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Farley Jackmaster Funk: Being Number 1 Is The Hardest Thing In The World

Author: Jonty Skrufff
Tuesday, June 1, 2004
"To me Farley started house. Because while Frankie (Knuckles) had an audience of 600, Farley reached 150,000 listeners". Mike 'Hitman' Wilson: Guinness Book of Rap, Dance & Techno.

The 150,000 listeners legendary backroom producer Mike 'Hitman' Wilson was referring to when he branded Farley Jackmaster Funk as house music's genuine godfather were the audience for his radio shows on Chicago station WBMX, who during the early 80s started tuning in to hear the world's first ever DJ mix shows. Simultaneously, he maintained a DJ residency at Chicago's Playground between 1981 and 1987 and also eleased the world's first ever crossover house record, the gospel inflected anthem Love Can't Turn Around (which burst into Britain's top 10 pop charts in the summer of 1986.) His success made him effectively the world's first superstar DJ, though already came with a price.

"One of the biggest problems I had back then was because I was number one," Farley tells Skrufff this week.

"Being number 1 is one of the hardest things in the world to handle because as the bible itself says 'you can gain a whole world but lose a whole soul' because you end up giving up all moral things just to stay number one."

His biblical references come from Farley's rebirth as an evangelical Christian in 1990, after he'd lost virtually his entire career and reputation amidst bitterness, ambition and arrogant, unrestrained greed.

"I can see myself in hindsight how I was and how it all happened. It made no difference to me, whatever I had to do to stay number one, I did," he confesses.

"You stop caring at all about whose feelings you hurt because all you want to do is continually have people praising you and telling you you're so great. And what extent you will go to, to stay number one is the part where you lose your soul," he adds.

14 years later, he's still a born again Christian as well as an internationally rated, highly crowd-pulling DJ, occupying an appropriate position and status as a respected elder statesman of house. Still performing prolifically, he's also recently lent his support to a new triple house compilation for Trax Records, the label that like Farley, helped invent house music before struggling when success got the better of them, sometime Farley recognises.

"I was totally sceptical about getting involved in the CD initially because of the whole history of how Trax records initially came into existence, given that they were one of the main powers of the industry back then and so many things got misconstrued," he explains.

"But at the same time, being the spiritual man I am today I realise that I wasn't a perfect man then either and I'm still not a perfect man today, but I now know that you have to be able to forgive people to move forward."


Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): What exactly is your role in the CD-

Farley Jackmaster Funk: "We're still trying to find the extent of what my role is going to be, right now I'm helping to promote it, in terms of trying to give it some credibility. There might not be so many others around anymore with a name and the marketing skills. So I'm kind of a spokesperson for the CD, but in my own words being able to say what I want to say. Because doing interviews always opens up avenues for me to get my message across, which is important to me as a Christian. Whenever I can get a platform I use it, I guess you could call me a spiritual mixer because I can mix the two sides."

Skrufff: How important is music to you these days-

Farley Jackmaster Funk: "I guess music is the backbone of life for a lot of people and for me given that I'm a Christian, that's about being positive and giving something back positive to people which is what God gave me. He gave me a platform with my music to be able to go out there to give people something positive, as opposed to records being about sex, for example.I think we've heard enough things
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