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Goldie - Timeless

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November 20, 2017

Drum And Bass Pioneer

“We have to find our own orchestra.”

In short: Goldie, born Clifford Price, is the British musician, producer, DJ and visual artist known as a pioneer of drum and bass and the founder of Metalheadz. He joined Brian Rose on London Real in 2017, a year after receiving an MBE, to talk about his memoir All Things Remembered (also on Audible), graffiti and hip-hop in the Bronx, yoga, gold teeth, working with David Bowie, his fear of being forgotten and the choices that shaped his life.

Goldie arrives at 52 describing himself as an alchemist and says that with age comes humility and an understanding of how little he knows. The book he is promoting, All Things Remembered, comes 17 years after his first memoir and, he says, focuses on what happened after the drugs, the fast cars and the chaos.

The conversation is loose and fast, moving from a confrontation on the tube on the way to a yoga class to the Bronx graffiti scene he visited as a teenager, the way hip-hop grew out of neglected neighbourhoods and what he sees as the lessons for London’s own cultural future.

Goldie also talks about the Miami workshop where he saw gold teeth being made, the Lost Tribes art show, the decision to turn down an American career, his friendship with David Bowie, his time on Big Brother and the advice he would give his younger self.

Key takeaways

Choice matters more than circumstance. Goldie keeps returning to the idea that you always have a choice, whether in a confrontation on the tube or in how you respond to a hard childhood.
Art grows where people have the least. He argues that hip-hop and graffiti came from young people in New York who had lost everything and had to get the work out of themselves to survive.
Style is a language. He describes graffiti as a coded script you can only read if you know it, and says an older writer rebuilding his letters changed how he drew.
Heat and discipline help him face himself. Yoga, especially in a hot room, strips away the ego and lets him see the boy he used to be, he says.
Do not copy your past. He sees the album Timeless as a closed chapter and has pushed his music towards classical and orchestral ideas.
Collaboration can feel like a miracle. He describes working with David Bowie and the sense that a single sequence of miracles had led him into the same building where Bowie once recorded.
Memory is what he fears losing. What keeps him awake is the thought of not remembering his life, which is why he has put it on paper.

An alchemist at 52

Goldie says he has spent a lifetime looking for identity: who he is and what he is. He calls himself an alchemist who takes the good and the bad, loses everything and gets back up. All Things Remembered has 52 short, non-chronological chapters because he knows people’s attention spans are short and wanted something readable, and he says he wrote it to be spoken the way he talks.

He tells the story of a young man who challenged him on the tube on the way to a yoga class, and how he chose to walk away. He also describes the Hoffman process and says yoga has been more effective for him, because in a quiet hot room there is nowhere to hide from yourself.

Graffiti, hip-hop and the Bronx

Goldie was 17 when he visited the Bronx and first saw New York graffiti in person. He recalls an established writer tearing a page from his sketchbook and showing him how to construct letters, a lesson that shaped his style. He talks about the importance of style, the hierarchy among writers and the shared respect between rivals who later became friends.

He explains how the subway artists, breakers and DJs emerged in neighbourhoods with fewer opportunities, how the struggle made the art stronger and how that culture later influenced rave and drum and bass. He calls graffiti and grime the voice of the UK now and says society should keep embracing diversity, referring to New York’s history as a lesson, and says he believes in London mayor Sadiq Khan’s cultural plan.

Gold teeth, Bowie and the work

Goldie takes Brian through his time in Miami, where he learned to airbrush and watched Orlando Pleen’s family make gold teeth, melting metal and setting diamonds, which he says confirmed his path as an artist. He also describes a recent art show, Lost Tribes, in which he painted on sandblasted tree roots and found a piece he called Nature’s Picasso.

He tells how Pete Tong passed on David Bowie’s interest in Timeless and how the pair wrote together, noting the serendipity of working in the same building where Space Oddity was made. He compares the process to Michelangelo’s idea that the sculpture already exists in the marble: artists, he says, channel what is already there.

Anger, family and what he fears

Goldie speaks about growing up in care and with a mother who struggled, says he has anger issues he has had to work through, and credits therapy and a decision to forgive for helping him do so. He says his latest album is about redemption and cycles, with nursery rhymes as archetypes.

He closes with what scares him most: the idea of passing and being unable to remember anything. He urges people to hold on to real memories and, when asked what he would tell his 20-year-old self, says you cannot change the past but you always have a choice.

Who is Goldie?

Goldie, born Clifford Joseph Price in 1965 and raised in the West Midlands, is a British musician, DJ, producer, visual artist and author. He started as a graffiti artist, adopted his name from his love of gold teeth and moved into music, co-founding the drum and bass label Metalheadz in 1994. His debut album Timeless (1995) became a landmark of the genre. He received an MBE in 2016, appeared on Big Brother, and published All Things Remembered, a memoir of 52 short chapters. He has also exhibited paintings and sculpture, including the Lost Tribes show.

Frequently asked questions

What is All Things Remembered?

All Things Remembered is Goldie's memoir, made up of 52 short, non-chronological chapters. He says it is written the way he talks and covers the period after his first book.

Why does Goldie say yoga helps him?

He says a hot room strips away the covers and lets you see the ugly self, and that sitting in a quiet room with a teacher's voice helped him confront old patterns.

How did Goldie meet David Bowie?

Goldie said Pete Tong passed on a message that David Bowie loved Timeless and wanted to work with him, leading to a writing session at the studio where Goldie once worked.

What is Metalheadz?

Metalheadz is the drum and bass record label Goldie co-founded in 1994, which helped spread the genre globally.

When was Goldie on London Real?

Goldie appeared on London Real with Brian Rose in 2017, a year after receiving his MBE.

Goldie's website

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Full transcript: Goldie on London Real

4:19 This is London Real. I’m Brian Rose. My guest today is Clifford Price, better known as Goldie, the English musician, DJ, visual artist, producer and now author who last year received an MBE from Buckingham Palace. You’re known as the godfather of Urban Rave, who shaped the drum and bass scene with your record label Metalheads, putting the British underground at the forefront of global music culture. You’ve acted in iconic films like James Bond, The World Is Not Enough and Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and just released your album The Journey Man and your new memoir, All Things Remembered. Goldie, welcome to London Real.

4:50 Yeah, I don’t cook about omelette either. A good Jamaican chicken, Cliffy’s Chicken is a good dish by the way. It’s on YouTube, Cliffy’s Chicken, it’s a very funny dish. It’s a beautiful dish, good Jamaican, proper good old Jamaican chicken and rice and peas thing. Yeah, it’s been interesting and it gets more interesting.

5:08 Life. Well yeah, because you get older, you know, 52, golden age, keep going, you realize that you know very little about life and then you really understand the humility and being humble and understanding when to kind of like go, you know what, have a nice day, move on. And it’s been a very interesting journey. I mean, I put it into perspective. I always said as a kid, if I lived in a street that all everyone had a Ferrari or Bentley, the street becomes boring.

5:39 You know, I was living in a place where everyone’s different. And I think that’s why it gravitates towards age because there’s a kind of, there’s all of that, the way that it looks rich and poor and poor people are happy and rich people are miserable. You know what I mean? Like a lot of people that, you know, they can have all the money in the world, but they have a lot of richness, they don’t have the wealth and I think it takes a while to gain the wealth.

6:03 And that’s been really interesting in every field because it’s, you know, it’s identity as well as search for identity. What am I? Who am I? I’m an alchemist man. I’m like this really old art form of alchemy. You know, you’re into the dark room and you play with drugs for a long time and you open this box and it all comes out.

6:23 The good and the bad and you take the good and you take a lot of the bad and it consumes you and you collapse and you get back up. You lose everything and then, you know, you throw yourself at a wall, you know, fast cars, fast women, fast everything. You know, you take yourself to the real edge of where you think you’re not going to be here the next morning. You think, you know, I just can’t switch this off. And then you just leave the gravity of all of that and you either don’t come back or you realize this about not having the gravity and finding an orbit in what is the universe that’s bigger than all of us.

7:04 I mean, our existence is minor. It’s a blink of an eyelid compared to everything. It’s getting your head around infinity, you know, infinity, getting your head around something bigger than us. Don’t know what it is. Don’t exactly think we could, you know, in our physical selves actually comprehend it in this mindset. We’re not ready with children compared to the universe in that sense.

7:23 But within where we are right now in the demographic of the arts and I’m enjoying where I’m at right now, you know, if this is a life I’ve had as, you know, a few times and I know of a few of yours, of mine, then this is the one that I remember the most. And all the deja vus are, you know, tracked out in a good way. A phenomenon to itself, but it’s interesting. Why write the book now? Why write the book now?

7:53 The book was written. I did the book. The book was 17 years ago. I did Nine Lives and it was a book about who you fucked, how much drugs you’ve done and who you know. This is about post all of that really. And that’s what’s great about it is that that’s what me invention is, isn’t it? People go, oh my God, you did a book. I’m like, no, I did a book.

8:14 Oh my God, you’re wearing a T shirt. Yeah, printed it. We did that. You know, I did that book, that book. And I thought after all of those lives, I’ve probably got one left.

8:25 So maybe let me just try and print another book with this one life that I think is worth it at the end of that journey. Look, man, sorry, guys, I’m not here to sell you a book, by the way. I’m just giving you a take on what it is. Don’t buy it, please. Don’t buy it. Boring.

8:42 But for me, the way the books are written, the way you read them and the way that podcasts are so vital in this platform in the way that we take stuff. If it ain’t interesting, I don’t know. I’m fueled by interesting people. You know, this is Joe Rogan or this is that. This is all these mad shows. It’s really interesting things.

9:05 Interesting books that people tell you about places to go, you know, and I think that why is because I think the Goldie Age explains a lot to, you know, why and the way that I am. I was challenged yesterday on the tube by a young kid. It’s like just bonks. What’s his past? He wants to, you know what I mean?

9:26 You turn around and go, what the fuck is that? Would you fight? Why would you want to go outside, man? Like, what is this fucking kindergarten? You know, you know what? Have a good day. A nice life for that matter.

9:37 And why you look at things now in that way that you spin plates in my mental mind is think very fast. Think, think, think. Process this really quickly. You know what? Why did you turn around in the first place? You want to show you? People bump people. Two? You were that kid, man. You were that kid. You were that 19 year old kid.

9:57 Three? I’ve got a son that’s already done that. And what happened? Double homicide, double life. For what? He’s going back to something you didn’t need to go back to. It’s all about the choice.

10:09 And I think a couple of sections in the book talk about the Hoffman process, which is a very, very interesting process because the Hoffman is post 70s, 80s. Kind of late 80s, discovery, channeling, finding stuff. You know, I can go to Eric’s place, man, go to Eric Clapton’s place in Antigua. And you know what? When you see a pub, I want you to cross the road. I live in the noise, beyond the noise. I’m not going to cross the fucking road when I see a pub. Are you mad? I want to sit in a pub. You know what I mean? That guy does this, this guy does that. That’s what it is. I can’t, I can’t be beaten for someone else’s sins. I get it. He sets up in another way. No disrespect to that platform. It works for people that latch onto it very early on.

10:59 That’s the detox platform, the Eric Clapton. It’s what it is. It’s done some great things. Bless you, Eric. It doesn’t work for your personality. Thank you. It works for a lot of people. It cost me a lot of money. And it was the money. I might as well just throw in the money. I might as well burn the money. You know what I mean? Because my engagement of that was getting berated by a guy who’s 23 seconds late for a lesson that he pointed out you’re 23 seconds late. Wow, this is not going to happen.

11:29 You know, so all of that stuff. This is what early late 90s. Yeah, this is 90s. You know, a couple of years, Saturn’s return before the mother aspects of my life, you know that. And it was, it’s important to get back to the point why all of these things, you know, the book punches through like my life, like the US tour. I’ve just had it zips around America as opposed to going in one particular route routing that it should do.

11:58 52 chapters, non chronological. Non chronological and short chapters because your attention span might be like that. Your attention span is there. My attention span is and people’s attention span is apparently nine seconds on, you know, on Twitter, you know. And I think that the technology, the velvet claw, that’s the phone, you know what I mean? Park your shit over there in Asia and take the sim out, put it on the fridge with a fridge magnet and leave it. Live a little bit.

12:27 You know, and I think when I look at people on the tube, especially when you don’t have a phone, let me see how many seconds it takes for each person to reach for the phone. This, this, this, this, this addiction of all of this stuff. And that’s where we’re at. Shit, we don’t have coverage underground. Some people do. But I think generally, and I like the other side of that argument, like the street of all the different cars, they’re not all for hours. Hey, we live in a world of technology, man. Cool, yeah. God help us Armageddon. God help us.

12:57 God help us when the lights go out. You know what I mean? I think that getting outside of the box is something I’ve always done living in the reality of, of, you know, a physical aspect that, you know, it’s really weird how I gravitate towards yoga because there I go again. I’m from on the tube to yoga in the short space of a sentence because it’s life while some spinning those plates because Braid dancing in early age is a beautiful thing. It physically got me something out.

13:28 Got me out of trouble. Got a lot of people out of trouble. Crazy legs included, Ken Swift included. And I think about that aspect of it and where I’m at. And I think hot room clubs. I’ve played in clubs all my life. You know what I mean? So it’s hot, sticky, wet. I like the heat. Big cramp. Give it a try. The idea of being in front of a mirror when everyone’s in front of a selfie. Once you go through that nice picture of the pouting of whatever you’re doing, then all of a sudden you strip away.

13:58 You strip away the covers and all of a sudden the ugly self comes out. The ugly you do not want to see. Is that what you’re confronting when you do yoga? Totally. I’ve done a lot of that. Now I see the boy. You know, I’m standing in the room and I just see the boy. I see the boy. When I say, where you going? I see the boy. Because you see the real humility of being the boy and stripping away what that is and having this place where no one can find me.

14:24 I’m in a room with people that are suffering, rejoicing, finding the right place, finding their selves. A quiet space man. No dialogue. Apart from the teacher’s voice, the guru, whoever’s teaching you. You know, there’s that point where you spend a couple of years going, you know, a fucking woman’s voice, she’s going to be fucking mad. Well isn’t that just because I hated women for a long time?

14:46 It’s the, I’m hearing my mother’s voice or I’m hearing a social worker. I mean, when she get, she’s talking to fucking me. No, she’s not. She’s addressing 35 people. Your ego thinks it’s just you. And I remember my yoga teacher, a guy called Paul Dobson, weirdly enough, last night on my way, I’m in town. I’ve got three hours to kill and I’m like, go home and sleep. You’re tired.

15:07 And I’ll wait because I’ve got this voice in my head. It’s a nice day. Well, I’m going to fucking yoga for in a room downstairs in a basement. And I hear this voice going six 30 class Vinyasa flow go. And I ended up going and on the way to yoga, I have this confrontation with this young kid and I’m like, I can see the headline now.

15:30 Goldie stabbed to death by a young angry child on fucking well, you know, on tube train Goldie beats up young kid. What a bully. No, he did the right thing. He just turned away. He just go and you go on it. He’s scratching his head. Yeah, I’m a big man. Yeah, good luck with that. And I think that with all of this stuff that happens, I think people that have grown up in a certain way, especially the 90s, we have this, there’s almost like this evolution going on with people like us. We’ve adapted to the environment. You know, give me 50 cans of complaint or war.

16:09 We had a little slippy floor, a little breakdown snooze, yoga, a bit of that, a bit of line drawing, a bit of sculpture. I like that poetry, writing, observing, sponging, taking it all in because what else can we take in with everything? It’s a very, I think that I think that is a really interesting experiment that I did about three years ago. And it was with a professor at a guy’s hospital. And he’s a neurologist. I forgot the chap’s name. I’m talking about the brain. I’ve forgotten the guy’s name. And he was saying we’ve only been able to wire the human brain up, really wire it up while the human beings are alive for the last 20, 30 years. Wire it up really well with some really good technology.

16:55 Not just on a life support machine, watching the blip go by, you know what I mean? And he said that the particular project was about making a piece of music. And they said, choose a piece of the body. Choose a part of the human body. And they had a list, and I just like the look of this name, and he said, limbic system. Sounds great. A good graffiti tab, limbic.

17:22 He’s got good K and he’s got good L. For those reasons. And he said, what is the limbic system? He said, what is the part of the brain, the old brain, right in the centre of the old brain, is like a needle head. And 100,000 magnifications on top of there is these two points. And if we show the human brain pictures of trauma, guns, blood, people dying, it illuminates in lilac.

17:49 And if we show people nature, things being born, art, music, classical, rap, all of these things, linguistics of sound, the art, it lights up in lilac. And I’m like, yeah, but they’re adjacent. Yeah, but to the immunities, microscopes, they’re together. But they are, there’s an archetype between the two. And the affirmation came right there and then, flight or fly. Why rap is so successful? Why graffiti is so fierce? Why break dancing is the new Olympic sport in that sense, should be.

18:25 Because people have come up through that primal aspect of stuff, physical engagement, athletics, all that stuff. They have a trauma. And within the arts, for the record, the only trauma that I’ve seen within the arts has always come out of hip-hop in the 80s. It came out of that. It came out of tenement. Well, surely that’s synonymous with Detroit techno also. Isn’t it, you know, isn’t that synonymous with the blues in Dorothy Dandridge? You know what I mean?

18:57 All those great players coming out of prohibition and the down and the new on blues. And you know, I used to look just at hip-hop. That was it. That’s it. You know what I mean? It’s like, yo, I’m in the Bronx. It’s the birthplace.

19:11 And when I started looking, you know, I’m becoming friends with Henry Chalfont, I started looking at cut off sleeves, documentary, from Mambo to hip-hop. You know, because I’ve got, I’ve got given wild style and that was it. And I don’t want to see nothing else. Subway Art is the Bible. It still is.

19:30 But then you realize what got those kids to that place? Why they’re not writing about stopping the bomb? Because they’re writing their names. That’s a bit egotistical. No, it’s not. They’ve got fucking, they’ve lost everything.

19:43 The mum’s on fucking crack. The dad’s fucking pimp, Ostlin, he’s on PCP, from gangsters. Why is he so successful? Why is Dan Saul Reggy so successful? In the sense of its global appeal.

19:57 We always look towards the arts in all of those genres, man. When you went to the Bronx and saw their graffiti based in contrast to what you were doing in the Midlands, what did you learn or see or anything? I learned really hard. I learned fast. Was it different? Oh, totally, man. I mean, it blew my mind, man, because it was more intense.

20:16 The style, the line, the flow, it’s like hieroglyphics, man. There’s nothing that can beat style in that way. And you know what the most beautiful thing about style is in that sense of the street style? Is that it’s right there in your face. And unless you know it, you can’t read it. We can’t read. You can’t see what we can see.

20:43 Idea to a two-dimensional drawing of some kid in the hood who’s got under such mental pressure, and he just draws this beautiful outline in style, which becomes three-dimensional, which becomes four-dimensional, which becomes like Escher on the wall, and then the execution happens. And then it’s going out there and painting it under all the stress. When you think about subway art as a book, when you think about Hand of Doom by Dondi, for example, when we think about scenes, big whole cars.

21:16 I spoke to Lee Quinone about this, all these beautiful whole cars. New York was on strike in this particular summer at the peak of its pinnacle. And they’re all on strike, and these kids are having a riot. It’s like Carnival in the arts. And I didn’t realize that.

21:33 And you realize all of the attempts that window down pieces here, the graffiti, the very beginnings of it. Kids making bubble letters, man. Bubble letters that have now taken it to a whole other world. The barbarians from within. That’s what happens. Josie Fry-Quinn said it in 1972, that a graffiti, the Latin term, will take over the art as we know it.

22:03 The barbarians from within will take over. Lo and behold, the 80s came, and the explosion of that. So you think about that, and going back to the point, what was so different about it? It was socially powered. The backing of it had such belief, such style, that when you turn it sideways, the social conditions that led to that moment, the loss, the power of wanting to believe and be somebody, going out and stealing the pain.

22:32 Not worrying about the police, worrying about who the fuck is going to beat the fuck out of me in the yard. People that lived in the yards, you look at Fuzz One, this is a really famous book, it’s very rare. Fuzz One. About a kid that came from Minneapolis or Buffalo, who went to live in New York. And he’s living in the fucking trains. He’s going there. He’s like nine.

22:58 I think the kid who’s nine in England living in the train yards, come on. The perspective of just the kid living in the train yards, let’s face it. So you can’t go back to that. But that’s as powerful as Da Vinci, as powerful as Leonardo. It’s powerful as all these different characters within the arts. The fight of the arts.

23:21 These people growing up through fending off people getting shot in the yards, people doing fucking PCB, getting thrown out of windows, people hallucinating, all of this stuff. Painting at night where brown looks like red and yellow might look like tan. It doesn’t matter. They used all of these primal tools, so primally. The evolution of that and the archetype is so phenomenal. That’s why I’m fascinated with it from the very beginning because it became the Bible.

23:52 It’s like through the arts as you look at that and you think about it. It’s a very powerful thing because New York had… Manhattan gets built. It gets built by blue collar workers, right? They come from the islands, right?

24:06 Colombia. Somalia. Haiti. They’ll come to build Manhattan. Then what happens? Economic clash all falls apart.

24:18 Where do all these people who are these kids, where do they go? Let’s push them out. Let’s build projects.

24:26 All these kids had nowhere to go and they became stacked on top of each other. Excuse the pun, they became stacked. You had gang wars that were like savages, nomads, skulls. You look across the street, it shows you all these gangs. One of the biggest gang leaders there who’d given up the gangs gets shot on stage, given a seminar.

24:45 And then it’s like, this is enough. And then hip hop’s born. And all of these different factions of that. Charlie Chase, The Puerto Ricans, BAM. All these guys, Crazy Legs. New York City breakers. All these guys, all these crews decide enough is enough.

25:03 And you think about that on the world stage, that’s the first ghetto that went like that. And then San Paolo, de de de, Rio. You couldn’t go to Rio. I couldn’t survive in Rio right now in a hoodie. They’ll ask questions later. This place is not that in Detroit.

25:21 So for me, for what that is and what that represents, what lessons have we learned really about that? That we’re still calling this shit like it’s the devil, like graffiti and grime music is just bullshit. This is that. It’s not, man, that’s the voice. That’s the UK’s voice right now, because when Paris and the projects in France were doing better than we were, because we were still online now with a really nice, neat tracksuit looking like we were out of style.

25:51 They were getting down with their own dialect in rap because they had the projects more than we did. And that’s what culture does. So answering the question about style and why was it so powerful? It’s charged because a ring that’s made from the craft point of view. And not from, you know, your high street jewelers where it’s very thin and it’s made in, you know, Taiwan or whatever.

26:15 You get a crafty ring that’s got weight behind it. That comes from a crucible. It’s crafted. It’s one carved it properly by hand. And they put the gold, they melted it and they put it into the mold and they shot it and it’s solid.

26:28 And that’s the difference because hip hop culture is charged with that. Then rave culture, Detroit techno exported to Europe. And also it’s house music. And Chicago came and made all of that happen. Detroit, Chicago responsible for that house scene.

26:45 Did your experience in the Bronx change you? My experience in the Bronx, I’ll try to keep it as less detailed. You know, you take someone out of that environment. I was 17 and a half, you know, I thought I was drawing really good graffiti and I stuck all these letters together. And I’m looking at every video tape and editing and splicing and watching breakers from Gladys Knight and the Pips to Buffalo Girls.

27:14 So, oh my God, that’s Ken Swift doing a move. What’s freeze? What train is this? You have on and look at all the aspects of the style. It changed me forever, man. I remember I remember bio coming on the second time to New York and there’s a famous cake shop brand in the Midlands called Stanton’s.

27:31 It’s like the weirdest. It’s like saying White Castle. You know what I mean? Like a really bad burger joint, right? Or Popeyes.

27:39 And you know, I’ll get to meet this guy the second time because Brim comes here on this big campaign off graffiti and he wants to see the ghetto. He wants to see Liverpool. He don’t want to see London. He’s seen London, but he’s hearing about Liverpool and Birmingham and Bristol. You’ve got other hoods. They’re all split up. It’s weird. They’re like 200 miles away. How can that even happen?

28:00 You can drive out of New York and go 200 miles. It’s like Boonieville, right? So you don’t expect it. Whereas New York is the Metropolis. And I was sitting in a cake shop and I show him, I give him my book, just show him my book. He takes the book and he’s like pictures of your people.

28:16 And I’m sitting there going, you know, 17 and I go, yeah. And he just looks at me like this. He looks at the book. I see what you’re trying to do, man. Aye, aye. And he just rips this page out. It wasn’t one of the ones that I’ve colored in.

28:32 It was like a line drawing piece, like an outline. But no, because we used to fill him with colors. And he just rips it up in front of me. He puts it down on the floor. On the table and what the?

28:44 Bro, so what the fuck? And he goes, man, you got to look at it like this, man. And he is a C and F is an E. C is a G. J is an I. The construction of the letters. I’m like, what? And he just started. He drew my outline. I wish I mean, my book sold this.

29:05 My brother sold this one of these piece books for whatever he was, for whatever weed he was smoking at the time. I don’t know. He sold it. It was a great book. He sold the outline and it was like he showed me the construction lines and then he heavily penciled in my name. But I could still see the construction lines.

29:23 That was it. I understood it before and that was it. Some got it quicker than others, you know, and the beauty of that. And weirdly enough, one of the most prolific writers in this country who now lives in Paris and quenched to Berlin and does a lot of odd shows around the world is a guy called Mo. We were rivals, bitter rivals, very young. They were London based. I was Midlands based.

29:51 And I remember when I’d blown up with the music and he used to go to the club, which was the Blue Note. And he gave me a book and it was signed and he passed in. And I opened it and he says, From bitter rivalries to close friendships. That’s where we were at. I think b-boyism, the idea of the culture is fueled by that. It accelerates us.

30:13 You know, politics, the smarter you are, the higher you get, the more apparent you’re going to cut someone’s throat, the higher you’ll get. Whatever you’re prepared to do. Well, graffiti has that a certain hierarchy, but it’s different. It’s the same as b-boys and we’re breaking everything else. Mo.2 style, for any of you looking up, way ahead. His character drawings, for me, are like Da Vinci. I really mean that.

30:38 On par with, I mean, his sketchbook alone. I say to him, why don’t you publish this sketchbook? Not the finished thing, the sketchbook. It’s prolific. And he’s just one of those kids who’s just very humble and just like, man, it’s what it is, man.

30:53 But he draws a human body like no one I’ve ever seen. And since then, I’ve seen other characters and other people draw in that way. You know, without going off piece dear, it’s how much it’s taught me. This tiny culture that they said would never last is just like, you know, at its centre, you can still not understand some of the wild style these kids are painting. I can read it. It’s like this secret hieroglyphic. We get it. We know it’s like, you don’t need to get like a guy who’s doing coding to understand this shit.

31:28 You send me secret letters of coding and all that stuff. We’ve got that. We can read it. How can it be so in your face, but you can’t read it. That’s how, you know, the laid back society. I don’t think. And also, do you want everyone to read it?

31:41 And that’s why, you know, you can put it on a T shirt and sell it in Barney’s or we can put, you know, artists on campus and put it in galleries. Good. If you’ve earned the respect of the University of the street to do that, and that’s the outcome of the archetype. Great. Sell it, put the kids through school and become the legacy. Because the last time I checked, well, if I ran into a sweet shop as a child and I ran in there and the shop owner is not there.

32:08 Every kid’s done it. I don’t care who you say you are. If you’re a boy and you’re young and you go to the local store and you go in the shop and there’s no one there. What do you think?

32:19 I’m going to steal something. You must have thought that. And all of a sudden, all these sweets, all these sweets, I’m done. I’ll just take that little bit and it’s, he comes back. Shit. You come out of the shop thinking, I could have, I could have stole that. And that’s what happens if you give a young kid a room full of paint with every color. He’s not going to process it, man.

32:40 Give me brown and red at three in the morning and they’re both the same. I’ve only got a few limited cans. Now you’ve got to make it work. So the struggle made that art even better. And they had to express it not because of a cause, because they had to get it out of themselves to live.

32:58 They had to get it out of themselves to live. To live is the word. Because these were threatened with social shit. They can’t go back home. My fucking stepdad’s going to beat the fuck out of me.

33:09 I’m stealing paint. I’ve got to get my money for crack. When you look at documentaries, when you look at hip hop documentaries in a way that, you know, look at Crack in America, the ICT, this famous documentary that you narrated. I mean, you look at pre, you know, what crack did. And all of a sudden, when that goes out of the way and it’s like, yo, let’s hire a Lamborghini. Let’s do that. That’s not a fucking hip hop, man.

33:37 I’ll get getting out there and getting your own. I get that. You know, and have we lost the message there in that sense? I think the struggle. People that are post-internet, I’ll see that as a kind of see that as more of a struggle. I can also see it being a struggle where, you know, you’re so pre-internet, no one gives a fuck who you are. I don’t care who you are.

33:59 Kid on the tube looks at me and he’s like, who the fuck is this old guy with gold teeth? Who the fuck is this Russian man? I’m always a fucking dad. You know what I mean? Of course. That’s what you do. I would have felt the same thing about a jazz musician if you’d introduce me to a jazz musician.

34:14 I don’t fuck about. I didn’t like olives. Fucking olives. It fucking tastes disgusting. I love them now. It’s just where we’re at. But understanding the culture.

34:23 If you feed a child, McDonald’s, he will become our beast. And with very bad breath. You serve me art and you serve me good food. If you can afford that food. And then that’s a really good thing about the culture. What we do with this culture. It’s real. When these guys go on battle, it’s real.

34:44 When you go to war and you’re painting and you’re looking at, you know, guys, guys, we’re going to judge these battles with these trains in the other place in Yonkers where they’re putting trains to get in and battling. And you can see it. It doesn’t lie. That lens doesn’t lie. So I’m blessed with what that culture’s taught me.

35:01 And I’m also blessed with looking at it as a culture and trying to say, now you’ve got to make it translucent. Think of it as an outline. What made it like that?

35:13 The latency of all that people. I got back to the point without a full stop of they all moved to Manhattan and built it. And it all fell apart. And these kids made culture. You put them there.

35:24 And furthermore, if you want to go there and open a can of worms with me, let’s go to the 14th century and work out where the ships went. And who we enslaved. Do you think if you never raped that fucking country for what it was doing, you don’t think that they would not. The great grandkids of those people would not find a way back to the place where the lights are shining from because there’s nothing left where they come from. So it was all written hundreds of years ago when it’s a consequence of those acts.

35:51 What does that mean ultimately? Well, it’s recognizing that. And you can’t fucking say that America’s not racist. You can’t say that Brexit was a big fucking mistake in the referendum. Of course it was.

36:05 Because you want someone to wipe your nan’s ass, but you fucking forgot that my dad came and put a number plate on a car from Ford. We came on a banana bar, that’s what you called it. They came here. What do you want to do? You want to split the atom now? Good luck with that. You can’t separate water from water.

36:24 Because Talking Heads said there’s water underneath the water, Gary in the water. All right? David Burns’ words. And I think in that sense, I feel it’s very difficult. The society integrates, guys. Why are you not even thinking like that? Why are you thinking it’s something else?

36:38 Right, let’s get rid of everyone. Let’s get rid of everyone. Let’s get the dreamers out in Mexico and build a wall. Let’s get rid of everybody. Oh, we need this now. Right, it’s good enough for you now. That’s good enough for you now.

36:49 I’m black. I’m white. I’m both of them. I’m English. I’m patriotic. I’ve got letters after me now. I don’t use them, but I’ve got them.

36:56 I also understand that struggle. You know what I mean? It’s like, you know, you… The influx of different people in the last 20 years of African descent has supposed to just been Jamaican. Because then it was Polish and Jamaican, usually. That’s the kind of… Roughly. The Czechs as well.

37:14 You know, in the 60s and 70s, you know, a lot of growth, a lot of influx. Now Haiti, Somalia, Jamaica, we had that. Africans, Ghanaian, Nigerian. The first wave in that sense of that, you know, that was going to have kids. They’re going to build a city with all these workers. What would you do what we’re doing now?

37:36 And we’re going to push everything out. New York, remind you? Anything? So don’t make the same mistakes twice. Don’t make the same mistakes twice. Embrace the diversity.

37:44 And believe me, Sadiq, now I saw the cultural plan. It’s phenomenal, man. You’re a believer. I’m a believer in him. I’m a believer in what he’s doing. And you know why I’m a believer?

37:57 He’s just straight talking and going and telling it like it is. Because he remembers it and he’s looking at it and he’s going, this is the plan. You know, the latency of the bike chain, the cultured bike chain that we think we’re pedaling, just kept falling off. And the ribbon that got caught in the chain to make it fall off is called bureaucracy, red tape. And it came off.

38:20 And someone’s going to be left in the bike ride because Samsung are ahead and Apple’s way ahead in that gang. Or you’re sitting there with the council flag thinking, we need to get some people to make it credible. Or you close the fucking youth clubs. You close my son’s school on an estate that has an influx of Czech, Polish, Jamaican, Ghanaian, on an estate where all these kids are growing up together. You close the community center and then you remove the school. You cut the fucking heart out of the community.

38:56 What do you think is going to happen while you’re saving money? That the mayor of London gets that now. I believe the mayor of London gets that now. And you know what? What did he say yesterday on the news?

39:09 77 million in what? Two years we’re heading towards population. Someone forgot that we fuck and make kids, a lot of them. Someone forgot that we’re shagging more than we ever have done. What else you got to do? Because people are poor and they know what they’ve got to do.

39:27 And people just need a bit to feel something. I was 17, I was like a fucking rabbit. In a hutch with loads of other huches. And embracing diversity and you have filters on your phone. What are the filters? Just answer me what the filters are. Just as a question.

39:56 There’s a black and white one. Is there a kind of oldie looking one? Yes. That’s a distressed one. A distressed looking one.

40:05 Various. And it looks like the 70s maybe. Or something frustrating. Why is that? Because we’re nostalgic.

40:14 Of course you want to go back and be nostalgic. Pre-internet. We want to get back to this place. We didn’t have all this stuff. Now everything’s available. Do you think when my daughter who’s 6 and now is going to see herself swimming in a swimming pool.

40:27 That person is going to be a completely different person to the one she’s going to be when she’s 50. What was I fucking thinking? What was I thinking? You were in my fashion. I had some atrocious fashion.

40:37 You were rocking some kangol back in the day. I was rocking some shit. I know. But that’s the start. I don’t know why you got the money for some of those clothes.

40:42 That’s the start for you though. Well there you go. That’s what I mean. A monk goes into a room and he looks at something shiny and he picks it up and he puts it in his pocket. But his left hand says put it back and put it to like yours.

40:55 Even the monk needs to be reminded. And I think this look we want to go to this nostalgic thing because that’s what we’re doing. We’re lamenting for that past. We also have to look at the future. Because most people in the hood and where we’ve come from.

41:10 You know when I look at stories like The Hane which is probably one of the most prolific films I ever saw. Amazing. Influenced me beyond anything else. Why? Because I did my research. It went to the up until it was on the editing room floor. It was still in colour.

41:28 And then it turned into black and white and sepia. This is the band Lou’s outside of Paris. A lot of hip hop, graffiti, people. This is the projects in the precincts. Hip hop and it’s a story of a gun.

41:42 A very good story of a gun and the power of the gun. And I look at that as a really big influence and I think that all of that. You know we’re going back to these things to lament for and we look at those stories and we think looking forward. We have to accommodate man. You know the amount of money that the government re-spent in making speed bumps when you could do it all at the same time.

42:11 If you were to say then well we’re going to build this estate. It’s really good housing. And we’re going to build a police station right on the edge of it with a secure SO19 unit. And it’s going to have speed bumps and gates for access. You’d have gone what is it? A prison.

42:27 When you sold it to us it wasn’t a prison. It’s an open prison isn’t it? Kind of. Because you removed things within that estate that I know that my son’s got in prison. He’s got more access to stuff than some of these kids have got outside.

42:49 What does that say to you about society? And I think that whoever was anticipating going back to the point of this growth burst that you had. Get your fucking figures right man. Why are you not looking at Bogota or looking at New York City as a thing of growth? What do you think London wasn’t going to grow? You think Berlin wasn’t going to grow?

43:13 That’s just the first metropolis and the second one it all goes off like that. What could we do about it? I am no fucking mayor. I leave that as a hard job to do. I ain’t going to do that. I ain’t going to be mayor. I would never be.

43:26 People say to me what would you do if you weren’t doing what you’re doing now as the art? So I’m like listen I’m still working on myself. Teacher I’ll probably end up pulling some kid over a desk and probably get stabbed in the head. Because of me not having patience. I’m still working on me.

43:41 I’m trying to find a child constantly. And trying to work out why I was a bad parent. I wasn’t a good parent. I didn’t have parenting skills. My daughter’s outside. We talk about this regularly.

43:52 I’m going to try and give her these skills. I need to take her to Thailand to go work in an orphanage. And be responsible. Because she wasn’t taught responsibility. I wasn’t.

44:02 I know that the experiment which was done in some serendipitous way in my life which has just made this path. If I put all these people I’ve met in a list. And I’ve gone. I’ve gone. Right. You’re going to be sitting with Val Kilner in a room with candles talking to Turner.

44:26 To the big man speaking to Turner on the phone. Ted Turner on the phone. Hey oldie man. Elle you know tells me about this project man. I want to know more about this. Good chatting to you man. You know.

44:39 Keep us posted. You’re sitting there listening to your first record. How big’s your ego going to be? All of that. I mean 10 10. Shout out Mal Mal.

44:49 Where Beluski had talked to him. Where he OD’d. Because Val wanted to get that room and wants to get that room. Thinking you know what the fuck is this. And I’m thinking about laughing. I’m sitting there with Catherine Ziti Jones.

45:00 And that was Michael Douglas. He’s fucking security’s going. Private party. It’s a gold party in New York. And they’re talking into their sleeves.

45:07 You know and then I get a phone call from Val. Val’s like I’m in the White House. Because I missed the plane. I was high as a kite. Missed the plane.

45:15 And I was supposed to be at the White House with Bill Clinton. Yo. He’s sitting right opposite man. Bill Clinton. Yeah.

45:21 I’m like fuck. So Josh Evans is sitting with Val. Because Josh Evans is Robert Evans son. One of my best friends. On the planet. A beautiful man.

45:33 I could not talk to him for two years and the conversation will take off. So what do you reckon about that then? You really did see spaceships leaving Nevada right? Really? We have this thing about pharaohs and being hyenas. Who’s chikling hyenas pacing through life.

45:49 And the experience of that. To being on a train. And an old lady says that record really changed my life. Thank you. That happened today. You know. Yeah. I get that a lot. But the diversity of my life is a really beautiful thing.

46:08 And you know if I would have gone to America and made it work. And I could have done. I basically told k-wrights to go fuck themselves because they didn’t understand what drum based music was. And that’s why you didn’t stay. Me and Josh Evans go I have a meeting with the head of K-Rock. And George Dukakis which was Madonna’s manager at the time.

46:27 And we’re sitting there and we’re talking about the pharaohs and all these people. They’re just the fucking them and us. We’re like fuck you. Fuck you. I’m like this is my manager at the time.

46:38 Trends in Harrison. He said this is the biggest mistake you’ve ever done. What the fuck are you thinking. Fuck what you thinking. I’m like fuck you too. I’m like fuck everyone.

46:49 And he goes what happened to Goldie in America. That meeting happened. And he just killed it right there and then. Then everyone understood it. I knew they wouldn’t. I only wanted to work with KRS. Fuck everyone else.

47:01 I don’t want to do Madonna’s album. It’s not going to happen. She phoned me and do the album. I’m like no. I’m making Mother. It’s an important piece of music for me.

47:11 And people go well you should. Well you mad. I’m like I’d be dead. If you went to America. In a hotel room with a needle in my arm in a motel. You would have gotten even more famous. I would have been consumed. I couldn’t handle it.

47:25 You think your subconscious knew that. My subconscious knew that. And I think throughout. You know I’ve been very rhetorical about everything in the sense of going around and you’ve asked you know maybe one question beginning. Which has led to all of this. My subconscious the past life the artist the soul knew that.

47:48 And I’m guided by something far greater than I could ever possibly imagine. And I’ve got eight points of blood and I shit and I piss. And I’ve been an addict of everything. Cocaine ego sex drugs alcohol everything. And I’ve swapped one set of addictions to another yoga well being. Painting music sound addicted to it.

48:16 And I’m not swapping addictions or is one actually. Getting you somewhere. Well I think I think I think you’re moving the focus of energy. OK. That says that in that caption doesn’t it. That deals with the question. Where were you on the night of the fifth. I was moving my energy.

48:37 That’s a very wide question wide answer but that’s the point I’m making. You know shifting the energy. You know the application of a medium to a surface. I’m moving it. You know the back of the book the line that says that watching gold melt. I got a life lesson on watching gold melt. Can you explain that. When did you first see that gold melt.

48:58 I was I was in Miami with a guy called Orlando clean. Great name from Suriname and Orlando is my mentor. One of great a great many mentors. Five brothers moved to New York. One goes to Jacksonville. One goes to the Coliseum in Brooklyn. One goes to Miami. One goes to Macon Georgia. The other one goes somewhere else. Atlanta. And then all and weirdly enough the head brother.

49:44 Big Mr. Plain comes from Suriname with a broken tooth and decides he wants to make gold teeth. They don’t exist at this moment. So there’s kind of these moments in hip hop with his moments in culture that I think are absolutely ridiculously phenomenal. You know like I’ve said it in the book you know you know life is a single sequence of consecutive miracles set within billions of years. You know it’s set like that. The chances of it happening.

50:18 And he starts making gold. It’s like bubble letters. Who made the bubble letter. Who decided that two decks was going to be you know one deck was going to be two. The moment of the time machine and the capture in the time machine. That’s the loop.

50:33 We’re now we’ve stopped time right there but it was Charlie Chase. There’s conflicts of it may have been right. But anyway the point is that he starts making these teeth and he starts to realize he can customize them. And he sets up in Brooklyn and Jay Z 17 when he walks in there and he makes his first gold teeth. Just ice. All those just ice covers. All the main players.

50:59 Mr. Pleen did the teeth. It’s called New York Connection. He was based in the Coliseum in Brooklyn and then all the brothers moved and I got in America find my father via New York. I go there do the graffiti thing and go to Miami.

51:13 You know step out of M.I.A. airport in a goose down. I’ve said New York’s like winter it’s December it’s freezing minus. I’m in Miami. Am I in a goose down sweating like what.

51:23 I can see this place. It’s like it’s Miami. What you expect. And I meet my father for the first time and I go there and I go to the beach in Miami and I look at all this kind of like oh my god this is where you know. Appetit you know this is where this is where it was shot. This is Scarface. This is this is Collins. This is 15 Collins. This is all these places. And you realize it’s all trendy and I’m thinking I don’t need to be there.

51:48 Father’s Jamaican. I go to the hood. I go to flea market USA and I meet Orlando Pleen. Brother of Mr. Pleen. Big Pleen.

51:57 And just see him. And I said listen I’m an airbrush artist, graffiti artist. I want to do this stuff. And yeah come on man set you up. Let’s go buy you some silk. Get some airbrush and let’s do this.

52:10 Left my dad’s went to live with him. We lived out of each other’s pockets and we’re in the yard to answer the question in my rhetorical way. My roundabout way. Oxygen set a lean on goggles down in the crucible. He gets his bag out and it’s just loads of little tiny metal balls or gold and he pours them in the crucible.

52:34 Doesn’t measure it. It’s a bit of an Indiana Jones moment. Heavy. Now take a little bit out. Puts it in there. Just boughs it in there. And it’s a centrifugal casting machine. So he takes the centrifugal casting machine which is in the yard. Baking hot at night.

52:53 Quick hits. He’s bolted it to the floor. You wind it on a spring. Lift up the bolt. It sets itself. Put the crucible in there. You’ve got the gold that you waxed. You put it all together. He melts the gold. He gets the hammer. He’s just standing back and he hits the hammer and he just goes like that. He just goes into the mould. The gold gets shot into the mould.

53:14 He takes it out, puts it in the water, breaks it and he breaks the gold away and he breaks the sprues which are the waxed sprues and standing on the end of the sprues are all the gold teeth which he did by hand all on wax earlier in the day. He saws them off, cleans them up with a drill, gets his dentist drill, cleans them all out, puts them back on the mould of the guy that he took in the flea market. Places them on there and delicately polishes them, cuts them, polishes them and then because he left a mount on there, he’s like why has he put like two layers of wax on it sticking out? That’s because they’ve got to put diamonds in there.

53:48 What? Put diamonds in? Yeah man. Guy wants diamonds. And he just sets the diamonds. Gets the guy next door. The portal rear can go. Ricky. Ricky’s goals. Ricky would set the diamonds in the work. He gets them back. Guy comes back the next week. Turns up. He’s got the diamonds.

54:04 He’s caged in the money. Sits on the table. Gets his rubber gloves on. Gets the hygienic spray. Tries it on. Gets the glue. Sets it up on there. Pops it in. Cleans away the excess. Brush your teeth. Bam. Done. Next boxer.

54:20 And watching the gold melt. Just seeing the, knowing that the outcome is this beautiful art form like wow. Knowing Miami everyone’s got goals. People got goals over goals. You know what I mean?

54:34 Seriously, golds would come out of prison like with old 14 karat golds which are like the early Miami stuff that wasn’t being done by. You know when, when uh, you know when Anna’s brother came down east of New York they all filtered down. Everyone’s working out how to do this shit. And they’re doing it with like cheap gold and 14k’s Miami. It was always 14k. So he’s using real horror stories. He’s using really, really bad shit. But if you go, I want to cover the golds man. They cover the golds with another set of golds. It’s like wow. Goldie over golds. We’re taking it too far now.

55:04 And that’s it. And I think, I think there’s something inside of me is an artist that clicked. Just seeing the gold melt. Knowing that you could change the form of something solid. And it also had some chaos to it. The chaos. I mean you know it goes into this silver colour. All of a sudden this chrome goes to the surface. It just darts around the surface. And then that chaos. I’m like there’s a pattern there. Don’t know what it is yet.

55:34 But that’s, that’s amazing. There is a pattern to that. And it’s like you. It’s very much like me. And I think, and I think that’s for me what good this good this golden age is about. What can I put back in now? I need to put something back in now. I’ve got to put it back in.

55:54 Because I’ve got so much from the street. So much from that culture. It’s taught me everything I know man. How do you give back? For charities and stuff I do and things and paintings I might give to people to sell. And also trying to do, you know, I’d love to do different things. I mean I think yoga in the prison system would be an amazing thing. I think that’s a, you know, we have this company, Yo Gangster, which is why would you associate yoga with Gangster? Well I’ll tell you why. Because it’s a gold get-em attitude man. I’m Yo Gangster. I’m going straight in. I’m going to do this.

56:24 I want to do two sessions today. I’m just going to do it. I’m going to, no James Kagan, top of the world, Mara. Dying in a hail of bullets. Don’t want to die in a hail of bullets. I had that time, that chance past me. Thank God. It’s just wanting to go out and do that. And I think with Yo Gangster, you know, we have a company, you know, or…

56:44 You know, Kelly Isaac, who’s out of New York. She lives in New York now. She’s Scottish. We have a connection, because I’m from Glasgow. She lives in New York now and when she’s about to acquire a yoga studio and you know, yoga gangster is a brand, it’s a beautiful thing.

56:57 You know, all my friends are like, man, that’s clever man. I never thought about it, it’s so simple. Y-O-G-A-A-S-T-E-N-E-R. Go, gansta. People go, yoga, gansta?

57:06 No, yoga, gansta is one word. It’s one word. Go, gansta. It’s just flows. And I like the idea of that because, you know, we did really well, we did this wellness thing at Ali Pali just now on Yoga Show.

57:19 We just finished that. And the amount of people go, do you know what? I never thought I was going to try the yoga. Man, if you can do it, I can do it. That’s good.

57:27 Because I used to think it was about tree hugging. I don’t hug trees. I want to sit there going, you know, man, it’s like so cool. I want to eat that. You want to go inside.

57:36 I want to go inside, man. I want to go into that meditation. Hey, it’s good if a girl’s got a hair on. You know, it was, you know, the attempts about it was Sonny Rollings. There’s one for you.

57:47 Sonny Rollings found yoga just before he did the bridge. I’ve seen a black man doing a handstand in a room. I’m like, wow. You know. And one of the most prolific yogis, western yogis in the world for me, if not the planet, Stuart Gilchrist.

58:08 Big, big, white beard. Big, white dreadlocks. Big, long. Down to his ass, you know what I mean? Hippy, man.

58:17 Total hippy. Total base head, though. Human system. You know, and I met this fella. Everyone’s telling me about this guy.

58:24 Nah, he’s infamous, man. Nah, he’s fucks in. He’s just gone mad at people in the class like he’s just feared. I want to meet this guy. Because, you know, what’s about him?

58:36 I meet this fella and he’s like, you don’t remember me, dear. I’ve got a really bad Scottish accent. Blue Note, your club, every week. Bayley, Ryder, I’m like, he’s mentioning all these things. He’s mentioning all these DJs.

58:49 I’m like, oh my God, because look, look, think without this. Think without this. Look at me. I sell the ease in your club every week. I got so high I went to another club on a Monday, which was Talvin Singh’s club in Camden, right, you know, in Camden.

59:05 And he walked home from the club, hires a kite, jumps over a wall, thinking there was going to be a landing, falls 20 foot into the canal, breaks his spine in four different places, gets picked up by, you know, a sister from South London who does Vinyasa. And that’s how he started. And that’s his story. That’s the kind of person I want to celebrate. I thought I was playing a small violin.

59:32 He’s got an orchestra behind him. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And that’s what I’m saying. I think that, you know, especially when you have the West, we’re completely medicating everyone.

59:43 It was some… Come on, man. I was doing three-roll hip-nought, a liter and a half of vodka, and an eighth of coke every night in the 90s. I should be dead. 5,000 years of yoga can’t be wrong, man.

59:59 If this is the energy it gives me, I’m down with that. Do you know what I mean? Talk to me about that violin, because you talk about it in the… Yeah! And you had every reason to get the big violin out, you know?

1:00:10 You got the care homes. You got the mom in one country, the dad in the other. You know, didn’t want you in the beginning. You had all the reasons to be the victim. Victor Meyers, another chapter.

1:00:20 Yeah. My daughter inherited it. I inherited it for a minute. And I went, you know what? I need to see the world.

1:00:28 New York was the shake-up. Coming back. Do you know what’s going to happen? The hood’s going to get built. Did it?

1:00:33 Everyone thought it was mad. Brave beat culture. Brave sound. I’m going to be the victim. I’m going to be the victim.

1:00:41 It’s going to collide. You knew that. I was there at the collision. What gives a graffiti artist the audacity to think he can make music? Yeah.

1:00:49 You know, it’s kind of like that thing where the audacity of… But the graffiti is the music. Because within my music, you may not understand it right now. I understand that. But I’m still alive to tell the tale.

1:01:07 That you hear it. But you’re hearing 4D. You’re hearing it’s everything layered. Not the layers of the onion. The layers between the onion skin.

1:01:18 The thin amoeba. The thin layer. The permutation of all of that. I’m jellyfish. 40,000 feet pressurized.

1:01:29 Take me out of the pressure. Throw me on the beach. Look like a plastic bag. So the audacity is knowing that all of the colour. I can see it.

1:01:38 I can see it. There’s nothing here as baggy man. I think the journey man especially, one I know is the greatest work I’ve ever done, I know it is the greatest work I’ve done. I know it is. It’s my magnus opus, I know that.

1:01:53 My magnus opus without a shadow of a doubt. Because when Timeless came out, I had the same response. People didn’t get it. Now it’s sighted. Very different.

1:02:04 Didn’t get it. Some people were like oh my god. And I get the trendy side of it. Because it was like, oh my god. Seriously, Death’s Drum and Bass music, it’s so fucking score, man.

1:02:13 It’s like, seriously? And it’s like a guy from Wisconsin, or a guy you’re like, you know, and, oh my God, man. Like this shit is like, I’m one of the guys in Miami like, God damn G, man, like. My boys in Miami especially were like, this is 163rd Street, drunk Drew. Part of like, you know, a whole clique in Miami.

1:02:33 This is After Luke Skywalker and booty music. Finding their own shit. Drunk Drew, man. We signed him to Independiente. Same guys that signed So Solid.

1:02:43 Andy, something or whatever, so anyway, you know, a guy ended up nearly shooting a singer in the studio and we’re in there, it’s like, what the fuck? Like this guy’s, you know, this guy’s crazy, man. He’s like, yo man, that shit there, man, like that pub fiction shit. That’s some other shit, man. That’s some jungle shit right there, man.

1:03:01 Because, you know, what happens with music, especially with the empires, the controllers, the record companies. We’ll take this music and we’re gonna flip it and gentrify it into something else. We’re gonna get this guy to do a mix. I don’t know the guy. Yeah, but they’re selling.

1:03:18 They’ll sell it for us. When you take that music, which is why the internet’s here, the velvet claw, don’t lie. People look, they’re skeptical. Storms, they see it. Young artists blowing up.

1:03:34 Kano’s been here forever, Dizzy, all of them. And there’ll be conflicts. Of course there will. But that’s the voice of the UK now. Rave was the resonance.

1:03:43 We don’t quite know what it is, but we know that there’s a skateboarder with a Rastafarian, with a drug dealer, and a Somalian guy with a black kid and a Jamaican standing in your club, who will later, 20 years later, 25 years later say, the blue knoll, I was there, man. What do you do? I’m a graphic artist. What do you do? I control the social media side.

1:04:06 What do you do? That’s weird. Most of them are artists. Most of them have gravitated because their resonance was being played to them. And that’s the importance of what that is.

1:04:23 The audacity of coming back to the point of knowing that what I’ve been brought up on, the past trains, jazz. Wasn’t Beethoven’s sonata 1111 jazz? What Mars Davis said. Beethoven was mixed race. Mars Davis was a morgue.

1:04:43 That makes sense to me. Do your homework, kids. Really? Why do the pictures look all white of him? Oh, I think he was a morgue.

1:04:53 Mother was a morgue. That would explain a lot about his music. Complex. He didn’t want anyone to play it. You’ve got to earn it.

1:05:03 All that stuff was going on with Beethoven. Mars Davis. Conflicted. Miles conflicted. All of that stuff.

1:05:11 I could have spent really, let me just make it really simple for you. Simple drum and bass music, yeah. No, it’s very integral. Because that’s the choice that I make of the art. You may not get it.

1:05:24 The point is about that album that I had to make an album that was going to surpass Timeless. God bless Timeless. Timeless is dead. Long live Timeless. Timeless is dead.

1:05:34 It’s gone. Beautiful part of history, because it was genre defining. I get that part of it. Baby making. Get that part of it.

1:05:43 New. Hard to sell to the label? It was hard to sell to the, well it wasn’t hard to sell to Pete Tong in his defense. But it was hard to sell Mother as a one hour long piece of classical. Classenist.

1:05:58 Classicist Impressionism. That was harder to sell. Because what they said in the beginning, what they wanted to do, what they did in the end was two different things. And that’s where it changed. Because they wanted Timeless too.

1:06:08 And that was never gonna happen on my watch. Because too much in life, real life was happening. My relationship, once you get the deal, you get there and you go, I’ve fucking done it. Look at me. All right, Mom, Dad.

1:06:22 Now I’m gonna make a documentary called Saturn’s Return. I’m gonna put you in a room and I’m gonna say, where did it all go wrong for me? And I want you to answer to me where it all went wrong. Small violin. Small violin.

1:06:32 Let me play this fucking really big cello out of tune. And I started playing it. And it was out of tune. And I’m ostracizing. I’m fucking putting my mother on the fucking stand.

1:06:46 You also got some answers in that movie. I got some answers with Saturn’s Return. I did. Your dad too? My dad’s answers were numb.

1:06:53 Because that’s what happened. That’s what happened. Yeah, you didn’t seem too impressed. But the thing is, he was a black man. They went to the church.

1:07:00 And he fell in love with his women. He got a woman out of any place, man. What happened to you? That’s what my dad was like. Well, you know what I mean?

1:07:06 I’m your mum, I’m your mother, I’m your luck, I’m your mother, I’m your name, she’s my runner on. Well, you wasn’t fucking there, dad. What’d you expect? I’ve done the same with my daughter. You know, my daughter.

1:07:15 I couldn’t stay with her mum. There’s a pattern here. It happens through the ages with us. You forgive yourself for that pattern? Of course I do, because I never had the tools.

1:07:26 Get therapy, get help. And so you forgive your dad? I have a total empathy for my mother. I buried my mother. I watched her die.

1:07:35 I went to New York and got the beat the fuck up. Straight after yoga. Come and beat me in the face. Start a fight with a guy from, find the biggest guy in the fucking hat shop you can and start a fight. Wow, let’s see how that fight, that gets you.

1:07:48 Stand there and get the fucking beating, go on. And you got a swollen head on a train and got in the fucking airport. That’s life. Felt like a hot radiator going like that. Whew.

1:07:59 You know what? That set was great that night. That set was fucking beautiful, hey? Because I just felt it, it diffused me. I’d got the beating, I felt the pain I wanted to feel.

1:08:13 And I think there’s a lot of young people in a lot of that pain. And I’m not them. Their violin is their violin. I can’t hear it. They can hear it.

1:08:26 We have to find our own orchestra. We have to find it. I didn’t even know what an orchestra fucking was. Just means getting it all in tune with everything, isn’t it? Tuning is an orchestra, isn’t it?

1:08:38 I always thought it was a beautiful piece. I did this Lost Tribes show.

1:08:47 You know when you do a show that includes people of black origin, North America, Africa, India, the trail winds, Lost Tribes, right? Dissected pieces of wood that are shaven and painted on and carved and put back together because they’ve been dissected, right? Just like the tribes have been dissected. It was never gonna sell. I was in the gallery, you know, Mayfair.

1:09:17 It was just one of those solders show out. Not one bit of press because no one wanted to cover Lost Tribes. It’s a bit too close to the bow and that is. We’re dealing with culture here. I wanna see Mickey Mouse and McDonald’s sign on him and go in like fuck Mickey.

1:09:32 Yeah, okay, okay. That’ll sell it, won’t it? Because it’s like, you know, art’s gotta like make fun of itself. Okay, cool. That’s a short version of it.

1:09:41 Banksy, Banksy’s done it. It’s gonna, everyone’s gonna emulate him. Clever boy. Of course, that’s what it does. Somebody makes a great record.

1:09:50 We’re gonna emulate it. We’re gonna do that. Because we like repetition. But this piece, I did all of the Lost Tribes stuff. There were 26 paintings.

1:10:02 I’m gonna post after this, this picture. I’ll show you this picture. All in my yard, all of them. They’re all painted, dissected. Then they’re taken off and they’re all lacquered like that with a four pack catalyst car paint.

1:10:14 Proper lacquer, like a surfboard. You can eat your breakfast off it. And more put back together. Organic, primal stuff. But with a really beautiful bespoke finish.

1:10:25 You know what I mean? It’s like, okay, there’s gallery worthy, right? All made on wood. They couldn’t deal with it. It was too far, it was too much to deal with.

1:10:36 Great show, we sold to some great collectors. But the art itself, the press, the media, couldn’t get its head around it. And the penultimate idea of it was creating a piece at the very end. Because I started, I thought, I’ve got this birch wood plywood, right? It’s in the forest, I drag it out.

1:10:55 I’ve got this stuff that I get, sorry. I’ve got this birch wood ply, sustainable, that I take and I measure up. I cut on a computer, we cut it. I draw all these shapes out, we cut it, we put it together, we paint it, I do it all, do it all, whatever else. I still wasn’t happy, wasn’t happy.

1:11:11 So I go to the forest near where I live and I start dragging out tree roots, dragging them out the ground, they’re dead, gone. I get in yellow pages and I go, I need a sandblaster. Just sandblaster, what do you need a sandblaster for? Because if I get a tree root and I sandblast it, all of the dead’s gonna come off it and what’s left is gonna be the roots of the tree, right? The root.

1:11:38 Now that root of a tree is gonna be really hard, isn’t it? It’s gonna be fucking age, it’s like 100 years, 200 years. And when I’m sandblasting it, like I’m watching the gold melt, I can see the ages. I’m watching time, man. I’m going back in the time machine, watching years and years of its growth, just going away.

1:12:04 Even though the stronger the sand, the stronger the pressure, the quicker I’m gonna cut through the wood. The bigger the grain, the smoother the finish, the rougher the finish. So I’m adapting to the environment as an artist as I’m speaking, as it’s going down. I’m seeing all of these beautiful shapes come out. Like something out of Mars, the real color.

1:12:27 This orange sienna, this beautiful color. And I just place these roots in the middle of the gallery and this one particular piece was in an oak. Because I just saw it in the corner of my eye. And it’s a piece of birch. That’s actually the wood that I’ve actually got the layers of that have been manufactured and grown as sustainable birch that have been made, I buy in sheets at a wood factory.

1:12:55 This is a real birch tree where it originally came from. And it’s got this shape. And I look at it, I think, Jesus Christ, it looks like an antelope. And I kind of sandblast it, and it’s really light. It’s really light as the curtain, it’s really light like this.

1:13:11 And I stand it up and I’m like, oh my God, it’s like an antelope’s head. It’s got an eye socket and like two nostrils and it’s got a long mouth. And it’s got this thing here and I thought cranium, I’m like, if I just get this piece of oak, I can make a horn, just one horn. And I do it, right? And I place it in the gallery.

1:13:32 Do you know what I called it? Nature’s Picasso. Because that’s the best piece out of the whole show. Because the art is just that. There’s so much natural art around, that’s all we’re doing.

1:13:46 All we’re doing as artists is photographing time, that’s all we’re doing. And I think it’s a job for me to do that. It’s not even a job, it’s a duty. But I love the arts. And I’m being taught by the most beautiful people to do the most beautiful things.

1:14:01 You’re just channeling something that’s already there. David Bowie said it, man. It’s all about affirmation for me. I think we’re in this, isn’t it a wonderful time to be in right now? Technology’s like going full pelt.

1:14:18 We’re like, oh my God, let’s get end of day, let’s get end of world shit going on. All of this, I don’t particularly mind being at the end of the world. Because for all I know, my father’s father was picking cotton and his father was picking some more cotton and he was picking something else. And he was on a boat in Africa. And he never got to see how far we are now in this life.

1:14:43 I can fly, I’ve been in New York in three hours. It’s all of this stuff. Wonderful time to live in. And that piece was the art. And we’re just reflecting that.

1:14:59 Like that. And I find that fascinating. I still find it very fascinating. And is that a good description of your artistic process? I think it’s because it’s like…

1:15:08 Is that how you create? It’s going back to the point. I wrote the track for Barry, one of the few people that ever got, it’s about to write for the guy. And there is serendipity all over this. What’s the line?

1:15:23 I think the line is, I’ve got to read the line. Because it’s… The reason why I have to read the line is because it’s the line. It’s the line. It’s the line.

1:15:33 The reason why I have to read the line is because it still freaks me out. And it says… This is about David Bowie. No, no, this is a line. Yeah, it appeals to that.

1:15:49 It says the same thing. It says, we came up with this thing. Life is a single sequence of consecutive miracles set within infinite moments of billions of years. What do you mean by that? Really again.

1:16:06 Right, so think about it. We thought about this in the sea. Me and a mentor. Me and a reluctant shaman called James. We’ve been thinking about an explanation to that.

1:16:19 Because we can’t. When the Chinese say the word is not the word when you find it.

1:16:25 At that time in history, on Where I’m Born, we do the album, we do Timeless, we do that. Then we get the money, we buy a studio. And I buy Mel Gaynor’s studio, Simple Minds, in St. Anne’s Court. St. Anne’s Court.

1:16:41 You go there now, St. Anne’s Court. On the second floor, Rob Playford and I had a studio. It was moving shadow headquarters and it was where I did that difficult second album. We’re about to make the difficult second album.

1:16:54 And on the steps on the first floor is a picture of David Bowie in a trillby from 1977. And every morning I go down there, I have to walk past David Bowie. And in my mind, never wished too hard kid, because you know, never wished too hard kid, because you might just come through. Yeah. Yeah.

1:17:14 Just imagine if you walked with David Bowie. You’re gonna happen. And then one day I get a phone call from Pete Tong saying, David Bowie loves Timeless and wants to work with you. Okay. I walk past this picture every day.

1:17:30 You know what else is weird about that? Space Oddity was made in the same building. Because now there’s a blue plaque there. What does that tell you? A single sequence of consecutive miracles of, you know what I mean?

1:17:43 Setting the parameter of that. And here’s the other thing. As we’re in the studio and we have a few meetings, we have a meeting in the tea shop somewhere, as in his initial meeting, the team meeting Grace Hello and whatever, he’s just checking me out. And he comes to the studio and his assistant walks in, David’s a little late and he comes in in a raincoat. And we have this meeting and he comes in and, you know, and we’re about to record.

1:18:05 I’ve already faxed him, faxes guys, I faxed him the lyrics. I’d written a piece on a five day bender off my fucking tits. I’d write this piece on this record mail is next to me and next to it. I’m like, some birds rip me a note. Fuck, it’s a bit long, innit?

1:18:21 I had a shag. I pick it up and it’s a long, and it’s just this part of this song. Written in my font, like the same font, the very same font that’s in the back of that book. Tomorrow for you to know, the sorrow hygiene sculpture. Where the fuck did that come from?

1:18:41 Came from somewhere, came from the unit, I was in this zone. And David said to me, like, you know, we’ve caught in his, took his coat off and then got in the studio. And I love it because Rob Playford didn’t want anyone to smoke in the studio. And as soon as David Barry goes in, he’s a chain smoker in the 90s, a big chain smoker. He just lights up and I look at Rob going, are you gonna tell him or I’m not gonna fucking tell him.

1:19:08 You know what I mean? He just smokes. So he goes into the room and we look at the piece and it’s like, this is the piece. And I’ve typed it all out. Written it all out very big and there it is.

1:19:18 And he says, this is the point. This is the point. What does that mean there? So I say that line. Say it tomorrow for you to know that sorrow hygiene sculpture.

1:19:31 Very good line there. Just put it out of the air, did you? Michelangelo said the same thing. What do you mean he says, Michelangelo said that the marble is there. And all we have to do is blow the dust off it.

1:19:48 The sculpture exists inside. That my friend is affirmation. And it’s a blessing and it’s like, that’s what it meant to me. The process of the art. The chances of meeting, being in the same studio of this guy who’s your hero that you meet, that you record.

1:20:06 He was a kid in front of a stereo playing space oddity on a seven inch that you bought on a Saturday. And you had 10 minutes to play every record that you loved. Supertramp, Tennessee, ELO, David Bowie, pistols, stranglers, steel piles, Bob Marley, Aswad, beggars banquet, beggars and co, pig bag. You know, all these things printed in me. And I don’t know for what reason they stayed, but they stayed there.

1:20:34 And if I’m fueled by that belief system, there is no God. It’s the spirit, I’m fueled by that alone. You know what I mean? You know, you look at American gods, you think people that think that Apple’s God, people think that Demigods, people think that the old gods fighting with the news, it was fuck Zeus. Everybody’s like, oh, there are new gods.

1:20:59 We’ve always had that belief system and my belief system is the arts. Why did David like you? I don’t know. I think he just, I don’t know. I think we had some really interesting conversations and I think, he kind of gave me this mentoring in a way that he told me the things I needed to hear and he said, look man, make a pile of shit tomorrow.

1:21:19 You’ve done it. Don’t forget, you’ve got to reinvent yourself. You could be next to your chip papers, you know what I mean? You’ve got to know what you’re doing. Well, I get into like, I get into like trying to get into a serious conversation with him and he just go, you can get a fish fingers on discount, you know?

1:21:35 I’m like, just flip it on you. And I’d say, why did you do that David? Why do you like, I try and have a serious conversation and you just want to see them squeal. Just want to see how they react. He was a beautiful advocate for that.

1:21:47 He was a beautiful guy that’s flipping people over. Just a testament. Just a testament, man. Make them look at themselves. Make them look at themselves and all sorts of things.

1:21:56 You know what, when you fucking think, and I was always going, you know, anti this, anti this. I’m like, fucking, he’s making pop records. When he was making pop music, he did the greatest songs he’s ever made. Do you know what I mean? Let’s dance, because it’s the biggest thing.

1:22:10 I was trying to be this size. He said that when he made any pop in Berlin, he said that, you know, we’d done the session. It was a great session. We’d done this stuff and it loosened up a lot. And you know, we used to do a go, we used to get these pieces of paper and we used to write all these words on pieces of paper.

1:22:26 And we used to cut them up and we used to spread them out on the floor and we just kind of put all these words together. And that would be the song. Really? Yeah, another thing we used to do, we used to say that, right, we’ll leave on a Friday, go as far away from Berlin as we can. You go east, I’ll go west.

1:22:44 Try and get as much drugs as we possibly can. Hustle, do what you gotta do for it, anything. Come back with all the drugs and get completely shit-faced and write music and sing. That’s what you used to do. And I’m like, fuck.

1:22:56 Just having, just doing that. You know what I mean? Like, just about finding identity. And he says, even when he, with all the pop music, he built all this empire and he just got sick of it. He said, but it served its purpose.

1:23:09 When you need to do that, that’s what he did. Because I was always in this thing about selling out. What is selling out? You were always worried about that. I was always worried about it.

1:23:17 I’ve got nothing, and the thing is now, there was a chapter of, the first thing we started with, gentrification, the whole aspect of gentrification. Yeah, I’ve got my thing about it. You know, you can’t plant trees on a candy road. You need soil. You can’t just like level a forest and then just plant loads of trees in a uniform and think that’s gonna be eco-friendly.

1:23:42 Because there’s lots of other things that rely on those trees, the roots, the insects. There’s a whole other ecosystem. Are you gonna replace all the people you built when you built the Olympics? Are you gonna replace all those small businesses? Are their customers gonna leave?

1:23:57 Are you paying for their customers to be diverted to your website? Are you giving them a website? So, in that aspect, gentrification works in two ways, it’s inevitable. Are we to, the balance is the balance, isn’t it? It’s to pull it back enough to respect what’s going on and advance it enough to be able to cater for the future, in that sense, I think.

1:24:21 And I think that, you know, if you’ve gone through your art and you think that you’re, if you want to make the music you wanna make, make it. But own it, don’t lie about it. It’s become an industry. We’re gonna make these fucking songs because we know the kids love it. But do you love it?

1:24:37 Not really, I fucking hate it. I can’t deal with that kind of person. Get me out of the fucking room, I can’t deal with you. You’re the kind of person I like. You’re all those people.

1:24:47 And David was telling you back then, just make the music and stop trying not to sell out. Just, yeah, just make the music you wanna make. Like, why bother about what they fucking think? It’s a fuck. Because when you gotta put your strictly come dancing shirt on, you’re gonna put the shirt on.

1:25:04 And back then, I wouldn’t have put the shirt on. But getting 80 grand and someone signs a check and put your kids through college, that’s not compromising the art. That’s just being a cunt. That’s just me dancing like a cunt and not being able to dance. Different, that’s the monkey on the barrel going, look what I can do, not.

1:25:23 First in, first out. Big brother, same thing. You know, why’d you do big brother? Well, here’s eight celebrities pretending they don’t know who they are. I was in a children’s zone with 42 kids who didn’t know where they are.

1:25:36 And I could see a guy behind the glass with his camera and his little smiley badge on. You know, the first thing I did when I went to big brother, the first thing I did. I don’t think I’ve ever told you so weird. The first thing I ever did. First night in big brother, I said to everyone in there, I said, listen, tell you what, everyone get your mattresses out of your bedroom.

1:25:54 And they did. And let’s pile them around a wall around the sofa and take your microphones off. And inside that space, you can talk about what the fuck you want. No one can see us or hear us. You know what they did?

1:26:05 You know what they did? They put the alarm bells on. Everyone go back to your rooms. And they had to break it all down. And let’s make everyone put their mics back on.

1:26:14 Did you get a few minutes? I’ve beaten them at their own game. Did you get a few minutes of conversation in? Yeah, of course. Oh yeah.

1:26:20 Do you know what I mean? Because it’s like, because I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. And I think the only other crowning glory moment for that was when a great comedian got out on the roof and fucked off. What was his name? He ran off, he got on the roof and ran and got out.

1:26:33 I think he went back in and left the next day. But anyway, it’s that kind of aspect. It’s like, there’s a reason, there’s a method to the chaos. There’s a method to my madness. Zipping across the surface.

1:26:45 There’s a method to that. That gaudy back in the Bowie days. What was that guy like? Crazy man, I was fucking crazy man. Angry?

1:26:56 Very angry. I’m gonna still have anger issues sometimes now. That’s a bite my tongue.

1:27:03 You know, I wanted to eat this kid’s head. Yes, I wanted to eat his head. Like, you know what I mean? Everyone said, I’m grown man. Like eat a head.

1:27:09 I thought, you’ve got to reel this in on various things that you do. I was very angry. I hadn’t understood pre-off man. I had understood my mom’s pain. You were just mad at her.

1:27:26 Just, I remember coming, I remember when I’d gone through New York. Because my brother who I struggle with, my younger brother who went through the pain that my mother went through, he was with her all these life. Two years apart, and I’m in the care, and I go through that, but he’s with her. She kept him. That made me so angry.

1:27:49 And then you know what I thought about after the Hoffman, I was like, he saw her getting stabbed. He saw her getting thrown down and stay. He saw her get beaten. She got some beatings my mom. I come home sometime for a weekend, he’s had a fucking big black eye.

1:28:05 You know, the fucking bandage around her fucking arms. You know what I mean? And the electric meter was broken in his because my brother needed money. And he swear he never did it. The meter, when we had electric meters in the house.

1:28:15 Oh yeah, break the meter, take the money. So you didn’t have to see that on the way. No, and he kicked her down and fucking, you know. Mad shit would happen. And you know, when I went home for weekends and my brother was Rastafarian, apparently.

1:28:32 Gave a pretty bad name for Rastafarian at the time. And we’d go out and rob people. Just to make money, get a draw. We’d go and fucking take someone’s woman’s bag on him like a bingo. You know, my mom would come home with, you know, this guy, one of the lovers that she’d had for a while was called Slim, worked in a family.

1:28:48 He worked his fucking bins off this guy. He worked really hard. And he always got drunk. I mean, whiskey was his, he got drunk. Wouldn’t remember anything.

1:29:00 We’d have to go in our hands. My mom would just go, nudge nudge, wink wink. And my brother, and I wouldn’t realize what was going on. They were eating co-hosts. That all it has been.

1:29:09 That always had to be hustling together. Because I’ve come from the, I’ve got my name in my shirt, right? Clifford Price. I’m coming home. The little sheep, you know, coming home.

1:29:22 Just stayed with my mom on the weekend in the ghetto. And she’d nudge and wink wink him. And next thing I know, my brother’s going, fucking be quiet, come on. You know what, you just go in there, crawl in there, get the wallet. I’ve gone get the wallet.

1:29:38 And we’ll split the money up. We split the money. And the next day, I think me little was a while it man. Life, what a fucking life that was. All of those times, there’s the fucking violin.

1:29:53 And I’m sure you lot have got your own violins, but that’s my violin. And it’s gone now. It’s gone now. It’s like the orchestra’s in studio. You know, and I think all of the music, because I need really answer the question.

1:30:06 And I want to go back to this point. Is really why the album’s so layered? What the album’s about? What Journey Man’s about? It’s about, it’s about saviour.

1:30:16 Redemption. You know what I mean? Now restless night with a headless horse setting self asleep, you hollow. Now fear to breathe as you lay with me, let go of all your sorrows. I’ll be wrapped around you, treat me as your pillow.

1:30:30 Look what here surrounds you, a looking glass of proud blues. That’s the blues. That’s the, you know, lying on my wife’s chest being saved like I’m fucking out of a hard time with all of this stuff. You know, opening line, a headless horse. What’s your fucking headless horse?

1:30:47 It’s nursery rhymes. It’s the broken nursery rhyme. Sleepy Hollow. Tick goes tock. Cunning Fox.

1:30:57 All of those poetic words and looking at what Bowie did, the words. Okay, so what’s all the nursery rhymes you know? What’s all the key words in them? What happens if we just throw them in the air? And we, do you know what I mean?

1:31:09 So there’s the archetypes have always been present. And the only reason why those archetypes are there within that album is because of the ultimate piece as a graffiti piece. It’s wild style, that album, it’s complete wild style. And it’s gonna take a while for the wild style to be read. And I’m not gonna expect you to read it right now.

1:31:29 Could take hundreds of years? I don’t know, I don’t know. 20, timeless at 20, I don’t know. I’m just thinking, I was very angry then. You asked me, this is the answer to the question in my roundabout way.

1:31:41 I wanted everyone to get timeless. What would have happened if you’d have gone to number one? And I went to America. You’d be dead already. Would that, is that what it would have happened?

1:31:51 Of course it would. And that’s the thing. I think that the journeyman established, I’ve established very well that the journeyman is about going around like the Lost Tribes. From Africa to India to Jamaica to North America. You see the pattern here.

1:32:11 I’ve always gone the long way around. My, this past life is the same life I’m going through. My daughter’s life overlapping mine is going through the same process. We’re just in a different time zone. We’re reliving the past.

1:32:31 And every time a genre gets a little closer to that surface, it will go back under the water again like a fish. A fish we can recognize. There’ll be another genre. I can’t see beyond grime right now. Because it’s the voice.

1:32:49 But I couldn’t see beyond your own base either. But in terms of in line of where we’re at, blues, jazz. That, oh diddly, all of that stuff. Chicago, Detroit, New York, LA, you know rap. LA had his own kind of fraction of rap.

1:33:11 All of that. That, export, world, house music, techno, by the Germans, craft work, all of that stuff. Rave culture, B-Boyism, collided with that. Job and bass music, dubstep, grime, great beat. I know the training and I know the carriages I’m on.

1:33:34 And I last month did a US tour, 14 gigs, 16 days. And I went to Mad Mike. He has a house in Detroit, this is a techno museum. Go figure. And in that museum are all the machines that they built all these famous records on.

1:33:54 I mean famous records. One Atkins assigned this drum machine, the T-R, you know the A-L-A, all these machines. I’m like, wow. You did that on that machine? It’s all my Instagram feed, Mr. Goldie.

1:34:07 And if you look at that and he’s like, yeah man. I’m like, who’s that? He goes, that’s Mojo, man. I’m like, man Mojo’s, we used to listen to Mojo on the radio, man. Like Juan and me and all these guys were listening to these techno gods, man.

1:34:24 You know, and he’s getting the money for the electricity. And house music and techno is biggest thing in general. It’s big. That’s what happens to genres. At the very source of its creativity, we’ll always be taken.

1:34:40 It’s what we take from him and what we want to put back in. I had to go to Mad Mike and give him my respect and thank him for what he’s done for me and thank him what he’s done for techno and thank him for what he’s done because he turns around to his boy and he goes, yo man, you see my boy G, man. Like, they got this whole human reinforced, my boy D on mark. They got their own shit going on, man. Like niggas can’t get their head around that shit but that drum and bass thing, man.

1:35:05 And these guys looking at him bewildered. He’s like, they got that. I don’t know why, I didn’t understand that shit but it’s part of the branch, man. The evolution, man. And that’s the difference because real knows real.

1:35:19 You know, when the record companies are getting people going back to the point I’m finishing now, I’m whining all my archetypes. See what I’m doing here? See the pattern here? When you really, when the record companies were taking your record and getting Rabbit in the Moon to remix it, lots of people got that Rabbit in the Moon to remix was great, I fucking hated it. They weren’t connected to me.

1:35:38 When my boys in Miami heard my shit, they got it. They went, that’s right. If I can take my music and send it in a fucking spacecraft and aliens find it, I know they’re not gonna go, this is shit. They’re just gonna go, it’s different. They’re not gonna go, oh, it’s just some bullshit.

1:35:52 I don’t wanna, you know, it’s, I’ll go through the ages with this shit. It’s gotta be real, it has to have integrity. It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it, right? You’re gonna be at the Roundhouse soon playing this album for people. What’s that gonna feel like, you know, being back in London?

1:36:09 You’ve been in London many times, playing many different venues, different types of music. What’s it feel like? The statue? Well, I think that, this statue, I think Ronnie Scott’s was incredible. There’s two models that I have.

1:36:23 You know, there are three models. Just playing the music as a DJ. You’re playing the drum and bass, I’m playing my labels, music, my legs, I’m playing music. You know, in America, you’re not, you know, four or five hour sets in a lot of great Dallas. Well, sorry, Austin, sorry Dallas.

1:36:36 Austin was phenomenal. New York was always gonna be ridiculous. Respect, LA, forget it. Like, forget it. Long sets. Ridiculous there but, just going through the art, the music and all this stuff that’s so underground, so black notes, the black notes of the music, the genre.

1:36:54 It is, and I love it when somebody goes, I don’t like jumping bass music where what it’s become. But I love the set, man. I’m like, good, because you’re hearing real drum bass music. And that’s what kind of happens. But the- Do you miss one of days of going to Tokyo and playing?

1:37:08 Well, I was in Tokyo two years ago. I mean, I love Tokyo. It’s great, we did that. But yeah, I enjoy the, when it was at its peak and it was like stadium, it was like, wow, wow. Because it was just new to everyone.

1:37:19 And you know, we did like, you know, I think the live shows that we were doing then, we did like, I think it was Hollywood Bowl and Lawrence Fishman’s, and I was like, oh, I’m gonna put my sons up on a fucking Ducati 998, just to come out. You know, I got Naomi on my fucking arm and I’m sitting there and they’re watching the timeless show and I’m thinking, I’ve got Flea and James Addiction on tour with these guys. I mean, it was crazy. That’s crazy. It was crazy.

1:37:42 That’s crazy. You know, it was crazy times. Because you know, this was in America, we do the James Addiction tour and the end of the tour and Perry Fowl sitting in Lucky Luciano’s mansion in the lake and I walk in the bedroom and I’m sitting there with my two girls on. And the two girls sitting in either side of me going, hey man, come sit down Goldie man, chill out. I’m like, wow.

1:38:03 It was a huge time. And I think it’s the new boys, you know, the Grand Mart is going out there and doing that and filling stadiums. He’s like, nah, nah, you know how that felt? Jesus Christ. That’s when the nostalgia comes in.

1:38:15 That’s a beautiful moment. You’re seeing those guys, seeing these guys smash up New York. You know what I mean? Seeing these guys kill it and you’re like, yeah, get it, but remember, get a fucking house. Buy art, get bricks.

1:38:30 Buy art, get bricks. You know, it’s what every person learns and I think that’s the one thing that I think. But the point about, you know, Ronnie Scott’s was important because, you know, Sally Green, who took over the ownership of Ronnie Scott’s with the board of directors, a phenomenal jazz club. It was on its ass in the 90s. It was going out.

1:38:54 It was going to close. It was like a sticky carpet. It was gone. They came in and they reinvented Ronnie’s. Some great guys down there did a great job.

1:39:02 And one of the few artists to actually play there, who can’t play an instrument, and I’ll play an instrument. I can play a bit of percussion. Yeah, sing backing vocals. But play an instrument like that. I’m a jazz musician.

1:39:21 But the music I make, it can be played by jazz musicians really well. That’s what we did. The ensemble show is going to be at the Roundhouse. It’s that kind of show. Because the other model is the orchestra.

1:39:33 South Bank, Heritage Orchestra, you know. All these 47 players, you know, you got like 27 strings, you know, 30 people, 35. Then you have the ensemble, the engine block. Matt Calvert, John Calvert, John Blee’s, you know, Adam Betts, you know. And you got extensions like Sam Crow, you know, and Dan Nichols.

1:39:56 You got these great people, Hugh Wilkinson. All these great guys that grew up in university together, music school, and played really well together and can play innumerable instruments. Being on stage with these guys, while they’re playing these concepts that were sang into an iPhone, that you recorded a melody on a beach in Thailand, to be layered that way and played and realized. That’s the alchemy right there. And I’m hoping it’s going to be a good show.

1:40:27 Because it’s the ensemble, no orchestra, just everyone playing since live, playing everything live. Guitar since. And it kind of moves around more like a jazz band with the ensemble because you’re not locked to an orchestra. Which works well. So I do have three models.

1:40:41 I mean, orchestras are hard to fund. If there’s a philanthropist out there. This has been a really long interview, hasn’t it? Yeah, I’m going to wrap this up. He’s asleep in there.

1:40:52 Let me ask you a couple of final questions and I’ll wrap it. I’ll try and be short. What keeps you awake at night? Life, I mean. What keeps me awake is knowing that I will eventually pass.

1:41:13 And you’ve got a lot more you want to do. I always say, what’s life? Living, what is living? You know, if you’re in a field, beautiful place, I can hear the sound of cars, children, laughter, traffic warning, moaning dog, whatever. I can smell pizza, I can smell shit, I can smell flowers.

1:41:42 That’s life. You know what death is? Not being able to remember any of it when I’m gone. I’m not an atheist. I want to leave you on that arc, I make what you want of that.

1:41:56 But I’m not an atheist. I’m a really strong spiritual believer. But in this capacity, none of us can comprehend what we think it is. I don’t care how many fucking frogs you lick. But I do believe in something else and it ain’t this.

1:42:08 So I think that the fact of passing and being in, you know, not being able to remember anything, that scares the life out of me. And I think I’ve got, I have an urgency. What kind of urgency of a legacy to leave behind? You know, you have a laptop. What’s in your hard drive, kids?

1:42:33 What cannot be wiped out by a fucking EMP? Like electrical charges, wipe it out. How many hard drives you lost, kids? How many nice drawings do you have? How many real pictures do you have?

1:42:45 How many photographs, Polaroids? Your life can go on your fucking phone like that. Because when I remove your phone, pretty much your kind of life’s not existed, isn’t it? What does that say, society? Get out in the fucking field, get out in the trenches, go work here.

1:43:02 Lose your fucking phone and lose your mind at the same point. Next question. Make a phone call to the 20 year old Goldie. Give that young man a bit of advice. What would you tell him?

1:43:11 You can’t. I don’t know what else to say. It’s, you know what I mean? It’s like, you know, it’s like Looper, right? It’s a great film.

1:43:23 I think Ryan Reynolds is a genius. You can’t. I’m like, some guy just called me and I’m gonna spend the next 15 minutes trying to work out everyone. I’d spend an hour on the phone when someone used to call me and go, Goldie, you’re a knobhead. Put the phone down.

1:43:37 How do you get my number? Who is it, fucking paranoid? I spent hours doing that, beating people up. Like, what the fuck are you doing? The fuck are you doing?

1:43:45 You insane. You a cunt, that’s it. And also the fact that, I can’t stop throwing stones from a glass house. My daughter’s got to go on her own path. So is my son.

1:44:03 He went on his own path. We have a choice. We do have, you do have a choice. You gotta remember that. You do have a choice.

1:44:16 You do have a choice. And that’s the most important thing. What would you say to the young Goldie? Is that you’re a cunt, but you do have a choice. And I think it’s taking the choice, man.

1:44:27 It’s the morality, it’s the morality of that and the moral of the choice, man, that’s it. I could have walked away from that guy with a sawn off, man. I could have done. And I did, I drove off at that point. That makes me a pussy.

1:44:41 No, it makes me alive. Do you know what I mean? My son took to different shores, but that’s his choice. I can’t throw stones because my daughter didn’t want to go and do a certain thing. I put her in private school, in an all girls school, because I had the money to do that.

1:44:56 What the fuck was I thinking? She was never going to be a dentist. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And what did he say? What did he say?

1:45:06 That comedian, Chris Rock, I just got to keep her off the pole. That’s what you’re doing. Do you want me to end it on that? I think we will. God bless.

1:45:16 I can talk to you for another three hours. We’ll have you back on sometime. The book is All Things Remembered. It’s 52 chapters, spoken. It’s written just like you talk.

1:45:26 Unfortunately, be shorter. And wrapping it all up at the end. Thanks for your wisdom. If I was on a podcast feed right now, because this has been aired, I would have switched this off a long time ago. No, no, no, no, no.

1:45:39 This is a piece of art that we’ve created here. Thank you much, sir. As London Real, we’ve made some of your journey. I appreciate you coming. Thank you very much.

1:45:46 Thank you, my friend.

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Goldie - Timeless

Drum And Bass Pioneer

Key takeaways

An alchemist at 52

Graffiti, hip-hop and the Bronx

Gold teeth, Bowie and the work

Anger, family and what he fears

Who is Goldie?

Frequently asked questions

Full transcript: Goldie on London Real

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Goldie - Timeless

Drum And Bass Pioneer

Key takeaways

An alchemist at 52

Graffiti, hip-hop and the Bronx

Gold teeth, Bowie and the work

Anger, family and what he fears

Who is Goldie?

Frequently asked questions

Full transcript: Goldie on London Real

Latest Episode

Dubai Real - Episode 4: The Art Of The Deal

More Like This

Dubai Real - Episode 4: The Art Of The Deal

Dubai Real - Episode 3: Inside The Deal

Dubai Real - Episode 2: Billionaires’ Row

Dubai Real - Episode 1: Why Dubai Never Stops Building

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