Fatboy Slim on why he’s stopped making music and how he’s become a cool dad to his son
Fatboy Slim says at 56 he wants to push the limits to see what the retirement age on being a superstar DJ is. But he’s more excited that he’s become a cool dad to his teenage son.
Entertainment
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British superstar DJ Fatboy Slim has a personal top five of the best things fans can tell him.
Sitting steady at No. 1 are the “elite group” of Fatboy Slim fans who met their partner at one of his gigs and went on to get married.
He’s even filmed congratulatory videos for some of them to play at their weddings.
“Some have then had children,” Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook says.
“I remember one couple brought their kid to one of my gigs and said ‘This is the reason you were born’. Thinking about that, even now, gives me goosebumps.
“We’ve had marriage proposals on stage. It’s nice to be a part of people’s lives. Every time people tell me ‘We’ve had a child who wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for you’ I say ‘Have you thought of Norman as a name?’ No one’s done that. When I get a child named after me I’ll retire, I promise!”
Cook, 56, began his career as the bassist in politically-charged indie band The Housemartins between 1983 and 1988.
Even during that time, Cook was DJing — his next band, Beats International, were a dance collective formed in 1989. They scored a UK No. 1 with 1990s Dub Be Good to Me, a cover of the SOS Band’s Just Be Good to Me with a sample from the Clash’s Guns Of Brixton. It still occasionally surfaces in his DJ sets.
After a series of aliases including Freak Power, Mighty Dub Katz and Pizzaman (Cook holds the Guinness World Record for the most UK Top 40 hits under different names) he became Fatboy Slim in 1996.
His signature album, You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby turned 20 last year — featuring songs still in his DJ set — Rockafeller Skank, Right Here Right Now and Praise You.
He’s already working new remixes for a 20th anniversary edition of the follow up, 2000s Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars.
“Such is the business of regurgitation,” Cook says.
“Once we get up to three figures on any of these reissues people should feel free to tell me it’s time to leave them alone or stop.”
Where Kiss put on make-up or Angus Young slips into his school uniform, Cook relies on a Hawaiian shirt to transform himself into Fatboy Slim each night.
“Norman Cook is a 56-year-old father of two who is a responsible, reasonable, sensible person. Fatboy Slim is an irresponsible hedonist with a mental age of 17 who doesn’t give a toss about anything apart from the party. It’s good that I never take him off stage because he’s a bit of a liability. But on stage he’s a great showman.
“I just have to define the boundaries of where Fatboy ends and Norman begins. And it is the Hawaiian shirt. Norman would never be seen dead in a Hawaiian shirt. Throwing off my shoes, putting on the Hawaiian shirt and getting slapped around my face by my tour manager is what turns me from mild mannered Clark Kent like Norman into party animal Fatboy.”
The slapping actually happens. “Every show. It means I go on stage fighting, with my cheeks flushed.”
Cook is the first to admit he didn’t expect to be still DJing at this age, noting that where pop stars are usually judged on their looks, the original superstar DJs were never pin-ups.
“We can get old and bald and grey and fat and no one really notices because we’re behind the decks. But at the same time, age comes with experience and that sixth sense of knowing what to do. Carl Cox, Pete Tong and me are the first wave of DJs who had popularity of this size. No one has written down what the retirement age is. As long as we don’t die we figure we’ll keep on going as long as we can get away with it. Who knows what the retirement age is for us?
“We do seem to be getting away with it and I don’t take that for granted. If I was in a boy band I’d have had to retire by now. Unlike being a sportsman, the act of DJing you can do when you’re older. You don’t have to worry about doing your knees. I quit drinking 10 years ago, I train a lot, I do half marathons. Half the reason is to keep myself fit enough for the late nights, the travelling around the world and the leaping about on stage.”
The DJ says he’s noticed his audiences are regenerating.
“The audience down the front are the same, they never age, it’s always 18 to 25. You can see people lurking down the back who are a bit older. But sometimes you can see ex-ravers who’ve got a babysitter for the night and they’re cutting loose.
“I’m noticing most kids coming to my shows who have grown up on my music. It was literally 20 years ago that You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby came out, so there’s 20-year-olds who have spent their entire lives hearing my music. They’re now old enough to come without their parents. It’s wonderful when kids come up and introduce you to their mum who they’ve come with. And the mum is usually more splattered than the kid.
“There’s a fresh supply of 18-year-olds each year who want to go out and get drunk and get laid and go through all those teenage rites of passage. So we make sure we grab them and draw them into our web of nonsense.”
Now sober for 10 years, Cook doesn’t mind being the designated driver behind the decks.
“I enjoy watching them from a distance. I was as drunk as them for many years. I know exactly what’s going through their heads. I get a bit intoxicated just hanging around them. A lot of people say ‘Oh Norman says he’s sober, look at him, he’s high as a kite’ but it’s either some euphoric recall still going around my brain or I just feed off the crowd.
“Fatboy Slim can tap into that mindset for two hours on stage and then shrug it off at the end. At the end of the show I don’t really want to hang around with drunk people. I need to go to bed so I can do it again the next night.”
While he maintains a busy DJ schedule, there hasn’t been a new Fatboy Slim album in 15 years (“the format is pretty much redundant”) and no new single in two years, while his last big hit was 2013’s Eat Sleep Rave Repeat.
“I’ve got a strange relationship with making music full stop,” Cook says. “I’m not sure how I fit in with where pop music is today. Which is why I’ve bowed out of making music for the time being, until I can find a place where I sit in it and can do some good. Until then I’ll just keep on DJing, because then I can immediately know when I’m getting through to people, that I’m doing something worthwhile.”
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His DJ set is far from the best of Fatboy Slim, rather it’s him picking a selection of songs he’s loving, new and old.
“There’s a little smattering of my hits so I don’t get told off. My main job as a DJ is to entertain the people there that night to the fullest extent of my capability. It’s not to play my greatest hits. It’s to play whatever gets them excited and able to escape from their normal lives. If that involves dropping a bit of one of my tunes great, but I wouldn’t have been able to do this for so long if I had to play just my tunes over and over again. I go for songs that unite all of us. I’d much rather play Fisher’s Losing It than my own songs!”
Cook admits his sobriety has also made him a better father and he’s finally become that rare beast — a cool dad to son Woody (18) and daughter Nelly (9) with ex-wife UK radio host Zoe Ball.
“For a long time I wasn’t, it’s not my job to be cool and I did my best to embarrass my son. But he’s now 18 so I can get him free tickets to clubs in Ibiza, so I am the coolest dad in the world. Woody’s mates invited me to play at his eighteenth birthday party, which I was touched about. It means a lot that 18-year-olds still dig what I do.
“And the fact your children can grudgingly admit you’re a cool dad, even with all your jokes and lyrics and dancing. It’s a powerful thing.”
FATBOY SLIM WITH 2MANYDJS
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, January 24
Riverstage Brisbane January 25
The Halls Olympic Park Sydney January 31
FATBOY SLIM
Glenelg Beach Adelaide February 1
Nodes Park Whitford WA February 2