It’s been a few years in between Australian visits for Fatboy Slim. This weekend will see all of that change though, as he finally makes his return, playing his own headline sets on either side of a highly anticipated appearance at Sydney’s Electric Gardens Festival. The last time I saw Fatboy Slim lay down a soundtrack tailor made for a burning summer afternoon/evening was in Berlin last year; alongside the likes of Kygo, Robin Schulz and Martin Garrix, the British DJ and producer drew easily some of the biggest numbers at the festival, one of the final shows of his 2015 season.
“It was a particularly good year,” he says, reflecting on the tail end of 2015. “From the end of September ’til the end of Christmas, my wife was working so I had to come off the road. So that show [in Berlin] was pretty much the last show of my season — it was a good one wasn’t it?!”
Along with his roster of club and festival dates through Europe, Fatboy Slim [aka Norman Cook] also landed a special gig at Banksy‘s attention-grabbing Dismaland in England, performing on a music bill that featured the likes of Run the Jewels, Massive Attack and more.
“My highlight of the year was playing Dismaland,” he says. “That was just a mind-blowingly surreal and funny experience. I was playing at the time, unannounced, on the corner of the bar; when I started playing, they didn’t realise who I was, I was actually serving drinks! Gradually, people would go, ‘Oh right – I get it.’ It was all completely secret. I love Banksy, he’s a good friend of mine; we’ve tried to do a few vague stunts together and this was like the first real proper one that we’ve done. It was a wonderful environment to play, just the look on everyone’s faces, it reminded me of when I used to play the toilets of Manumission in Ibiza. That was the biggest super club in the world, you’d walk in the toilets and see me playing and be like, ‘What the fuck are you doing in here?’ That, for me, was the fun bit. When I’d go out and play in front of thousands of people you have to take it really seriously and concentrate, this is me having fun. It was all the more fun by the fact that I knew that Banksy was there in the crowd too. Everything that Banksy does is refreshing, cool and surreal, a little bit derogative, but also very entertaining; it was a pleasure to be a part of that.”
Quite obviously someone who has experienced some pretty interesting shows and no doubt antics to have come along with it, there’s still a distinct difference between the world famous DJ and the family man who takes roughly half the year off the road to be at home with his children. As he talks about how the scene for EDM and techno has changed in the last 10 to 20 years particularly, there’s just such a wealth of knowledge and experience Cook projects his thoughts and opinions from that even if you’re not heavily involved in the genre yourself, you feel like you’re gaining an education.
“It’s a double edged sword,” he says of the effect streaming platforms and the internet has had on DJ’s today, both emerging and established. “Streaming is a double edged sword and EDM is a double edged sword; on the one hand, it’s opened a whole new door for DJ’s and it’s trickled down to the most minimal techno DJ’s – they’re still getting more work and going to more countries had EDM not happened. That’s on the one side. On the other side, it’s become so horrifically commercial and parts of it has been hijacked by DJ’s who are just thinking about money. People are becoming DJ’s because they want the lifestyle; you know, flying around in private jets and drinking Cristal. Before that, if you were a DJ, you were the one that bothered to search out all these records, you did it for the love of music. Now, people who are coming in are attracted to the lifestyle side of it.”
“The internet is a double edged sword too,” he continues. “On the one hand, it means you don’t have to sell records anymore but on the other hand, it’s so much easier to get noticed if you’re good. All you have to do is make a video that will go viral. You can bypass that whole bollocks of sending out cassettes to record companies and then sitting on your career for two years. There’s good points and bad points. The good point for me is the DJ, it’s the one thing that the internet, that streaming can’t replace: the experience of going out and being part of that collective euphoria and escapism of being in a huge kind of festival crowd in a night club and just losing your shit. Getting high and getting laid. That’s the one thing you can’t replace. So luckily I’ve still got a job.”
It’s this euphoria and escapism that perfectly sums up the atmosphere his shows still conjure, whether it’s a Fatboy Slim show at Glastonbury or Creamfields, or popping up in a bar at a defunct amusement park a few hours outside London. The crowd’s response and their enthusiasm for those classic Fatboy Slim cuts as well as his other mixes is one Cook feeds off with each show, it’s a very mutual experience.
“It is a two way street,” he agrees. “I get as much out of the crowd. One good thing about being a DJ rather than being in a band is that it doesn’t grow old with you. If you go to a Rolling Stones gig, predominantly you’ll be there with people who are up there in being as old at the Rolling Stones, whereas with dance music, there’s an constant supply of 17 year olds! I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I look out at the front ten rows and they’re all the same age! They never age.”
“Sometimes it is a double edged sword though,” he laughs. “Sometimes I’ll drop something like “Born Slippy” and expect the crowd to go nuts and everyone just stands there and goes, ‘Well what’s this, then?’. I then realise that 90% of the crowd weren’t born when that came out! That’s the downside of the audience being younger too.”
Regardless of the age demographic, Cook isn’t taking any of these shows for granted. This Australian tour in particular is one he’s been anticipating for some time and he’s confident in guaranteeing good times all round for those keen to jump on board and party with him around the country.
“I’ve been working on a film soundtrack and that’s finally just been put to bed, which is good,” he says. “I wanted to finish that before I embarked on tour again. Because my wife does a daily show during the autumn, I stay home with the kids; I’m looking forward to getting out on the road, off the leash and having some fun. I’m like a coiled spring waiting to explode.”
“Every season becomes more precious to me,” he admits. “It’s seriously the best job in the world. I’m aware that I must be coming to the end of my career somewhere along the line, but I’m so glad that I’m still allowed to do what I love as a job.”
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Fatboy Slim kicks off his Australian tour tomorrow night at Perth’s Red Hill Auditorium. He then moves on to Sydney for the Electric Gardens Festival (January 23rd) before locking in two headline sets in Brisbane (Riverstage, January 25th) and Melbourne (St. Kilda Beach, January 26th).
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