The Chemical Brothers on Raving, Mick Jagger & the Future of Dance Music
Author: Jonty Adderley
Saturday, January 19, 2002
While some magazines portray both Tom and Ed as early-to-bed, over intellectualised stay-at-home types (notably Q in their latest issue) the pair, in fact, remain committed clubbers, both as DJs and individuals. Skrufff's Jonty Adderley met the pair at Virgin Records' London headquarters just before Christmas as they kicked off promo for their new album Come With Us.
Skrufff: How do you regard living life in the public eye-
Ed (the dark-haired one): "We are pretty anonymous, people don't really know who we are and I think we have a good level of recognisability in that, if we want to go to a club late, we can get in. At the same time, if I'm walking around Notting Hill gormlessly (dopily) looking like a tramp and no-one knows who I am, then for me that's a good level of fame. If I want to go to Fabric and it's 2am and they've shut the doors, I can still probably get in and that seems to me a good thing to have from being in the Chemical Brothers. We don't get recognised on the street, though it's nice when people come up to us. When Afrika came out I walked down Portobello Road on a sunny day and about three people came up to me and said they loved the record. That was great."
Skrufff: Do you ever get people who don't believe who you are-
Ed: "We don't really push it, we're not exactly the sort of people who say, "Do you know who I am"-'"
Tom (the blonde one with formerly flowing locks): "They only really come up to you if they're fans of what you do, it's not like people see you on TV then say something."
Ed: "We never sort out (guest list for) celebrity things but when we do happen to go to funny parties where there are celebrities, we're like people going, "Oh look, there's so and so". We went to one party and Mick Jagger was there and wanted to meet us and we just turned into little kids, we can't really handle it."
Skrufff: So what did you say to Mick Jagger-
Tom: "We said we were too busy enjoying ourselves to meet him."
Q: Does the word underground have any relevance to you these days-
Ed: "We like our music to be understood, I've never really wanted to make music that people don't understand; electronica music or underground music that's uncommercial and doesn't do very well. We don't feel that kind of music is a superior product to our electronic music that people do understand. What does underground mean now anyway- In terms of dance music- dance music's pretty much the mainstream, isn't it-"
Tom: "There's always an underbelly of music; if you're in Japan at a techno club for example, that might be (playing) the same music you'd get somewhere else but there's a feeling that you're opting out of the mainstream. Dance music, however much it dominates the charts, still has that feeling of being in a club and it being 6 in the morning and it's illicit. It's a different thing to what other people are doing. You're coming home while people are going to work, and there's still that feeling that you are doing something different. That still exists for people today and the music is something that goes hand in hand with it, but the idea of making something that's wilfully obscure is fine, it's a cool thing to do, but we like playing music that really excites people as well as us when we play it."
Skrufff: Do you still get a buzz from being out at 6am, dancing-
Ed: "Yeah, I love it, | still like clubs, I think I've enjoyed going to clubs more in the past couple of years just from having more extended time off. We had a great time in Australia, we went to a few clubs there. It's just the freedom of not having your immediate people around y Tags