You fill dancefloors across the globe, but not many of the starry eyed clubbers know that once upon a time it wasn’t pieces of vinyl you were spinning, it was the saxophone, guitar and a microphone in your hand that was rocking your musical world. What’s the story here?
“That’s true, I was in quite a few bands back then around the East Midlands. My parents moved down there from Scotland when I was 16. I didn’t want to move as I wanted to finish school so I stayed and joined them later. I didn’t think I’d like England, but as soon as I arrived I really liked it. One band I was in was kinda Nu-Romantic, another was a funk band where our bass player looked like that guy from Level 42 and there was another Aztec Camera influenced band, poppy funk. It was great, I got to meet different people in different parts of the music world, that’s how I met the guy who owned the record store where I started working which was the start of one long journey. It’s funny you mention the sax because my current new record ‘Samba Party’ under the guise of Park & Hussey on K Klass’s new label Muzik-K which I made with Nick Hussey sees me playing the sax. Check it out at soundcloud.com/graemepark”.
Where’s home now?
“I live in a little village outside of Warrington, Lancashire. My house used to be a Mental Home, seems quite apt.”
Other than my dad, you were the first DJ that had me trapped, Fridays at The Hacienda with Mike Pickering was stuff of legends. House music at its finest – but which artists and albums led you up the dance music path in a Fife bedroom once upon time?
“My parents had a great record collection. Loads of Motown, Stax and lots of brilliant Pop records. There was admittedly a lot of crap but that’s parents for you. I started collecting records very early on, it was the early 70s and I was buying T Rex, Sweet, Mudd, David Bowie and Mott The Hoople. Then the late 70s saw Punk explode, I was 14 and at the right age for Punk. All of my friends at school were into Progressive Rock – stuff like Rainbow, real heavy Rock. I was never into this, never got it. I’d go to friend’s house parties when their parents were away, the usual kids snogging, having crafty fags and cans of beer. They were all into jumping around to albums like ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ and I was like, “you don’t want to be listening to stuff like this” and I’d stick ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols on. Then by accident I discovered Disco. Back then Disco was seen as cheesy, all that ‘Saturday Night Fever’ cobblers. It was a friend of my dad’s who got me into it, he was like “listen to this, this is real Disco” and he opened my ears to the most glorious sounds – I thought this is fucking great. I have always been open minded about music, most people nowadays tar me with the ‘oh he’s just a House DJ’ brush, but I’m not at all, I have always mixed things up. I love it when people ask me to play at small club or bar and ask me to play “anything but House music. I’ll still get clubbers come up to the booth and say “why are you playing this, can’t you play Alison Limerick or The Brand New Heavies?” – and I’m thinking ‘no, I am loving playing different stuff’.
You cut your cloth in Select-A-Disc Records in Nottingham at a time when the first house and techno records started to filter through from Chicago and Detroit. Mr Mike Pickering up at The Hacienda heard about this incredible Scottish DJ tearing up clubs and asked you to cover for him when he went on holiday – you soon took over as the main DJ at the venue. I used to sit in a traffic jam on the M1 for hours driving up on a Friday, sometimes only for half an hour of dancefloor bedlam if the traffic was bad. What are your memories of Nude at The Hac?
“Well I’d met Mike at ani-D photo shoot down in London and knew what he was doing with his T-Coy production stuff also. My DJ career was going well at the time, but getting on at The Hacienda took it to a new level. I remember all of the people trying to make it up from the south every Friday, the M1 and M6 was a carpark wasn’t it! People to this day think that I used to get around to all of those gigs and raves in fields in a helicopter, hilarious. So The Hacienda, it was an amazing time. A true cultural youth driven movement that we hadn’t had since Punk in the 70s, The Summer of Love in the 60s and Rock & Roll in the 50s. The 80s gave us Acid House fuelled by the most insane drug called Ecstasy. We used to play on a crappy old sound system myself and Mike, playing the most incredible Detroit, Chicago and later on New York records that had been made on cheap drum machines and crap synthesizers. We’d be getting five or six brand new tracks every week that we couldn’t wait to play to a crowd who were so hungry for new music. There hasn’t been a revolution like that since – the 90s and 2000s have not given us anything to write home about, it’s just recycled old stuff. The Nu-Rave stuff a couple of years ago was so contrived and this new modern day rock thing is laughable. I really hope my twin sons in maybe 10 years time or so have something like Acid House or Punk Rock to get their teeth into, experience what some of us have felt in the past. I am 45 now and still out DJing with the likes of DJs like Carl Cox and Pete Tong who are of similar ages. Our generation are still going out clubbing and there are all these younger kids out there saying ‘well what about us’ and we’re all going ‘oh well come and join us lot then’. It’s a mish mash of generations out there, we need something new. All these kids are saying, ‘we don’t care that you all invented super clubs and superstar DJs – we want something to call our own – I mean, my parents weren’t going out when they were 45.”
You still loving what you do?
“Of course, I wouldn’t do it otherwise. Last weekend in Aberdeen for instance, I’ve been playing up in my original home town for 20 years since the days of Fever. I was lucky back then, there wasn’t that many DJs around back then and nobody had the records I had for sure, I was able to play here there and everywhere and it was great. Now you can’t move for people claiming they’re a DJ and everybody has the same records. Anyway last weekend was just like the old days, it took me 20 minutes to get to the stage and half way across I knew that I should really go to the loo before I went on if it was this difficult to get around the club – well if you think the dancefloor was chaos, I got completely mobbed in the toilets – it was brilliant. Whilst I was DJing I looked into the crowd and saw such a diverse range of people, all ages, all with their hands in the air. I love gigs like that because it means I can play the new stuff for the new generation and old classics to the older crew.”
What Mancunian artists do you think have been the most important over the years to clubland/music in general?
“Well there are only two answers to this question and people will always be split into two camps. New Order or The Smiths. From a club point of view New Order were streets ahead of anyone, using new technology and working with superstars such as Arthur Baker. They embraced club culture with their sequencers and synthesizers and were amazing – when they weren’t fighting with each other and slagging each other off. The Smiths were the traditional Rock/Pop band and absolutely fantastic, but they never strayed from their boundaries.”
You were part of an elite crew back in the early 90s, yourself, DJs like Allister Whitehead, Norman Jay, Giles Peterson, Slam, Andy Weatherall, Justin Robertson – a band of brothers who simply loved their music inside out and never sold out. A question that regularly pops into my head – what do you think of the current state of DJ world, DJs who play a load of crap for an hour and a half and pick up £20,000 in the process?
“Well in my mind there are two type of DJs. I cannot get my head around these ridiculously over paid, over hyped DJs who play concert halls to 20,000 people plus, with their sets pre-computerized. I don’t see that as DJing at all, okay they will say “but our sets still need programming” – how the fuck can you pre-program a set. What happens if you arrive at a gig and the crowd isn’t exactly what you expected – too old, too young – your tunes may not suit the gig and you’ll look like a wanker. I use Serato which is great, I still can have that feeling of queuing up a record, still have that feel of placing a needle on a record and I can have thousands of records at my disposal. And Serato is great for my radio shows too. Don’t get me wrong, there are some DJs out there who embrace technology but still keep it real, there are so many great DJs/producer duos out there who whilst one is busy chopping up a track and re-interpreting it, the other is on a laptop doing FX – that works, that’s a performance.
Big tunes you are playing at the moment?
“Shit, the days of simply leafing through your record box and shouting out some names are long gone. Let me open my laptop…well the tune with Nick Hussey is going down well, check out The Supersonic Mix. You know, I have had 185 tunes sent to me since Sunday already. The good side of all this new technology is that it has made it easier to create and release music without the hassle of booking studio time and trawling around labels to get a deal. The downside is that as a DJ we are all bombarded with so much rubbish and it gets so tedious going through every track – which we have to do in case we miss something. I collate a playlist at the end of every month, tracks that I like. My July list already has 147, June had 64, May 105, April 144 – do the figures, that’s sometimes 40 tunes a week I like – how on earth can you fit that many tracks into your set alongside older stuff? Other tunes I’m liking at the moment are ‘I Want’ by Yass feat. LT Brown on Code Red and Sandy Rivera & Andy Daniel ‘ Whatever’ on Defected. My favourite UK band at the moment is Cicada, ‘Psycho Thrills’ is just immense.”
You was the first British DJ with Mike Pickering to play places like Australia and Africa – what was your reception like there?
“Yes that gets overlooked really. We were asked to come over thanks mainly due to our association with Factory Records and The Hacienda – the records and the press proceeded us. We toured Oz in 1988, for some reason Mike never really got into the overseas gigs after that, he was quite happy DJing all around the UK. From what I can remember from that trip, Brisbane was okay, Melbourne terrible – the DJ on before us told us as we went on, “listen guys, play some Haircut 100 and the place will go mad”. Sydney though was unreal, 8000 people at The HordenPavillion with an overwhelming smell of poppers as the crowd were mostly gay. There was this band on called EinsturzendeNeueauten who had one of those ‘grinding’ girls cutting up oil drums and various weird objects on stage. The event had the world’s biggest mirror ball which I think is still listed in the Guinness Book of Records. We were introduced to the crowd in a very strange way – Mike was introduced as the ‘Godfather of Acid House’ and I was introduced as DJ Graeme Pink. For the next three years whenever I played in Australia I was known as Pinky.
So travelling the world bringing beautiful music to new territories was important to you back then?
“I loved it. Uruguay, Argentina, Hong Kong – all new to me and all wonderful. One trip that stands out was when me and Nancy Noise went to Sarajevo and Lubiano in the then Yugoslavia. Lubiano was first up and everyone was saying ‘oh don’t go to Sarajevo, they’re bad people’ and when we got to Sarajevo it was the same thing, ‘we can’t believe you went to Lubiano – it is full of wankers’. I said to Nancy, ‘what’s wrong with these people, they are so angry. The day we got back civil war began. Another memorable trip was going to Iceland with i-D magazine for a club tour date with The Happy Mondays and A Guy Called Gerald. There were loads of journalists on board the plane coming home and we had partied intensively. A major couple of days at it. Anyway, this journo from The Daily Telegraph pissed Bez from The Mondays off and Bez thumped him in the face, a huge fight broke out and there was I sitting in the middle of the plane…fists flying behind me whilst everyone up front were screaming thinking they were going to die. God only knows how the wonderful air crew calmed it down. I also loved the New Music Seminar in New York back in the day, it was where I met and played with the likes of Jellybean Benitez whilst all these brilliant UK A&R guys like Rob Manley, Steve Wolfe and Spencer Baldwin were partying with us with ridiculously large expense accounts. Great times.”
You must get asked what your favourite Hacienda classics are all of the time – forget that. What tunes spring to mind right now this second when you think of the club?
“Great question”, nobody has put it quite like that before. At this moment in time, I’m thinking Blake Baxter ‘When We Used To Play’ – moody Detroit Techno at its finest (at which point Graeme starts playing it at full volume down the phone). If I play it today, because of the whole stripped down Techno thing at the moment, people think it’s new. Also, Seduction ‘You’re My One And Only’ – the organ at the beginning wow, and anything at all by Derrick May.”
Okay, tell us the truth, did Mike’s mixing ever do your head in at The Hacienda?
“No, not at all. You don’t have to be an amazing mixer to be an amazing DJ. He used to pick incredible records, at the end of the day, it’s all about the music.”
Which clubs/citiesaround the world do you enjoy returning to these days?
“Well I had the most marvellous time in Toronto recently, it was my first time there and blew me away. It’s like a European version of New York, another city that I have started DJing in regularly. I also play a lot in Dubai, I don’t get over excited about going there but the parties are always fabulous, full of Brits going mad. It gives me a little time to chill to, obviously I don’t go there in the Summer. The thing is, I don’t really do the long haul trips anymore, I have two young boys and it’s unfair of their mum for being away too much. I do miss Australia though.”
What clubs in Manchester are doing it right now?
“Sankeys just celebrated another birthday and is still going well, I am sure The Warehouse Project will return but you know, there are so many little clubs and bars with late licenses having it off at the moment. In years gone by, every city had its pivotal club. Liverpool ‘Cream’, Manchester ‘The Hacienda’, Leeds ‘Back To Basics’, London ‘The Ministry of Sound’, Birmingham ‘Miss Moneypenny’s’, Bournemouth ‘Slinky’, Glasgow The Sub Club and Sheffield ‘Gatecrasher’. That’s all changed now. It is so fragmented musically and venue wise.”
How did you feel when The Hac was turned into flash apartments?
“Well I’d given up my weekly residency a year before it closed down. It was sad it shut down but it couldn’t continue. No way. The original idea was to keep the front facade but that didn’t happen. I was there with Tony Wilson and Peter Hook as the JCB’s rolled in and demolished the stage – that was upsetting.”
Did you get any memorabilia?
“Ha Peter was right on that, he got all of the best bits. When the rest went to auction I got a piece of the dancefloor signed by loads of Manchester musicians and DJs, it’s all in a lock up now somewhere in Manchester, what a great investment that was. What was amazing though was when the film 24 Hour Party People was made, they recreated The Hacienda in a warehouse in Ancoats and it was like walking back in time. Myself, Mike Pickering and Jon Da Silva were basically given one more time to play the club, everything about what they had made was identical to The Hac, even the shit sound system.”
When all of the ‘superclub’ business came about, DJs like yourself had to take a back seat for a while and wait for the clamor for overpriced DJs to come and go, you kept to the sound you loved and here you are still ramming them in. Who do you think are the best DJs in clubland today?
“I never get the chance to see them to be honest. After I play all I want to do is have a sit down and a rest!”
Best club you have played at this year?
“Deja Vu in Hull is always very good, ‘360’ in Dubai was off the hook and the new Gecko bar/club in KohSamui, Thailand was fantastic.”
Pet hate regarding DJing?
“I won’t mention any names, but what really gets my goat is these DJs who I haven’t seen for ages and when I ask them where they’ve been they reply ‘oh I do 95% of my gigs abroad now, the UK is shit.’ Well it’s not is it? I get so fed up with people who say ‘oh it isn’t what it used to be’ – well fucking fuck off then. Things move on, we all have to adapt. I do gigs once in a while where the club may not be full and the promoter is all apologetic, well come on, there are so many bars out there which are free to get into and open until 4am – things are going to be difficult sometimes, especially as we are gripped in Festival Fever right now. When Key and Juice decided last year that they didn’t want their stations to have any specialist stores and stopped my show, I just brushed it off. I started to do some lecturing in radio and music production at a local university and when they asked me to do a radio show, I jumped at it, if I can bring music to these kids ears and inspire them, then that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about the music.”
