As Fatboy Slim,
U.K. DJ Norman Cook Leads
the Big Beat Parade –
And Laughs All the Way to the Bank

By Brian O’Connor

New York – Just 18 months ago, Fatboy Slim barely registered as a blip on the Stateside pop market’s radar screen. Radio programmers, MTV and mainstream press were either wholly unaware or passively indifferent to Mr. Slim’s talents. So were consumers and, fortunately for Mr. Slim, so too were those packs of saber-toothed sample-clearance lawyers.

See, prime among Mr. Slim’s considerable talents is his ability to rummage through crates of old vinyl, sample some tasty snippets with a trusty Akai S950, attach bombastic, Richter Scale breaks and add some stuttering build-ups. Stamp it with the name of Fatboy Slim and Voila! – here come the lawyers looking for a piece of the rock.

A couple years ago, when Fatboy Slim sliced the signature guitar riff from The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” and pasted it to his “Going Out Of My Head,” few took notice — until the song became a hit in the U.K. and caused a considerable stir in the States. After much legal wrangling, the song is now officially considered a cover version of the original, with all proceeds going to the Estate of Mr. Townshend. Hopefully the windfall might prevent another ill-advised Who reunion.

Don’t cry for Mr. Slim, though. The track – featured on 1997’s Better Living Through Chemistry (Astralwerks) — successfully jettisoned Fatboy into consumer consciousness after mainstream rock publications, MTV and countless CD compilations picked up on it. Even long-time rock and rollers were dragged, hips swinging, into the clubs. While the fire was still hot, “The Rockafeller Skank,” a big beat surf single with a Lord Finesse vocal edit, followed suit; a big Punjabi beat remix of Cornershop’s “Brimful of Asha” further whetted the country’s nascent big beat appetite.

All this activity primed the pump for the just-released You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (Astralwerks), featuring the big Carib-beat follow-up single, “Gangster Tripping.” Indeed, Fatboy Slim has come a long way. Nowadays he clears samples before releasing material, thus preventing unseemly litigation, even if that means giving Joe Walsh many, many Benjamins. No, Fatboy Slim won’t get fooled again.

DJ Times recently caught up with Fatboy Slim – also known as Pizzaman, Freakpower, Beats International, Mighty Dub Katz and Norman Cook, depending on the day of the week and the time of day — and he offered an earful about life in the fast lane, pop stardom and the Golden Touch.

DJ Times: Last time we spoke, you had expressed frustration over a lack of spirited audience response in the States. It seems to have changed now. So, Norman, are you feeling it?

Fatboy Slim: Yeah, it’s really just a matter of working at it. I mean, every time I come back to America, people “get it” a bit more, because it’s something different, especially when it’s compared to what the industry in the States has been used to. If you spend a little time and come over, it’s easier. In the past, it was like bashing my head against a brick wall.

DJ Times: I noticed that you use the stutter effect a lot when you DJ.

Fatboy Slim: Yeah, I use the phono switch to get the stutter, or I do it with the fader a lot, too. Builds people up a bit, I think.

DJ Times: At your recent Bowery Ballroom gig, you really turned the place inside out.

Fatboy Slim: I was completely shattered that night. I had done D.C., Boston, Montreal and Toronto. I actually passed out while I was playing in Toronto.

DJ Times: Passed out while spinning?

Fatboy Slim: Yeah, heat exhaustion. I was DJing until 6 in the morning, every morning, getting on the plane at noon, getting two hours sleep, getting up and playing again. The fourth night running, it just got so hot in the club. I fell against the back wall of the DJ booth, slinked down, looking at the audience, and they were looking at me, saying, “What the hell is he doing?” My legs had gone. The last thing I remember was shouting to the light jock, “Get another DJ, I’m out of here.” And they walked me out of the club and I was flat out on the ground outside.

DJ Times: How does the success of Fatboy Slim affect
your worldwide DJing?

Fatboy Slim: I don’t do it for the money, but I suspect that I do get paid a bit more. I get more offers [to DJ], nice offers, but unfortunately I don’t have so much time to do them. It allows me to be more and more selective. In England, I only play three residencies: Big Beat Boutique, a Skint records party once a month at The End, and I do the Heavenly Social. And those are the only three places I play in England, which is good, because if I were to play for one other person then everybody else would bug me. So I can say, “Sorry, but that’s all I do, no thanks.” There are trips I do for fun – Brazil, Australia, Japan. Singapore is always nice to go to. But basically I’ve got such little time, it’s got to be somewhere really hot, really interesting and the food has to be nice. Forget about trying to get me to DJ in Belgium. Just forget it.

DJ Times: Are the folks in these locales knowledgeable
about your music?

Fatboy Slim: I don’t know if it’s the Internet or what, but [all these foreign and remote audiences] seem to know what to expect. Especially the last year or so, everyone knows what kind of music I play. In fact, I played in Singapore last year, and I thought I’d play a safe set, ’cause I wasn’t sure what these people were used to. After the show, on the club’s web site, there was one bloke who said, “I can’t help thinking he played a bit safe. It was a bit kind of predictable.” So I e-mailed him back and said, “Well, actually, yeah. I didn’t know that anybody in Singapore knew anything about what I did. So I just bought the greatest hits thinking I’d turn you on to something new.” I was wrong.

DJ Times: Does it seem to you, in the States, that you’re drawing rock-n-roll fans kicking and screaming into the clubs?

Fatboy Slim: Yeah, maybe not necessarily kicking and screaming, but they’re being lured by the promise of more fun and highjinks.

DJ Times: Those recognizable riffs on top of breakbeats have got people almost fooled into liking dance music.

Fatboy Slim: In America, people are like, “Well, I’m not sure about dance music,” and then it’s like, “Oh, it’s got a guitar riff I can latch on to.” Yeah, it opens the doors. To me, it’s a bit too easy just to try and do that all the time – there’d be no challenge there. But I’m getting used to DJing in America, and if people recognize it they can get into it. It’s a nice little sweetener.

DJ Times: Now that Fatboy Slim has attained a level of popularity here, does he have to be careful, now, in the sample-clearance sense?

Fatboy Slim: It doesn’t change things when I’m making the records, but one of the things that you have to be wary of is having samples cleared. One of the things my record company wanted was for the samples to be cleared first, before I make the track.

DJ Times: So it doesn’t affect your criteria when you’re searching for samples?

Fatboy Slim: Well, you always try to find something that’s a little bit obscure, try to find something that’s a little less obvious than, say, something that Puff Daddy is doing right now, which, to me, is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. You know, take a record that was already a hit, stick in another verse, and then you’re sure to have another hit, you know?

DJ Times: Was Pete Townshend cool about clearing the sample for “I Can’t Explain”?

Fatboy Slim: No. The main reason was that we procured it a year after the record came out. It was already a hit in America, so obviously, they were like, “Why didn’t you come to us before you released it? Why did you come to us only after it was a hit?” All we could say was, “Well, we thought we’d get away with it.” [Laughs] No, it wasn’t actually Pete Townshend; it was his publishers. But at the moment, it’s considered a cover version of “I Can’t Explain,” and he gets all the money for it.

DJ Times: Ouch.

Fatboy Slim: That’s kind of the price you pay for not clearing the samples beforehand.

DJ Times: What’s the status of Pizzaman, Mighty Dub Katz and your fellow personalities?

Fatboy Slim: Pizzaman is in a coma. He’s on a life support machine, and every now and then I go for a visit and there’s no change – he’s still hooked up. One day I just might go there and unplug the machine. We’ll see. The Mighty Dub Katz have kind of gone on holiday. They’ve gone to Mexico, and they haven’t come back yet, but they will at some point.

DJ Times: They like the Corona, I suppose.

Fatboy Slim: That and those Hispanic women.

DJ Times: And Freakpower?

Fatboy Slim: And Freakpower has been off to the drying-out clinic, the Betty Ford Clinic, and they’ve just been released to start making some more records. Freakpower’s what I want to be doing, but Fatboy’s been taking up so much of my time. We’ve got tons of record companies screaming for Freakpower. We had a one-off No. 1 hit in England, without a contract, luckily, and everybody wanted to sign us, but I said, “Look, it’s only one song,” and they said “Well OK, we’ll sign you to a contract.” And I said, “Wait until we finish an album.” So, hopefully we’ll do another Freakpower album.

DJ Times: Are you still using the Akai S950 sampler?

Fatboy Slim: I’ve got two 950s now, because I was limited in sample time and memory with only one. Besides, on my original 950, all the buttons are broken and worn out. It’s really old and sometimes I’d have to hit them real hard and it was getting kind of annoying. So I bought a new one, but I didn’t have the heart to get rid of my old one because I love it so much.

DJ Times: Did you patch the two together?

Fatboy Slim: What I tend to do is work on the new one, and if the
memory gets filled up, I’ll just load it to the old one. This way I don’t have to hit any of the buttons on the old one, and it acts as storage.
It just gives me more flexibility.

DJ Times: Why does everyone need a 303?

Fatboy Slim: It’s just the simplicity of it that I love. I love synths, but I’m not that good at programming – if it’s got more than four knobs on it, I won’t know what the hell to do. I like the 303 because I know it inside out, and I know how to make it do certain things, whereas with a lot of synths, it’s just trial and error to try and get a good noise out of them. And the 303 also has this soulful quality about it, no two sound the same, and it doesn’t even sound the same on different days. I can sit down with it and it doesn’t sound anything like it did the day before, but they’re both good. It’s a very expressive instrument.

DJ Times: As far as your beats go, are you a chopper or a looper?

Fatboy Slim: I’m a chopper, I’m a complete chopper, especially on vocals. On this album, just about every vocal got chopped up into constituent syllables – which is great because you can do some crazy things once you get it down to that.

DJ Times: What kind of computer software are you using?

Fatboy Slim: Oh, I’m very low-tech. I use an Atari with Creator for sequencing.

DJ Times: Will the next single most likely be “Praise You”?

Fatboy Slim: Yeah, it’ll probably be the single. It’s a few lines from another song, “Take Your Praise” by Camille Yarbrough, who I suspect is from Yarbrough & Peoples. It’s an old funk record, and she just sang those first four lines before the band came in, so I took that, put a piano riff in there, and made a different song out of it. Luckily, she has the same publisher as me, so it made it easier.

DJ Times: Is there any feeling that you’re getting away with something – like if a formula works, stick with it?

Fatboy Slim: Oh, definitely yeah. But you always try to move it on a bit more. The sound I was doing a year ago, stuff like “Renegade Master” and “Going Out Of My Head,” there are records that are coming out in England that sound exactly like them. So, I kinda try and stay one step ahead of the imitators.

DJ Times: How do you do that on a conscious level?

Fatboy Slim: I listen to their records and think which bits of what I do they picked up on. And then I think, “Well, I can’t do that again anymore.”

DJ Times: What kind of bits?

Fatboy Slim: The ideas, or the general style. Like having a track that has “Go Go Go” on it, or things like using ska, like the Latin ska remix of “Magic Carpet Ride,” which was a big hit here, and there’s a bit of ska in “Renegade Masters,” and a few other Fatboy tunes. Basically, there are so many breakbeat ska tunes coming out in England at the moment.

DJ Times: I noticed on “Gangster Trippin’” a slight Beats International flavor.

Fatboy Slim: Yeah, yeah. That’s good, because while we were doing that, my engineer said, “This sounds a bit like Beats International.” And I said, “Oh shit, should we take it off?” And he said, “No, no, it’s alright.” I don’t know, it just seemed to work all of a sudden. I was listening to that Fatboy tripping vocal bit, and all of a sudden my hips started swinging.

DJ Times: What’s the secret to your drum sounds?

Fatboy Slim: I’ll use two or three breakbeats. It’s sort of like Gary Glitter using two drummers, or Adam Ant using two drummers to get those big drum sounds. I’ll use at least two breakbeats. One has the bottom end and the presence, and the other has the clarity and the bite, the top end. With the two drum kicks, that and the way my engineer mixes, it just comes out big. I normally have the kick, the hat and the snare and whatever ticklaries on the snares, and I’ll write the drum beat in from there. And occasionally, I’ll use a 909 hat just to get a little extra top end. I never use extra kicks or snares.

DJ Times: There’s a nice sampled string part in “Right Here Right Now.” Was that…

Fatboy Slim: Expensive. That was very expensive. We were going to pull that track off the record because Joe Walsh wanted 100-percent of the publishing for it.

DJ Times: From a James Gang record?

Fatboy Slim: That’s right. He said he wanted all the publishing and we said, “Oh come on! At least give us 20-percent, there are other bits and samples on it that we have to pay for.” But he wasn’t budging, and so we were going to pull the song off the album. But to be honest, it’s one of my favorite tracks on the album. It’s the first track, and it’s my declaration of intent and a bit more thoughtful than the last album. So I had to kind of swallow that one.

DJ Times: What song is it?

Fatboy Slim: It’s the end bit on a track called “The Ashes the Rain and I,” and it was hand-picked for [The James Gang’s] haircuts and choice of motor bikes on the back sleeve of the album. Guess how much I paid for the album?

DJ Times: Where did you but it?

Fatboy Slim: The Music and Tape Exchange.

DJ Times: $1.98.

Fatboy Slim: 20p, which is about 30 cents American. And it’ll wind up costing me about £30,000 for the sample. Never mind. You win some, you lose some. I’ve gotten away with murder so many times, and to be honest, I think Joe needs the money more than I do.

DJ Times: Where are your favorite spots to go record shopping?

Fatboy Slim: Second-hand record shops are the ones for me. That’s where you find the best stuff for samples. The latest dance shops, on the other hand, are stocked with imports and stuff that I’ve received two months ago.

DJ Times: What are you looking for?

Fatboy Slim: The ’70s are my main era, and hairstyles. I look for hairstyles. If they’ve got long hair and they look like they take drugs, it’ll inspire me. Years and the hairstyle, anything between 1968 and 1974, and especially if it’s a multi-racial band that has long hair, they seem to be the best source of samples. If they look really obscure as well.

DJ Times: Where are your favorite shops?

Fatboy Slim: New York City is my favorite, at a place called A1 Records.

Fatboy Slim: New York City is my favorite, at a place called A1 Records.

Fatboy Slim: Never. You’d have to kill me first.

DJ Times: Do you talk to Paul Heaton at all?

Fatboy Slim: Yeah, I just worked with him. He asked me to produce the new Beautiful South album. I didn’t have time and I didn’t think it would be a very good idea – it’s just so different from the kind of music that I do. So I got him down from producer to executive producer to rhythm section consultant.

DJ Times: So he wanted your ears.

Fatboy Slim: Basically. He’s really good at writing tunes, but he doesn’t get a groove going. And he wanted to get a bit more groove in there and I’m good at grooves – and not so good at tunes. So I worked with the rhythm section for about three days, rewriting the bass lines and trying to get a bit of a groove. And then I was in the studio with him for a few days.

DJ Times: Did he like your stuff?

Grooverdier: It’s the same formula, same type of people, same feeling, but it’s the younger siblings of those kids in the acid house days.

DJ Times: Ever drop in an acid house retro track during a drum-n-bass set?

Grooverider: No, these kids are growing up in something different. There’s a time and a place for everything. DJ Times: Has the success of drum-n-bass made it easier for you as a DJ, to book yourself around the world, or to play at all?

Grooverider: Nothings ever easier. I’m at the same plateau I was at when I first started. I still have to go out in front of people and do the best I can do. That hasn’t changed at all. I like to create when I’m there. I’m just playing records as far as I’m concerned. I just do what I do.

DJ Times: Any young drum-n-bass DJs that you’re interested in?

Grooverider: I’m not interested in what anyone lese is doing it or what they’re playing. I just do what I do.

DJ Times: How do you think your record will fit into the American drum-n-bass scene?

Grooverider: I’ve heard bits of pieces of some American drum-n-bass which sound pretty good to me, so it sounds like it’s progressing. You have to learn, Americans haven’t been doing it as long, but it’ll happen over there. It’s about building. It’s about plant- ing seeds. Rock didn’t just happen, it was built.