I
was thirteen fourteen, and I'd have to you know, work
out you know, someone bet fifty quid at five to
four and I do the bet calculations. So really, well,
how many people were working for him, I don't know,
five or six. Yeah, he had like three shops and

(31:30):
but it put me off gambling forever for like the
next question, it did because it was it did him
in basically, I mean he was There was an era
in the in um so we're talking about the late
seventies where the independent bookmaker could still make a good living.
But um, the the the chains or the conglomerates started

(31:51):
to rise. So there was there was two big companies.
One was called lab Brooks and the other one was
Joe Coral. And the fact that they had, you know,
once you start having thirty shops, forty shops, a hundred
shops in the UK, you could just offset your you know,
you just balanced the box where it's really really hard
for a guy with three shops to have a bad. Um.
Grand National where the favorite one, you know, and it

(32:13):
was always it was red There was his famous horse
called red Rum. And my mom will always and she's
still alive, um and whenever it gets the Grand National
Day and I call her from here and say what
we're gonna it was it's the one time I'll still
have a bet because I wanted to get my daughter
into it just to see, just to show her what
we used to do. And I rang her this year
just before the race started and she's still you know,

(32:35):
she's nine now, um, but she's still. I can't do that,
you know. It's like it's that's that's what he brought
your dad to his knees, that bloody race. Okay, so
he literally set the yards himself. I guess so. I

(32:57):
mean I think there was some kind I don't know,
I forgot now it worked. There was some kind of
correlation with what was going on on the track because
back then on TV you'd see the odds at the
course and I think, you know, they it was literally
people going around going, you know, has this horse got
all its shoes on? Is this one got his tail on?
You know? Is the jockey drunk? Is you know? Is

(33:20):
there information? You know that when we're not knowing? And
that would that would how someone would go around and
right the odds and then he would have to look
at those odds that were on TV because it was
before betfair or internet or anything like that, and he would, Um,
I guess, yeah, he could. He could give an extra
point or take a point away. Here they all do
what he wanted to do. So how did he do it?
In the end? It ended horribly. It was some he's

(33:43):
started having to bet. He was a gambler as well,
so he would he would take a load of bets
on and then have to kind of bet against the
book to books, and it just it started to unravel.
In the end, he was a very proud man and
he sold he sold out to um two lab Brooks
or Joke Corals, I think it was Labrook's, and then
he went um. He never really recovered from that. Actually

(34:06):
he went into he then him and my mom bought
a hotel and they went into the hotel business. Just
one big, big, quite big hotel in the town Gravesend,
and um, but the idea of serving other people and
just he just got very depressed about it, and he
was he was drinking too much. So okay, did he
sell out whichever one of the two couples it was

(34:28):
because he saw the future coming or because he'd lost
so much Okay, but there was enough money to buy
this hotel. Yeah yeah. And how long did they own
the hotel? Um? He he died in nineties three, so
um we probably had another year like we were winding,

(34:49):
had to wind it all up, so from from yeah,
late seventies to four probably and other than him disliking it,
was a good business. I think it was good for
a while. And he's grand his father did it and
it was so I think from the you know, after
the Second World War there was probably twenty years where
that was a very good business to be in. Yeah, okay,

(35:09):
So what exactly put you off gambling? It's just it's weird.
I just there's not I could. I mean, I've worked
in Vegas so often I've gotten it's just weird, you know,
like people talk about addiction or like, you know, people
always want to drink. It's just weird. It's it's not

(35:30):
it's gambling to me. It's just like I don't it's
like in my DNA that there's fear. There's somewhere I might.
I might. I'm quite curious about blackjack, and I might
occasionally go and throw, you know, you know, throw something
on a roulette table, just for a laugh, like I'm
talking about like once every ten years. But I got no,
I just don't have any. The only time I ever
bet is when I go to football matches in the UK,

(35:52):
and if I'm lucky enough to be invited to someone's box,
they bring when you're having dinner, they bring around a
sheet and you actually bet on the result. So I
actually do that because it's football and I'm mad. I'm
mad about football. Um, but there's no I just don't know.
It's just I think watching my dad obviously when from
when I was very young at seeing what it did
to him. Um, it's obviously just closed off that door.

(36:15):
And what about alcohol and drugs, Um, well, yeah, I
mean I've I've had periods of um of drinking not drinking.
So I think I think everything in you know, moderation
really Okay, So it's not that well I'm not sure.
It's not that you don't have an addictive personality. It's
like gambling is the thing too itself. Push that aside. Okay.

(36:36):
So if you are going to school and it's late
seventies from the US perspective, this is pub rock, Graham
Parker in the Room or whatever. Okay, wretch a little earlier,
like ninety two. Okay, So when did you get into music?
Very early age? I was My dad did get a

(36:58):
lot of albums and single and um, so I just
he was there was always records around the house and
I just became So he did get a lot. Yeah,
he was into music, so he bought a lot of albums,
and he had quite an eclectic taste. There would be
the Beatles and the Stones, but there would be um,
then there'd be the crooners like Dean Martin and Frank Snatcher.
But then there'd be Santana and like more exotic kind

(37:18):
of music, and like a lot of he'd buy like
a lot of like African drumming albums and stuff like that.
So he was always had these mad gatefold sleeves. Um
so I and I've still got some of them actually.
So there was music always around. I was always banging
things as a kid apparently, and then um, you know,
I had my piano lessons and stuff like that, but
rum drums is what I settled on. Okay, So how

(37:40):
long did you play the piano? Well, on and off
a few years, but but it never really stuck with
which I gratefully greatly with regret lessons. How long did
you take drum lessons or played drums? Probably from eleven
or twelve till till DJing really kicked in, which was

(38:03):
about fourteen fifteen. So I had a drum kit, a
Ludwig drum kit that you got me, and I used
to sit in our front room with the headphones on,
trying to play, trying to follow along with Keith Moon
and John Bonham. Okay, did you ever the first thing
I could ever play when we formed a school band
and we used to do Smoke in the Water by
Deep Purple and we could do hold your Head Up
by Argent. Of course, Um, I could play. I could

(38:24):
play almost every instrument on that song, and so yeah,
it was it was fun times. And we used to
we did some school concerts and we did a like
village hall concert and but one day I saw a
DJ at a school disco for the first time with
two belt drive turntables a little old at the time.

(38:45):
This is like, okay, so that's nineteen seventy five. Okay,
that was not happening in the US and the early
seventies we had a DJ. Well, this was not cool.
This was like wedding. So we had to turn tables
just so he didn't have to worry about a break
or was he mixing the two together and I'm mixing it?

(39:08):
Just just two turntables and like what looked like a house,
you know, a lampphraids taken from his house, and um, yeah,
it was a microphone. He was like, now and now
this is number two in the charts. It's like, you know,
and this was like a school dance. Was your school
boys only or girls too? It was boys only at
that stage, and just when I left in the sixth

(39:30):
form they started to introduce girls finally. So um, this
would have been just in the in the middle school
that what we called the O level years the GCSC
is so um, I can't remember exactly. Okay, so you
see the guy with the two belt driven turn tables,
and then I just thought, well, my dad's got loads
of records. This makes a much better noise than I'm

(39:50):
making with my band. I see much more in control
with that. So firstly it was me and a friend
of mine and my school friend. So we did a
bit of a double act of like what what what
you decide you're going to do it? There's no rehearsal
because you think you know everything kind of yeah yeah,
So then when do you say, I'm gonna go out
and get gigs? Well, then I took over the school

(40:13):
this go so I can't remember. We had one at
the end of every term. So what do you said?
It said hiring somebody you know? Volunteer yourself, because I
think there was a student's union school something like are
you that type of person? Entrepreneurial like that. I would
never have used that word at the time, but I
clearly was more than I give myself credit for so.
And back then being a DJ meant having the gear,

(40:36):
so like you could be a DJ if you had
the gear. So it was all about getting the gear.
So with a bit of money that my dad gave
me and like scrapping together stuff, I managed to get.
You know, you get the two speakers, you get an amplifier,
you get the turn tables and it and it went
from there and my my formative years as a DJ
was all about being a mobile DJ, because which meant

(40:57):
you had the gear. And then I had I had
the transit van quite early. But you said it was
a duo, a guy called Nigel Burns, and I lost
track with him thirty four years ago, but he at
the beginning there was two of us, and I can't
remember quite why, but it's probably to do with the
fact that he probably put some money and got one

(41:18):
of the speakers and I got the other one, and
we had we had the boxes like with the flashing
three lights and it was total you know, classic kind
of cliche stuff. Um and it was you know school
dis Guy's where we play t Rex. But then I'd
learned I, you know, play funkadelic, you know one colation
under a groove or get up, you know Casey and

(41:39):
a Sunshine Band disco text and the sex Alex James Brown,
and I realized that these this music made the dance
for move more than me playing Mark bolan Um and
I kind of that's where my formative my taste starts
to come together. There's a fifteen sixteen year old that
really sould music was my thing. Um. And I've spent

(42:01):
a lot of time around Gravesend, even though we lived
in this village. A few miles outside there was a
record shopping grays And called Chris's Records, and I got
myself a weekend job there and I just loved the
idea of like, you know, filing the records away in
plastic covers, like obviously the covers in the shop were empty,
and then you'd take them to there and they and
this this shop had quite unlike the unlike the US,

(42:24):
the records were not shrink wrapped, no, no, everything was
like it was in self. It was in an open
plastic cover. But but this because this this town I
grew up around had a strong West Indian community, an
Indian community and England you know white community, and they
like reggae and they like soul, and a lot of
the kids were going up to London to like early

(42:46):
kind of underground from London. It was it was an
hour on the train miles outside London on the Thames
South Thames coast um and so I started hanging around
with a load of pop at like music like like
music that wasn't the music that was top forty UM.
And back then growing up even then, there was a

(43:09):
lot of specialist radios, state programs. On Radio one UM,
there was a very eccentric American guy called Roscoe Emperor
Roscoe w n Work. So he used to play you know,
white boys soul records that the first time I've heard
anything like the average white band or anything like that.

(43:29):
And then there was the guy called Tony Prince who
was on Radio Luxembourg. And then eventually Robbie Vincent and
Greg was they were my you know, and it was
like it was like the window to another world hearing
this music and everything was very rare and like you
have to really hunt around. Yeah, complete opposite, and I'd
have to go up you know, I've would send people

(43:49):
up to London. I'd I'd start going to London on
the train and going into Soho or to Holburn and
then finding these records in these record stores, and then
you have to build your relationship with the person behind
the counter because there'd only be five copies and if
you weren't cool enough, you weren't going to get one
of the five copies. So it's all this thing of
searching music. And then when I get it back home
and i'd play it in Kent, you know, around these

(44:12):
shows that I started doing, I'd cover up the labels
so that other people couldn't steal it off me or
find out what it was. So it was all very
um it was. It was cool. Okay. So you're in
what we would call high school. How many nights a
week or how many nights a month are you're working? Um, well,
once it left school eighteen before you left school, because
you did at school, it wasn't I mean, how you know,

(44:34):
like once I can't even remember, like once or twice
a month probably and we did did yeah, okay, and
then no I did what I was doing mobile, No,
I was getting hired to do weddings and stuff like that.
And okay, so you're you're making decent money. I'll start
making decent money. What are you quickly? What do your
parents say about you're not going to university? Initially they were, Um,

(44:58):
there was a little bit of resistance, and initially they
were pushing me, but um, they saw it was my
passion and didn't really stand in my way. I think
they kept thinking it would wear itself out and just
be careful that you don't get too old and it's
too late that if you want to go to university
or you want to do this stuff. But my dad
didn't really go to UNI, um and my mom didn't

(45:20):
go to UNI, so it wasn't a UNI tradition in
our family. So that probably helped. Okay, some things started
to happen quite quickly, but I always, um, you know
DJ's didn't no one dj for a living back then.
This is the big point to make. So you even
you know, mobile DJs had day jobs. You know club DJs,

(45:41):
the early ones that I first heard about, they had
day jobs. Um, unless you were literally the breakfast show
DJ on the BBC or Radio one or something like that,
which I didn't ever want to be. I'd worked out
quite early on that I didn't want to play other
people's music choices. If I was going to be on
the radio, I wanted to play what I wanted to play. Um,
So I got day job. So nine nine, Um, what

(46:03):
was your day job? I joined a music magazine called
Blues and Soul, which was the mixed you know, the
dance magazine of the day, although it was Could you
make any money working from Yeah, I got a salary,
I got a car. Really yeah, it had so as
you know, and I and I I don't know if
you remember in the UK, they used to be a

(46:25):
Pauli Yates was a writer for Record Mirror and she
was the first one that ever wrote about like pop culture,
stroke gossip. So I I was obsessed by what she wrote,
and I thought, I want to write something. I want
to write about the scene and the gossip in a
cool way and the music, and so that was what
I thought my job was going to be at Blues

(46:47):
and Soul magazine. The day I got there, the publisher
said to me, yeah, that's just that's just laughing. You know,
your real job, you're gonna have to go and sell advertary.
So if you want to do that, you can do that.
But you've got to go and sell some ads. So
they gave me a car to go around and sell advertising.
So I would have to go around all the record shops,
you know, back in the day. So the record shop ads,

(47:07):
they used to list a hundred titles, um, and then
you put them in the back of the magazine with
a hundred titles mail order, you know. Um. And with
the reggae shops, it got a bit tricky because if
you made a spelling mistake, they try and not pay
your bill. So you know, I had guns pulled on
me and like all sorts of things back in the day.
So um, but it was it was it was rites
of passage. It was a massive experience and it was

(47:28):
I started to meet more people in the industry because
I was writing this column. So it's kind of the
making of me working at Blues and Soul Made and
you're living were at the time. I was commuting from
Kent into London. Um. I know, I actually got a
house really young as well. I got I managed through
bits of money from DJing. Houses were super cheap back then.
My first house was I got mortgage obviously, but it

(47:51):
was like twenty grand or something. I got like three
bedroom terraced house. Yeah. Boy, my godmother was quite healthy
and she left me a bit of money. And you're
talking about like even if you had five grand, you
could get because it on a proper house. It was
opposite a cemetery, but it was actually quite cool. And
so how long you would I left the house. So

(48:15):
so the magazine I was three, And then the record
companies were starting to kind of, you know, get more
and more interested in dance music. And Roger Rames was
working at what was called Phonogram, and there was a
guy called Tracy Bennett working at a place called Decca,

(48:37):
and Tracy had signed Banana Rama to Decca, and Roger
had signed you know, Tainted, Soft Cell Dex's Midnight Runners.
Roger was killing it and and they to keep him happy,
they gave him his own label. So they gave him
the Redundant London label which was sitting on a shelf
um and said well why don't you reinvent London And
that he came together with Tracy and they formed London Records,

(49:00):
and then there was a club promotions A and R
man Phonogram at the time called Jeff Young who also
happened to be a DJ that was a bit older
than me and my buddy, and you know, I was
almost his protege and he was also on the radio,
so I was kind of following his path. And he
they assumed he was going to go with them to
start this new venture, and he said no, he wanted

(49:22):
to stay at phonogram Um and he wanted to retire.
Eventually packed up djaying as well. He just wanted to
do radio, not club djaying. And they said, well, who
else are we going to call? And they said, did
you call this guy? Pete Tong? So I had a
meeting with them and it was it was amazing those two,
you know, rogers, very thoughtful and sensible, and you know

(49:43):
Tracy was quite wild and flamboyant and the sexy guy
everyone wanted to sign to kind of thing with with
great spiel and amazing years. And I worked for the
joined them and it was it was, you know, a
ride that took I went. I worked with them for
eighteen years until early two thousand's, until the label got
sold and it was it was an incredible time, incredible period,

(50:05):
and um we hit the ground running and the first
day ever went into work, UM we were number one
in the chart with Candy Girl with new Addition, which
Roger and traced licensed off of street Wise off Arthur Baker.
And I was given the tapes to the next single,
like big half inch tapes, so you're a DJ, go
and edit the next single and yet and I was like,

(50:27):
and I was walking out the door and like, I'd
never cut tape with a razor before, But I went.
I went to a studio in Marble Arch which actually
eventually became Paul Weller studio called Solid Bond, and there
was a lovely old guy in there called Carlos and
he he took me under his wing and he said,
don't worry, We're going to work it out. Like, well,
what do you want to do? You know, It's like, well,
I want to cut like eight bars out the interest

(50:48):
he showed me, like with the razor. And I had
cut tape at home, but nothing like on a master.
Did you cut the master? The master? But I guess
it was a copy of what they'd sent us from America.
Back then. Um so you can't. I started editing literally
my first day at work. It was quite funny, so
it was a it real writes a passage. But and
then you know, I started They started sending me to

(51:09):
America very regularly. And it was the days when you
you know, walked down the street and bumped into someone
and licensed a record off and a bit like I
remembering Hurtigan m Urtigan's book he says that about the
Rolling Stones, like you know, it was a fantastic tile
down the street and I bumped into mid Jagger and
I signed him. It was a bit like that with
dance music back then. And I signed Rundy m C

(51:33):
licensed them from Profile from Corey Robbins for the for
the world outside of America, and that got me straight
in with with Russell and Leo um And and and
Rick Rubin and m I met those three very early
on and um And that we and we did and
that was the Raising Hell album, you know, so that

(51:53):
was hugely successful. En off the back of that, I
managed to sign Salt and Pepper from Eddio Lachlan the
next Plateau Records in but tween signing like the odd
early like Paradise Garage house record or the early house
records that were coming through from Chicago, and I was
I was on a roll as any and our man.
I mean, we just we sounded push It and that
was like a massive, massive hit. UM and eventually Salt

(52:15):
and Pepper we stuck with them UM and we ended
up becoming the label in America eventually as well, during
the kind of the en vogue what are man at times?
So it was it was it was great fun. And
then they gave me my own label. So dance music
was like blowing up. So in six eighty seven, just
as house music was starting, we started f I started

(52:36):
ffr R, which was actually a little symbol on the
top of the old London logo that just stood for
full frequency Range Recording, so it was like a mono
stereo Dolby. It was an old symbol from the deca
days about the quality of a recording. I thought it
would be quite nice because we were obsessed by deaf
jam so like Black Silver wanted something like death jams,
so FRR looked quite good. Okay, so you're working London records,

(53:00):
you were successful. Sounds like you're making a good paycheck. Yeah, okay,
and and then I was still all the way doing
that's my question. How much were you DJing? Well then,
like every week it was some you know the club scene. Okay,
let's let's start there. Okay. There's a lot on how
it did it. It's a long tradition of the Brits

(53:21):
going to a Betha. But when did it turn into
a whole dance stay up all night environment Betha. Well,
it was that from the very beginning. We just weren't
welcome as Brits in the late eighties, so um, you know,
we the Britgs used to go there is like a
cheap tourist package holiday destination in the early eighties. And

(53:42):
it wasn't till the late eighties, like specifically where I
kind of discovered Alfredo and Amnesia and Passia and started
seeing these parties that went through the night and then
carried on going when the sun came up. And that
was totally unique because we had the licensing laws of
the UK um and that's when everything started to really

(54:03):
really change. But I mean, so Betha um from I've
been there every year every ever since. But the yeah,
the nineties, you know, it started to really kind of
shape itself that it really really blew up in probably
the two thousand's is when Oka. But the clubs there

(54:25):
were they existing or did the Spianiards have a vision?
They had a vision for sure. It just by accident
or design or this vision. Um, it happened to be
this small island you've been, you've been and it you know,
there happened to be there for four or five clubs,

(54:46):
all very close to each other. That happened then went
on to become some of the most famous clubs in
the world. And I think it was the mix of
the audience and then the liberalism of the licensing laws
that enable about to happen. So obviously it's changed a
lot over the years because that that idea of going
through to the morning and carrying on, that's kind of stopped,

(55:08):
you know, the idea of the big superclubs like Amnesia
Um and Passia in particular, going on until they wanted
to like ten in the morning. That that's gone, you
know that. So in the last ten years it's been
much stricter about you must finish it six, when you
must finish at seven, or you must finish it eight
or whatever. And then often the after and then there's

(55:28):
no carry on like officially the after party seen often
starts after lunch and it's actually a bit more organized
and you know, so, but the the idea of going
through the night get a long answer to your question,
but actually it's it's probably been more curtailed. It was
like that where it was like twenty four hours, you know,
and now it isn't. It's okay, you can, but you

(55:50):
can find somewhere to dance pretty much twenty four hours.
It's not in the same place. To what degree do
you believe it was fueled by drugs? Um, Well, clearly
really had a massive influence on it. Um that's that's okay.
I mean it was at a combination of things. I mean,
it's so it's easy from a tabloid non you know, educate.

(56:16):
You know, if you if you don't know anything about
the music and you just want to write a certain
type of history about it, you could you could lean
in it that way. But to but to think that
it wasn't artistic and it wasn't about the music, you'd
you'd be completely missing the point, which comes right back
to the beginning of our conversation, which is why a
beether classics works because the music was great, and maybe

(56:36):
it didn't necessarily get the the props it deserved back
in the day, because that's what a lot of people thought.
You know. The very reason we started the I M
s was because people thought all that happens in a
Beth was it was a party. Okay, So how important
is me and Chester of the hut Yanda and the
acts there? Hugely important? Um, you know, that's a whole

(56:59):
another thing. I was. I was an observer and occasional visitor.
And I wasn't part of that because I was I
was a London guy. Um, but you know, phenomenal apportment.
And you've got to remember back in the late eighties
when that started, you know, the country was much more disconnected.

(57:20):
You know, just the idea of like, you know, having
these things and the way we all travel now, you know,
being in London and like making a trip to Manchester,
it was a massive thing. You know. It's like this
did not happen on a regular basis, you know. And
it was before DJs even traveled up and down the country.
So I was a big DJ in in the southeast
and I was virtually unknown in the rest of the country.

(57:41):
But what was the night worth to you back then?
Probably um, but in the eighties I don't know there was.
It definitely starts with hundreds and then it becomes thousands.
So in any event, but you're aware of the scene
in the Anchester totally. By then I was in the

(58:03):
record company and Mike Pickering quite a grand part, quite
rapidly became rival A and r Men as well. I
mean Pickering went close in with Deconstruction, and Deconstruction became
the label of the North. Even though it was run
by one guy from Liverpool, it was actually always seen
as it was, you know. And then obviously Factory was
most of those Factory acts, I mean Joy Division had

(58:27):
purchase here and has maintained as bigger than it's ever been.
But the Happy Mondays a lot of those acts never
made it here. How big were they in the UK?
Absolutely massive and more than massive, they were hugely um
you know, they carried an awful lot of gravitas, particularly
new Order obviously coming from coming out of Joy Division

(58:49):
less so something like Orchestral maneuvers in the darkest that
the fact Factory was an amazing thing, you know, and
I was I got deeply involved with them towards the
end because London one kind of started to bail him out.
You know. We started by licensing the Happy Mondays and
having their records around the rest of the world. And
then as the financial troubles got worse, Um, we got

(59:11):
we got further and further into factory to the point
where we bought it. Yeah. So, and then I used
to work a lot with Tony in the city and
um Tony Wilson and um them. From an A and
R perspective, I actually ended up looking after New Order
and became their A and R man when they came
over to London, and so I worked very closely with
you know, with Bernard and with Rob Grettan. Okay, so

(59:40):
you're a DJ, at what point do you start playing
individual records and start mixing the records together. Um, late
late I'm just think this, but through probably early eighties,
what was basically what happened is, um, you know, when

(01:00:04):
the soul scene was blowing up, the underground soul scene,
and it was a northern soul scene in in in
the North. Um. One of the guys in our gang,
you know, the biggest, one of the biggest DJs of
that time, was a guy called Froggy, and he was
my mentor when it came to DJ equipment, So he
was always the geek with the DJ equipment. Had this
Orange sound system which was incredible, and I bought decks

(01:00:25):
off him when he was re upp into the to
the newest model. So I got all his old equipment
and became like an understudy to Froggy almost, But he
started going to New York before and you know, one
of the first guys to ever go to New York
and see Larry Levan. Um. There was a very famous writer,
a beautiful guy called James Hamilton as well that was

(01:00:46):
like that used to review all the music for Record Mirror,
and he was the first one to actually issue bpms,
so he every review came with a bpms per minute.
And then and Froggy went over and like saw the
early um you know, David Mancuso, and saw Larry Levan
in action. And so when he came back from New York,

(01:01:07):
like it was like he had two copies of everything.
It's like what you know, what you're doing. It's like, oh,
I can make I can extend this. And he literally
came back. He literally it was like, you know Moses
coming down from the mountain. It's like I've been to
New York, I've seen Larry Leavan, and I've bought two
copies of this from the vinyl factory or whatever. And
now I can play this record and make it like
twice as long. And I was like, oh my god.

(01:01:29):
And and that's because you work out what tempo it
is and you match the tempo. And it was it
was just it was before you know, it's just just
as very speed turntables were coming in that in fact,
you could even do that. So he opened He was
definitely the gateway to open everybody's eyes to mixing, and
we were we were edging towards smooth segways. I mean.
The other biggest DJ of the day was a guy
called Chris Hill. I actually used to run Ensign Records

(01:01:52):
with Nigel Lucy and Granger's brother and and they say
of Boomtown Rats and shined O'Connor and and so Chris
had a day job, but he was the biggest DJ
at the time, and he used to sing over the
records and talk across the segway, so it would like
blurred everything together. Um and Froggy kind of brought in

(01:02:13):
this more like modern way of doing it. Obviously we
were aware as well as like Africa Bambarto and the
hip hop guys and what they were doing in terms
of turntable ism. So it kind of that's when it
all changed. And then suddenly, I don't know, there must
have been one day where it just wasn't cool not
to mix. You know, you just had you just you
just assumed you had to mix. And by the time
the house music kicked in, um, you know, like you

(01:02:37):
just you just had to be doing that. It was
just the thing to do. Okay, did you practice or
did you practice? No, definitely practiced. I had the whole
set up at home and it um. And then and
then they became people that were the best at mixing,
you know. But there was melodic mixing, mixing and key mixing,
beautiful transitions, you know, taking people on journeys, and I

(01:02:58):
was you know, so it just raised the game. There
was a guy called Sasha you know still around today,
a good friend of mine that really it was another
one that really raised that. There was another real you know,
raising the bar moment, like when he came on because
he could just do it in his sleep, and he
just everything always seemed to being key, and it just

(01:03:20):
you know, not just about mixing out of the drum
break of one into the drum break of the other,
but actually thinking about, well, now this baseline is going here,
I'm going to get this baseline to go there. And
that was yet. So its just the whole skill set
around it and the the learning curve just increased hugely
in the late eighties. Okay, so London record has assolted

(01:03:40):
around the turn of the century. Where does that leave you? Um,
weirdly at forty plus years old and sitting around going, um,
oh my god, you know, for the first time in
my life, even though I've done it my whole life,
I'm i am a full time PJ. So um and
I went. There was no thought of adding another record

(01:04:00):
company job. I was kind of over it by then.
It got if you remember the naps to you know,
two thousand, two thousand one, I mean, the dance music
bubble had burst, you know, we all the way through
the nineties, like the ecosystem, the economic value of dance
music every year just kept going up like a stock
price out of control. So everything you know, and the

(01:04:22):
infrastructure about dance music got fatter and fatter and fatter,
and inevitably, after ten years of like fattening this giant
cow bull um, people start to take their eyes off
the ball. Things definitely aren't as good as they used
to be, but everyone's making loads of money. And and
I wouldn't say that it didn't pop around the millennium,
but it got punctured somewhere along the way. And as

(01:04:45):
we came into the new decade after a couple of years,
like the tires are deflating, um, you know, magazines are closing,
major record companies are starting to either you know, make
people redundant or tighten up. Budge. It's you know, doing doing,
doing all sorts of stuff to dance labels. And by
then my career at London, I was kind of head

(01:05:07):
of a and r of the whole thing. So I've
kind of outgrown the dance bit and I've replaced myself
with people, you know, many great people worked with me,
and John Niven wrote the book about us with you
know Killy your friends, but you know people like Nick
Raphael who's very senior now at Capital, signed Sam Smith,
you know, Christian tatters Field, and you're well aware of.

(01:05:27):
UM used to work for us at London Records. UM.
Even Patrick Moxley worked at London Records. You know, there
was like there was loads of people UM that have
gone on to Paul McDonald. Funny enough, he was a
manager of you know, James Bay and George George ezra Um.
He was a London Records. You know, there was amazing
It's sold basically, but I'd become head of an R

(01:05:49):
and it was like the game. I remember that signing
some kind of pop things because everyone you start sign
you end up signing things because you think they're going
to be hugely successful economically and you kind of but
you don't really love them. But like I remember there
was one I can't remember the name of it. UM.
Oh god, I remember being involved in signing this pop

(01:06:12):
act and it was only Smallman and Dennis Inglesby were
the managers, and I and UM and and every you know,
it's one of those ones where like Roger was sure,
everyone was sure, Like the dorman of the building was sure,
everyone at Radio one was sure. Like I've made it
about as sure as you could possibly making. It was
hugely expensive and UM and we spent about a year

(01:06:34):
doing this deal and six months making the record and
then it was like and then we took it to
Radio one one day and it was Alex Jones. Donnelly
was the head of programming at that time. It was
like and it's like literally within about a month they
were dropped. You know, we wrote off like half a
million quid and um, you know, people would get you know,

(01:06:57):
it's just like, no, I don't like this anymore. It
was so and then so I started my full time role,
started to be a bit of a consultant, and I
remember when it got sold out and if you remember,
Roger went into the kind of heavens like working with
Dick Parsons at Warners. You know, John Reid took over
on a day to day basis. We moved to Kensington.

(01:07:19):
You know, me and Tracy were like, everything from our
kind of indie beginnings have changed so much. We kind
of lost a bit of interest and I got more
and more distracted by DJ and my DJing in the
early two thousands. As as what happened to a lot
of DJs. Then this is the economic value from recorded
music collapsed. All the value went into live suddenly. Though
with the Internet, we were getting calls from Peru and

(01:07:42):
Chile and Australia for the first time, and you know,
we could start traveling and migrating like birds to where
the money was. So two thousands to probably two thousand
and five, I just did an awful lot of touring.
So you at what point do you start working as
a record executive. Well, two thousand one, two tho two
starts to kind of filter out. There was a little

(01:08:03):
flirtation with Universal Um where I was going to I
kind of did a deal to do some compilations, and
I was going to consult with a dance label and
some ex staff from London Records were working there and
funny enough, six months ago to negotiating that, and um,

(01:08:24):
the guy that did the deal I did. I signed
a deal on a Friday, and then on the Monday
he got pulled out and it was it was it
was Matt Jagger and and that Jason ially came in
to take over and we got on fine. He said,
it's just not my vision, you know, It's like I've
got I've got enough things to fix here. That's not
going to work. And um, so I went back out

(01:08:47):
and did other things. I was doing radio and I
had a radio production company and stuff different to buses
and pieces, and then um, around that same time I
changed managers and then w m ME for the and
I knew Tiger because Geiger was our agent for New Order,
and so w ME opened in London, if you remember,

(01:09:08):
it was Ed Bicknell, strangely stret manager, David Levy, Solomon
Parker and they were the three that's opened and it
was that was their first office. And my manager was
Gary Blackburn, who was the manager of Fact Boy Slim,
who's David Levy's long term client. And Gary said, you
should be with David. He's the best guy. And David
was the first ever DJ agent anyway, literally in the world.

(01:09:29):
He was the first, you know, dedicated agent for a
DJ and that was Paul Oakenfold, so I knew about him. Um,
so I moved to w m ME. And at the
same time Geiger was like, you know, well, he knew
I was an out of work record company guy and
he always saw me as that. He said, why don't
you come and do an n R for an agency?
So it was quite visionary thinking and I said, what
do you mean, how's that going to work? So we'll

(01:09:50):
just tell us what we should sign, you know, help
us introduce us. You know, you know I love dancing music,
love electronic music. He always did. He was obsessed by
Moby Um, obsessed by factory, and he said, why don't
you come and do it here? So that's how that
relationship started. And I'm still with him, you know. Okay,
So now when you're on your own, how many nights
a week or how many nights a month are you

(01:10:11):
working back then? I mean, because I don't know like
the average gigs is. I think my averages have gone.
I think the peak was like a hundred gigs a year.
I was never like a dead mouse or you know,
so you're never one because I was never. I was

(01:10:33):
never two hundred gigs here. I mean, funny I've I've
always had, you know, you know, I've gone through that divorce.
I've gone you know that I'm definitely deejaying didn't help um,
and that that early period of the two thousands where
it all fell apart and me traveling, you know, more
away from home. Insecurities probably, I mean all sorts of stuff,
and then um, but I've always cherished this other. I've

(01:10:55):
never I think the reason I'm still dejaying to this day.
Is simply because I never could do burnout because I
always had you know, I see it as an artistic thing,
and I definitely do do it for the money as well.
But um, I've always managed to never have to do
it as much as everyone else has had to do
it because you've had other income streams. But assuming you

(01:11:16):
did want to do it, there's enough workout there for
you to work do hundred nights a year. Not now,
I wouldn't think, not unless I want to do some
really rubbishy things that um that wouldn't enjoy. So I
try and try, and I mean it's there's always this
thing of and it's it's the same for if you're,
you know, a musician in any genre of music doing

(01:11:37):
it as long as I've done it, you have to.
There's a certain amount of reinvention you have to go through.
But I think I've been lucky that my curiosity for
the new and the next, and the fidgit nous of
always thinking looking around the corner um has kept me
current like that. It's just it's just the way I am,
you know. Okay, So have you been one of those
DJs you know, I travel with a USBs Dick, I

(01:12:00):
get on the private jet. I'm going somewhere else. Has
that been your Have you lived that lifestyle a little bit? Nothing?
I was a bit like um my, my era of
true superstardom came a time where the money was still
pretty crazy, but the travel wasn't. I was just before that,

(01:12:23):
like so I'm talking about like mid two mid nineties
to mid two thousand's was probably the purple patch for me,
when I was like number one on poles and all
sorts of things, and then the money. Don't get me wrong,
the money was still good, but we weren't doing what
they It's a bit like football, you know, if you're
George Best, you know it's amazing, right until like twenty
years later there's David Beckham and you realize that you're

(01:12:45):
earning like a tenth or a hundredth of what they're earning.
And it's been a bit like that for me. So
I still, you know, you still do well out of it,
and yes, I've used I used private jets when I
have to do. But for me, you know, there was
there was some times in a beef during the residency
period when I before I moved to America. Um, there
was one year, two years actually where I I was

(01:13:08):
given a private jet every week for eighteen weeks for
two years, like to do the whole season. So they
would would be on Radio one until at nine o'clock
at night on a Friday, and then I would we
drive to the the airport and get a plane, do
the gig, and then yeah, come back the next day.
So UM, that was how when did you get and

(01:13:31):
how did you get the BBC gig? The BBC gig
was so we're going back to We're wind back to
the eighties again. So again I didn't use that word
entrepreneurial at the time, but I guess looking back I
was because it was like, well, how am I going
to get involved in this music? I don't want to
be UM, I don't want to be a breakfast show

(01:13:52):
DJ playing pop records. But I love this music. So
I just want to share this music with as many
people as possible. And the people are in for It's
me the most in terms of shaping who I was
as a DJ. With these guys, I was hearing on
the radio playing specialist music, so it was a natural
thing for me to like, well, I I want to
do that. I used to sit at home listening to
the radio, writing down what people said, writing down their names,

(01:14:14):
of all the records, and I just got obsessed with it.
So I got when I was at the magazine, I
was already I was dabbling with like local radio, pirate radio, UM,
anything I could do to get on UM and a
weird twist of luck fate. Whatever is This guy Froggy
I told you about, had the equipment he used to do.

(01:14:35):
He used to provide the equipment for Radio one road shows,
so when Radio one did an outside broadcast, he'd be
the guy that would do the equipment. He then got
to know some of the producers there and some of
the DJs there, And there was this DJ called Peter
Powell who was the drive time DJ, and he was
very progressive with the music policy, very curious about you know.

(01:14:56):
He was the one that broke Spandel Ballet and Duran
ju around and Malcolm McLaren all these things. And he
wanted to have a proper street DJ come onto his
show on a weekly basis and give them some tips.
That was a feature he was doing. And it turned
out that UM Froggy was was very technical and he

(01:15:19):
was very good with with with mixing records together, so technical,
but the content like sometimes he didn't have the time
to find the records. So who did he call me?
So I was at the magazine getting all this music
and going around all the shops. So his feed fun
froggy music. But lo and behold, what quickly happened is
that they start inviting me as well to go up

(01:15:39):
to Radio one. So there I am at night and
I'm going on to primetime BBC Radio one, giving them
tips of my records. And I thought, this is like,
literally I've literally gone from zero to and I literally
after a couple of years of that, it was like,
will give me a job, giving me my own show?
It's like no, tap me on the head. So you've
got to go away and get some more experienced son.

(01:16:00):
You know, you can't just jump to the you know
the Manchester United, Real Madrid, you know l A, you
know the forty nine. The biggest football club is um
and so I I went back out and I U
but I used that calling card of having been on
Radio one. It's kind as leverage to get onto commercial
radio and Kent and then I was on Radio London

(01:16:21):
which is a BBC station. And I got into Capital
with Richard park Um just as house music and the
rave scene exploded. So I was the Saturday night dance
guy on the biggest radio station in London and I
was there for four years um and then I was
like the number one draft choice when that guy Jeff
Young I told you about, retired and I then got

(01:16:43):
moved to Radio one. So I joined Radio one in
one and been there ever since. Now in America, nothing
likes a lot. Is that the age? Is that you?
Or is that BBC? I think it's a bit of both.
I think, um, there's nothing like the BBC globally unfortunately. Um,
you know, just public service radio that wants to be

(01:17:04):
popular is an unusual thing. You know, you've got these
Triple j's in Australia and things like that, but and
you've got an MPR here, but nothing nothing like what
the Radio one have done, you know, from and they
get battered, you know, they get battered on a annual
monthly basis by the conservative press that they shouldn't be
there on across all disciplines of the BBC, from you know, news, sports, drama,

(01:17:28):
everything but radio. Thank god, it's been there and it's
been you know, it's still it's brilliant, but it's still
saddens me a little bit. I mean in terms of
moving the needle in in UM, especially for dance music,
electronic music. It's still does it better than anything in
the world, which is great but actually also kind of
a bit weird. But you also have a show on iHeart,

(01:17:49):
right what I did actually that ended, that ended, and
it was you know, it was enjoyable. I got introduced
to UM that I met all the senior people in
Bob Pittman, right, and in a bether actually through Pino Sagliocca,
remember there doing a very famous live Nation promoter and

(01:18:09):
they and they would you know, I think Bob's sun
was enjoying a beether and everything like that is anyway
that Pete Songs, your guy like Pete Songs should do
a dance show. And I did it for a while,
but it was a bit it was, you know, good
people around me, but it was a little bit soulless.
I just found it. I don't know, no disrespect to
our heart, but it's that it's just that thing of
like it's a commercial radio station, commercial model, and it's

(01:18:33):
the commercial model for music. It's always been a struggle
in this country to do specialist dance radio. And I
want to point out the read and the simple thing being.
You know, I used to go to New York City,
as I said, it's a sitting hotel rooms and I
would listen to Frankie Crocker, w b Less, Timmy Registered,
Massive Respect, Merlin Bob. You know, these guys trained me,

(01:18:58):
taught me so much when I was a kid about
dance radio and mixed radio, and I wouldn't be here
without them, and they were. They were on American stations,
but um sat sadly most outside of obviously, you know,
the metropolis of New York City being so big, no
no other you know, mixed show radios on the American

(01:19:19):
radio tend to happen after midnight or super you know.
The whole power of Radio One was like Pete Tong
was on at six pm on a Friday night, you know,
and they and he stayed there for you know, I'm
still on a Friday night. I'm on a bit later now.
I start at nine and two hours for my show
and two hours hosting the essential mix later in the night,

(01:19:41):
and it's all gone to like listen again and BBC
sounds and you know it's like it's a different model now.
But to be on basically at six o'clock at night
for twenty years at least, Um, that's what made it
so powerful. That's why it moved. You're living in l
a oh that's prerecorded now now it's I do it
at home. You know, it's smoke and mirrors and technology,
thank god. And when I'm in London, I do it live.

(01:20:03):
So I'd still got back quite regular. Okay, best gig
you've ever had foo Probably Love Parade um was one
of them, doing in Berlin when it still happened, you know,
being I was one of the first ever Brits to
be invited to play at the monument Um and there
was a million people on the streets. So that would
Love Paraders where they had the accident all the people

(01:20:24):
died right um in Germany where they were ultimately going
through the tunnel. I don't know if it was still
the Love Parade then, but maybe okay parade was an
open street in what year was that, um? That must
have been early nineties. Um, So what made it a
great well being playing to so many people and it

(01:20:47):
being a kind of historic thing and we did we
we we recorded it for Radio One as well. Um
so it's just I just obviously one of those things
that will never happen again. And we tried to replicate
it in UK. We did a UK Love Parade and
there was one in Leads in a place called round
Hay Park and that we got two fifty people and

(01:21:09):
it was me and Sasha and Darren Emerson from Underworld
on stage at the end. That was that was truly special,
but unfortunately a lot of people's gardens got trampled and
like people were and then We've Got We've Got moved
to Newcastle the next year and it was a very
toned down version and it never quite worked. Um Space
a beefing, you know, all those beef clubs, having got

(01:21:32):
to play them, all of them at some point, will
always be special. South America is really good. Argentina in
particular in my wife's Brazilian but Argentina is probably the
most the true natural home to kind of electronic music.
You know, it's I've played some pretty special shows in
Chilean and Brazil, but Argentina is something about that the

(01:21:52):
kind of mentality down there and then America. You know,
the US has been pretty amazing as well. I mean,
Miami might as well be another country as that's it's
that's you know, so mixed down there, especially during conference time,
you know, in that Miami Music Week. That's that. You've
got some great memories there. And Space in Miami is
probably the closest. Who was the first club to ever

(01:22:14):
be remotely like a beether And to this day, funny enough,
it's more like a beether and the bether is now
because Space Miami does go pretty much twenty four hours.
So okay, most exotic place you've ever played, um Borakai
maybe in the Philippines. Um you got to look it
up and yeah, I don't even know what that is.
That's like a very long plane ride but followed by

(01:22:36):
two small planes in a boat, so you get to
like desert island. And I did this party in the
days when cigarette companies were still allowed in some corner
of the world to sponsor parties. And it was me
and Almond van Helden Todd Terry funny enough, and it
was on a beach, sand in your shoes, you know,
and it was that was pretty exotic. So what's the

(01:22:57):
biggest p day you've had for a d G gig
Um New Year's Eve, Um probably seven figures. No, No,
I think back then it was it was six figures,
but it was, which is still pretty big. But um, yeah, okay,

(01:23:19):
now I'm not Yeah. I mean does the music excite
you as much today as it did back in your
formative years in hey day? Hard to yes, yes and no. Um,
I worry something, you know. I was talking to the
guys that Splice about this this morning about how, you know,

(01:23:44):
the ultimate you know, electronic music probably more than any
other form of music. It's been so democratized, you know,
every you know, the barriers to entry and completely removed
so everyone can make music. It's amazing. Everyone can publish
their music on SoundCloud and obviously we talked about all
the streaming services um and the keys have been handed

(01:24:05):
over of the asylum as they used to say. But
the downside of it is it almost seems harder and
you know, to get to the Triple A list at
the very top. That that worries me a little bit.
You know, it's very easy to make a very good
record now you know, it's it's it's almost impossible to
make a genius record, you know that dance music with

(01:24:26):
the sample packs and like if you know you can
make you can make that something sound pretty convincing forgetting
the people who get in at the bottom, you know,
the semi pros. Uh, if you are at the top tier,
are there fewer genius records than before? I think so? Yeah,
I think so. I mean there's no disrespect to some

(01:24:47):
you know I did. Yeah, we haven't had you know
that that era of the Prodigy and Underworld and you
know Orbital and um, you know we staft punk even
now is a long time ago. Um, so I think
the yeah that you know, I'm I'm kind of waiting,
you know, we're all you know, the fishing nets are
out in all stripes of music. I would use a

(01:25:09):
similar description. And uh, and what I would label popular
music the Spotify top fifty especially certainly a narrow genre.
So who do you believe are the most artistically successful
DJs working today? It's a big question board. Um whoa

(01:25:35):
that that there's a there was a fork in the
road somewhere during the E d M era where the
the what the ranking system from success it was was
two different paths. So you've got the music makers, you know,
the pop producer writers, so and whether you like their

(01:25:55):
music or not, you have to give them credit. And
you know, from David is a good friend of mine,
even you know, Marshmallow as well to Sathing did come
from our world and gone and gone into the stratosphere
of another world. And I think, you know, I wasn't
particularly a Marshmallow fan at the start of what is music,
but I'm a big fan of what he's achieved in

(01:26:17):
terms of the impact and influence and consistency that he's
been able to have at the very kind of top
tier of the pop table. So I think that's worth
the props. Um. On the underground electronic side, there's there's
some amazing you know, the highest paid, I should say,
and that's because they sell the most tickets. Um are

(01:26:38):
people like Solomon and Black Coffee and Tail of Us
and Marco Corolla, UM and the and the Rise of
the Girls. You know, it's it's amazing to see you know,
Peggy Goo, Charlotte de Witter, Emily Lens, Nina Kravitz, Um.
We've probably seen the biggest game change in the underground

(01:26:59):
world in the last five years, you know, truly the
the the key, you know, the batons being moved on
to a new generation and a new and a new
and a new look, you know. And the fact that
female DJs and and female electronic musicians are having such
a massive impact is is great. Now do you equate
those people who are getting the big paychecks, are those

(01:27:21):
also the people pushing the envelope artistically? Yeah? I think so.
I mean with the underground, you don't get there by.
You get there because you earn the right to be there.
It's like so it's like being in the trenches. You know,
it's like being a stage actor. Um, you have to
go and press the flesh, tread the boards, do the work,
and you get to the top of the tree because

(01:27:41):
people think you're really really good and you and you
continue to innovate with your sets. They've all got their
own labels, they're all championing another generation of musicians. They've
all got their own sound. Um. So I think that's
a very healthy ecosystem, except for the actual person doing it.
I mean it's hard. It's it's frontline, you know, in

(01:28:02):
the trenches work and and the underground is not, Um,
it's not it's not turning up and playing an hour
at E d C. It's often playing you know for
ten hours, um, seven hours, six hours, you know, the
big long sets and after parties, and you know, the
legends around those guys is almost dude down to their endurance.
You know. I was interloom Um a couple of days ago,

(01:28:24):
because that's become early January has become a time when
all of the underground guys flocked there and there's all
these big parties um. And as I was leaving, Solomon
played his party the night before we left. And then
when I got back here, I heard the guy at
my hotel said, old Solomon's doing his after party today.
And when I got back, and then two days later

(01:28:46):
someone said it just finished. So it's like it's it's
it's heavy, you know, and it's some but I guess
it's about as rock and roll, you know. Well, it's
kind of the punk end of if you want to
use that analogy, it's like the punk end of of
our world. Um. And you know, I hope rather than

(01:29:08):
just headonism, good stuff comes out of it, you know. So, okay,
how about this hasn't been something reading about recently, the
concept that people are just standing on stage pushing buttons. Yeah,
I mean some some of them are and they push
a lot of buttons in the right order and it's great.
So I think, um, you know that Analogy was all
about pre pre organized sets. But you know I was

(01:29:32):
being you know, having obviously being behind the scenes, I
can clearly see you know, this was about music makers
playing their own music and getting booked at bigger and
bigger and bigger events and having more and more responsibility
to kind of blow everybody's mind. And in the case
of Swedish House Matthew who definitely wrote the book on
it first, um, it starts to get into choreograph shows,

(01:29:55):
you know, and you're spending you know, hundreds of thousands
of dollars on a visual experience. They took it to
another level, you know, they bought that kind of you
two level of production into the electronic world. And I
always say hats off to him because they were the first.
I mean, Tiesto was going around, you know, Paul Oakenfoll

(01:30:16):
was doing it first, you know, to a certain extent.
Tiesto took it to a whole another level. Arm and
Vambera and all these guys. But you know, and the
show has got bigger and bigger and bigger, and and
they were still essentially djaying and there still was, um
a sense of Tiesto didn't know what he was going
to play in what order. You know. He had a box,
you know, and he had a selection and he had

(01:30:37):
his favorites, and he was a smart DJ, so he
knew how to make the crowd go crazy and stuff
like that. But but there still was an element of
free willing what he could do, and he could make
a last minute decision and change something. And then the
Swedish House Mafia era where they start doing Milton Keene's Bowl,
which was unheard of in the UK for a bunch
of DJs playing to you know, eighty thousand people or whatever. Um.

(01:31:00):
You know, then you've got to have a U two
type rolling Stones stage and you've got to put films
on and they've got to tie in with the with
the music you're playing and the lights and the explosions.
We've got a golf at the right time. So you
get into that thing that you can't change the order.
You know, you can change the order maybe before the
show starts, you know, a couple of days to tell
the visuals guy but you can't just change the order.

(01:31:22):
And that's where that comes from, you know. And I
think Dead Mouse, to a certain extent, you know, fueled
that as well, because he clearly was never really playing records.
But you know, the guy was playing back his own
music and reinterpreting it in different ways. So okay, when
you played, you playing it advance? How do you do it?
You spin records. I've come through the full cycle of
like vinyl into CDs, into playing off the laptop with

(01:31:46):
all of the software when it all started, like Ableton
and Tractor and Serato and stuff like that, and and
I've gone full circle back to um. Yeah, I carry
around a couple of big drives like that, and I
plug him into CD players and I don't have pre
planned sets. No, I'll do some sets that will be
quite similar, you know, two or three days in a row,

(01:32:07):
but I'll change things around. So I'm still doing it
old school. It's with the orchestra that I've got into
that hole. And we you know, the orchestra week we
can we can change a few things. We changed songs
night by night, but we have um that that's more
like it's not pressing buttons, but its well as they
has to be, you know, all the York rib so

(01:32:29):
so I've you know, so I'm still djening old school
in that sense. Yeah, all gone thumbs up, thumbs down,
what the film thumbs up? Okay, But the concept using it,
it's like, you know, we talked about Howard Stern and
they have hit him with a high and I know
John Hind heats it. So I always loved it. It
was it was a it was meant to be. It was.

(01:32:52):
It was a fanzine in the UK called Boys Zone
who were made some mine actually, but they were very stroppy,
kind of like angry men, and they started this fanzine
and the whole point of the fanzine was basically like
fuck it, you know, it was to get in there
and like stir of shipped up and so they'd be
rude about everybody and that. And I was djaying with
these guys and they were that's the way they were

(01:33:14):
rude about me. And it was meant to be a
way of winding me up at the start because I
was you know, there was a thing in the UK
with if you were around before the year zero, which
was basically when house music started, then you were a
Dinosaur and the fact that I was in the soul
boy era before and a bit of the hip hop era.
They they were like, what are you doing? Is it's

(01:33:36):
all gone pizza on? So it was like it was
this and then it caught on. It became later on
like cockney rhyming slang and in the Penguin Dictionary and
all this stuff, and then you know, it's notoriety. It
was like, you know, it was. It was fantastic. And
then to end up having a movie made of that
name was that just took it to another level. So
now we are now I have my own parties. You know,

(01:33:56):
we would call it you know, we do it in
Miami and we do it around the world. It's all
on Pete songs. It was good. Okay, So what is
the future hall for you? What is the dream that's
like you've obviously achieved so much and unexpected, like you
know with the BBC at age nineteen, What what would
you like to achieve or do in the future, whether
it be music oriented or not. Well, for me, it's
always come to music discovery and curation. So it's it's

(01:34:20):
finding a way, I guess of moving into this next
decade gracefully and still being out the work. I'm blessed
with that and be healthy, um and just I guess
try and use my whole life's worth of experience in
A in a positive way. UM and hopefully still try
and not. I'm back into like the A and R

(01:34:42):
gig again. I just joined three zero with Mark Llespie.
It's Calvin Harris's manager, um, and we've rebooted his label
through Sony. So I was, I was. I did go
back into the Warner system for a few years. UM,
but my curiosity is back again about A and R,
about being act more hands on. I think funny recording
the albums with the orchestra and being back in the

(01:35:04):
studio hands on. I mean, I had this great education
and met all these amazing people. You know, I was
at the end of the you know, Tommy Mottola, water
yet Ni Cough, you know Berry Gordy, you know with
I've met so many people in my time. You know,
I worked with Chris Morris as Chris Thomas in the
studio making records, you know, Um, and I kind of
missed it. So I think, you know, if I if

(01:35:26):
I can help nurture the next generation and champion their
cause then that I would be happy. But there's no
intermounting flame or destination something that you would like to
achieve that you know, stratospheric. I still think this is
have end endless conversations with people like saying low about

(01:35:49):
this of you know, where it's all going. I think
I worry about music discovery and curation, you know, and
that's completely broke it. Yeah, I mean there could be
great stuff that doesn't rise to the time I think.
I think on a very basic level, on a really
really basic level. You know, the DJs I talk about,

(01:36:09):
especially the underground ones, are still in a sense, um,
the greatest curators in the electronic world anyway. Um. And
I was just thinking on the way up here actually
that um quite. I don't know. Maybe maybe a few,
you know, maybe if you have the DJ to spend
less time taking photos of themselves on beaches and actually

(01:36:31):
tell us what music they're playing, that's an interesting way
to put it. I don't know. I just think the
future curation is it's still up. It's it's still up.
For the obvious thing that people talk about playlists, I
never believe I'm trying playlists and streaming services but as
I say, yes, if you want to listen to the
pop hip hop, you know, pop songs already on a
grandde you can find that very easily. Other genres of music.

(01:36:55):
I mean, you know, if you go through the genre
playlists on Spotify, which is the big hood, you know,
you can't listen to that music, never mind that much
bad music. But somethin's personality lists. So I think, you know,
as much as that sounds old school coming from someone
like me, I just think, you know, it's it's ultimately
will come down to personalities. You know, Virgil Aublaw does

(01:37:16):
a pretty good job turning people onto fashion, and there's
been certain people, you know, certain musician, you know, certain
hip hop people back in the day that have turned
people onto I believe, I think, I think, but I
believe the culture is totally changed. The culture is purely
about money, and there's really no money in curation, at
least as we can see the short way done. There

(01:37:38):
never was that at the beginning for the you know,
not for me, not for John Peele, not but John
Peel he got they say, and yet she got the
narcis whatever. He got the great adulation, so without the money.
But in today's society, where it's bottom line money, everybody
is driving in another direction, even though it's the artist
who's honest who ultimately has the most impact. So it

(01:37:59):
either takes some one where money is not the number
one thing, where just as a dream to to fix this.
And I think we're, you know, across the world, certainly
in America, we're moving towards that era, income, inequality, etcetera.
And I think, I mean you you spent a lot
of your blokes that I've read, you know, and you
know loyally, I mean all the star I mean all

(01:38:21):
the style of Apple music was based on the same frustration,
right from Jimmy and um from Trent to try to
actually get skeet curation salted. That was kind of right,
But I think, you know, I don't want to make
it about Jimmy specifically. I just didn't think they had
it right. I didn't think, you know, there was a
playlist company for you least to hype me all the time.
We would know as active listeners, we like to pick

(01:38:42):
the tracks we're listening to, but we certainly know the past,
We know that people we know, with the great unknown,
we have no way to go through and certainly listening
to radio. None of the radio DJ it's like Apple
Beach Radio. They announced that I haven't heard a person
talking about Beach radio Beach one radio and years. Okay,
that's just not how people listen. But I like, I

(01:39:03):
have a guy in Nashville happens to work for w
m A, and he sends me what to listen to,
and I always listens to everything and he's always right
like like it, But I like someone who could do it.
In general, I think, you know, one of the problems
is we give everybody a break where in reality is
we discussed most of the stuff is ship. Just tell

(01:39:24):
me what's great and I and I have an unlimited
don't give me a hundred tracks to listen to, give
me three. Okay, in any event, that's a different discussion. Beat.
Thanks for the illumination. Thank you great, great to have you.
Until next time, It's Bob left Sense

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Bob Lefsetz

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