Business Is His Pleasure

Mar 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Simona Rabinovitch

Surrounded by the glowing screens of SADiE workstations, the knobs and faders of Eela consoles, and the flashing lights of racks of processors and MiniDisc players, Pete Tong slides his chair toward two Technics SL-1210 turntables. In his hands is a 12-inch of Roger Sanchez's “You Can't Change Me,” which he slaps onto one deck and cues up. Behind him, two young producers scurry around the cozy confines of BBC's Radio 1 studios checking the playlist. Tong swivels his chair and makes one last-minute adjustment to the microphone hanging overhead. As one of the producers flashes Tong a hand signal, the DJ speaks, filling the room with the booming, larger-than-life voice that has become familiar to more than 12 million listeners all over the world.

For 11 years, British clubbers have started their weekends by tuning in to “Pete Tong's Essential Selection” show, which is broadcast live on BBC's Radio 1 Friday nights from 6 to 9 p.m. Thanks to the Internet and international syndication, Tong's program now enjoys a worldwide audience. To a generation of scenesters, Tong is not a man or a DJ, but an icon of the dance-music industry. Credited as one of the primary forces bringing dance music to the masses, Tong remains as influential as ever.

Tong started his radio DJ career in the early '80s, getting his first break with Radio 1, where he presented a regular 15-minute program about dance music. That eventually led to his own weekly dance-music programs on Radio London and Capital Radio. In 1983, Tong was hired as A&R manager for London Records, where he managed the careers of pop acts such as Bananarama. Five years later, the label allowed Tong to start his own dance imprint, FFRR, to which he signed acts including Salt-N-Pepa, Steve “Silk” Hurley, Smith & Mighty, the Brand New Heavies, Orbital and Goldie. Recently, he supervised the soundtracks for the films The Beach and Human Traffic, and started his own radio production company, Wise Buddah, which produces most of the BBC's dance-music programming. Tong also has released more than a dozen successful mix compilations, including his most recent effort, Twisted Beats.

Tong is such a celebrity in England that he's become immortalized in London's official slang dictionary. “That means I'm known by grandmothers now,” he says with a laugh. “In London, we have this thing called rhyming slang. It goes back hundreds of years ago and came out of the East End of London, where people would say one thing and mean another. For example, ‘Apples and pears’ means ‘stairs,’ and ‘I want some Jimmy Hills’ means ‘pills.’ Somebody started saying, ‘It's all gone Pete Tong’ back in the rave days, which means ‘It's all gone wrong.’ It's just a joke. It wasn't meant to be a diss against me.”

Although Tong is associated with dance music's commercialization, he has managed to maintain his underground legitimacy. Success notwithstanding, Tong remains one of the scene's most aggressive champions of cutting-edge sounds. “I've always been an enthusiast of new music,” he says. “That's what got me into this business in the first place, so it's as much a job as a duty. Every week, I listen to as much new music, talk to as many other DJs and go to as many clubs as I possibly can, and bring back the spoils of what I've found the previous seven days.”

Tonight's show is a perfect example of Tong's dedication to the scene. The playlist includes the latest crowd pleasers and floor-fillers from the Chemical Brothers (“Star Guitar”), Timo Maas (the Fatboy Slim remix of “To Get Down”), Mos Def (“Jam on It”) and Robbie Rivera (“FunK-a-Tron”), but he also spins obscure new white labels by Artica, Dirty Trix, Mendo and Liquid People. As the show wraps to its conclusion with a 30-minute prerecorded mix by Felix Da Housecat, Tong sits down with Remix to discuss the dance-music business and his role within it.

How has the music business changed during the past two decades?

The business isn't what it used to be when I started in '83. It's now very corporate and calculating: “We'll invent a pop star and force it upon the people.” I've become disillusioned with a lot of the process, so I'm enjoying getting back down to the lowest, most basic level to find talent again. It's more refreshing than trying to invent the next — I don't want to say Britney Spears, because I quite like Britney Spears — but you know what I mean. I'm still in the record business. My company got sold to Warner, so I'm a consultant to Warner WA London now, and I'm still a figurehead for FFRR. But I've removed myself from being in endless planning meetings, and I'm a much more potent weapon and A&R source to the label if they let me just find the music and live amongst the music.

How do you do that?

Over the past two years, I've tweaked the way I operate. The advent of e-mail has enabled me to cut out the managers and the agents. I spend a lot of time just talking directly to the talent and my peers and contemporaries, so I'm back on the phone more than I was five years ago. It makes the flow of information so much better.

One of the reasons the dance-music industry in the UK has gone so far is because of radio support. How have you used radio to push dance music as well as your own career?

I was a club DJ first and foremost who started DJing at a time when it wasn't really a career move, and radio was a sort of parallel interest. For anyone who started DJing at the same time I did, in the late '70s, being on the radio was your goal, whereas now to become a club DJ you don't naturally think about going on to the radio. I was on the biggest station in London at the start of the whole rave, acid-house scene, and I moved to Radio 1 in 1991, when it was just kicking into gear as a national phenomenon.

What role does your radio show play?

I've always thought of it as a meeting place for the club fraternity on this national platform of Radio 1, where we don't have any advertisers or cater to any commercial requirements. The unique thing about Radio 1 is that it's a public-service broadcasting organization that still commands and programs its stations in such a way that it appeals to massive audiences and therefore has a massive influence on young people. The target audience age is 15 to 24, and everything is done with those listeners in mind. The 6 o'clock slot on a Friday night is a very significant slot to have, and we've built it up over the last 11 years. I've just been there to report on what was naturally happening anyway. I never considered myself to be the person with the Midas touch. I don't have any God-given right to make or break records. If I bring great records onto the radio and “discover” them, then all I'm doing is speeding up the inevitable. The record is good anyway, so I'm just bringing it to a wider audience faster.

Many people look to you to turn them on to hot new sounds. Do you perceive this as a responsibility?

Definitely. I want to use the position to push things all the time. It's fun for me to play electro records three or four times before the sound becomes a craze, to actually force it on the audience so what sounds like the most fucking odd thing one month suddenly starts to sound more normal three or four months later. There's this record called Lover Tits by Peaches that sounds like something from the New York underground in the mid-'70s. It's out of time and so lo-fi, but it's techno as well. Now that record is starting to sound quite normal, whereas when I first played it, people were just like, “The drums are out of time with the bass, which is out of time with the singer. It's all over the place.”

How do you determine if a tune is going to be a big success? Can you pinpoint certain elements that catch your attention?

Often, it's just a feeling. I look for originality and records with a lot of spirit and soul — bold music-making, really. I've had a pretty good sixth sense for determining when a genre is peaking, running down a blind alley or starting to repeat itself too often. It's more than just having good taste. It's having good taste that tends to be shared by a lot of people eventually. You can have good taste in your own world and be very obscure.

It's been said that you sign one indulgent record for every hit.

When you're starting a new label, you have to reflect your personal taste. But if you just reflect your personal taste, you might see your label go bust. My role models were Atlantic, Island and Motown Records. Island was started to release cutting-edge underground reggae music, but they also had some rock 'n' roll acts like Roxy Music and Grace Jones. They had cool stuff, and they had stuff that really sold. In my own way, that's what I tried to do at FFRR. I signed Jamie Principle's “Baby Wants to Ride,” which was this shagging record, and then I put out Salt-N-Pepa's “Push It.” We tried to keep a balance.

The same approach applies to the radio show. If I played only obscure, unknown, underground music for three hours a night, I'd have three people and a dog listening. The fact is, it's entertainment. Some songs they know, and some they don't know. By building the records through programming, you can turn an obscure song into a hit.

Many producers are so attached to the underground label that they're almost fearful of making something that could appeal to a wider audience.

America, in particular, seems to over-analyze things. “Is it underground? Is it overground? Is it cool? Is it not cool?” It's almost as if there's a set of rules they should be following, but they haven't quite found them yet. People forget it's entertainment. You've got these DJs coming on, and they think they've got to be so this or so that. They'll inflict two or three hours of music on the audience, and sometimes it's torture because it's all unknown. It doesn't really work, and the music they're picking isn't really that good anyway. It's supposed to be fun.

How has technology changed the nature of the business?

The whole CD-R and MP3 explosion has been really healthy. There's a massive circuit now of MP3s and CD-Rs going around. It's almost like a little club. There's another creative space where DJs are making records for each other. It's not impossible now for Joe Blow from Milwaukee to come up with a brilliant idea on his PC, burn a CD, send it to Danny Tenaglia and hear him play it on Saturday. That happens more and more.

Do you ever play records sent to you by unknown producers?

A lot of people are sending me stuff right now, but it tends to come to me via someone else. The quality of music I've been given onstage while playing in American clubs has been astounding, actually. Funnily enough, I haven't tended to get stuff from the idiots. The only people who seek me out are the people who are really good! It's completely reversed from the way it is in England, where you tend to get something from people you'd rather avoid.

How can aspiring producers learn to navigate the commercial waters while staying true to the music?

It's very rare when you find someone making really cutting-edge, vital music while sitting in a vacuum in a room somewhere. That is a one-in-a-billion occurrence. It's much more likely that the people who actually do make quite good music are either running the hottest record store in town or they're a big face in a certain club. They're already implanted in the scene in a different level, like some mate of Sasha who's been hanging around him for a while and just suddenly starts to make music. Those people tend to get discovered, and they tend to just do it for themselves. You get that a lot now — new names, new producers, new musicians who've been hanging around a certain scene, who get inspired by the scene and then start making music. Who do they give their first record to? They don't need to give it to some bloke they don't know! They give it to Sasha or to the person they've been hanging around. That's how so many careers get started. A perfect example is Goldie, who came back to England from New York, hung out at Rage — the most seminal drum 'n' bass club ever — watched Grooverider play, started making music, gave the first acetate to Grooverider, and the rest is history.

Have you discovered anyone in a similar way?

Yes. I've known Swedish Egil quite well over the years, and I always used to try and pop into Grooveradio and do stuff for them whenever I was in America. A guy who worked there always took a real interest in what I did and was always really nice and polite, not in my face. We built up this relationship, and I threw him a New Order remix recently — the first remix he's ever done in his life. His name is Dave Dresden, and now he's been flooded with work. He only started five months ago, and his career's off and running. I feel really proud of being able to help him. He's working with Josh Gabriel [see the sidebar, “Natural Selection”], a kid I met in Miami last year at the Winter Music Conference. I love that these two guys just found me. One found me in Miami, and the other built up a casual relationship with me. And now they're a new remix team! You couldn't get more entrepreneurial than the way those two went about it.

Is it important for established talent to help out up-and-comers?

When it's like the situation I just described, yes. But you can't do that for everyone, because you get 500 shit things for every one really good thing. Some people just have it, and some people don't. Anyone reading this story who's been sending CDs to famous DJs for the last 10 years and hasn't got anywhere, chances are he or she hasn't got it. In Josh Gabriel's case, he gave me a record in Miami, and I lost it. I was cussed at by Dave, who said, “You really should have kept that record! You're mad! I'm going to get you another copy.” It was phenomenal. If it had been crap, I would have wiped the name out and moved on. The fact was, he actually did something good. That's why I was turned on to it. It's like the process of natural selection. As much as you think the American pop charts are crap, if something gets to Number One it's actually good — except Vanilla Ice.

What do you see as the next big musical wave?

The music I'm into at the moment has got to be funky, sexy and sound like it's not trying too hard. That seems to be the stuff that everyone's into, somewhere between funky, melodic techno, and messed-up, nasty house records — not conventional garage or anything like that. There's also something going on with electro that's somewhere between breaks, techno and electro and is coming out of Germany, France and Italy. I don't really like genres, believe it or not. As soon as someone comes up with a name, it's abused. I hate musical boundaries. I started playing records in clubs when you could play a hip-hop record, then play five house records and end with a rock record if you liked. I prefer that. I started to include a bit of what I call a “space terrace vibe,” which is a sense of humor, on my last tour in America. Melody is really important to me, too. A record doesn't have to necessarily have a conventional verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure, though. I want people to be entertained when they come and see me play and to go home remembering certain things and singing to themselves. That keeps the girls interested, as well, rather than it all becoming trainspottery.

What records in particular should people be looking out for this spring?

Layo & Bushwacka. I'm really into what Funk D'Void are doing on Soma — anything on Soma at the moment tends to be really, really hot. The Bedrock label is really good; a lot of Digweed's stuff tends to be funkier. It moves me more than the progressive tracks on other labels.

What is your opinion on the U.S. scene?

Most of what I see going on in America is really, really healthy. The scene is growing, but it's fragile. It's gotta be treated with TLC, as you can see with Twilo shutting down, so many clubs being raided, and the Creamfields and Mekka festivals falling apart. The support of commercial radio would be a phenomenal help.

It's kind of crazy that the American scene is totally influenced by the European scene, especially the English scene. In the late '70s, us English guys used to go to American clubs like Studio 54, Paradise Garage and Zanzibar and soak up information like sponges. We were checking out what mixers they were using and what records they were playing. That's what the whole English scene is based on! Obviously, these clubs were run and championed by gay people, and that scared the shit out of normal America. So outside of New York, Chicago, and, to a much lesser extent, Miami and L.A., the rest of America just wrote it off. It didn't exist.

What is the single most important piece of advice you can give to aspiring DJs and producers?

Be an entrepreneur. Don't sit there and wait for doors to open for you. Sending tapes to people and hoping to get discovered never works. Get out and do it. One of the greatest things that's happened in the development of dance music worldwide over the past 10 years is that the keys to the asylum have been handed back to the people. You don't need to have a record deal to be successful in the dance business. You're far better off pressing a white label yourself and getting it out there, or going to the smallest label you can find rather than trying to get a deal with a major label. Cut out all those middlemen. Fight, kick, scream and get yourself out there on the record counter any which way you can. People who are looking for hits spend 99 percent of their time networking and looking at what's going on out there rather than sitting in an office listening to the tracks in their in-tray.

What does it take to become a successful DJ?

It's a lot harder to make your name as a DJ these days than when I started, because there are so many more of them. People are a lot more narrow-minded, so DJs tend to have to have a sound now to get a reputation. Derrick Carter, DJ Dan, Yousef, DJ Lottie — you know what they sound like, and you know what you're gonna get. That makes it difficult because there's not always space to carve another niche. But people do it. My reputation grew out of having good taste and being able to give people a really good time. If anything's hindered me over the years, it's probably been that people don't quite know what my sound is, because I can be flexible.

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