It's all okey-dokey

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A down-to-earth chat with "the world's most successful DJ" Paul Oakenfold

by KRISTA

He gave the U.K. its first taste of American hip hop and brought the sound of Ibiza back to the big island. He helped produce Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. He was on hand to inaugurate London's first mega-club, the Ministry of Sound, and kickstarted Liverpool's infamous Cream, where he was resident for two years. He says no to Madonna when she makes a request.

The quintessential mega-DJ and poster boy for the progressive sound, London's Paul Oakenfold is credited with having created entire movements in dance music and club culture and "changed the world of trance" through Perfecto Records, the label he shares with production partner Steve Osborne.

To top it all off, he's been voted number one DJ in the world more than once, and in late 1998 he was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records as "the world's most successful DJ." What's next? I mean, the guy makes more money than most professional athletes--but he's just doing it for the love of the music, man.

Mirror: Your story starts when you moved to New York back in the '80s. What was your impression of the music scene in America when you first came to New York?

Paul Oakenfold: The music in England was pretty much all house-oriented, all the same. New York was totally hip hop-driven, dominated by street culture and breakdancing. It was fresh and exciting. And yeah, totally different from what I had been exposed to.

M: What made you want to move to New York in the first place?

PO: Originally I just went on holiday and really liked it. I wanted to get in to the music business and it wasn't really happening in London, so I moved there. I started going to all the big clubs there, like Studio 54 and Paradise Garage and making the connections, and I was really into the whole hip hop scene.

M: Yeah, and suddenly you were running Def Jam in the U.K. How did that come about?

PO: I started doing A&R for Def Jam and then Profile in New York and brought it back to England. I was the first person to bring that to the U.K. My first signing was Will Smith, as in DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and then Salt-N-Pepa.

M: So when did the whole departure from hip hop happen, then? How did you go from that to progressive trance?

PO: The whole time I was running Def Jam I was also DJing in London, so that was always there. But I became really demoralized by what happened to hip hop, with the fighting and the violence. People started to focus way too much on negative lyrical content and forgetting about the vibe. I had to move away from that and so I just started concentrating more on my nights.

Across the spectrum

M: So was that when your legendary Spectrum night picked up?

PO: Spectrum really started because of what we had been doing in Ibiza. It was a party that was musically different from the rest of the country. For the first six months that we were doing that night it was tight. Then one night the club owner called me up and told me that I owed him a ridiculous amount of cash that we just didn't have and he was going to shut it down. Right after that it just blew up all of a sudden. One week there were a few hundred people and the next week there were a few thousand and we had made enough money to pay everything back. And a night like that was unheard of England. It was on a Monday and we were getting 2,000 people through the door every week.

M: What was the reason for shutting it down? Too much of a good thing?

PO: That night ended because of bad press, really.

M: Oops. Damned reporters.

PO: Yeah, there were these undercover reporters who kept coming down to the club and then going back and writing about how everybody was on drugs and Spectrum was just a front for drug dealers and debauchery. I mean, sure there were people on drugs, but I don't think it was that bad. They were just out to stop us and they did.

Trance formation

M: If you had to pick a defining moment or track for yourself, what would those be?

PO: The first summer, the summer of '87 started it all. And the track would be "Why" by the Woodentops, because of the energy and the spirit of it. It was always the last track of the night and people would just go mad for it.

M: Hip hop, Balearic beats, trance... you really are the man. You're touted as having championed and developed trance music as well. How did you arrive there?

PO: (chuckling) Well, again, I guess I was just bored with what was going on and started to develop a more progressive sound out of what we were already doing. It's not like any of us back then set out with this grand idea in our heads, like, "We're going to make trance music and be huge." It would never have worked like that.

M: What's so appealing about trance, though?

PO: I would say that its appeal is that it's melodic. That was what I first heard and wanted to capture. At the time records were becoming so aggressive, like with rave and hardcore breakbeat, and I wanted something warmer and softer. Recording something in a major key gives it depth and makes it more melodic. It makes it sound familiar even though you might not have heard it before. It draws you in like that.

Not a sell-out

M: Now trance is huge. You hear it everywhere, almost more than house music.

PO: Is trance big over there, too?

M: Oh yeah. It's everywhere. Radio, TV, car ads...

PO: It's funny, because magazines always dis trance music and make it out like it's this big, cheesy sell-out and trance DJs are sell-outs or whatever, but trance was always the biggest underground sound. In England at least, house music was always more commercial. That was what was being played on the radio, while trance was the underground sound that you only heard in clubs. Now it seems that's changing. There's a switch happening. I know there will be another change soon and something new will come out of all this. I'm starting to move away from the big, riffy sort of cheesy sound and getting into a darker and heavier sound. My next record, which comes out in September, is called Another World. It's less a DJ-oriented record and more soundtrack-oriented. It covers quite an expanse of sounds, some downtempo, some progressive. It's more the kind of record you put on and listen to all in one sitting as opposed to playing individual tracks.

M: Are you set to head the next big dance music movement? We're all watching you, you know.

PO: (laughing) Well, you've got to be forward-thinking and stay one step ahead of the game.

With Max Graham, Tiesto, Tiga, Laflèche and Luc Raymond at The Oasis, at the Molson Centre on Saturday, July 15, 10pm, $45-60