Just coming off of the "One Way Ticket To Palookaville" tour, Fatboy Slim stopped to chat with JIVE Magazine the day of his show at Atlanta’s eleven50 club, which was promoted by Liquified and was a part of his “Fatboy Slim Spring ‘05” tour that started in Austin, Texas and wrapped up in Washington, DC. In this interview, we get to see some of the fun behind the magic and learn a little about musical “gags”. We’ll find out about how he comes by his odd, yet notable music videos and what can happen when you produce music for commercials. Even more important, find out what Fatboy Slim wants people to do when they listen to his music.
When you play out on a DJ tour how do you get your real mojo on? What makes you do your jellyfish?
FBS: It’s sort of a crowd and me thing. When we both kind of hit, it’s the money shot. It’s that point in the evening when everything comes together and it’s all about a certain point in the gig when a track kicks in and I kick in and a crowd kicks in and all at the same time. It’s like a climax. It’s as much of a religious thing - when people get over-excited in church and they suddenly jump up and start flaying their arms around you. It doesn’t happen every night. It has to be a good crowd and the right night.
Palookaville was JIVE Magazine’s pick for the artist album of the year in 2004.
FBS: I’m touched on two counts there. Touched that you made it album of the year and touched you wouldn’t describe me as being commercial.
You’re not exactly pop music.
FBS: Well I don’t think I am. But in England I’m kind of the acceptable face of cross over. But a lot of people in America especially the people that write for magazines they kind of sort of say you’ve sold out. And I say, “What you mean I’ve sold out?” They say some of my works are with Virgin, which is a major, and that’s selling out.
Virgin Records seems to support quite a bit of niche and original music though.
FBS: But you know that mentality in America where the people in the underground want to keep it underground. In England people in the underground want to go over ground because you don’t get paid being underground. You start in the underground and all you have to do is cross over. Where as in America I think people think “This is our thing; we want to keep it our thing; we don’t get played on the radio; we don’t want our music played on the radio. What are you doing?” In England all you want to do is get played on the radio. I’m very touched that you don’t consider me to be a commercial sellout. I always try to keep an edge. Unfortunately I do have this pop sensibility. I loathe that I can’t do underground music. But I do try to keep an edge to it so it doesn’t become packed.
What inspired you to pick up a guitar and start playing bass on your latest album?
FBS: Blur. They’re an accomplished band and they’ve been going a long time but they never sit back on their morals. They are always pushing things further. They work with people like William Orbit and me. They phoned me up and said, “Do you want to produce [the album] so I said, “Yeah but what do you want to make? A dance record?” They said, “No, we just want you to bring something new to the table.” I like that kind of spirit. The songs they write are very catchy but they try to put in that edge and not just be pop. So we’re very much kindred spirits and it was a nice meeting of the minds. During that the writing and the arranging process there were times that I would pick a bass or a guitar up and say, “Hey - what about this?” I hadn’t played in a while. It’s been six or seven years since I played bass or guitar on a record. It was just the fact that you could have something lying around plugged in, and I would try out something rather than finding a sample. That’s quite liberating. So we did that for one track on the album and for some reason that bass just stayed in there. We just picked it out and then the guitar as well. Yeah, it was just a liberating experience. After sort of banning live instruments, it’s quite nice.
Speaking of live music versus software, what do you use?
FBS: I still don’t do any of that. We now mix on Pro Tools. My engineer does it but I still work on Atari. I know how it works. I know how to get it do what I want. I can’t get internet and email on it. I don’t get bogged down. I don’t want to be getting email. I mean I don’t get email at all because I haven’t got a computer. The less the computer does the less you get bogged down by it. I know what it’s capable of.
When we first heard your “Joker” remix our first thoughts were, “This is sacrilegious. How dare you?!” Then we started singing along and decided we loved it. You were forgiven.
FBS: Yeah, that was a mistake [laughing]. I was commissioned to do a Levi’s advertisement. They’re always very good and they always use old songs, which then get re-released. I was lucky to get turned onto one of them and Levi’s was going to make a CD of cover versions of famous Levi’s tunes that have respectively become hits. So they said, “Do you want to do one?” I picked “The Joker.” It was either “The Joker” or “Should I Stay, or Should I Go?” I thought about the singers I knew, and immediately Bootsy [Collins] doing “The Joker” came to mind. We started working and then we pretty much finished it, but then Levi’s changed their mind and said we don’t want to do the CD anymore. Rather than just scrap it, we put it as the last track on Palookaville, as the bonus track. It doesn’t really fit on the album but it was never meant to be a single. When people hear it, I think they see it was Bootsy and I having fun.
Tell us about your latest tour and plans for another album.
This has really been the last kind of trip for this album. I’ve been doing this since last June. I’m going to take stock of what to do next. I don’t know because this there is nothing that didn’t work so well with this album. It was halfway between a club and a song. And for some people it kind of fell too much in the middle. Maybe I should have gone completely for songs or maybe I should have stuck with the repetition because that is what I’m good at. So I’m still not sure which side of the fence I fall down on.
It was really a very provocative album. It made people wonder where you are going.
By the way, just where are you going?
FBS: Well, I’m always the last one to find out anyway. Sometimes you have a plan. I mean, with You've Come A Long Way, Baby, and after the first album, I thought if you put that riff down that’s good. We’ve done a couple of singles, and we’ve done “Rockafeller Skank”. I had the blueprint for that album. But since having done that I didn’t want to just keep doing that same formula again. With the last two albums I didn’t sit down and say, “Alright, I’m going to make an album that sounds like this..” You sit there and you see what comes out. I’ll do twenty tracks and then think maybe twelve or so sound like an album. One is good but it doesn’t sit and fit with the rest of them. You can of do it first and then decide what it’s all about later.
Do you go out after some samples first or do you work up the music first, then go find the samples you use?
FBS: The samples comes first. That’s the first part of making an album for me. I’ll go around to stores in LA and a couple of shops in New York and just buy a crate of records for $.49 each and initially just ship them back to England. And I’ll just sit and go through them and just try to find music. It’s a bit laborious sometimes. It’s fun though when you find a good bit or good vocals, and you think you could make a whole tune out of that one little bit of vocals. You can just imagine it and what fun you could have. But a lot of times it’s very laborious. You listen to endless seventies rock.
Your music seems filled with a sense of humor. Is that all accidental?
FBS: It’s not all that accidental, it’s kind of inevitable. That’s how I am. I don’t take anything too seriously and I try to feel that life is as many smiles as possible, whether it’s me or other people.
You’ve produced some songs that just crack people up with the sampling, the lyrics, the oddity…
FBS: We call them gags. You know, the whole basis of the genre, what I do, is to make people smile and dance. For me, it’s not to educate people or politicize them, but just to put a smile on their face and wiggle in their hips. So it’s not necessarily always a sense of humor but it’s a sense of fun. It’s not necessarily jokes, but I want people to smile when they hear the records. I don’t want them to change their morals, there’s no angst here. But at the same time I don’t want it to degenerate into comedy.
Let’s talk about your music videos, especially the “Wonderful Night” video. What’s up with the werewolf? Where did it come from?
FBS: There is no hidden agenda. It’s just silly. The basic premise is a big Hollywood production number.
Was that your idea?
FBS: No, it was the director.
So you just gave the track over and someone else came up with the concept. How much input did you have?
FBS: I choose which one you make and I pay for it. I do my best not to be involved in it. I’ve been very lucky especially since working with Spike [Jonze]. There is sort of a legacy of what Fatboy Slim does. You’re not a proper director unless you’ve done a Fatboy Slim video. It’s groundbreaking and irreverent. It’s kind of like a rite of passage, until you’ve done a Fatboy Slim video, you haven’t really arrived. It’s got to be weird and a little bit goofy, like the music. Basically, every track we have I get ten to fifteen treatments and I read through them. I pick the one that makes me smile. Like the one for “The Joker” that came out. It’s just kittens. For instance, the one for “Weapon of Choice” - I got all these treatments and there would be three pages of scripts and storyboards. I finally get this slip of paper from Spike that says: “Christopher Walken tap dancing in a hotel foyer.” It was something like three lines and I thought, “Fine!”
What’s the most amazing thing that has ever happened to you onstage?
FBS: I did two beach parties in Brighton beach and I was allowed to do a free gig. When you come back to your hometown and you walk out to quarter of a million people… My family was there. My parents had never seen me as “Fatboy Slim” on stage either. My son was there too. Yeah, that was probably the pinnacle of it all for me.
JIVE INKBLOT
Dogs/Cats: Cats
Wine or Beer: Wine
Salad or Steak: Steak
Surf or Ski: Ski
Star Wars or Hitchhikers guide: I think you know the answer to that one... Hitchhiker’s guide.
