You’ve collaborated with loads of great artists – who’s the one that got away? ShermanMLight
Tom Rowlands: “One that got away” implies that it was feasible, but I did have Kate Bush on the phone. I sent a track, she was very sweet and said: “It’s a nice idea, but you’re alright on your own. It’s fine as it is.” But you’ve got to aim high, haven’t you?
Ed Simons: We are both massive Bob Dylan fans and after one long-running conversation, we thought: “Why not ask Bob Dylan?” It got far enough that we were asked to write to him, so maybe he liked the idea. I’m not sure we ever wrote the letter.
Tom: We did try, but got stumped at what to call him. Robert?
Ed: Bob, if you’re reading this, we’re still here.
Do you have any anecdotes about the late, great Andrew Weatherall? FulhamFreds
Ed: He was an incredible DJ, a funny guy and really kind to us. Just after our first record came out on Junior Boy’s Own, we got him to DJ at our club Naked Under Leather in Manchester, but then we had to move it to the University of Manchester’s student union bar, the Swinging Sporran. Not his usual gig. But to be fair, he took his shirt off and pummelled it, although he was heard to say on arrival: “Ed, you bastard!”
We used to get quite tongue-tied around him. I remember being in a nightclub asking him what synths he’d bought. He said: “I’m waiting for the Chekhov Warp.” Which I took to mean a new synth we hadn’t heard of. A couple of weeks later I realised he meant he was waiting for the “cheque off Warp” records to buy new equipment, so when we remixed Saint Etienne’s Like a Motorway we called it the Chekhov Warp mix.
Tom: Our first ever live gig was at his club, Sabresonic, that normally hosted proper techno DJs. We didn’t think of ourselves as pros, so we told him we wouldn’t feel comfortable on the stage. I think he appreciated a wrong way of doing things, so he set us up at the back of the room on top of this makeshift toilet block with the sequencers on the loo.
Ed: I once looked through his DJ box and one record was labelled “Italian piano canterer. Break open only in emergency.”
I worked behind the bar at the Monarch in Chalk Farm during the 90s and you guys DJ’d with decks set up on a trestle table next to the bar. My best day at work. What has been yours? Flanboy73
Ed: You never think “That was the one”, but we have been looking back for the book [Paused in Cosmic Reflection, published later this month] and headlining Glastonbury in 2000 was a phenomenally good gig for us.
Tom: I always remember doing Galvanise at the Hit Factory in New York. There was a lot riding on the session and I remember walking along 34th Street in Manhattan on a bright blue day with this nervous anticipation. Then later coming out of this iconic studio with this amazing piece of music.
You’ve been responsible for some cracking remixes, such as Jailbird by Primal Scream. How much involvement does the original artist have and are you typically given free rein? VerulamiumParkRanger
Ed: We would never take one hi-hat from the original track and call it a remix. We take the same ingredients somewhere else. In the big 90s run of remixes we did for Primal Scream, the Charlatans and so on, people would come down and contribute or bring stuff on tape. In terms of free rein, we’ve only had a record label man ask us to change something drastically.
Tom: He didn’t get his way, although when we did Björk’s Hyperballad, she said: “I will never have a record with slap bass.” She made the right call. How did we ever think Hyperballad needed to be a slap bass odyssey? Although we reworked those bits for our track Dig Your Own Hole.
On your new album [For That Beautiful Feeling], you have reworked an obscure Teresa Harris track. The DJ version (at Amnesia Ibiza) features a Jesse Jackson speech which you previously sampled in your Ariel [Tom’s pre-Chemical Brothers band] days. Any plans to release this? OffWorld1
Tom: There is an Andrew Weatherall connection there as well. He used to lay that Jesse Jackson speech down in the acid house days.
Ed: It’s from an Aretha Franklin gospel album that Tom got me for my 21st, so it’s a sacramental text. We like to make different versions for DJ-ing that we don’t necessarily want to release.
Tom: I’d been working on the music and then found this obscure soul funk record by Teresa Harris featuring the Gene Parker Quintet and took the vocal. The power comes from those two worlds colliding in a really odd way. If there’s any mad alchemy, we will always pursue it.
Can you tell us about Wolf Alice singer Ellie Rowsell’s writing credit on Feel Like I Am Dreaming [from the new album]? OffWorld1
Tom: Ellie is an incredible singer and a couple of years ago we did a lot of sessions with her towards writing a song that never got finished. While making this album, we had been DJ-ing and came back to that performance, so we looped the “feel like I’m dreaming” bit and put it in this other song. She gets a writing credit because she came up with the words.
I remember hearing that, when you first started doing sets, you used to get paid in beer. How quickly did that change into pots of cash? 11LFO11
Ed: When we DJ’d at the Heavenly Social everyone who might have bought us a drink was busy jumping up and down. We did get paid in beer or cider but were just happy to be asked. Rather than going out on a Friday night, we would DJ, take our friends and make a night of it.
Tom: When we played the Hacienda in 1995, each of us had a hotel room rather than sharing a car home. That felt like the first proper gig. People from New Order’s road crew who worked that gig are still with us today.
I heard you turned down a gig at the Sydney Opera House because their sound system wasn’t up to scratch. Are there other big opportunities you’ve declined on artistic grounds? bathman
Ed: That story is quite apocryphal. There was a technical issue with hanging the speakers. We weren’t talking down the acoustics of the Sydney Opera House! We would love to play there.
As a fellow alumnus of the University of Manchester, is the rumour about you playing at the Bop at Owens Park an urban myth? BiggestGeoff
Ed: This was the Friday night disco at the halls of residence. I was the DJ there and I was bad. I would play cool records I’d heard at the Hacienda, but we were student freshers so I would drink quite lot, get on the mic and call out to Tom and our friends. After I was fired, the first record my replacement played was All Night Long by Lionel Richie. They loved it.
Tom: I entered and lost the Battle of the Bands in the bar at Oak House [student accommodation], where I set up with my drum machine. I had completely forgotten about this until my eldest daughter went to Manchester and lived in Oak House. I walked in and thought: “Oh my God …”
You once said that when you first met Noel Gallagher he said something rude about Tim Burgess. What did he say? ImitationFireplace
Ed: It wasn’t rude. It was more like: “You’ve had Tim Burgess do a fantastic job singing on Life is Sweet. I respect him, but also I back myself to do a similar job” [which Gallager did, on No 1 single Setting Sun].
Tom: “I back myself!”
Ed: Well, I can’t do a Manc Noel impression. Words to that effect. But in Noelspeak …
When you were told you had to change your name, what were the other potential names on your shortlist? subsub
Ed: When we were called the Dust Brothers we got a very nice but firm letter from the American Dust Brothers asking: “Can you please change your name quite quickly?” Suede had just become the London Suede [in the US], so we were going to become the London Dust Explosion. If we had I don’t think we would be having this conversation now.
Tom: Didn’t your mum suggest the Grit Brothers?
Ed: I think that one was mum’s. Luckily, Tom suggested: “We’ve got a track called Chemical Beats … how about the Chemical Brothers?”
How close is your relationship? Would you like to be brothers? dbates73
Ed: Tom’s got a brother I’m very fond of, but we have spent an inordinate amount of time together and have a shared history in our bones.
Tom: We used to live together, go on tour and go on holiday together and we still see each other socially. We’ve probably spent more time together than most brothers.
Paused in Cosmic Reflection is published by White Rabbit on 26 October. The Chemical Brothers’ tour starts at Glasgow OVO Hydro the same day. For That Beautiful Feeling is out now on EMI/Virgin
