A Conversation With Norman Cook

[Greg Wilson]

Just updated electrofunkroots.co.uk and added, amongst other features, the interview I did with Norman Cook last month, which centres around his own DJ roots in the early 80's and the influence Electro had on him. I've included the intro piece below. To read in full, click on:

http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk/norman_cook.htm

A CONVERSATION WITH NORMAN COOK
SEPTEMBER 1st 2003

INTRO:
Earlier this year I e-mailed Norman Cook via Skint Records, telling him about the electrofunkroots project and my intention to document the early 80’s period more thoroughly. Some weeks later I received a reply from the company, saying they’d passed on my message and asking for my phone number so Norman could call me direct to set a date when he could answer the questions I wanted to put to him. The call came in August; it was the first time I’d spoken to him since 1990.

Back then Norman had just reached the summit of the charts via his Beats International project. Their single ‘Dub Be Good To Me’ was a cover of a track that had been a huge tune for me in the summer of 1983, when I deejayed at Wigan Pier and Manchester clubs, Legend and The Hacienda. This was ‘Just Be Good To Me’ by the S.O.S Band, which would finally enter the UK Top 20 the following year, almost a full 12 months after it had first appeared as a US import. By this point I’d stopped deejaying completely, whilst Norman’s journey had only just started.

I was living in London in 1990, managing and producing the Ruthless Rap Assassins, who had just completed their first album. I was waiting at a tube station on my way to EMI for a meeting about their forthcoming releases, sat at the platform thumbing through a copy of the NME. I was reading an article on Beats International, an interview with the guy behind the project, an ex-Housemartin called Norman Cook, but was stopped in my tracks when I read my own name mentioned in the piece, alongside no less than the great Grandmaster Flash, as an influence on his career! I began racking my brain for who I might know from Hull, the city associated with The Housemartins, but couldn’t think of anybody, let alone someone called Norman.

It wasn’t until I got to EMI and hooked up with Kermit, who was then a Rap Assassin, that it all became clear. Kermit looked at the piece and told me, ‘that’s Quentin, the guy we met in Brighton, that’s Ox’, and the penny finally dropped!

In December 1983 I’d been the DJ on a short tour, The Hacienda Review, with gigs in Brighton, Hickstead and London. The previous August, I’d become the first dance specialist at The Hacienda, presenting my own ‘Funk Night’ on a Friday, and playing for an hour each Saturday in order to introduce their regular crowd (then very much an ‘alternative’ post-Punk audience) to the type of music I was playing on Wednesday at Legend and Tuesday at the Pier, which were then firmly established as the leading black music nights in the North, with the emphasis on the Electro-Funk style that I’d become increasingly associated with. I was also the manager of Broken Glass, the Manchester breakdance crew, who were making quite a name for themselves at the time.

One of the best-known members of Broken Glass was Kermit, the first British breakdancer to be photographed for a national magazine. Still a teenager, Kermit had been a regular at Legend even before Electro-Funk held sway, originally gaining respect for being one of the finest Jazz Fusion dancers on the scene, as part of a local crew called The Scorpions.

Broken Glass would dance every week on The Hacienda stage during my Saturday spots, becoming, to all intents and purposes, the clubs resident break crew, whilst playing a significant part in raising The Hacienda’s profile with Manchester’s influential black audience (although, sadly, their role in setting the club off on the road towards becoming a legendary dance venue has never been properly acknowledged). Their importance to the club’s image at the time is born out by the decision to include Broken Glass as part of The Hacienda Review, which, in addition to myself, also included Factory Records band Quando Quango (Factory, of course, owned The Hacienda), led by saxophonist / vocalist, Mike Pickering, who would later find fame as a House DJ at the club before going on to form the hugely successful M People. Mike was then The Hacienda’s promotions manager, but when I stopped deejaying he would continue the Friday night dance experiment, his ‘Nude’ night eventually taking off in a big way.

After the first show, in Brighton, a young guy came over to us, full of enthusiasm for what he’d seen, and invited us to a party. This was Quentin, who told me he did a bit of deejaying himself, under the name Ox. We took him up on his offer and headed back to his home, sitting up all night smoking spliff and spliff and discussing all manner of topics relating to the club scene. The following day, a bit worse for wear, we all piled onto the Broken Glass mini-bus, Quentin included, and headed off to our gig in Hickstead. We parted company the next day, with Quentin making his way back to Brighton as we drove to our final date at Camden Palace in London.

Our paths would cross again just a few months later when The Tube was filmed at The Hacienda (with an unknown, called Madonna, making her first UK TV appearance), but the next time I spoke to Quentin, in 1990, he was very much Norman Cook, one of the hottest names on the dance scene following his success with Beats International.

On the back of the NME piece I’d tracked down his number and given him a call and, as a result, two of the Rap Assassins singles included Norman Cook remixes.

More than thirteen years have now passed, and in the meantime Norman has become the best known DJ in the World via his alto-ego, Fatboy Slim, which has brought him a string of hit singles and albums, plus countless remix credits. Some of the names he works with are as big as they come, on the very day I spoke to him his remix of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, the classic Rolling Stones track, was issued, whilst Elton John’s ‘Are You Ready For Love’, the first number 1 on Norman’s own Southern Fried label, was still enjoying it’s initial 24 hours at the peak of the UK Pop chart.

What I found particularly interesting is that in over an hour of conversation Fatboy Slim wasn’t mentioned by name once, the focus being on Norman’s roots rather than his subsequent fame. As a result, our conversation not only covered the questions I wanted to ask him regarding his Electro-Funk influences, but also provides a rare insight into Norman’s beginnings as a DJ, with a depth that perhaps hasn’t been documented previously. It obviously helps that we were talking the same language, having a perfect understanding of what each other meant in reference to the early 80’s period, which had such a profound effect on both of us.

I’ve titled it ‘a conversation’ rather than ‘an interview’ because, given the history between us, albeit brief, interview seemed far too clinical a term to describe what was, in essence, a chat between two music lovers, both now in their forties, about the old days.

So, without further adieu, in the words of Jimmy Castor, “what we’re going to do right here is go back…”

http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk