First's Exclusive Interview: Superstar DJ, Pete Tong

26-12-2005 00:00

He was one of the very first 'superstar' DJ's of the emerging dance scene in the early 90s, once he managed hot 80s girl group Bananarama, he's hosted the Dance Show on Radio 1 for nearly 15 years and he even has his name in the dictionary.

So isn't it weird that his name is synonymous with things going wrong, when it couldn't be further than the truth for Pete Tong.

And now the infamous DJ has just released his first retrospective album, Essential Classics.

Essential Classics is a fantastic three CD album that trawls through the very best of Pete's extensive record collection and will take you on a mind bending journey of dance, from the very beginning, if only you could remember it!

Recently, Sarah Williams caught up for a chat with one of the worlds most loved and respected DJ's -Pete Tong.

You are one of the very first 'superstar' DJs and have been headlining your own show at Radio one since 1991 - what drew you to it at first, was it the chicks, the money or the free beer?

Pete: I kind of wanted to be a rock star. I was in a bad school band, playing badly and I saw a DJ at a school concert and I thought, sod this - that looks easy I'll go and do that. The job wasn't the same then as what it is today. When I first started, to be successful, you had to be on the radio. So it was really just to be involved in music and the kind of 'birds, fast cars and booze' thing; I grew up at a time when being a DJ became a bigger and bigger thing, till there was a point in the 90s when you had the phenomenon of superclubs and superstar DJs.

How old were you when you started Djing?

Pete: I was about 15. I always looked older than I was and I got helped out by my parents with money to get stuff. I was doing quite well at school, then I got distracted by Djing and I didn't do that well at my A-Levels, so I just got straight into music. When I left school for the first year, I was about 18, I just was Djing at peoples parties and weddings and running around with a sound system, just trying to learn about it. Whatever underground scene there was at the time, I was just trying to get to grips with it. Running my own gigs was the only way of getting in touch with the big DJs of the day and then booking them to play with me. Then I started to get booked on the first all dayers and weekenders.

When you first started booking DJs to come and spin with you, did you learn a lot of the tricks of the trade from them?

Pete: Yeah absolutely. That was when I first really became conscious of DJs who had a big following and then there was a big kind of change. It was pre house music and just as rap was exploding. Everyone was playing old records. If you went to an underground club in the mid 80s, everyone was playing old records and then mixing it in with early rap records and Def Jam records, like LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. It wasn't until the end of the 80s when house music first started to appear. First everyone just through it was funny because it was like a revival of disco, no-one realised the impact that house music would have. It was kind of a whole punk rock moment for dance music, the whole acid house, rave scene of the late 80s. It felt like there was a new line drawn in the sand. Everything changed after that and it really became what you know it as now.

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