Tony Thorpe
© Brian David Stevens
Tony Thorpe was, literally, a very bad influence on me. I’m not really one for epiphanies, but one of the clearest moments of musical realisation I remember in my life came in 1990 at the age of sixteen, just after going to my first rave club. The club experience itself and the music played there was great, exciting, disorienting, all the rest of it – but it was as we carried on at some friends’ house afterwards that I first heard the KLF vs The Moody Boys version of ‘What Time Is Love’. Its combination of a complete re-making of the instantly recognisable riffs of the original with sonar bleeps, soundscapes, synthesiser sounds the likes of which I’d never heard before and what I would later discover was a sample of Misty In Roots - “When we tread this land we walk for one reason, to try to help another man think for himself. The music of our heart is roots music, music which recalls history because without the knowledge of history you can’t determine your own destiny. Music about the present because if you’re not conscious of your present, you’re like a cabbage in this society.” - took the top of my head off and made soup with the contents.
I was already vaguely acquainted with electronic music and, even more vaguely, with dub at this point – but this track was a shattering revelation to me of the possibilities of both, of the fact that dance music needn’t be for the dancefloor, that cultural boundaries were there for the breaking, and that music could be both very serious and utterly ridiculous, both profound and hedonistic at the same time without contradiction. And it was this track more than any other that set me off on a course of spending my life seeking out preposterous music wherever I could. I quickly discovered that the Moody Boys were actually a man called Tony Thorpe who already had quite a history in music first in the post-punk band 400 Blows and then with early UK acid tracks, and proceeded to buy his records whenever I found them: ‘First National Rapper’, ‘Acid Rappin’, ‘Journeys Into Dubland’, ‘What Is Love’ with its remixes by the KLF. He never became an iconic figure or underground celebrity in the way many contemporaries in electronic music did, but he never stopped making interesting, unpredictable and often brilliant records either, on labels like Guerilla and his own much underrated Language, and I was thrilled when I heard him completely in tune with current sounds with his 2007 dubstep remix of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Love Is A Losing Game’: a gleaming, futuristic, precision-tooled monster of a track that amplified the gambling metaphors of the original to gloriously glamorous proportions, but somehow maintained its fragile heart of blues; had there been any justice in the world would have been the first Bond theme for the rebooted franchise instead of that Chris Cornell monstrosity.
I refrained from telling Tony that I thought this, though, when we met in the café of Brixton’s Ritzy cinema. I had already embarrassed myself by telling him how much that ‘What Time Is Love’ remix meant to me as a kid then immediately realising that he was not someone who liked to trade on past glories. It was an awkward start to the interview, then, but things quickly warmed up, and the hour and a half we spent together ended up providing as fascinating overview of linking threads that run through British music of the last quarter century as I could have hoped for. What you see here are extracts; further parts are going to appear in Woofah fanzine shortly, and once that has hit the shelves, the interview in its entirety will finally be posted here.
Tony’s Studio Rockers label compilation / DJ mix Studio Rockers @ The Controls is out now.
So Tony, you’re known for your music but also for having run quite a number of interesting labels. When someone who doesn’t know you asks what you do, what do you say? Musican? Producer? A&R? Label boss?
Musician, really, I suppose. Producer? I don’t know really. People tell me what I am – I don’t go round saying I’m anything, never have done. It’s up to people to come to their own conclusions. I’m just a music lover, I suppose a music lover that got lucky – and that’s why I’m still doing it after all these years, that’s why I went beyond ‘What Time Is Love’ or whatever and did so much more above and beyond that. That’s why I’ve still got enthusiasm for it, and why I’ll still be doing it until I end up in whatever old people’s home or nuthouse they stick me in. So I’ll just keep doing it and look forward to that nuthouse…
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Could you pin down exactly where your life in music started? You grew up in Croydon, right?
Yep, that’s my hometown, the grimy streets of Croydon [laughs]. I suppose it started in a place called the Old Barn in South Croydon. I mean before that I grew up with a West Indian background so there was always soundsystems around, always heavy all night parties, always music in the background, soundsystem in our front room, and I can remember just being really into the equipment, getting my first gramophone, buying my first single, all that. But it was just about the culture of the time, following whatever was around – the first record I bought was bloody T-Rex, I mean I was just like any other kid born and bred in Croydon, just like anybody else, into the pop of the time. Then after that I was a punk, I was a rasta, bloody new romantic, skinhead – I’ve been through the whole lot. I used to follow Pete Tong and Chris Hill, go to the Caister weekenders, northern soul gigs, Wigan Casino, Goldmine – we were the sort of South London Soul Patrol crew, and we were heavily into dancing in those days, going down to places like the Horseshoe with Paul Murphy on Tottenham Court Road where they’d have dancers, mate, absolutely amazing dancers every night. They were like ballet dancers, twisting, spinning, bending, always really original in their moves, and it was great going around challenging people to dance-offs, going around different places like we’d go down to Sutton Scamps on a Tuesday night and have a dance-off with all the Sutton lot, then another night we’d go down to Caister and have a dance-off with them lot. It was a constant like “waheyy!” fun thing, but also it was releasing your aggression on the dancefloor, challenging each other with dancing where these days you’d do it with a knife. So yeah I was into black music, into all the American stuff of the time…
What about electro? Or was that more a northern scene?
Well in the late 70s, early 80s it was funk stuff, then rap came. I remember someone on the radio when ‘Rapper’s Delight’ came out going “this is never gonna go anywhere” and we were sat there going “no! This is the future!” and if you knew what you were talking about, you knew that in the Bronx this stuff was there for real, it was a lifestyle, know what I mean? I think I’ve always been open-minded, but when that really started to open out was when I got into 400 Blows…
And how did that come about?
Well I was a DJ basically, that’s what I started off as – we used to do this club in Croydon called the Swamp club and, and… [laughs, looks disbelieving] it was sort of a rockabilly thing. But in them days you could play anything – I’d be playing Animal Nightlife with King Kurt, mixed in with James Brown and Kraftwerk! All over the fucking place – and all these people were there in quiffs and suits having a good time, all kind of smartened up and it was brilliant, mate. Bauhaus, B52s, James Chance, Bob Marley whatever – man, that’s when I used to really enjoy DJing because it would just be “right, what am I going to play today?” and it could be anything. And you drop the right classic and people would just go fucking nuts. I did Dr Jims, a classic old jazz-funk venue where all the soul guys played, sunday night jazz-funk fusion type place, teamed up with my mates Rob and Andreos, who was… [laughs] …he was George Michael’s cousin. ‘Cause he was in Croydon too, the whole bloody Wham! thing had its seed in Croydon, we used to play them and Animal Nightlife, all that kind of soul pop of the time. Haha I’m a bit embarrassed, this aint doing my dubstep credibility any good…
But George was a proper soulboy too, wasn’t he?
Oh mate, you can’t knock him! He’s someone who loves his music, and I love the way he constructed his whole success without trying to rip anyone off and developed his own style, which is what it’s all about in any kind of music. No George is a wicked guy, man. But yeah, a mate of mine, Mick Maguire, started this thing called the Forum, which was in the Whitgift Centre – just like a pub right in the middle of the place there, and we’d hire it out. And his dad did HP with us to buy a soundsystem, so we’d pay him money every month to buy the soundsystem which was total top-of-the-range. I mean the sound was like… phwoooarrr! And everyone else was on these silly little mobile disco things, flashing traffic lights and the lot, but we had decent Citronics turntables and proper bassbins. So we were this little sound and we called ourselves Midnight Groove… bit embarassing really…
That is such an 80s name!
Yeah… [cheesy grin and wink] “Midnight Groooooove!”. But we had t-shirts made and everything, “Midnight Groove” with stars and glitter, and don’t forget it was the early 80s, era of bad perms… horrible, mate! But the music we were playing was fucking brilliant, so who cares? Again, it was all sorts – hip hop, soul, rare groove, jazz, jazz-fusion funk…
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So, you were working with acid house, and throwing anything you wanted at it? And you could do that because pre-1990 was before the dance music industry had set its rules and formulae in stone…
Yeah, that’s right… but let me think, I’m trying to place this right, to get the story in its accurate order… I don’t know how long I can keep that up… So – at Rough Trade, around that time, actually before I left 400 Blows in fact, I was listening to John Peel, and he had this fucking record on that sampled the Beatles. It was all samples, totally mad, and I just thought “who the FUCK could be idiotic enough to get these crappy Beatles records and chop them all up?” Well it came to the end and he said “Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu” so I just thought “I have GOT to find out who these people are”. Not because the record was any good – it wasn’t – but just how could they have the idea to sample crap records, I mean at the time I was sampling James Brown, Muhammad Ali, cool funky shit, you know, so I thought “I’ve got to find out who these idiots are”. So I did a bit of networking… at the time we were doing ‘Funky Alternatives’, ‘Funky Alternatives 2’ in fact, and they had this track ‘Don’t Take 5, Take What You Want’ – so I said I wanted to do a remix of it for our compilation. They were all like “yeah ok sure wicked”, and I did a mix, thought it was great, lovely, gave it to them, they said it was shit. I think Jim actually threw it in the dustbin in front of me, like “this is shit!”. I was really “mrrrmrrrmrrr” [scowls] about it, but it was funny.
And what did you think of Cauty and Drummond as people at the time?
Well I did find the whole thing quite…. quite hippie for me – but really nice people. That rejection really got me, though, more than anything. But we kept in touch as mates, I went to some of their mad warehouse parties in Stockwell [at the infamous Trancentral squat / studio] – I mean those were the days when people were partying man, ‘87, ‘88, the whole thing was starting to move, the whole acid house bollocks whatever. So we became friends, and I don’t know what happened, but at some point they approached me to do a mix again, I think it was ‘Kylie Said To Jason’ which was for some house tracks compilation… now that record died a death, really, it wasn’t a big hit, although they really meant it as a pop single – by that time I was meeting up with them a lot, going out with Jimmy and Bill, Alex Patterson and Youth: it was this whole sort of Brixton, South London little thing going on. So then we were… [he is lost in acid house memories for a minute] Where was I? …sorry mate yeah, ‘Kylie Said To Jason’, we did that, then we did ‘3am Eternal’ with a Moody Boys mix and an Orb mix on it, and then suddenly they had a hit with… oh what was it called?
Doctorin’ The Tardis?
Yeah, Doctorin’ The Tardis! I remember them playing that to me, “diddy-di-dum diddy-di-dum” [Dr Who theme], and I just went “this aint very funky is it? This is rubbish, this isn’t going to do anything” - and of course it went to number one, so I was just “oh fair enough then!” Then I can’t remember how it all went exactly but I ended up doing the mix on their new version of ‘What Time Is Love’ which was the first of that batch, and somehow it just became like a day job. They’d had the Pure Trance ‘What Time Is Love’ but this was the “Stadium House” version, and from there it just became like a well-oiled machinery, really – like a really interesting way of working. They had their mad concepts of how these records should be, and we had this slick machine for making them and getting them into the charts.
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And when hardcore was beginning to start, how did you feel about the change in atmosphere in the raves?
Right, right, yep, now we can start talking. OK, I found there was a point when you had that Spectrum, acid house thing, when everything was quite colourless, it wasn’t black or white, you couldn’t tell who the people were behind the music, and those gigs were really multicultural in a really good way – then something happened and the soul was just taken out of it, it all became very European and the soul just went, or just got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And then – I don’t want to say trance, but there was a point where I thought it was going to take over the world that kind of music, and I just don’t find it very soulful. Trance, progressive, tribal, they called it, but it was just monotonous. It’s music by numbers, you don’t need any imagination to do that. Bit embarassing, I did one track you could call trance, with that guy Steve Hillage – ‘7:7 Expansion’ – it got to number 20 in the charts, bruv! We did that, me and a bit of Youth, and Steve, and I didn’t feel too bad – but as soon as I see people wearing tights in clubs, I’m out of here, I’m out of this scene, you’re never going to see me again, that’s IT! I mean I was playing breakbeat at trance clubs, at the Butterfly parties, Youth’s thing in his garden, I played breakbeat just to get away from that European… thing.
But those early hippie/trance rave nights like Megatripolis, they could have hardcore rave DJs, they could have experimentalists like Autechre; and hippie bands like Eat Static could play at hardcore clubs like Rage!
Yep, yep, totally – it’s all relevant, it’s all relevant to where we are now, music is all shaped by those influences even if you don’t want to admit them. But the rest of the scene by then was all starting to get a bit too corporate, a bit too soulless, a bit too music-by-numbers, and yes, it was really horrible – I don’t care what anyone says, it was horrible… I thought it would never end, I was sat there thinking “look at all these DJs making all this money and just milking, milking, milking – milking this soulless music, this music that you make just to assist your drug high…” I find that just totally immoral in a lot of ways. And it’s still there now, and I don’t think it’s ever really progressed at all, I mean I’ve never really heard anything from that scene that’s made me go “wow, yes, this is a new music”. It’s just not progressing, bruv, that’s the problem – it says ‘progressive house’ but it’s not progressing one bit. And I think that killed the togetherness, the cultural mix, it killed the unity, family kind of thing, it really did, man.
People went with the money, that’s the problem, they went with the money, where the big bucks were and fuck everything else, and that’s why you ended up with a lot of them DJs, man – I don’t want to mention any names, cos these are the people that are forever slagging people off and putting them down, and I’m not doing that – but a lot of them DJs made a lot of money, while their heritage and roots were so deep into black music it’s unbelievable, it’s almost like they forgot about black music and just went “oh we’re making money now, fuck that”. But nothing lasts forever, know what I’m saying, nothing lasts forever mate, so whatever you’re doing you’ve got to have that in the back of your head, and you’ve got to be prepared and ready to shift and move on all the time, or you’re just going to sit there milking things and not knowing who you are, til one day you turn around and you’re old school and nobody gives a fuck about you and who cares about you…
…and you’ve got a chunk of your nose missing.
Hahaha yeah that’s right, a big old hole in your nose – so yes, thank god I’ve never gone down that route, I’ve known so many people go down that dead end alley.
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Dubstep seems to be one place where there’s been a conscious application of that idea in protecting vinyl sales, right?
Yes, dubstep is like the last bastion of the 12”, it feels like. Obviously you’ve got 7” sales, indie 7”s, that’s still strong – I know people who’ve got all these 7”s on their wall but they haven’t even got a turntable! Yeah, dubstep feels like the last stand maybe, and they know that vinyl sounds better. But people have been duped by technology into thinking that things sound OK – they don’t! Digital, computers, they have their place but recording technology is not better because it’s easier; like what I was saying about when I play post-punk records from the 80s and people can’t believe what they’re hearing, can’t believe they’re that old, because they sound so advanced and imaginative. And of course people get used to shitty speakers – I would far rather you annoyed me with a giant ghetto blaster than a shitty little telephone. Seriously, any day, blast your ghetto blaster, it’s so much less annoying. We’re obsessed by “small” - we want it half the size and half the size again and we think eventually somehow it’ll get to a size that’ll make us happy, like you can put it on your fingertip and blow on it and it’ll tell you the time and this’ll somehow be better… I think things should be getting BIGGER! BIGGER phones, BIGGER computers, things you can really give a shit about.
Again that’s an idea that chimes with dubstep – it’s an aesthetic that likes size, whether it be vinyl, speaker stacks, the physical impact of bass drops…
That’s what I find wonderful about it, the way it’s able to capture that old-school soundsystem mentality, a bit like what Soul II Soul were doing back in the day with their soundsystem reggae mentality – and you had to be there with it, you had to be there in the room and feel it physically, and this is just another manifestation of that, and it’s all relevant man, all of it is relevant. And there is no better vibe than going up to DMZ on a weekend and seeing those guys up there calling out “REWIIIND”, pulling the records back, chatting on the mic, it is brilliant – it is just brilliant, you can’t fake that. It just reminds me of going to see Jah Shaka back in day, but it is completely their thing, it belongs to that younger generation and that is really exciting and really great.
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So with your new label Studio Rockers you get out of bed in the morning with an appetite for it, then?
Yeah, it’s great! I go to bed thinking about Studio Rockers, with a tune in my head that I’m working on, I’ll go to sleep thinking “wow I can’t wait to get that finished” or “I can’t wait to sign that kid” - and finding talented artists, wow mate, that is such a buzz, honestly. Such a buzz finding someone that I can help develop and bring to the world, I mean I’m good with helping people, helping them get to that point with their production where they can really show their potential. I give them all the advice they need to get their tracks better – it’s so much easier for me to tell someone how to do that, to take the existing track to bits and analyse it, than it is to explain how to do it from scratch or to create my own stuff. With your own stuff you can get lost in it, don’t know if it’s good or bad, but with other people’s stuff I’ve been doing it so long I can almost do a mix for them without thinking.
Mate, when I did A&R I used to do mixes on the telephone! I used to have kids ring up on the phone, I’d be like “turn that down a tiny bit, yeah, eight bars of that mate, another bar there, do that there”, know what I mean, and that’s it, sorted. And now I use Skype to do that, you know “yep, move that slider, no not that one, the next one, that’s it” [laughs] It’s silly but really, that’s one side where I’m just really glad I’ve been able to contribute. There’s one kid I’m just about to sign, about nineteen, really young, really great potential, he’s from Leeds – and I can see we’re going to have some great fun, we’re going to build some great tunes. And like I said, I’ve always tried to help other people’s careers, I like to help people along, with all my labels I’ve done that, with BPM, with Language – especially with Language, in fact… people like Si Begg, I helped him develop like that.
And he passes that on – Si Begg is someone who launches new artists all the time on his own labels now.
Yep, yep, he’s a proper artist and he knows that helping people is part of that, and I’m glad to have been a part of that. I watched him develop into that, and that’s part of the reward of doing what I do.
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El-B told me that in his Ghost Studios he’d get a lot of young guys coming in having earned money from drugs, thinking they could just spend their way to becoming good MCs in the studio, that enough attitude and money would make them good…
Well you can knock it, but drugs made jungle, mate, drugs made hardcore and jungle – I’m not being funny there, they really did, they really bloody did. It’s a shame we’re stuck now where the whole drugs scene just seems pretty bloody dark, it just doesn’t seem like fun any more, it all seems pretty depressing really, not fun, just dark…
Maybe that’s why dubstep had to go back to Guinness and weed?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right, I mean the first time I went to DMZ I was just “oh… my… god – people are smoking weed and not doing pills, but they’re still raving”. You know they’re still jumping at 5am, and seeing 500 people in a room all nodding their heads in perfect synchronisation was just “wow!”. And seeing people like Kode 9 do a DJ set, I’d think to myself “my god, if I’d have done a set like that, like I wanted to do, fifteen years ago, the floor would have cleared completely” - but now… now, people are open. And that’s what great for people like myself, and a lot of my peers and people I know – the foundations for those audience and people being open have been layed down by people like myself, and like yer Rob Smiths and yer Guy Called Geralds and Shut Up And Dances, you can go on for ever. Those people have helped in the gradual creation of a public with a conception that they can be open; you had to have the music there to create a public that would listen to it.
So dubstep is pretty healthy now, you think? It’s not approaching that position of becoming “normal” yet, you think?
Well, again, that’s why dubstep is interesting for me, why I feel comfortable with it, because you know that there are producers within that scene who are forever going to be pushing it forward. They’re not going to stay where they are. When I listen to what DMZ were doing two years ago and what they’re doing now, I’m amazed. Mala’s tunes now are crazy, they’re just mad, there’s Scottish producers that are insane, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation like this for mass creativity, where I’m just constantly “wowww… wow!” about tunes, and I love all those guys too – when I see all them guys I’ve got the time of day for all that type of people. And it’s amazing, sometimes I meet these people and they’ll go “ahh, my dad used to play your records” and I’ll be like “oh, OK” [mock offended face]
I mean this is a bit embarrassing, I dunno if I should even tell you this, but I bumped into Coki a while back in Liverpool Street, he’d been to some gig and I’d been up north for some other gig. I was going back to Norbury to see my mum, and he lives in Norbury, just up the road from my mum in fact. So he was like “come down my house I’ll sort you out some tunes”, so I was like “yeahhh, brilliant [rubs hands in glee] come down and get some new Coki upfront bits!”. So we were there having a chat, he burned me a CD, then I popped downstairs and it was like “wait a minute, I recognise that person…” and I realise I knew his dad, then next minute I realise we went to the same bloody school, and I was just “aaaah no!”. So I’m sitting there with his son, who’s just burned me some cutting edge dubstep, and we used to go to the same school… that’s Croydon, mate, Croydon… it’s a funny old place!
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