DJ DEREK MAY
“Nothing to Prove”
With Rhythm Is Rhythm, Derrick May defined the
sound of Detroit techno. Yet he hasn’t released
a record for years and now admits he’s wasting
his talent. So should we still love Derrick May?
Derrick May swears he’s an arrogant asshole but
industry “insiders” state that he’s actually a
prick. Other “sources”, meanwhile, insist clubs
have to open their double doors before this
self-regarding bighead can get in. It’s a
contentious issue, it really is. So, here comes
techno’s leading
arse-connected-to-a-sexual-appendage-to-a-wantonly-oversized-ego,
striding casually into the foyer of Glasgow’s
most fashionable hotel. Like he owns the bloody
place.
“Hi, we’re from …….”
“Hello, I fucking hate journalists.” Asshole.
Then he pulls some kung-fu moves, making sure
everyone in the vicinity knows for sure he’s
arrived. Prick.
“I’ve got nothing to prove to you,” he
continues. “Nothing at all.” Bighead.
Okay, we’ll give him a chance before casting our
final judgement. Let’s watch as he chats up
umpteen waitresses in a restaurant, then
discusses the relative merits of Naomi Campbell,
Scary Spice, Posh Spice and several women who
walk past. As he accuses everyone in Birmingham
of having buck-teeth, does an impersonation of a
London ragga kid, shows off his muscles, slags
off Madonna, chats up a few more waitresses….Oh
stop it, please. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Derrick
May’s an absolute……
…..Scream, actually. Because what many forget to
point out is he’s just as willing to deploy his
merciless wit against himself as anyone else.
Blessed with a blinding intelligence and
relentless energy, he’s fantastic company. Shhh,
don’t tell him that because we’re going to a
club. We’ve got to fit this asshole through the
door.
Tomorrow, Derrick May – aged 35 – will tell all
to us, thereby promoting “Innovator”, his “new”
album for Transmat/R&S (it’s actually a
comprehensive collection of his epochal early
releases). But tonight he’s playing at a party
called Aquaplanet, alongside DJ Sneak, Andrew
Weatherall and Amsterdam’s Dimitri. It’s on at
The Arches venue in central Glasgow and we know
this because we’ve just pulled up in a taxi –
outside the Tunnel.
“You’re not playing here , mate,” laughs one of
the bouncers. “Paul Oakenfold is. Your club’s
round the corner.”
“I’m glad I’m not playing here,” Derrick
derisively snorts. “Ha ha! This place looks
dead.”
Eventually we make it to the Arches and it’s
starkly apparent that admiration for May burns
as strongly as ever in hard dance strongholds
like this. Starry-eyed clubbers, who can’t have
been more than eight years old when “Strings Of
Life” came out, queue up to remind him he’s a
legend.
“But I’m not,” he retorts testily, “I’m alive,
not dead.”
Come 2am, Sneak relinquishes the decks to
Derrick. If the former’s set is all solid lines
mixed with disco flurries, the latter’s is
savage and angular, with Derrick snatching
aggressively at the EQs. For the next two hours,
tunes by himself, Carl Craig, Moodyman and
Stacey Pullen whizz by. Oh, and he plays Li’l
Louis’ “French kiss”…. Like he always does.
Then a girl clambers over the barriers. “I don’t
mean to be a pain,” she gushes to May. “I just
wanted to show my appreciation.” He thanks her
warmly then winds up the 18,462nd (or something)
stellar DJ set of his career.
Numerous punters accuse him of being a legend as
he leaves. He gets invited to a few house
parties but politely declines and gets a taxi to
the hotel. He might’ve only got off a plane from
the US a few hours ago, but, incredibly, he
could still give Goldie a fair fight in the
boundless energy stakes. We say goodnight to May
in the early hours as he nips off to raid the
hotel’s kitchens for ice-cream…
Something kept May up last night. The renowned
Lothario wouldn’t have minded if it was a woman,
but instead it was pesky thought.
“Recently, a friend said, ‘If you don’t make any
more music, it’ll be a terrible waste of
talent.’ I didn’t think much more about it until
I was lying in bed last night. Suddenly I found
myself agreeing.”
Ho-hum, it’s easy to be suspicious in moments
like this. That bar the odd outing on
compilations like 1994’s sublime “Virtual Sex”,
May hasn’t released a track since “The
Beginning” in 1990, yet happened to have a major
rethink for the first time last night. Still, we
won’t quibble, because we’ve got to get him to
backtrack. Whether he likes it or not.
“You should be able to rent out the video by
now: ‘Detroit – The Early Years’,” he huffs. “I
was talking to Kevin (Saunderson) about it
recently. I said that until we elevate to the
next level, we’ll never leave that whole story
behind.”
The story? That of May, Saunderson and Juan
Atkins, three chums from Belville High School,
Detroit, who in a spare afternoon or two,
invented techno music. Clever, that.
Fusing their combined passion for Parliament and
disco; the fledgling house sounds emanating from
nearby Chicago; the bleak influence of living in
their fading hometown, as it suffered post-car
industry boom decline; a love of heavyweight
futurist text and Kraftwerk’s benchmark
electro-pop, they reached for the stars. For a
few years back then in the late 1908s, they
touched them, too.
Atkins led the way at first, cutting tracks as
Cybotron and Model 500, but May was busy
watching from the wings.
“Juan had the vision,” he recalls. “I was a
friend who happened to be in the right place at
the right time. Juan and his brother Aaron
changed my life.”
“We were still at junior school and Aaron was a
renegade – aged 13, he was smoking joints and
driving cars with Juan. They didn’t like met at
first – they used to think I was an ‘L7’, a
square! They tried to get me to smoke a joint
but I wouldn’t!”
May was the only child in a single parent
family, his mother working long hours to provide
for him. The considerable time he spent at home
alone caused his brain to work overtime.
May first used the “vault of feelings” he
concocted in this period in 1987, releasing
“Nude Photo” on his new Transmat label (later
home to releases from the like of Carl Craig and
Joey Beltram). It was a revolution, as brutal as
it was beautiful. So too were the tracks which
arrived in rapid succession over the next couple
of years, including “R-Tyme”, “Freestyle” and
the magical “Strings Of Life”.
“Why did that one work? Because it was ‘simply
complex’,” he smiles. “I did it on one keyboard,
then recorded it on cassette. The damn thing has
sold over a 100,000 copies!”
May had left Atkins and Saunderson far behind at
this point. Having weathered the remarks that
others were always present in the studio when
his finest tracks were made (Thomas Barnett
co-produced “Nude Photo”, Darryl Wynn “R-Tyme”,
Mike James “Strings Of Life” and Carl Craig
“Drama”), he was the undisputed King Of Techno.
However, the series of events which took place
over the next couple of years would see his
pride and passion in producing music diminish by
a monumental degree.
“The first time we came to Britain (in early
1988) people were wearing suits in clubs and
weren’t digging the music at all,” he explains.
“Then we came back eight months later and it was
total hands-in-the-air mayhem. Guys in England
has started making their own music and it sort
of seemed like we weren’t invited to the party
anymore.”
Acid House has exploded in the UK and the Motor
City kids’ considered, reflective approach to
music didn’t fit easily amid the drug-powered
hedonism. May hated Britain’s nascent
techno-rave sound and made that patently clear
in a mighty row with Factory Records’ supremo
Tony Wilson at the CMJ Music Conference in New
York in 1991. However, he now denies he ever
suggested that while people shouldn’t make
techno.
May adds that he drained away yet more of his
creative energy by acting as a mentor for Carl
Craig, Jay Denham and Stacey Pullen. Most
destructive of all, though, was the techno
supergroup that never happened.
May, Saunderson and Atkins hatched a plan in
1991 to record together as Intelex. They saw it
as their take on Kraftwerk. Trevor Horn – boss
of ZTT, the label they would have signed to –
wanted the “black Pet Shop Boys”.
“It was our Great Plan,” May says despondently.
“But then the deal was off. Trevor decided I was
an erratic crazy man who wouldn’t do as he was
told.”
So techno’s chief savant pulled the plug on his
productions and, save for the odd remix, hasn’t
returned to them since. You can view it as a sad
story – as indeed those in years to come might,
when reading about a pioneer who became so
disenchanted that he bailed out. Alternatively,
you could decree it a major cop-out by someone
who’s often complained people don’t understand
his music; seemingly oblivious to the fact that
no-one inherently understood Marvin Gaye, Public
Enemy or The Beatles; that they made people
understand. Or then again, you could choose to
sympathise when he says he hasn’t feel
sufficiently inspired.
“I’m the ultimate temperamental, prima donna
artist,” he confesses. “If you sneeze too loud,
my ass is out the door. And I’ve always been
like that. Most people in Detroit can’t stand
me.”
“I’m an asshole,” he reminds us. “But I’m a
happy asshole.”
He is, too, because May has glossed over the
heartache by becoming a maximum lucre-earning
star on the international DJ circuit;
consistently turning on crowds, yet pissing some
pundits with the often unwavering sets he
offers. Exotic travel, food and women – this bon
viveue has sampled them all.
“A womaniser? A techno playboy? Yeah, that was
definitely me up until a year ago. But not so
much now because I can’t be bothered with
fucking little club girls anymore. It always
turns out they’re only 19 years old and they
always want their little friends to come back to
the hotel, too. I’m like, ‘Who are your
friends?’ ‘Oh, just those 28 people over
there’.”
May says he’s merely a “serious flirt” now, that
he’d get married if he could find a woman who
was “panoramic” enough. He also admits he’s less
likely to lay the boot into other artists these
days, effectively acknowledging that he’d seem
like a woeful old curmudgeon if he was to
lambast successful youngsters like Daft Punk or
the Chemical Brothers.
Some things don’t change, though. He still gets
hordes of technophiles arriving at this
apartment. Understandably, he’s less charitable
that he once was.
“I’ve got a shotgun and a pitbull, so they don’t
come round so much now,” he jokes. “You get so
many weirdos, the Mark Chapmans of techno. They
turn up with a sleeping bag and backpack and
demand to sleep on my sofa for a month. ‘Knock
know. Er, is this, like, the Hotel Mayday? I
have a reservation to sleep on your sofa for a
month, then steal all your hi-tech dance music
secrets, take them back to my land and become an
overnight sensation!”
A rumour about Derrick May: that he’s shortly to
retire from DJing and concentrate on production
work.
“Er, nah. When I was 18 I’d look at people like
Ken Collier (now deceased former resident at
Detroit’s similarly deceased Music Institute,
where May and co first went clubbing) and say,
‘I am not going to be that old and still playing
records.’ But now I realise DJing is a moment of
freedom and euphoria. “However, the moment I
feel people aren’t screaming anymore, that
they’re swaying, not dancing, I’ll be out. And I
won’t be lugging record boxes around the world
forever.”
To which end he, Carl Craig and Kenny Larkin are
launching their own club in Detroit next spring.
Though nameless at present, May intends it to be
a “high-tech cyber-club that’s on the cutting
edge. It’s going to be a personal place where
the music’s the most important thing.”
Another rumour about May: that he’s handed in
two ambient-ish albums to R&S (whom Transmat
have signed a deal with), but they refuse to
release them.
“That’s a good one,” he retorts after a lengthy
exhalation. “I haven’t handed anything in and
when I do there’ll be no handing back. If R&S
don’t like it they can kiss my beautiful black
ass.”
Rightio then. But at one point in the interview
May clearly says, “The album I did which has not
been released is not me toying with people.”
Hmmm?
“There are pieces of that album in place,” he
says next, scuppering talk that he hasn’t been
near a studio in years. “But it’ll only be
finished when I say it is and I don’t care if
people who read this think that sounds corny –
be they pop stars, little kids, fat A&R men or
wannabe musicians.”
But isn’t it a cop-out, even an oxymoron, that
May has lamented the state of techno yet not
been on hand to push the sound to the proverbial
next level?
“You know, you’re right. I’m to blame for a lot
of things, cos it’s like I took the music to a
certain point then left it hanging there. I’ve
been a really selfish person with my own
creativity.”
He once famously described techno as “George
Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator.” And
now?
“Kraftwerk got off on the third floor and now
George Clinton’s got Napalm Death in there with
him. The elevator’s stalled between the pharmacy
and the athletic wear store.”
He states he’s no longer bitter; that he’s
actually more “hungry” than he’s been for ages.
Hence the new African drumming project he’s
producing – it was going to be called Detroit
Rhythm Riot, except he’s not so sure now.
Featuring percussionists aged between 25 and 70,
and former Last Poet Omar Ben Hussan on vocals,
he is certain, however, that it’ll be a “far
superior” version of Masters At Work’s Nu
Yorican Soul.
But anyway, enough chat because Derrick May
wants to go to lunch now.
“Stop!” Techno’s relentlessly lively one only
managed to chat up three waitresses at lunch and
now we’re driving around Glasgow. “Stop!” May
urges again. He’s come across a phenomenally
long queue for an under-18’s disco and the
“former” womaniser can’t believe his eyes.
“They’re the reason I’m no longer a techno
playboy,” he chuckles, gesticulating at a row of
girls braving the freezing conditions in
preposterously short skirts. “They’re under-18?
Huh! They’re the kind of girls who could get me
in trouble!”
What an asshole, eh? What a perplexing,
sporadically inspirational, always endearing,
ceaselessly fascinating, occasionally
frustrating asshole. You’ve got to admit it,
despite everything, he remains a veritable star.
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