Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim: My Story as told to Elisabeth Easther

Recording artist Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim.

Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, is an English DJ, musician and music producer. A former member of The Housemartins, Cook has released numerous hit albums and holds the Guinness World Record for most top-40 hits under different names. As a solo act he’s won nine MTV Video Music Awards, two Brit Awards and he’s touring New Zealand this summer with gigs in Christchurch, Napier, Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown and Taupō.

Leafy Reigate is just south of London and it was a lovely place to grow up. Although suburban Surrey was also quite dull for a young lad who was obsessed with music and had no other ambition in life beyond being a musician

Being born in 1963, I literally grew up with The Beatles, because that’s the year they started having hits. The Beatles were the soundtrack to my youth, until I moved on to T Rex, David Bowie and glam rock. Punk rock was another huge influence. That hit around 1977 when I was 14 and it shaped a lot of my attitudes. Not the snotting and spitting, more the questioning of authority and wanting to do things differently. As soon as I discovered punk rock I couldn’t wait to leave home.

I was relatively rebellious at school, so my education wasn’t all that inspirational, even though Mum was a teacher and Dad worked for a glass company. Dad was in charge of launching bottle banks in England and he even got the MBE for services to glass recycling. My parents were actually pretty groovy and tuned in, and I was brought up as a pacifist, but my parents didn’t encourage me to do music.

My parents didn’t think music was a sensible career for their son, especially Dad, which was actually really helpful, as his resistance made me want to prove him wrong. My parents have grudgingly embraced what I do since then but there’s also that father/son thing, that you can never be enough. Mum is very proud, but my dad will always be like: “It’s not what I wanted for you, but I suppose you’re doing all right.”

When you’re young, you think you can change the world with your music. Early in my career, I was in a band called The Housemartins and we were very vocal politically. The singer, Paul [Heaton], was a most eloquent mouthpiece. But I’ve always struggled with that sort of thing and over the years my politics have become more personal, rather than preachy. These days, I try to spread my philosophies quietly through upbeat messages, rather than moaning all the time. I just want to be positive about life, and focus on how we can all get along within the realms of dance music.

England is still a pretty shit country and that motivates many of us to forge a stronger sense of community. Living in a country where people aren’t necessarily happy with the way things are run, that can spur people on to create change. Music is a great medium for dragging people out of pain or stress or boredom. Music can also change things for the better, if only a little bit, because good things can emerge from adversity.

Norman Cook was in The Housemartins before becoming a DJ and producing dance music.

Political parties use my music without permission with alarming regularity and I do get cross when it happens. I would generally side with Labour but when Tony Blair used one of my tunes, Right Here Right Now, at their conference I took issue with it. That was just after Blair got us involved in the Iraq War, and because music is so personal, and a powerful medium, for that positive song to be hijacked to mean something completely opposite by people who didn’t care about “right here, right now”, it was galling. But the good thing, every time that happens, I get interviewed by the papers and I’m able to raise important issues, so in a way it helps.

The beginning of The Housemartins was crazier than the dance thing. I’d always had this dream of being on Top of the Pops, so to actually be there was crazy. It was like, “Oh my god, my dream has come true.” So by the time dance music exploded, I’d already been in the business a long time and was used to that sort of thing.

I used lots of names between The Housemartins and Fatboy Slim. Beats International. Freak Power. Pizza Man. Mighty Dub Cats. Fatboy was fairly late in my career and the only one that was just me on my own and was maybe my sixth or seventh incarnation as I figured out my strengths. It was actually about 15 years into my career when I realised people just wanted me to DJ rather than be in a band. It took me all that time to realise what I was good at, which is making songs that aren’t really songs and don’t have lyrics.

When dance music came along, I was lucky to have already been DJing as a hobby. Then when everyone was saying, this is really cool, tonnes of people started trying to learn how to do it, but I already knew. Plus I’d been in pop bands, so I knew about chord structure and how the business worked. That’s one of the reasons I became quite successful. I had pop chops as well as dance music know-how.

I’ve never been one for the big trappings of success, although I have had a dildo named after me. It’s called the Fatboy Thin. And I’ll never forget the first time I heard one of my tunes being played from the jukebox in the Queen Vic on EastEnders. Pop culture moments like that are more precious than the big trappings of fame. Probably the most surreal thing was when Paul McCartney moved in next door but one from me in Brighton. We were good neighbours, and he’d bring my dog back if she ran off. That was freaky.

I did my time pinging off my tits. I was quite famous for leaving no stone unturned when it came to a hedonistic lifestyle, but eventually it got too much. My health and my life suffered, including my ability to be a good father and husband. Eventually, it came to a point where I had to stop, and I got sober nearly 14 years ago. But it’s not like I want to be the poster boy for sobriety. Or be holier than thou. It was just something I had to do for myself. For my own self-preservation. So I went to rehab, but it was more like bootcamp. It wasn’t one of those posh places. It was filthy dirty with a load of skank heads and they taught me that I’d have to go without alcohol and drugs for the rest of my life. That’s what they told me. That I could never do it again and I believed them so I haven’t.

The people at my concerts are probably having a better time than me but I have the higher ground because I won’t feel s*** the next day. What’s really weird - I become kind of intoxicated when I’m around those people. The intensity of being onstage playing that music for two hours, I feel like them, then I can walk away, go to bed, and wake up and do it all over again the next day. I feed off their energy.

Fatboy Slim is touring New Zealand this summer with gigs in Christchurch, Napier, Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown and Taupō.

Because I did 30 good years of getting high, I know what’s going on in their heads. It’s not like it’s alien to me. I also like being around people who are in that state. I love entertaining them, knowing which buttons to press to make them more excited. Then I finish my set and I’m done.

The pandemic made me realise how much I love my job, and how providing pure entrainment defines who I am. We all tried to replicate the experience of raving together. We got together to play live-streamed gigs that people all watched at the same time. Listening to the same tunes in their kitchens with flashing lights, but it wasn’t the same because there’s something about communing with people in real life. It’s so important for humans to connect like that. To escape from reality together, and not being able to do it made me cherish it even more.

Dance culture is more than just drunk people itching to get laid - as there’s something very warm and emotional that happens when we dance all together. The pandemic made me realise I want to do this as long as possible, to create collective euphoria and propagate feelings of togetherness through dance music.

Towards the end of restrictions in the UK, the government did a test gig. We were allowed do a big rave in a warehouse in Liverpool with 8000 people. As part of the experiment, everyone was tested before being allowed in. There were men in white coats with clipboards, doing things like measuring air flow. It was quite an honour to be that first show back but it was also a bit worrying, after a year of not doing it. We had to think, how do we do this? Then it was even more joyous than usual. Like New Year’s Eve when the clock strikes 12, but for eight hours straight. All of us hugging strangers, and as part of the experiment it was masks off and get in there, lick each other’s faces, off their faces, share body fluids and see what happens. We were all tested afterwards too and everyone was negative. That was the most interesting government experiment I’ve ever been part of.

Politicians tend to boil things down into short little memes, and if I was one, mine would be: “it’s not about me, it’s about us”. That would be my credo, because we all have to share this world, so let’s look after each other and not be selfish. It’s very simplistic but it works for me. If you want to call it socialism, you can call it that, but if we aren’t greedy there’s enough of everything for it all to be shared out fairly. If I was in government, I’d be in the “It’s Not About Me, It’s About Us Party”. But I’d make a s*** politician. I’m too opinionated, and I’m not eloquent enough to persuade others to my way of thinking.

The spirit of my concerts is about not taking anything too seriously. They’re about raving and getting on it and looking after each other. My shows are about community, joy, connection and solidarity. Someone reviewed one of my gigs on Instagram with those words, and I think they summed it up beautifully because there’s something really special about dressing up. staying up late and dancing to really banging music. If anyone can take any of that good feeling home from my shows, good on them, because I love how dancing together can engender so much joy.

https://www.endeavour.live/tour/fat-boy-slim-nz-tour-2023