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Pete Tong On The State of the Clubbing Nation, Ageing DJs, Cocaine & The Future Of Clubbing
“A perfect club for me today would include 25% of people who like electroclash, 25% into French funky daft house, 25% who like adventurous music and the rest being those who would otherwise have gone to see Sasha or Digweed but still want to smile.”
Still smiling after 15 years at the top of the DJ tree, Pete Tong remains dance culture’s most powerful DJ, principally due to his enormously influential weekly Radio 1 show, the Essential Selection. And what’s kept him at the top, whether through his radio show, club DJ sets or record company activities has been his musical taste and enthusiasm for change.
“If you could reduce everything I do down to one sentence, you could say I ‘sieve’ music out for people,” he tells Skrufff’s Jonty Adderley.
That’s what I’ve always done, whether as an A&R, radio presenter or DJ.”
 Chatting in the rarified confines of private members club Soho House, he’s reserved though articulate, speaking in great chunks of monologue, about everything to the state of clubland (’ dance music’s not dead, it’s just moved to a different place’) to DJing (‘I’m still a trainspotter underneath it all’)
He’s also here to discuss two forthcoming mix CDs (Fashion TV Presents Pete Tong and his first Essential Selection CD for online marketers TrustthedJ.com), his first foray’s back into the compilation business, since walking away from the Warners/AOL owned FFRR last year despite spending 17 years building the label from scratch.
Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): Both of your upcoming mix CDs are your first compilations since leaving FFRR last year, what approach have you taken with each?
Pete Tong: “Firstly, we’re going through a massively changing time in the music business generally and in the dance business in particular while secondly my life is also going through a period of change, personally. Up until last Autumn I was still involved with a major record company, Warners, then left my association with them and since then have been thinking about what I wanted to do next, or even if I wanted to do anything next, other than what publicly most people know me for, which is the radio show and being a DJ.”
Skrufff: What approach did you take in compiling the CDs?
Pete Tong: “As a DJ doing compilation albums it’s gone full circle from the early 90s days of doing the first Cream album through to a quite long run I had doing them for Ministry. I had phenomenal success with Ministry’s Annual compilations, with Boy George, but at that time everything was novel, we were like kids in a candy store, with everything fresh and honest, without cynicism. Towards to end of the 90s the whole compilation market got bigger and bigger, and became more and more overcrowded, so in my position as ‘Pete Tong the establishment DJ’, I ended up operating in the upper echelons of the market in terms of sales, which meant doing albums that were usually TV advertised and influenced by the level of marketing budgets going into them. There was a constant pressure of trying to walk the tightrope between mass sales and some sort of credibility. The bubble eventually burst a few years ago.”
Skrufff: How do you view those past compilations now?
Pete Tong: “I don’t regret what I’ve done, because I’ve sold lots of records and got paid for them but I think long-term the effect that those CDs had on people’s perception of me as a DJ is that all I do is that (kind of music). It was quite important for me to spend a couple of years afterwards putting out material that wasn’t subject to too many commercial pressures. Now I’m out of all those old compilation deals and the industry is in a terrible mess these two unique opportunities came along at the same time, from Fashion TV and Trustthedj. The Fashion TV one is already available in France, while the Trustthedj one will be shipping off their website shortly and there’s no particular agenda to either of them. Fashion TV are so much NOT part of the dance music establishment yet they have a very interesting network of outlets, they’re one of the biggest cable operators and programme suppliers in the world, from China to India to Europe.
They put together their compilations from Paris clearing the tracks for as many countries as they can, shipping them everywhere, then hammering (promoting) them on their TV shows and playing the CDs at their catwalk shows. It’s completely different to being marketed by Warners or any of the other labels, so it’s still mass marketing, but based on a whole new set of rules. It wasn’t important that the top three hits were on the CD, I’ve always had an interest in fashion, I’ve worked with many designers on their shows before, so I thought ‘Why not?’”
Skrufff: You mentioned that the dance industry is in a ‘terrible mess’, what’s your assessment of its underlying health?
Pete Tong: “Everybody still loves music and partying, dance music’s not dead, it’s just moved to a different place, it’s just in the UK that it’s gone back in the shadows. To me it’s always been about the party. If we keep worrying about the party and the experience of the individual who pays to go there, then that inspires the people who make music to make sure their music is great, and the DJs to insist on still playing great music. Everything comes from how it all started. The forefathers of house music made great records but that wouldn’t have meant shit if the parties they played them at hadn’t been good. They made them because they were inspired by their surroundings. If we can still create parties that good, then everyone will get back on side again.”
Skrufff: Nag, Nag, Nag’s Jonny Slut recently told Skrufff that he’d got turned onto electroclash by hearing you spinning Fischerspooner’s Emerge on your radio show, 18 months ago, do you think in terms of one track like that sparking a new genre?
Pete Tong: “I’m always looking for fresh music and, yeah, I do think like that. The electroclash trend is a very interesting phenomenon and the jury is still out in my opinion, on where it progresses. It’s not quite got there yet but the people involved are so desperate for it to work, as we all are, though the only thing still letting it down is the music, because it’s so hit and miss. You get a record as good as Emerge or some of Felix Da Housecat’s tunes but then you get lots of naff records that are rehashed versions of bad 80s records that weren’t good then, let alone in the year 2,000. But the fact that electroclash has inspired people to dress up, smile and put on make-up again in clubs is incredibly healthy, because that’s a culture, that’s a genuine scene.”
Skrufff: Is Emerge a track you personally still rate?
Pete Tong: “An interesting thing about the Fischerspooner track is that it was Dave Clarke who turned me on to that record and it was really the techno scene who were playing that record as a tongue-in-cheek track, who first got it. And usually they’re the most po-faced of all. Dave though, despite his reputation, has a very dark and twisted sense of humour. That track for me was an instant record to put on the radio and bang (push) it really hard, it’s an important record. Dave also championed the other key (elecrtroclash) record before it, (Kernkraft 400’s) Zombie Nation.”
Skrufff: Where do you expect electroclash to progress?
Pete Tong: “I think what’s going to come out of it is some kind of merger. The people who like electroclash have injected excitement into the club scene again, in the same way that the Gatecrasher kids did with trance. A perfect club for me now would include 25% of people who like electroclash, 25% into French funky daft house, 25% who like adventurous music and the rest being those who would otherwise have gone to see Sasha or Digweed but still want to smile (chuckling). In other words, a bit of everybody, with the crowd also being internationally mixed. The greatest thing about electroclash is its sense of humour and entertainment value, that were the same values I grew up on as a DJ in the 80s. When me and Dave Dorrell were doing the original acid house parties at the Milk Bar we’d be playing the big house records alongside Depeche Mode, INXS and the Rebel MC, clubbing and DJing then was all about fun.”
Skrufff: Did you go through a punk or new romantic phase in your 80s pre-acid house?
Pete Tong: “Not really a punk phase, I was a bit young when punk started, I was going out more when the New Romantic thing hit. Like everybody I loved the Sex Pistols and I loved the Clash but I wasn’t a punk rocker though by the time the New Romantic thing was going on I was already actively DJing in London and lots of the New Romantics were my friends. One of the first bands I ever toured with, for example, was Spandau Ballet. I used to play soul, funk and disco records before they went on stage.”
Skrufff: You’re one of the key pioneers of acid house, is acid house something you still identify with?
Pete Tong: “I do with the acid house spirit, though I’m very conscious of not wanting to be condescending to new generations or boring them silly with dance music’s history. But what the spirit was about was the collectiveness that came from doing something different, together. The great clubs in the country that are surviving or doing well today are still ones which epitomise acid house values. They’re about not selling out, keeping things real and wanting to book the best DJs without getting tied up in ridiculous fees.”
Skrufff: Mixmag recently launched a vicious campaign against ageing DJs, though excluded you from it, what do you make of the campaign?
 Pete Tong: “I don’t necessarily agree with it. When the editor Viv (Craske) made that statement I said, ‘So that’s it, it’s over, is it?’ I have a funny relationship with Mixmag, I’m very happy to do the column and I’m probably enjoying it now more than ever but I never really wanted to do it originally. Now I’m with another generation of editorial staff. I can see what they’re trying to say, they’re saying that they can’t continue to sell magazines by celebrating something that’s been going on for an awfully long time. They’ve got to champion evolution as much as anything else, but you can’t champion what isn’t there. It’s a very difficult time for magazines and it’s easy to be negative about what they’re doing. But we don’t want them all to go out of business. The sweeping statement that all old DJs are over though, is obviously f*cking ridiculous.”
Skrufff: Is age an important factor for DJing?
Pete Tong: “That’s obviously something I think about quite a lot (chuckling)… how can I answer that?… What’s important these days, is to ask who’s really into it and who’s not? If you’re genuine about DJing then age isn’t a factor. You’re never going to be the hot new DJ on the block again but if you’re genuine about what you do, then people will still respect you for it. And if the clubs still want to book you and people still want to come and see you then there’s no argument. So, touch wood, people still want to book me and come and see me, and Radio 1 still want to employ me.I couldn’t keep going for this long if I didn’t care about it. I’m still a trainspotter underneath it all and that’s what keeps me going.
The most misunderstood thing about me is the fact that what I really love doing most of all is DJing. All the other stuff I do is a reflection of that. I love doing radio but I never wanted to be a talk show host or do a breakfast show, I just wanted to play music I loved. I wouldn’t enjoy playing music that other people picked at all. If you get to be 40 years old and you’ve been DJing for 20 years but you don’t mean it anymore, or you’re trying to cream it off, then I don’t think people will book you.”
Skrufff: And how do you see the role of new DJs coming up?
Pete Tong: “It’s really important that new DJs come through but you can’t expect a new DJ to turn up and solve everybody’s issues, it’s not going to happen. If you said ‘All the DJs over 35 have to disappear’, sure some great young DJs would emerge but I reckon the scene would be lesser for that. What matters is that the likes of Yousef can come along and force his way in. All the old DJs, whether you love them or hate them, did pay their dues, no-one got put there automatically.”
Skrufff: What do you make of your long term associate Eddie Gordon’s theory that cocaine’s rising popularity has damaged club culture in recent years?
Pete Tong: “(Pausing) Without sounding like a bullshitter or naïve, to determine whether it would or it could, you’d need a measure, wouldn’t you? I’ve heard him say that and there’s no doubt if that everyone was on coke in a club, it wouldn’t make for a good club. I’ve got an instinctive feeling that the core of the scene, where everything new starts, is over cocaine already. You can work out a lot of stuff by examining what happened in America before. America went through the ecstasy storm without anybody outside really realising, during the days of the (Paradise) Garage, then in the 80s went through the cocaine storm which accompanied the complete collapse of the American club industry as we know it. Then it came back up the other side.
Cocaine has probably had a bad effect though I know some party animals for whom it’s no longer part of their life. You need to be so focused right now and the people you’re working for, the club runners, are so different these days. During the mid 90s there were some crazy times but nowadays club promoters are taking much greater risks by putting nights on, nothing’s guaranteed anymore. When I read stories of bar culture in the suburbs, though, and you see how coke is now the average Saturday night for checkout girls then there’s no question that that has a negative effect across the board, it’s a completely different drug to ecstasy.”
Skrufff: I must own up to listening to Terry Wogan in the mornings on Radio 2, do you see a point when you’d ever join Radio 2?
 Pete Tong: “I don’t know, … I wouldn’t want to compare myself to John Peel in terms of everything he’s achieved but I think I’m more Peel-esque in terms of the fact that I like new music and I don’t know how new music would fit into their format. The idea of going to Radio 2 and reviving old music doesn’t appeal to me, I’m happier on Radio 1. I’ll probably end up on Radio 5 as a football commentator.”
Fashion TV Presents Pete Tong is out on March 31st, on Fashion TV
Pete Tong’s Trustthedj.com compilation is available from April 10th exclusively via www.trustthedj.com.
Jonty Adderley (Skrufff.com)
Interview by: Skrufff.com
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