The Legendary Shovell From M People Who Just Rocks The Island With His Drum Warrior Percussion And Vocal Show…
You are one of the best percussionists the music world has ever seen. Tell us about it all began…
“I am the Drum Warrior. I’ve been playing drums in clubs since about 1988. I was going to Shoom on Southwark Bridge Road which was my mate’s dads gym, It was a Saturday night and we all jumped in a cab and went down for this after-hour’s party. We walked in and it was just smoke everywhere and ‘doomph, doomph, doomph’ and people with long hair. And big baggy dungarees. Then about an hour later I had my jacket off and I was on the dance floor and I’m not going to lie, it changed my life. I remember the first time we heard the Martin Luther King speech over some beats, – I don’t care how clichéd it sounds, I felt love and it was touching us in a way that went straight to the soul. This was a way of thinking about your life in a different way and going in a different direction, I thought – right, “I can do this” and within a year I resigned from Lewisham Council.”
Shovell, tell us about your connection with Defected?
“Well I first met Simon Dunmore when he was at Cooltempo around 89/90, I’d done a session for Kenny Thomas who’d covered the track ‘Outstanding’. (By the way ShovelI, he’s shagged one of my cousins) was in a band called ‘Natural Life’ and I was playing in the club called Monkey Drum, the DJ called Glen Gunner saw me there and came down for a session, I met Kenny who was working for British Telecom at the time. He had a great voice. I played the drums, it was mad. It got released and did ok. Then we met Simon and Cooltempo signed it. Simon did a mix on it after a few months and I think is was about 7 months from the day I was in the studio to being on Top of the Pops – a BT Engineer and a plumber! We PA’d it all over the UK. Myself, Kenny, Simon in a car – drums and microphone, literally from John O’Groats to Lands End. I don’t know how much Simon liked being in a car with me, we used to have a few on-tour antics, which is another story. It was a massive learning process for me and it was the beginning of a dream coming true…to be a musician.”
You’ve been a big part of Ibizan culture for a long time and you’ve played Pacha, Ibiza since the late eighties, what did it used to be like then and how has is it different now?
“Ibiza’s changed man, when I first got to Ibiza it was the wow factor, that whole Island, its like even the rocks gave off an ambience and were humming something energetic, you would sit on the beach and you’d feel this buzz all the time. I remember going to Ku and it was all misty and smoky and this big naked Rasta came walking through the crowd handing out spliffs to everyone, and on top of that madness, the music. So you were in a club listening to the most amazing dance music with the most amazing people from all around the world, it was a deeply spiritual, moving, unique thing that no-one had ever experienced in their lives and then you look up and there’s no roof. If that happens to you it cannot do anything but change your outlook on your whole life, It touches something deep inside, the policy in Ibiza then was love, I don’t care how corny that sounds – and it was all about music. It wasn’t about the mixing, it was about records that just flowed into other records. Everyone in Ibiza in those early days brought something to the table. There was loads of freedom and loads of love and any blocked doors were kicked open, everyone could express themselves. If there is a difference now, it’s that things are a lot more money and business led. However, I still maintain that Ibiza is a massively special, a special place and it goes through changes. I remember 1992 when people were saying “it’s the end, its over”. I’ve been hearing that nearly every year but Ibiza is a living thing and it changes, sometimes it’s a backache and sometimes it’s running as fast as it can run – it’s a living organism and we’ve all got to change and move with it, and it will always, it’ll always be a massively special place.”
You’ve done some really titanic stuff, tell us about it?
“Natural Life played the Downham Tavern and some bloke was filming, turned out to be Adamski’s manager. He liked what he heard and got us in the studio and we ended up signing to Hollywood Records which was Walt Disney’s music label We got an amazing amount of money when we signed, but by October 1990 we were probably minus thirty grand. No one had got a car or a house or anything, we just went to the most expensive live-in, thousand-a-day studios. I put on a stone there – it was food all the time, we were having parties of course! But again, I wouldn’t change it for anything – it was a massive learning experience. That all ended in about ’92. Then I met M-People at Brixton Academy, they were sound checking, their percussionist had broken down on the motorway and they asked if I could stand in for the sound check. Three months later I got a phone call and about 4 months after that ‘How Can I Love You More’ – and Top of the Pops again! We did Glastonbury in ’94, Robbie Williams was on the truck, we had all these footballers, got on the stage with 60,000 people, an 11 piece band, we were covering ‘Sunday’ and as we got to the first chorus the cloud moved and the sun come out and and I thought “I used to be a plumber two years ago!!’. It was an amazing moment. M People was a massive part of my life till about 1999/2000. I was always playing at clubs during that time like ‘Up Your Ronson’ and the Hacienda – every major dance club and venue all over the world. Then M People wound down at about 2000 and I sort of sat back, did some TV presenting. I soon realised that I love music and I’m not a presenter, so I got back into the music, started playing loads of clubs again. Then I got on board with Defected and met my dear mates Copyright and people like Faze Action and I started making records again.”
Let’s talk about your role at Pacha, tell me about the you, the Drum Warrior and what he does at Pacha and how it feels?
The first year I played with Defected at Pacha I had a flashy pair of trousers and a t-shirt on and I was like ‘what am I doing, this is Ibiza man’. The island is all about freedom and expressing yourself and I thought I’m not in the same vibe and spirit, I wasn’t showing what I was feeling from the inside on the outside. Ibiza’s a spectacle, the clubs are a spectacle, it’s a show, of course the music is massively important but you get out there and say what you got to say, show what you got to show. The idea of the Drum Warrior first came to prominence with the track ‘Bulo’ that I did with Copyright, it was the first time that I gave that character life, it had been hidden in my head and that was when it was born. Playing the drums touches me, I can joke about it but it does, it takes me back to the land of Africa and I try to acknowledge and represent that in wearing ethnic rhythmic clothes. But also, I’m a geezer from South East London and that’s why I wear trainers and I like the punk ethic. It’s an amalgamation of everything that’s touched me and shaped me from the early days in Deptford to being able to travel all around the world and take the best from all of those places and ending up in Pacha and trying to express that in music. I just like to join in and give it a bit of a show with what I wear and put the face paint on. When we’re all in that club and that music’s playing and that beat is going its like the heartbeat of life and literally on that island, at that one point everyone’s dancing, we are one tribe of moving, grooving people, dancing to one beat, one sound and that’s why I do the Drum Warrior.”
What’s so unique about the Copyright Ibiza 09 mix you have just released on Defected?
“We decided to give it a percussion flavour, a Balearic flavour, like a live mix really, representing what we do when we get to Ibiza It’s Balearic, its drums, it’s that rhythm. So even though we did it in the Copyright studios in Finsbury Park, we kind of had to shut our eyes and be in Ibiza. CD1 is Ibiza daytime, CD2 is a little bit darker, a little bit more mysterious, a little bit stranger, a little bit wilder – it’s Ibiza at night. So we opened up the tracks on CD1 with an ambient feeling of entering Ibiza with a few shouts from myself in Spanish and in English and some percussion playing, to set it up, – to open the door on this journey of Ibiza, then throughout the tracks I come in with some ethnic shouts and some Drum Warrior shouts and play some more percussion on top of the tracks. Then on CD2 we open up with a track I love, I know I’m involved in it but I love it, ‘Drums of Bennirras’. For anyone who hasn’t gone to Ibiza, particularly on a Sunday evening in Bennirras when the sun is setting with loads and loads and loads of drummers – and I’m not talking about just professionals, there’s like four year old kids with sandcastle buckets turned upside down with professional drummers and there’s families and hippies and naked women dancing. We wanted to respect that beach and respect the island and we’ve called that track ‘Drums of Bennirras. Whilst I was performing the track, even though I was in Finsbury Park, I was on that beach. Playa de Bennirras – I was in Ibiza and I was in Africa at the same time, even though it was Finsbury Park.”
What about your tracks that are on the mix?
“Gav has done some magical stuff, he had his fingers on the twizzley noblets, he bought back the acappella of ‘Voodoo’ and also the ‘Yema Yah’ vocal. Also we’ve covered another track, I’m working with Robin Lee, Faze Action and some other guys, it’s called ‘Soul Makossa’ that’s going to be coming out on Defected. It’s a new project called ‘Shovell and the Latin Hooligans’. I’m really, really excited about it because it’s a new venture for all of us, everyone seems really pleased and everyone’s biggin’ it up.”
So where can we see you performing this year?
“Ibiza throughout the summer, I’m there about 9/10 times. I’m playing many festivals, Dance Valley, I’m in the States, France, Portugal and a few Bacardi festivals.”