Episode 8: Paul Oakenfold RMN Podcast
In 1987, Oakenfold travelled to the island of Ibiza for a week to celebrate his birthday. Trevor Fung, Nicky Holloway, Ian Saint Paul, Danny Rampling and Johnny Walker accompanied him. Oakenfold convinced the owner of a venue in England to host an "Ibiza Reunion" party after-hours. He had previously made an attempt, but it failed as the crowd was not prepared for the acid house style until 1987 when the party was successful. After that, the night became a classic and became one of the UK's major acid house nights, known as Spectrum at Heaven in Charing Cross. The party was best known for the "Theatre of Madness", as more than 1,500 people were present on Monday nights, until it went down; with the financial issues it changed its name to the "Land of Oz". Artists like Alex Paterson DJ'd in the VIP chillout area known as the "White Room", which gave Oakenfold more free time, and then he began producing music under the alias "Electra" in 1988.[10] Members included Nick Divaris, John "Johnny" Rocca and Micky. As they continued releasing only four singles as the Balearic beat band Electra, in Full Frequency Range Recordings (FFRR Records) founded and run by Radio 1's Pete Tong, the duo created a new alias under the name Perfecto. Also in 1988 he decided to create a place where new artists could develop their careers. At that moment, Perfecto Records was born.
He collaborated with his friend Steve Osborne on various projects. In 1990, he worked with Terry Farley, Andrew Weatherall and Osborne on two remixes for Happy Mondays. The remixes of "Rave On" and "Hallelujah" were released on the Madchester Rave On EP, as well as "Step On", a covered version adapted from John Kongos' 1971 hit "He's Gonna Step On You". The song reached the Top 5 position in the UK. He was invited as a guest DJ to Spike Island, a gig with The Stone Roses. Pleased with the last single, the Happy Mondays gave Oakenfold and Osborne the opportunity to produce their third studio album, Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches. The album entered the UK charts at #1 with pre-sales of 150,000. The album was named NME's "1990 Album of The Year", and both Oakenfold and Osborne won the 1991 Brit Award for "Best Producer"
00:00:00 - I sold my soul. I prostituted my talents for R.M.N.
00:00:18 - Yeah, that's right.
00:00:20 - And George, George.
00:00:30 - Oh, who could fight for it?
00:00:32 - Hey buddy, how are you? I'm good. How's things going? Good. Really good actually. So don't
00:00:57 - I hope you don't mind if we just jump into it because we're going to leave in 20 minutes.
00:01:02 - So I wanted to squeeze you in, so thanks for calling now, I appreciate it.
00:01:08 - No problem, thank you for squeezing us and that's fantastic.
00:01:11 - OK, well let's just get straight into it then Paul.
00:01:13 - Just off the top then, what is your opinion of the current music industry right now as we stand?
00:01:21 - It's in trouble. Help. We need help, it's in trouble.
00:01:26 - To elaborate I think, especially in the electronic world, a lot of people take music for free and unless you are lucky enough to be out of goal on the road to make money, a lot of people aren't and the big shift you're seeing certainly in my world, the electronic world, is producers of music who used to make the music and give them to the DJs to play are now turning into DJs to make money because they're not making any money as producers and it's also getting very difficult to share that with people who are incredibly talented and just want to make music and don't want to be on the road and have no interest in being a performer and they are not making no money because everyone's taking not everyone but most of the people take it for free. Yeah, absolutely. That's a problem. And what's really disheartening, incredibly disheartening is that sometimes you come across these great talented people who are their dream is to make music, produce music, play instruments and they don't make enough money out of it to make a living and you see their dream disappear because the reality sets in that they're not going to actually succeed in it because when they do make tracks no one has no one's buying them they're just taking them and it's a real shame. Yeah absolutely absolutely so what's your viewpoint then Paul on where do you think it's going to go where do you think it's going to end up?
00:03:13 - Well, I like the idea, it's a moral idea that you pay what you want for the track which seems to work.
00:03:24 - I mean, Radiohead did it with her album and it just puts the individual on a spot.
00:03:30 - Some people still won't pay for it, but I don't know, I think you have to bring a system in the, you know, where people can't take piracy, where people can't take music for free. I mean, you know, sometimes you're selling it, not even for a dollar, and people still want to take it. I think it's the culture that you grow up in, just presume that it's there to be taken.
00:03:56 - Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, obviously, DJing and, I mean, you know,
00:04:04 - You don't mind me saying this, but obviously you're one of the biggest DJs in the world and have been for an incredible number of years, but from your point of view, you've made a lot of records as well, Paul.
00:04:19 - You've been behind a number of, has sales decreased for you then?
00:04:26 - Absolutely.
00:04:27 - Obviously, there's still the sync scenario, there's still the synchronization where you can go on to do adverts, you've done the Big Brother theme track. I mean how does that relate to, I mean obviously I'm not trying to compare incomes here on fees that you would get for Dejan, just based on records only, how does that compare to what it did say five years ago or ten years ago?
00:04:52 - It's dropped incredibly, I mean my first album I did a million records worldwide
00:05:01 - And then I had a big wake-up call in Russia about four or five years ago when the record company there told me, I'd sold about 50,000 albums and they said, you've probably sold 100,000, but you've 50,000 of them would have been bootlegs and I was like shocked and they said, yeah, that's generally how the industry at that time looked at it and that's when I kind of realized that it's an ever decreasing circle you'd unless you're in that five percent where you have um who knows a little bit of luck maybe I mean with Adele's record she made a record that appealed to an older generation that wanted to buy an album I make music to a younger generation who want to just buy singles and expect to get them free so it depends where you
00:05:55 - I think Black Eyed Peas done 15 million downloads and a couple of million albums when 10 years ago there would have been a lot more albums.
00:06:08 - So it's the nature of the beast, so even in film everyone seems to be looking at the financial side of it and saying well we can get this done cheaper, we can get that done cheaper and everyone wants to own more and they cut your prices so you're kind of driven to go on the road and that's where we are at the moment and you know if it still worked on to be on the road.
00:06:39 - I mean look you know again you can't compare to the normal DJ Paul I mean at the end of the day I mean you're at the top of the tree and again I've been there for years so your diary is probably booked well in advance and so on. But I mean new DJs or even the producers that we both know are going out there trying to go into the DJing circuit where you've got yourself and you know, Junior Vasquez's and all these kind of guys that have been around
00:07:09 - David Morales, Roger Sanchez, all these guys that are at the cream of the top, whatever.
00:07:13 - I mean, there isn't space for new DJs, is there?
00:07:16 - No, it's got incredibly competitive at the DJ level.
00:07:22 - And a lot of DJs are hyping the DJ charts.
00:07:27 - They're buying likes on Facebook because it's falling into a number game.
00:07:36 - And where you had that great DJ who could tell a story through music,
00:07:42 - Unless he's changing with the times and being very competitive in terms of social media side of things and cross promotion and content then he will get left behind unfortunately and that's the nature of the business.
00:07:56 - I mean when I DJed Paul and I DJed years ago you know with the Technics 1210s as the due and then we moved on to you know some use the Pioneer CD thing.
00:08:08 - DJs today are using computer programs, Tractor or whatever, I mean is that Ableton or whatever,
00:08:14 - I mean is that, what's your view on that?
00:08:17 - Yeah, that's just embracing technology and embracing change in technology is important.
00:08:24 - It doesn't mean you have to use it but you have to be aware of it and change with it to a certain extent, otherwise you're just going to get left behind.
there's no DJs now who carry crates and use records and if they do they're kind of looked at as very old school.00:08:42 - Yeah, yeah, sure.
00:08:44 - You know, now it's unfair to judge them, you know, and if they prefer that, and I'd prefer to sound the final, but you don't have to do that no more.
00:08:55 - No, no, sure, sure.
00:08:57 - So what's your advice then, I mean to kids, bands, producers, you know, I mean
00:09:02 - And obviously there's no room in the DJ circuit, everyone's trying to jump on a bandwagon.
00:09:10 - And I look at, you know, even guys like David Guetta, who's done really, really well, David
00:09:16 - Guetta's had a lot of hit records lately, probably made some money from music, I would imagine he would be one of the few people that's done well in music.
00:09:24 - Well, where he's made a lot of money from music alongside Calvin Harris is the publishing side hasn't changed.
00:09:32 - And the radio side still hasn't changed, so if you're making those kind of records, you're in the pop world and you're getting played all over the world on radio and you're getting publishing, so that side hasn't changed.
00:09:47 - But what would your advice be to the young kids then that are starting in this industry,
00:09:53 - Paul, I mean starting from scratch and they want to be in music, they want to be a band, they want to be an artist, a DJ, whatever, what would be your advice?
00:10:01 - Well, my advice is that you should first of all be original, second of all work incredibly hard, understand what you're going to do, practice, practice, practice, I mean if you're a basketball player and you want to be the best you've got to practice, a lot of these
00:10:21 - DJs just come into it and think, just press and play and on you go and that's where you see the difference between a great DJ who will be around for years, like a few of the guys you just named, to all the others who fall or to the wayside. So there's a lot of components, you know, like breaks being in the right place at the right time, all that plays into it also. But you just, first of all, got to be really good at what you do and then hopefully something will come out of it. And when you've got people like ourselves to looking for talent, eventually you'll come across it.
00:11:00 - I mean, let me ask you something about yourself then, Paul. I mean, you kind of separated yourself.
00:11:07 - I had this conversation just the other day with a very, very famous person who was basically in a similar situation to yourself in as much as that. They separated from their peer group, which I think you did quite well. I mean, you managed to, there was a point in your career where you separated from the bunch and you became this iconic DJ. But when you looked at your DJ sets, it wasn't so much the DJ sets, I mean this was a marketing thing, a promotional thing, perhaps a change of management, a push or something. For you to even go from the UK to America was a massive step for you. How did you manage to achieve that? What did you do different? Well I had goals I mean I got to a point as a DJ and was doing the same circuit, same clubs and going around in circles and it wasn't inspiring for me and on top of it the music started to get really boring so I was very fortunate that my father was a big fan of film that I learnt about the film side in terms of music and earlier
00:12:20 - I had an opportunity to go to Hollywood and score a movie and I was very nervous and was concerned but it's an opportunity and you have to grasp certain opportunities otherwise you're just you're going to regret it for the rest of your life and I thought you know what I'd go for it and if it doesn't happen and I fail then at least I try it at least went and and I think if you've got that attitude then it usually if you're good it usually figures itself out and that's how I ended up living in Hollywood and scoring movies and games and building from there and I mean I mean that is that is an incredible an incredible sort of story
00:13:04 - Paul and but I mean the countless I mean you took chances with others wouldn't and and what what we're trying to get across here really is this kind of motivated positive message coming across from people that have actually done it and saying well you know to the students, the kids, the people, the reader of the you know the thing is you know what is the common ingredient here?
00:13:27 - What is the ingredient that makes you know?
00:13:29 - I think it's believing in yourself.
00:13:32 - I think all the people that speak to have set the pace and they've taken chances where others wouldn't and they have based on the belief that they can do it, the determination that it will happen and not being scared of failure because failure doesn't even come into it, you don't even think about that. It's not one thought of failure that comes into your mind. That's the difference.
00:14:01 - What about music then? You're saying that music got boring.
00:14:08 - It all sounded the same, very similar to now. Everyone's running around copying one another because they're all wanting to take a success rather than sitting back and focusing on what they do and not panicking and rushing around.
00:14:23 - So do you think that for someone looking to make a track, that was going to be next question is someone's making a track, a producer, perhaps a DJ or whatever is making a track, they shouldn't be listening to the charts or what's getting played today, they should be listening to what's coming tomorrow. And obviously, what would you do? I mean if you're going to make a song, you're going to make a track, I won't.
00:14:48 - Play to your strengths, play to your strengths on what you've done before, what you look good at and search for cutting edge new sounds of course you've got to move forward but you know if you're based if you if you as an artist is based around songs or you're based around a melodic emotional feel whatever your music is then then stick to that because that's what's made you successful and don't move away too far from the tree. Yeah, that's what's the future for Paul looking for then? Well my residency, I mean we focused on Vegas, I mean certainly blowing up Vegas as a destination so certainly concentrating on building that. I've signed to Sony so my new artist record will be coming next year. And just working on with creative people and being a part of a flourishing scene really,
00:15:48 - I'm really enjoying it. I'm on tour with Madonna at the moment, travelling as a support artist for her tour, on her tour. So I'm enjoying that, it's going well.
00:16:00 - Are you doing the full world tour, Paul, or just the American tour?
00:16:02 - Yeah, I mean we go to Mexico and then I'm yet to know whether I'm going to South America, about being enjoying it so far. That's fantastic that's great and I mean so I mean from from a perspective then of doing doing Vegas then I mean you see yourself I mean do you see yourself continuing with the live thing for a long time to go to go or do you? Yeah I think I enjoy it in the moment I've got back in the saddle and I spent time away from it so you know to get out and travel the world and see what's going on is enjoyable I've always loved traveling at the moment I love it that's fantastic that's great and what about a new album or productions apart from yeah I've done a few new tracks and they will start the trickle out towards the end of the year early next year great great poem and so the last word is there a trick then apart from apart from the kind of obvious things, is there any trick or I mean, would you advise somebody who is in the spotlight to hire a publicity company, a marketing company, would you?
00:17:14 - I think that they should focus on social media. They should have a strong social media presence.
00:17:21 - Okay. That's what I would advise them because that's where it's going.
00:17:25 - Social media is playing a bigger, bigger part of it.
00:17:28 - Yeah. Okay. All right. So that's fantastic. Paul, that's all we really need to this. Thank you very much.
