- yesterday
Ahead of the release of his new coffee table book, It Ain't Over... 'Til The Fayboy Sings, legendary DJ Fatboy Slim aka Norman Cook takes a look back over his 40-year-long career.
Category
đ
NewsTranscript
00:00In the next-door dressing room is Paul McCartney.
00:03We're like, fuck this.
00:04Hello, Latitude.
00:06Oh, come on, it's only day two.
00:08Hello, Latitude.
00:10That's better.
00:11Thank you very much for coming along.
00:12This is The Independent Live.
00:14My name is Matt Everett.
00:15And we've got a very special Q&A for you.
00:17Is everybody right at the back?
00:20Is everybody right at the back?
00:22Okay, we've got a very special Q&A for you with...
00:25Well, a musician, a bass player, a chef, a DJ, a scholar, an acrobat, and now an author.
00:34Please welcome to the stage, Norman Kirk!
00:47What a good-looking bunch you are.
00:51How are you?
00:52I'm good, I'm good.
00:53How are you?
00:53I'm very good, sir.
00:54How are you?
00:55Good.
00:57We're here to talk about a new project.
00:59Not happy with dominating the music charts, you're now up for dominating the literary charts.
01:06What's on its way soon?
01:08Well, it's hardly literally.
01:09It's a coffee table book.
01:11Basically, some point about a year ago, we were looking...
01:16We realised that it was my 40th year in show business.
01:18My 40th year since quitting my day job and running off to join the circus.
01:23And we wanted to market with something.
01:25And just literally while we were thinking about it, a publishing house called Rocket 88 said,
01:30would you do a coffee table book?
01:32And they'd just done one on The Clash and on Devo.
01:35And they seemed like really nice people.
01:37And I just thought, why not?
01:39But it's not literary.
01:41Right.
01:41Because I can't write all those words.
01:44All the stories that everybody wanted to hear, I either can't remember for various reasons,
01:50or I can't tell because my daughter might read them.
01:55And so, yeah, no, I never really wanted to write a sort of wordy book.
01:58But it seemed like a good idea just to have a sort of pictorial photographic memory of my 40 years.
02:04A sort of celebration, hopefully.
02:06Yeah, yeah.
02:06And so, yeah, so that's why it took seven or eight months of my life.
02:11Comes out in October.
02:13And this is the first, yeah, like you said, this is a world premiere because it's the first thing I've ever done to flog it to you, basically.
02:20And what's it called, Norm?
02:22It's called It Ain't Over Till The Fat Boy Sings.
02:26You see?
02:27There's got to be a good pun, isn't there?
02:30There's got to be a good pun.
02:31So we thought we'd run through some of the chosen images from it and kind of find out some of the stories.
02:38Look at that.
02:40Oh, look.
02:42Aren't he cute?
02:44The reason that's there, apart from the fact it's just embarrassing, is...
02:47Hawaiian shirts from a very early age, I'd just like to say.
02:50This is it.
02:51You're a man who loves a Hawaiian shirt.
02:53So, the first House Martins track single that you play on was Sheep.
02:59You talk really fondly about your first Top of the Pops in the book.
03:04Because that's a big deal for...
03:06All right, Grandad, what's Top of the Pops?
03:08Yeah.
03:09I'm looking around.
03:10I think a lot of you are old enough to remember Top of the Pops.
03:13Old enough to remember that that was part of your, you know, Thursday nights.
03:17That was part of your thing.
03:18And so you have to understand that from when I was about eight years old,
03:21I always wanted to be a pop star, or I always wanted to be a musician.
03:25And so I watched Top of the Pops religiously from then until I was 22.
03:30And when I was 22, I got to go on Top of the Pops.
03:33And you have no idea how exciting that was.
03:35This is like the mountaintop for me.
03:38And it's, yeah, I mean, it's something that you've looked up to your whole life,
03:41and then suddenly you're there on it.
03:43And I think I say in the book, in the next-door dressing room, it's Paul McCartney.
03:49We're like, fuck this.
03:50And then Paul McCartney's sort of talking to us, because we're now musicians.
03:53He's like, we're one of, you know, we're like on a part where peers.
03:56Great.
03:57Yeah.
03:57So, and he was, obviously, he's always very friendly to everyone.
04:00But I just suddenly thought, this is it.
04:02We've arrived.
04:02We're on Top of the Pops.
04:03We're chatting with Paul McCartney.
04:05Very big moment in my life, yes.
04:07There's a lovely bit in the book where you talk about the House of Martins.
04:10Bringing down the government was higher on our agenda than living the life of pop stars.
04:15Yes.
04:15And I'd kind of like, because I was a massive House of Martins fan, and that was part of it, wasn't it?
04:20There was a hugely, like, you know.
04:23Yeah, we were driven by politics.
04:24I mean, when I first wanted, when I saw Donny Osmond when I was eight, I wanted to be a pop star.
04:32Then when punk happened, which is about when I was 14, when I started actually playing.
04:37Punk rock, it's like, you don't want to be a pop star anymore.
04:39You want to be, you know, doing something and saying something.
04:42And a lot of our politics came from the clash.
04:45A lot of our politics came from the miners' strike.
04:46Paul, obviously, who wrote all the lyrics, his lyrics were so angry.
04:51And we really wanted to bring down governments, abolish royal families, that kind of stuff.
04:57And, yeah, it was what drove us way more than wanting to, you know, the trappings of stardom.
05:04Which is why we always deliberately dress so badly.
05:07I don't know if you've ever looked.
05:09I mean, but the good thing about that was we got through the 80s with no major fashion disasters,
05:14because we never really flirted with fashion.
05:16So we were like just Fred Perrys and Cardigans, and we just get, yeah, but we were, Paul especially.
05:22I mean, Paul led from the front, he wrote the lyrics.
05:24But the Housewives were a really political band.
05:26We've sort of remembered for the nice tunes.
05:29But if you ever read our lyrics, there's, you know, we wanted to hurt people and upset people.
05:35And we did.
05:36We've upset a few people.
05:37Yeah.
05:37The Daily Mail, The Sun.
05:40The glee on his face.
05:41All the good ones.
05:42Yeah.
05:42This is it, isn't it?
05:43It's like if you can smuggle in that message and ethos under these beautiful songs and brilliant melodies,
05:48even a song like Sheep, which is not about sheep, is it?
05:52It's about people behaving like sheep and just following blindly.
05:55Yeah.
05:56Yes.
05:57No, it was, it was, it was, yeah, they were such fun.
06:00So I always say, being a musician, well, in this context, being, it's like sex.
06:08You never, your first sex isn't necessarily the best, but it's always really memorable.
06:13And the Housewives for me, it was like, that was like, I lost my virginity with those three other people.
06:18And we sort of got a bond.
06:20And, you know, me and Paul are still friends from Stan.
06:22We're still friends to this day.
06:23And then Paul was gracious enough to invite me to join him on stage at Glastonbury last year to play Happy Hour one more time.
06:30So, yeah, no, we, we went through a lot together and it was our first time together.
06:34So I'll never forget those days.
06:36Yeah.
06:36So for a long time, like the name, the name Fatboy Slim, for a long time, you kind of avoided talking about it or giving the story behind it.
06:46But this is, this is in the book.
06:47It's a sort of lovely.
06:48Well, this, the most boring question that I always get asked in every interview is, where do you get the name Fatboy Slim?
06:54I've told it a few times.
06:55I've told a few alternate lies about it.
06:58But it keeps getting asked.
07:00So this, just to bury it once and for all, this is my list in my little notebook of my favorite blues singers.
07:05I really like pre-war blues.
07:07And they all had really stupid names, like Bo Weevil Jackson and Peg Leg Howell and Petey Wheatstraw.
07:13And if you were a fat blues singer, you would be called Slim.
07:18So there was Pinetop Slim, Memphis Slim, Iceberg Slim, Bumblebee Slim, Lightning Slim, Magic Boy Slim, Watermelon Slim, Fillmore Slim.
07:26And I just, Fatboy Slim sounded like the oxymoronic blues singer who could never exist.
07:31It's good you weren't called Barbecue Bob.
07:35I mean, would you go and see headlining at the Latitude Festival, Barbecue Bob.
07:40Okay, now this one, I know this story because Norm's told me this story.
07:45I love this.
07:46So that is, I mean, Norm's obviously worked with some phenomenal people over the years.
07:51Macy Gray, Beasties, like a phenomenal list of musicians.
07:54But that's Bootsy Collins, like probably the greatest funk bass player of all time.
08:00And what else is on the left hand of that picture?
08:04Well, basically, Bootsy is like you said, he's the bass player of funk.
08:09And he's got this theory about the funk.
08:11It's all about the one.
08:12Everything's just on the one.
08:14And when you work in the studio with him, if he feels like the groove is happening, he just stamps on the one.
08:20And after two days of doing that in my studio, he put his foot through the floorboard.
08:24But the thing was, the carpet was still over the top.
08:28So I knew that there was a hole under there, but nobody else knew it.
08:32And basically, if you were on office chairs, if you put one wheel of the office chair over the trap, you went down the Bootsy hole.
08:42And we would watch people, see them getting near it.
08:45Then they're just like, whoa!
08:47And we go, you've gone down the Bootsy hole.
08:49So we kept the Bootsy hole, and then my brother-in-law ended up living there.
08:54And when he did alterations, he's like, we can't have this hole.
08:58So he took the carpet up, and that is said Bootsy hole.
09:01And when he put the new carpet in, he remembered it.
09:07What a dude.
09:10Okay, just what's your first reaction seeing that picture of Brighton?
09:16Oh, it's lovely, isn't it?
09:19No, I mean, that night was one of the proudest but most scary nights of my life.
09:28So proud that so many people came out.
09:30But with that amount of people came in a lot of danger and fear.
09:33So I was just absolutely running through two sets of emotions concurrently.
09:39And I still to this day don't know which one won.
09:41Yeah, and it's one of those events that's kind of, it sort of entered British music, cultural, like it's, everyone knows about it.
09:51And people, because it turned from like just a gig into this, everybody that had any interest in what you were doing was like, we're going to Brighton today.
09:59Why?
10:00Norm's playing.
10:00Will we get in?
10:01No, we're just going to go.
10:02And everybody did.
10:04Yeah, I mean, it was lovely.
10:05It celebrated my relationship with the city that I call home, but also the city that I'm very proud of.
10:10And it was a kind of, I mean, when we were, when I was looking, I'd got to see some of the kind of the rushes in the footage from the day when we were making the film.
10:21And I looked at it and it's like, this is mental.
10:23It was.
10:24It's like I was there and I remember it being mental, but I don't remember it being that mental.
10:27And by anybody's standards, you know, taking away the use of CGI, there was just so many people.
10:34And yeah, so I'm, yeah, it was, it was a momentous moment in my, in my career.
10:37I mean, it launched, then launched a whole career of me in Brazil and places like that where they saw the DVD and said, oh, come and do it here.
10:44And we did it on Bondi Beach and on Flamengo Beach in Rio.
10:49So, yeah, so it was a great, it was a, it was a very pivotal moment in my life.
10:54Was it after that you started the relationship with Brighton Football Club?
10:58Was it like, we've done this for the city and I love football, so can I get on board?
11:03I don't know.
11:04The gentleman at the back wearing the skin shirt, can you tell me what year?
11:08We went back to, we went, came back and we're at the, with Dean.
11:15You weren't born.
11:16You weren't born, oh.
11:18How old are you?
11:2021, right, well, it was more than 21 years ago.
11:23But you have, like, every, every tour you do, every big show you do, you do kind of, like, add extra visuals, extra tricks and stuff like that.
11:32It's always kind of good seeing the show evolve as well.
11:34It's, I love the way it does evolve because it's like a stock pot.
11:40It's not like you sort of finish a tour and go, all right, we have to write a new set.
11:44I'm, because I'm DJing the whole year, I just gradually, things get retired and things get put in.
11:49So it's like an ever-boiling stock pot and you take a ladle out and then you put some other stuff back in.
11:54So it's sort of, hopefully, over a year, it's sort of rinsed itself, apart from praise you and right here, right now.
12:04Hopefully it's, yeah, by then it's kind of flushed out.
12:06But, so, hopefully, if anyone who saw me last summer shouldn't hear too much of what you heard, this, what you'll be hearing tonight.
12:13Yeah, yeah.
12:13I hope.
12:15It's not an exact science.
12:16It's not exact science.
12:18Did you enjoy doing the book?
12:19Because, I mean, it's, not many people sit down and go, right, I'm now going to spend nine months going through my life.
12:24Yeah, I didn't know it was going to be nine months when I signed up for it.
12:26I'd just like to say that.
12:28No, it was really, it started really beautifully because I'm a natural-born hoarder and collector.
12:35So I've collected every single backstage pass I've ever had in my whole career.
12:39I've collected every, not every ticket stub, but I just collected a lot of ephemera.
12:44So the first bit of it was just going through all these boxes of stuff.
12:48And it was just really beautiful and cathartic to go through your whole life.
12:52Because I've kind of lived it all at fairly breakneck speed.
12:55There's been quite a lot going on, you know.
12:57So I've never actually before took a pause to, like, reflect.
13:02So I had a few afternoons just going through the boxes going, oh, God, yeah, that was cool.
13:06So that bit of it was fun.
13:08And then when we started putting it together, there was way too much.
13:11Like, it was like, this is going to be 320 pages or something.
13:15We had, like, 600 pages.
13:17And too much stuff.
13:19So then it's whittling it down.
13:20There was a moment about two-thirds of the way through that I really, I was losing the will to live.
13:26I think, I mean, I sometimes get it with records.
13:30You start with a great idea.
13:31And if it doesn't happen after a certain point, you just start, you're like,
13:35why was this ever interesting in the first place?
13:37You know, you just, you're so bored of it.
13:39So sometimes you have to take a step back.
13:41Coming out in October, is that right?
13:43Yeah.
13:43Excellent stuff.
13:44And what else?
13:45Playing around the world?
13:46What else is on the, written on the post-it notes on the fridge?
13:50What else is there to do?
13:52Just gigs, gigs, gigs.
13:55During lockdown, I realised how much I love my job as a DJ.
13:59And how much it's part of me and what I do.
14:02Because not doing it for a year really made me cherish it.
14:05So I made myself a little promise that if I ever got it back, I would never take it for granted.
14:10And I would rinse everything out of it while I'm still young enough to.
14:14So that's my only real, you know, so I'm just playing gigs and gigs and gigs.
14:18I do about 100, between 105 and 110 shows a year.
14:22That many?
14:23Yeah.
14:23Whoa.
14:23That sort of, and yeah, and I love it.
14:27You know, as anyone who's seen me, that smile on my face, that's not fake.
14:31I really am having the time of my life up there.
14:33And like I said, it's a privilege to share it with you.
14:36Yeah.
14:37And thank you to the Independent.
14:39And thanks to Matt as well.
14:41Matt, for the first.
14:44Aside from the professional side, me and Matt are actually really, really good friends.
14:48And it's always a pleasure to chat with you.
14:50Oh, thanks, Norm.
14:50We do like, like, I always interview Norm at Glastonbury.
14:54And we've been, I've been interviewed so many times every year at Glastonbury.
14:58We now just do the same interview every year.
15:00Just do the same questions.
15:00It's good that we've got something new to talk about.
15:02Exactly, it's great.
15:02Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to leave you to get ready for, you're quite busy later.
15:06You're doing a thing somewhere on the stage over there?
15:08I'm doing a thing, playing some records, yeah.
15:10Okay, okay.
15:11I don't know where, over there, somewhere.
15:13Are we looking forward to it?
15:16Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up.
15:18The fat boy slim, Norman Cook.
15:19Thank you very much.
15:20Thank you very much.
15:21Thank you very much.
Recommended
0:41
0:35
4:14
3:54
3:45