Noel Watson

Todd Burns

Hello. Welcome to the second lecture today at Red Bull Music Academy Weekender in Belfast. I’m very honored to be joined by house-music-and-hip-hop-in-the-UK pioneer Noel Watson.

Noel Watson

Thank you.

Todd Burns

I wanted to, I guess, begin in Belfast, because you grew up here for the first 18 years of your life.

Noel Watson

Yeah, I was born in Belfast and I grew up here. I left Belfast around about 1979 in the summer, just after my 19th birthday.

Todd Burns

What do you remember about growing up here? Obviously, London is a big part of your life, but I’m wondering before that, what was this city like growing up?

Noel Watson

I came from a community in east Belfast, a Protestant community that, during the ’70s, because of the Troubles and everything that was happening here, all the different aspects of the war in Northern Ireland, it made growing up in Belfast really interesting, actually, in one respect, because you’re watching what was happening on the 9 O’Clock News at night that was actually occurring in your street or your neighborhood, that you were actually a part of as well.

When I was a young boy, I got involved it, because you do, because I was a working-class kid from Belfast, and that was part of my culture and part of my upbringing. Luckily enough, I didn’t partake in that thing very often, or not after I was about 13, 14, because I was only a child then. Once I realized what was going on and what was happening, I realized this has got to stop. This isn’t good at all. It’s detrimental to a lot of things in your life. It was scary in Belfast at times, as well.

If you were going out at night in the town center, as Terry said earlier on in his talk, it was absolutely deserted. The streets were deserted, and the people that were hanging around were a little bit dodgy, to say the least. You had to be very careful. I, on the other hand, my mother and father were very liberal thinkers, and my father was a free thinker, and my mom actually became a Jehovah’s Witness. I had a very strange upbringing. It was very odd.

My brother and I both worked in a tailoring business in Ann Street in Belfast when we left school, a Catholic family business. My brother would make the suits and the clothes, and I worked downstairs, and I would measure the customers up, and I ran the dress-hire company and blah, blah, blah.

At night, we’d go to Bangor, and at the weekends, we’d go to a bar called the Viking, which was in I think Ann Street or one the little streets that runs, I can’t remember the name of it. It was an upstairs bar. On Saturday, we’d all meet there, and we were all Young Americans. We’d already have got into the fashion that was happening in parts of London. Morris and I met this guy who would bring us plastic sandals and Bowie jackets and bits and pieces from London.

Then we’re only about 15, 16 at that point, and then basically, we would then travel back and forward to London if we could save up some money and go on shopping trips, and then come back and go out and hang out and party here in Bangor.

Todd Burns

Fashion was a big part of growing up for you, obviously. You were doing this tailoring business, and you were quite interested in it. Where were you going in London specifically and looking to, store-wise or fashion-wise?

Noel Watson

To Sex, Malcolm McLaren, Vivian Westwood’s shop Sex. It was still Sex then, actually, just before it became Seditionaries, and Acme Attractions, and Robot. The King’s Road was the place that you would go to then. That’s where all the really cool shops were. You’d maybe go into the west end occasionally, but we lived for going over to the King’s Road.

That’s when I eventually went and moved to London, I got a flat in a place Onslow Gardens, which is close to the King’s Road in Kensington, in Chelsea. That was the epicenter then of cool and fashion and punk rock. It was amazing, and really vibrant and an incredible experience, because it was so different to growing up in Belfast.

Just seeing all these different types of people and cultures, and the whole aspect of life there was just so amazing. I fell in love with it immediately. I lived on a riverboat over in Richmond on the Thames. That was the first place I stayed in. It was just beautiful and getting up in the morning and traveling into the town center going to King’s Road and things… it was just really good fun, and something completely different for us.

Todd Burns

When you moved to London, you were looking to get in the music scene. What had you been doing already in Belfast, musically, before then?

Noel Watson

Morris, my brother, ran a club night in a place, down just outside Bangor, called Crawfordsburn Inn, I think it was called. He put on a little disco there, and we would play indie music and alternative music and things like Kraftwerk and The Slits, and we ran a couple of little nights there. We were just kids.

Todd Burns

This is the late ’70s?

Noel Watson

This was about ’77, ’78, yeah. We had a band. We had a house in Hollywood that we all lived in, me Morris, Ruth Priestley, the Stockman brothers, the Priestley brothers, and Harry Binns, who was Tom Binns’ brother, who Tom Binns is now one of the biggest jewelry designers in the world. He lives in LA, and it was through Tom that I met Malcolm McLaren when I went to London.

It was all interconnected, and we would put on parties at the houses that we lived in in Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, and things and start to get... That was before we started doing the illegal warehouse parties.

Todd Burns

In the late ’70s, obviously, you were listening to electronic music like Kraftwerk, but also you were quite into post-punk and industrial things that were coming out too?

Noel Watson

Yeah. When I was a kid here living in Belfast, you couldn’t really get many independent 7" punk rock or electronic records. I would send off for them, mail order through the NME and things like that. I’d buy singles. I’d buy bands like Pink Military from Liverpool and Wah! Heat and Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, because the first albums I got into as a boy were Roxy Music – I was a big Roxy Music fan and then I got really into Iggy Pop and David Bowie, especially Low and the [Berlin] trilogy series. Then more ambient work, like by Brian Eno and people like that. Also listening to John Peel and listening to the radio and dub and reggae and we’re hearing black music as well.

Todd Burns

You’ve mentioned it before as a huge touchstone to you in introducing you to a lot of this stuff…

Noel Watson

What’s that?

Todd Burns

This Dub reggae and, I guess, black music in general.

Noel Watson

Yeah, I mean I just got that one day that you just listen to something and you realize, “My God, this has just touched me some way. This music is incredible. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how they make this, the rhythm of it is so energetic. It’s so life affirming.” Listening to early Roy Ayers and Stevie Wonder albums, then getting more deeper into black music, it just took over my whole life.

Todd Burns

Tell me about the first couple of years in London. Obviously, you had some friends you know, Malcolm McLaren, you were getting into a scene I guess.

Noel Watson

What happened, how that all panned out was basically when Morris and I moved to London together, because he had the tailoring skills, he worked then in a shop in Beak Street called Demob. Demob is an incredibly important shop and aspect of the whole subculture of music and the club scene in London.

Next year, a project I’m working on at the moment with a company called Test Pressing. Test Pressing are a very chic and hip kind of organization. It’s a design company, record label, and they’re involved in many aspects of culture in London. Basically –I’m losing my thread here – but it’s kind of Morris worked then for the shop Demob and through Demob, there was a guy called Chris Brick, who ran Demob. He suggested that we put on a club night or a party because so many people were coming to the shop and it was beginning to become like a scene on a Friday night just down at the shop.

They had a big room at the back and it was curtained off. Basically, if you’re in the know and you could go in behind the curtain, have a drink, there was drugs. You could smoke and there was coke. There was a recording studio downstairs. All the movers and shakers were coming in and out, and it was this bohemian kind of hip scene.

They suggested that they put on a night. The first night, they asked Morris and I would we DJ for them because they knew we had records and we were into hip hop and black music. They said, “Would you play?” and we played. It was at the electric ballroom in Camden and it was rammed. It was really a very successful night. From that, they then decided to start doing regular parties but doing them illegally in warehouses.

Todd Burns

This was the early ’80s we’re talking about?

Noel Watson

This is around ’83, ’84.

Todd Burns

This is right when hip-hop was really starting to become a bigger thing and these records were coming over. How were you getting them? Were they being in shops in London that you could buy?

Noel Watson

Yeah there was a couple of import shops in London. There was a shop called Groove Records, where we would all go on a Friday afternoon and we would wait for the imports to come in because they would only get so many copies of a certain thing, and you would have all the other DJs in there waiting to buy them as well.

You had to be quick and competitive and just get in there at the right time. Things like “Sucker MC’s” by Run-DMC for the first time, on Profile, coming in. All of these early electro and rap records that were just incredible, like “Hip Hop Bee Bop” by Man Parrish and these different records.

Todd Burns

Was this stuff accepted immediately when you were DJing or was it a little bit of a hard sell to get people behind it?

Noel Watson

No, the night we played at the Electric Ballroom, they went mad. People loved it. They tore the roof off. The other DJ’s were playing a lot of rare grooves and northern soul, which had been a staple diet of that underground scene at that point. Morris and I just took, we had also decided that we would invest in some equipment. We were still young. We were kids. We thought, “What’s the future? The future is DJing and music…” Then Technics turntables suddenly appeared, and we thought, “We want those.” We bought four turntables, a DMX drum machine, two mixers, reel-to-reel TEAC machines, keyboard, and set up a studio.

Todd Burns

Was this all through Demob money that you were paying for this?

Noel Watson

This was through Demob money and I worked. I worked in a vegetarian restaurant in Battersea, and I had income coming in. We were kids. We didn’t drink then much or anything or go out much. We just were obsessed with music. It’s like with practice all the time and practice cutting and scratching and mixing and learning how to use equipment.

Todd Burns

You were some of the few DJs that were cutting and scratching in that way in the UK at that time, as far as I understand it at least.

Noel Watson

Yeah. At that point in London, we were probably two of the first white kids to embrace that culture and just really immerse ourselves in it. That’s why we met the likes of Malcolm McLaren and stuff, through Tom Binns. He would come down to our parties at Battle Bridge Road, and I had meetings with Malcolm where he would want me and my brother to take over as A&R people for different labels and things like that, because we were then being asked to remix records and mix compilations.

He kind of knew and could see that we were cutting-edge. He would have people like Massive Attack, the whole band, come along to our nights at Battle Bridge and sit on stage behind us and watch us DJ and cut. People like Jazzy B and some of the Clash would be in there. Joe Strummer was in there a lot and Mick Jones and some of the Sex Pistols. Paul Cook used to come. It was like a vibrant crowd.

Neneh Cherry did our bar. She was our bar girl, her and Andrea Oliver. I would give them 500 quid on a Friday and they would go down to Acton and get a load of beer and alcohol, set that up on the stage on one side, set the decks up on the other side, fill the whole room with camouflage material and turn out all the lights. Then we would let about four or five hundred kids in there. It was crazy.

Todd Burns

Battle Bridge Road? Speaker: Noel Watson

Battle Bridge it was called, yeah. Sean Oliver DJed with me and my brother Morris. Sean played the bass for the Slits and Rip Rig & Panic. Basically, he was a dread guy, a dreadlock guy. He died from sickle cell, Sean, because he got ill with sickle cell disease.

We were quite wild, and Morris and Sean would go off to Berlin even back in those days and DJ in Berlin and do little one-off parties and I’d hold the bells and bring a guest in to play with me at Battle Bridge. Then one night, we turned up after about six months of it and the police were waiting for us outside.

Todd Burns

You had been doing this party weekly for about six months?

Noel Watson

Yeah.

Todd Burns

It was an abandoned warehouse?

Noel Watson

It was an abandoned school hall, behind King’s Cross Station, in Battle Bridge Road. That’s what it had wooden floors so there was a great sound in there. We would put the turntables up on cement blocks up on stage and the stage was wooden as well. Hire in a really good sound system, so quality of the sound was really good for that period of time.

Morris and I would cut a lot of records up and Nellie Hooper, as I say, and all these people would be there. They just used to sit and watch, and they loved it and it was electric.

Todd Burns

Then the police showed up one day?

Noel Watson

Yeah, the police came one day because it was illegal, and they had got wind of thousands of kids turning up at this street behind King’s Cross Station. They sealed the road off, actually cordoned the road off and threatened to arrest anyone who came through the cordon. This had happened to us before. We did a club called the Speakeasy and Substation. Substation was another illegal venue, which was held in another underground basement by the Demob guys. It was also a really incredible event.

People like Sade would come there and dance in front of us until 6/7 AM in the morning. There was a lot of things going on there. We had a little bar. We put sawdust all over the floor and the turntables are way up on a little mezzanine. A lot of movers and shakers from London, Don Letts and people like that would all be there on a weekly basis. Don Letts actually shot the “IOU” video for Freeeze there. It was an amazing venue.

Once again, we actually got shut down because of Paul Foot from the Daily Mirror and the local residents, they made a complaint. They were waiting on us one night outside with loads of placards and the police suddenly appeared. They chased us actually. We had to run.

Todd Burns

They chased you?

Noel Watson

Yeah, the police came after us. They wanted to arrest us. They were vexed that all of this had been going on and they didn’t like our attitude. There was a lot of drugs going on at these clubs as well. At that point in time, in the mid-’80s in London, our biggest problem was heroin dealers.

The heroin dealers would usually take over the girl’s toilets and deal from the girl’s toilets. That used to be a slight problem. Speed and heroin was the drug of choice then and a bit of LSD or acid. Then it changed.

Todd Burns

This was before ecstasy had come to the UK, basically en masse, at the very least?

Noel Watson

Yeah, this is before E. This is before ecstasy. The ecstasy scene started to happen in London round about 1988, late ’87, ’88. I think a lot of the kids who were coming back from New York or Ibiza had discovered ecstasy and also the house music culture and the Balearic culture that was happening then in Ibiza played a major impact in that.

At that point in time, around 1988, Morris had actually gone to live in New York full time at that point. I carried on Delirium with Robin King at Heaven, and then at the Camden Palace.

Todd Burns

Even before that, though, you were in New York traveling there a bit and seeing the clubs there. What kind of impact did seeing what was going on in New York have on when you came back and what you did subsequently?

Noel Watson

It had a huge impact. Morris took me to the Paradise Garage and took me to Choice. Choice wouldn’t even open until 6 AM, and you would go in and sit there at these tables in this really bizarre warehouse party. There was no alcohol allowed. It started at 5/6 AM in the morning. I think Roger Sanchez was the resident DJ. I’d never even heard of him then. He would play a lot of dub. He would start usually his sets with Grace Jones and a lot of early post-industrial dub and electronic music and then gradually, it would build into disco and the classic Loft kind of sounds.

The place would fill up and everyone would dance, and it was a wild atmosphere. The Garage, as well, was wild. Levan would turn out the lights for maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and you couldn’t see anything. The music would stop, and everybody would just be buzzing around, and it would be weird. Then suddenly, you would hear that boom and that beat and then the lights would gradually go up and the place was just going off the hook.

They had a little cinema in there that used to have a curtain just across as well. You couldn’t go into the cinema, if you get my drift, unless you were of a certain… It was very sexual what was going on in there. They did have the big glass bowls of punch on the bars. They were all laced with, I don’t know what they had in them.

Todd Burns

Something.

Noel Watson

It was like tripping. You would be tripping after you’d have a couple of cups of this juice. It was early like MDMA and ecstasy. You would lose your bodily functions, but it was brilliant. It was mental. It was scary as fuck, but it was brilliant. Also, listening to Larry Levan play this incredible disco music and the way it was played and the loops. They used reel-to-reel a lot as well, and the edits of things were just incredible.

I would go to another club called The World and watch Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan play there. They would have a lot of stuff on loops as well, just on tape. It would go on all night. About 6 AM, 5 AM seemed to be the time in New York where it really started to kick, and it really got busy and everybody really started to get into what was happening, because they didn’t drink alcohol. They took drugs. They had energy. The alcohol wouldn’t sap their energy, so they’d be up all night. They’d just be getting going about 5 AM, and these parties would go on for two days.

Todd Burns

One of the things you said earlier was the Battle Bridge parties, the sound was quite good for that time period. I wonder if you went the Paradise Garage and you heard that sound system you must have thought, “OK, this is actually an amazing sound system. This is how it should be done.”

Noel Watson

Yeah but, as I say, at that stage, Robin King and I had already taken Delirium to Heaven and we had a Richard Long system installed in Heaven.

Todd Burns

He’s the same guy who did the Paradise Garage system?

Noel Watson

Yeah. Basically, the sound system at Heaven that we had at our disposal was incredible. We took the club over every Thursday night. I would bring over DJ’s like Frankie Knuckles for the first time he’d ever been in the UK. We brought Frankie over and he ended up staying with us for two months and becoming resident with me at the club. I learned a lot from Frankie Knuckles, DJing with him.

He would give me records and albums of things that were priceless and acapellas by black singers that you could just never get or find anywhere. Also, just the way he played his music and records, like the Isley Brothers “Inside You” parts one and two on the 12" and things like that that – ten minutes of pure disco funk, but he would glide it all smoothly in and mix it all together incredibly well. Just sitting watching him was a great learning curve for me.

Todd Burns

You were coming from that hip hop DJing style where you were doing quick cuts…

Noel Watson

Yes. I’d come from the hip hop background because Morris and I had mixed the Electro album series. Hip-hop in the ’80s and mid-’80s, around ‘84, ‘85, ‘86, was the prevailing choice of music that all the kids wanted to hear when they’d come to the big clubs on a Saturday night. We opened Delirium at the Astoria. On our opening night, we had LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Whodini and I think Run-DMC all on the same bill. Speaker: Todd Burns

Not exactly house music.

Noel Watson

No, not at all. Then the following week, I think we had Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. Then the following, we had DJ Cheese. Then we had Schoolly D and Code Money. We were bringing in people who were making cutting, like Schoolly D had just released “Gucci Time” and “PSK.” We wanted these black American artists to come in and bring them into a bigger, wider audience in the UK. They wanted to play for these crowds too, so it was cool.

Todd Burns

I wanted to ask about this moment where your own personal tastes and I guess interests moved from hip-hop more strongly to house because I get the sense that if you were playing house to an audience that was knowing you just for the hip hop stuff, it must have been an interesting transition?

Noel Watson

Yeah, because Morris and I were DJing every Saturday night at the Astoria on Charing Cross Road and it held around two-and-a-half thousand, three thousand people. We would turn away nearly two, three thousand. It was so popular. It was packed. These kids were coming from every part of London. Our crowd then was very mixed. It was I’d say 70-30%, 60-40% black and white.

We had a lot of kids who were into the hip hop culture and wanted to hear hip hop and wanted to hear music that was related to that culture. When we changed, Morris had decided that when he’d been to New York and gone to the Garage and he’d come back just with a big parcel of disco and early house. He said, “Look this is it. We have to change. I don’t want to play hip-hop anymore. It’s boring. Also, it’s becoming more violent. I don’t like the aggressive tone of some of the crowd. We’ve got to change this. Clubbing should be a fun experience.”

He didn’t particularly like the vibe that was beginning to occur. We decided we needed to change that.

Todd Burns

What did you think when Morris came back with these house records when you first hear them? Were you immediately falling in love with it?

Noel Watson

Yeah, I was still into my hip-hop, much more than my brother, but when I started listening to them. Then when you listen to the roots of those records as well, like Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, “Bad Luck,” the 12" of that, and the re-edit of that. It’s just an incredible experience and an incredible feeling to hear that music. I fell in love with it as well, not as quickly as my brother, and not as obsessive as my brother.

We left the Astoria eventually, because we had problems with the management. They were complaining about our crowd. They said it was too black and they said that they didn’t spend any money behind the bar, and they wanted them out. We thought, “That’s racist. We don’t like this. We don’t like your stance.” They were gangsters, and basically, we left.

At this stage, as a group who were running the club, we went separate. My brother moved to New York and got married in New York and then had a child there and stuff. He never came back really. I stayed in London, and Robin and I took Delirium to Heaven on the Thursday nights.

Todd Burns

Tell me about the genesis of Delirium and Heaven. Heaven was already a club that existed. You had been there before, and you liked it, right?

Noel Watson

Yeah, when I discovered Heaven, the first time I went to Heaven was to go see New Order’s first ever gig, after Ian Curtis died. It was their first time playing a gig after his death. I thought, “Wow got to go to this. Where is this club Heaven?” A friend of mine, Ruth, who I lived with in Hollywood who was now in London with us, her and I took a lot of magic mushrooms and acid, and we got on the tube and we went to Heaven.

Basically, we were tripping even on the train on the way there but when we got into Heaven, I was just like, “Fuck, this is like unbelievable, this club.” It was just incredible. The Star Bar upstairs was all lit up and it just had this electric vibe about it. The fact that it was a gay club and it reminded me of a New York club. It reminded me of the Garage. It reminded me of that kind of vibe. I thought, “Wow, I’ve got to do something here at this club. This place is incredible.”

It was years later, before we moved there and took on a night because when Heaven opened, it was a predominantly gay venue. They wouldn’t do straight nights. That’s why we did the Thursday night, because they wouldn’t give us Friday or Saturday, because they were predominantly gay nights. We said fine. It was a bit of a risk moving from a Saturday to a Thursday, but it worked. As I say, we’d bring in Jellybean Benitez to DJ, Derrick May, Frankie Knuckles, Todd Terry. We had thousands of people coming. Then we’d have people like Danny Rampling and Jenny Rampling, before they’d even started Shoom. People like Andy Weatherall and people like that all sitting on the speakers with their ponchos on, watching us an what we were doing. We didn’t realize they were discovering the ecstasy and the scene in Ibiza as well. Paul Oakenfold used to come and sit with me in the booth, but he was still kind of hip-hop-orientated. I made sure that the music policy downstairs was strictly house, and the music policy upstairs was hip-hop still so that there was an alternative for both sets of people. We’d have Afrika Bambaataa come and DJ.

That was fun because putting Bambaataa in the Star Bar in the club on a Thursday night in London and he was just part of this massive New York hip-hop culture was odd at the time. People were wild and crazy, but they loved it.

Todd Burns

It must have been a little bit of a culture shock for them, the artists.

Noel Watson

It was. We put DJ Cash Money up there and he was a hard nut from the Bronx. He was a real tough nut. He was a bit like, “Hey dude, what’s going on here with these dudes in this club?” I’m like, “Look dude, it’s a gay club. We have house music downstairs, hip-hop upstairs. You’re going to be fine. No one’s going to bother you. Just do your thing. Enjoy yourself and have fun. I’ll talk to you later.”

Later on, after they’d done their set, and they were amazing. They blew the place apart. He was like, “Wow thank you so much. I love this. It was fantastic.” Bambaataa loved it as well, so it was cool.

Todd Burns

You mentioned earlier the word “subculture,” and I wanted to come back to that a little bit. Was this subculture at that point? You said you were turning away two to three thousand people.

Noel Watson

Yeah. I mean I met so many amazing people at that point in my life and I was still only 26, 27 years old. I was a kid, but I was then asked to produce and DJ for independent bands, like Age Of Chance, who I did join and who I mixed a couple of albums with and then I toured with Age of Chance and joined them as an indie rock band and I would scratch and cut. We would go to festivals all over Europe. It was amazing.

There were so many amazing things happening. We were getting asked to go to New York City by Comme des Garçons as models and walk in fashion shows. We did a show and one of the models with us was Jean-Michel Basquiat, the artist. Jean-Michel had been a friend of friends of ours in New York. We knew Jean-Michel. Man, he took a serious amount of drugs. Jean would never get up until like 4 PM in the afternoon, and then he’d go to Warhol’s studio and paint. Then we’d all hang out and mix and go out with Malcolm as well in New York and go for dinner and then go to clubs.

There was a whole, the subculture – it’s regarded as subculture. Last year I did an exhibition for the ICA gallery in The Mall. It was called Subculture Off-Site. It was celebrating the fact that these things had happened artistically, fashion-wise, music-wise and film-wise in the ’80s had a massive impact on what is happening now in the culture of today in design, film, music and art. It was an incredible exhibition.

We had vitrines, where I had the collection of books and artifacts from that period, and old flyers from Delirium. We showed a film of Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys live at Delirium that night, because we had it on film. Also, Neneh Cherry and looking after Run-DMC and driving them around London in Tessa from The Slits’ old Morris Minor car. It’s mad footage.

Gregor Muir, who is the director of the ICA said to me, “Noel, this is now archival art and basically you are an archival artist. You should think of this as that thing and we want to carry this forward. We want to do something with this.” That’s why I met the Test Pressing guys, because they were doing the Ibiza Q Exhibition with Too Many DJ’s. We were all at the opening party and they said, “Noel, would you like to be involved and do something and carry this through with us?” I thought, “Yeah, I would.”

That’s why, for next year, that’s what I’m working on and that’s what I’ve been doing this year in getting all of these things together, which we’re turning into another film exhibition, book, compilation albums, blah, blah, blah.

Todd Burns

What is it like to look back on this stuff? I imagine in some sense that, at the time, you probably felt like this is amazing, but did you know exactly how special it might be viewed nowadays?

Noel Watson

No, I didn’t, not at all. It’s quite amazing what’s happened. I’m so glad that I kept all of these artifacts I have. I’ve got Rick Rubin’s original little card. “Hey, here’s my card,” when I met him in New York with the Beastie Boys and stuff and hung out with them. I ended up DJing with the Beastie Boys at private parties in London and in New York. I’d written a column for i-D magazine at that point. I said, “I want to fly to New York and hang out. They can pay for this and I’ll do blah, blah, blah.” Yeah, cool. It was, sorry…

Todd Burns

No, it was just kind of…

Noel Watson

Yes, the thing that has now become… yeah, it’s scary in a way though as well, because you realize it’s 30 years old. It’s 30 years ago. Am I that old? Has this all happened, and where has the time gone? Wow. It is amazing but it’s really cool that it’s regarded in the vein that it is. The exhibition at the ICA, my vitrines were beside Tracy Emin’s vitrine and Gilbert & George and [Michael] Clark, the ballet dancer.

Just an incredible group of artists and people and to be regarded and asked to contribute and become an artist alongside people like that is amazing.

Todd Burns

One of the things that I find very fascinating in all of your talking about names, you’re saying The Slits and then the Beastie Boys and then Rip Rig & Panic, these are all very different sounds that all seems to cohere at that time. All of these people were mixing and talking to one another and creatively vibing off of one another. Was that your sense as well that it was just completely natural for these scenes to be interacting with one another?

Noel Watson

Yes, it was. I find it really natural and I think so did all the different people involved because the Beasties, when they came to London, we would go hang out at an old pub on Portobello Road, an old Irish pub. The Clash would hang out there too, Strummer and Mick Jones.

I took the Beastie Boys to meet the Clash actually. I took them to Mick Jones’s house and we all hung out together. Mick Jones was obsessed by the Beastie Boys and Def Jam. His band, BAD then released a single on Def Jam. Adam and the Beasties, they were really into punk rock remember. They had been originally a punk rock band.

They loved the Clash and they loved Madness. I took them to meet Suggs and Chrissy Boy and we’d all hang out together. They loved that London culture as well and that underground thing. Then basically black music at that point as well, the post-industrial stuff that was happening, just seemed it was changing sound-wise and evolving into hip hop and evolving into other different areas of black music. It felt really natural.

Todd Burns

It seems like house, specifically, was one of the dividing genres. I remember in an interview you did, you talked about the Beastie Boys. They were not very excited about house music in the slightest. Your audience that you talked about, where you were playing hip hop, they were like, “No, this is not…”

Noel Watson

Morris at that stage lived in New York. He knew the Beasties as well and the two Adams and Mike D, and basically, they were like, “Hey man, you guys are barking up the wrong tree with that music.” We were like, “Well, we’re DJ’s and we work in the club scene. No, there’s definitely something happening here.”

To me, the whole culture of house music was similar to the whole culture like punk rock in the ’70’s or the hippie movement in the ’60’s. It was a wave and a new form of youth culture and music. With it also came a new drug, new fashions, a new way of life. Anything that happens in that sort of sense has to be regarded as a major happening culture-wise.

Todd Burns

I know we’re jumping around a little bit, but you mentioned fashion again and I do want to ask you, how did you end up as a model again on the runway in New York?

Noel Watson

Just because Morris and I, we had long red hair at that stage, and we were kids and we knew people who knew Yuki and Peter who run Comme des Garçons in London. We were asked to come to a shoot and audition. We thought, “Yeah, why not? This could be fun.” Morris my brother actually ended up marrying a Japanese girl and working for Comme des Garçons full time in New York, in their flagship store.

They flew us to Paris, New York, Milan. It was really good fun and something different. You were meeting different people and it was just of a time when things were different. They’ve always had a different aesthetic as to their models and who wears their clothes. It’s a Japanese very haute-couture brand and still is.

It’s funny because in London at the moment, they own a building in Dover Street, called Dover Street Market. This is crazy because that’s where the ICA originally was based and started in the ’50s. Artists like Richard Hamilton and some of the early Andy Warhol and artists like that would come and exhibit there. Now that space is owned by Comme des Garcons, and they share Test Pressing and Idea books are based there as well.

It’s this whole new culture. It’s an amazing little set-up really. It’s really weird, because a lot of people don’t really know about it but it’s over six floors and it’s an incredible building. It’s steeped in artistic history. It’s just mad that all of this is still connected.

Todd Burns

Yeah, it seems like the fashion and music industries are quite connected in a way and you’re one of the few people who actually is bridging that gap in both senses.

Noel Watson

No, I mean there are a lot of people are involved and have bridged that gap. We were just lucky and were in the right place at the right time, and we knew the right people. It was just of the time. Fashion and music has always gone hand-in-hand. I mean I am obsessed still by the early ’70s and David Bowie and Low and that whole experimental scene of Brian Eno and Talking Heads. It’s just amazing.

I went to see Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads last year in London at the 100 Club. Afterwards, I said to Flora, my girl, I said, “Look, I really want to meet her and speak to her. This is important.” We ended up… she came out suddenly and I just approached her and said hello and spoke to her. She was really friendly. She knew some people that I had known back in New York. Then she completely opened up and we spent the whole night together and hung out.

We were talking about this whole culture and scene and David Byrne and Brian Eno and Talking Heads and just the whole way it had changed everyone’s lives and also how fashionable it was as well. Fashion has always been a major part of music culture and vice versa. One doesn’t really exist without the other, to be honest.

Todd Burns

What did you get up to in the ’90s? We talked so much about the ’80s, I’m wondering where you went after I guess the way that I understand it, Delirium at Heaven got taken over by another DJ basically?

Noel Watson

Yes. We finished on the Thursday nights, Robin and I, after about a year and a half. Then we took it to Camden Palace. Paul Oakenfold at that stage then, he took our night over and he called it Spectrum, or Land of Oz. Then he would do a Monday night and a Thursday night. I was a little bit vexed at this point because I just thought, “Man you’ve just taken our crowd and stolen our ideas.” But he hadn’t.

He had done it entirely off his own back. He turned the whole place around. He pushed the whole acid, ecstasy culture through his night Spectrum and Land of Oz. I toured with Paul and DJ’d for Land of Oz with Nancy Noise and Paul. He was a lovely guy Paul. He was an old friend. What he did there was incredible. Then that culture just exploded and took off. It was amazing, and it was logical that somebody would come in and do that night.

We struggled at the Camden Palace, Robin and I, even though we put on some amazing events, brought over DJ Mark The 45 King for the first time to London. We hosted a big event with MTV and brought Derrick May back over to DJ, The Orb, Andy Weatherall. It was really amazing as well. There were some fantastic nights. It was a huge club – and it’s Coco now – in London. To hold a Thursday night event there, just me and another guy running it, was very stressful. There was a lot of money and a lot of work involved.

We just gradually, Robin had decided that he wanted to leave London. He moved and left as well and moved to Paris. I was on my own. At that stage, I just thought, “I’m now working in Black Market Records during the day, DJing at Black Market, playing music there all day six days a week. I need a break from this as well.” Then, basically, I got asked to play every club all over the world. I traveled to Italy, Spain, Germany a lot and France. I guest DJed basically.

Todd Burns

Are you still playing? Like tonight you’re playing here in Belfast. What can we expect to hear? Are we going to hear classics or is it stuff that’s coming out now?

Noel Watson

It will be a little mixture of both but, to be honest, I’ve been given a lot of new tracks by producers like Richard Seaborne, who did a track recently that Todd Terje had charted and stuff like that. He sends me unreleased material that he’s working on. Some of it’s awesome. I’m going to play that.

Also, I edit things up on Logic and then put acapellas in, and I program my own beats and play keyboards and things like that on top of it. I’ll be mixing bits and pieces like that in and out. I love still embracing the new music. There’s so many brilliant producers out there at the moment.

House music is having a really amazing creative time again, a rebirth. It’s actually I’ve fallen back in love with house music and that whole culture after leaving Belfast again and moving back to London. There will be a lot of new music, and some old music interspersed in between.

Todd Burns

Cool. I wanted to open it up to questions, if you don’t mind, from the audience.

Noel Watson

No worries.

Todd Burns

Does anyone have anything they’d like to ask of Noel?

Noel Watson

We’ll take that as a no, yeah?

Todd Burns

There’s one right there.

Audience member

[Inaudible]

Noel Watson

Yeah, I did. I came back, and I played at the Art College for David Holmes. I did two Sugar Sweet gigs and they were amazing, really, really incredible. That was the first time I realized Northern Ireland and Belfast has totally changed. I actually started feeling really comfortable coming back home and coming here. I could see the whole change in everyone’s attitude and the way people were coming together, and the part ecstasy and the drug culture was playing in that as well.

I thought, “Wow, this is amazing.” What David was doing and how that all progressed and the DJ’s that were coming in and playing from Boys Own, Andy Weatherall and Terry Farley and people like that, it was amazing. I thought this is incredible that Belfast has changed and is coming up and through this. So yeah, I did. I came back to live here in the mid-’90s just for a couple of years to look after my mom, and also to get out of London for a little bit.

Then when I was here, I got involved in some of the local festivals, the Corridor Arts Festival etc, and Out to Lunch and would help bring over bands or DJ’s. I loved it and it was a great little period as well. It was nice to see… I DJed with The Fall and Dan le Sac and the Public Enemy guys here in Belfast, and had brilliant nights. It’s amazing how it’s all come full circle and how it’s evolved. Really good.

Todd Burns

Are there any other questions?

Audience member

[Inaudible]

Noel Watson

Yeah. You have to love your art and you have to study your art. You have to become good at what you’re doing, otherwise you get found out as a fraud because, sooner or later, you’re going to be asked to do something with other people who are really professional and who are dedicated to what they’re doing. You’ll get seen as a fraud. All I can really do is music. Even at times in my life when I wanted to do other things, it seems that I always come back to music.

Because of doing this work with Test Pressing, I’ve got two more big mixes to come out, interviews and, as I say, lots of other thing. Morris and I practiced and really studied our art. You were just asking me about what I did in the ’90s. In the ’90s, I set up a recording studio and I released a lot of independent 12" singles. I had my own label, Join Hands.

Then I got a deal with Warner Brothers and signed a five-album deal with Sonja Sohn, who was my partner at the time, who was a spoken word artist from Brooklyn, New York. Then Sonja got her role in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead, and then she went on to become Keema, the detective in HBO’s The Wire. She wanted to leave the music business. Warner Brothers changed tack, and we lost the deal, but I didn’t really mind at that time. It was cool working for a major record company was really hard work and stressful. It was great.

That’s why I managed to build a recording studio. They paid for everything and I had some great times doing that with Sonja. We shot two videos in Paris with Daft Punk’s directors and stuff. It was great fun. I learned how to engineer and program as well and how to use Neve desks and SSL, and go into the studio, I could use samplers and I could do things with samplers that it didn’t tell you about in the manuals. You just discover yourself, by different combinations of buttons etc.

I immersed myself into production and doing my music even then as a different… because the gigs were stopping to come as regular as what they had been because I was getting older. New DJ’s were coming through. You’re not in fashion anymore. Things change, and I just thought what I wanted to do anyway from day one is produce music and at least try. Even if I’m not successful at it, at least try and do what I’ve always loved doing.

The fact that we got the five-album deal with Warner Brothers and I released about 17 records, I’m happy with that, and I met a lot of really new people as well through that scene. It was cool. It was cool.

Todd Burns

You said just now that you always wanted to produce, maybe more than you wanted to DJ even at the beginning?

Noel Watson

Oh no, not at the beginning. At the beginning, when I started DJing, I fell into DJing, as I say, Morris and I, really purely by accident. Then when I got the bug, I lived for DJing. I was obsessed, and my brother was very obsessed. Morris would practice eight hours a day on the turntables and he would program and do different things. He was obsessed. He had double copies of every record. Obviously living in New York, he was able to buy them cheaper and get the classics. I’ve still got some of his collection. It’s all promo 12" material from the ’70’s. He ended up, my brother, actually playing with Larry Levan at a club in New York. The two of them would get very high and wasted, and he would phone me at like 6 AM and go, “Larry can’t see the labels. Don’t ever take ketamine because there’s a guy talking to the wall.” I’m like, “Morris look, it’s 6 AM. I’m sleeping, man.”

When he would come home to London sometimes to see me or whatever, he wouldn’t sleep. He would be up all night. He would be DJing and mixing, and then he went off on a tangent but obsessed. Obsessed, totally.

Todd Burns

Are there any other questions? Yup.

Audience member

[Inaudible]

Noel Watson

I don’t know where I got the energy from. I just, as a boy, I remember being about eight years old or nine years old and hearing The Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” and asking my mom if it was OK if I couldn’t go to school and just for an extra 10 minutes so I can hear the outro of this record. It touched me in this way, and this funny thing went through me. I thought, “My God.” Then I would go out and buy little 7" singles on my way home from school.

My mom bought me a little Dansette turntable with a little arm on it, and I would pretend to be a DJ. I would have my own little top ten and I used to torture my poor mom, because she’d be standing in the kitchen and I’d play my No 1 record ten times over because it was No 1 that day or whatever. I just became obsessed with music when I was young.

I would travel to London a lot as I say and then I would go and see bands like Cabaret Voltaire or the Pop Group and the Slits. Then I was meeting these people. They were inspiring me to do better, to work harder, to do something because this is an opportunity you can’t waste. These opportunities only come along once in your life, so if you’ve got something like that happening to you, grab it by the hands and do it.

The scene that was created by them, I wanted to be with those people. They seemed to get in everywhere for free. They seemed to have all the coolest friends. They seemed to be invited all over the world, and they were making money, and they loved what they were doing. I wanted that. I didn’t know anything else.

We were very lucky, my brother and I. We were blessed and to meet the people we met… it was a fantastic opportunity. It’s still happening. For example, Gregor Muir, who is the director of the ICA is an old friend of mine that I met through the music scene and who really loved my brother. It’s quite incredible.

I bumped into Rifat Osbek actually just yesterday, the fashion designer. He didn’t remember me. I said, “Rifat,” and he went, “Yeah.” I said, “Do you remember me?” He said, “You’re the boy from Black Market that used to sell me my records, all those records, Raze ‘Break 4 Love.’” I said, “Yeah.” We were talking, chatting. He had a new shop open in Notting Hill and he was standing outside it having a smoke. We were just reminiscing about those days and Black Market records.

The Pet Shop Boys would come in and then I would deal up the Pet Shop Boys with all their music. I’d give Chris. I’d say, “Chris you need this 12", this house track.” They would spend £500, £600 each session on music. It’s just kind of mad you know. Then all the DJ’s would come in.

DJ Harvey used to come in and I used to play with Harvey a lot in London on a Sunday night at a Club called Solaris. It was cutting edge underground club. Harvey used to come in in the mornings and me and him would have breakfast together, coffee and a sandwich, and just talk about music and beats and torture each other before he went off to LA and became this superstar kind of like enigma that he is, which is amazing because he’s an amazing guy.

Todd Burns

Was he always a character?

Noel Watson

Yeah. Harvey was always a little bit left of field and always mad. He used to come in with his duffle coat on, him and Choci. They always wore duffle coats and baggy jeans. They were hippies. They were into rock as well. They had the Tonka soundsystem.

Last year, actually, I did the Secret Garden Party and the Wilderness Festival with the Tonka soundsystem guys. Choci and Harvey came to one of them. Justin Robertson played and we did Glastonbury and we did all these different festivals. Yeah, it was amazing.

Todd Burns

Hopefully that kind of answered your question.

Noel Watson

Was that okay?

Audience member

[Inaudible]

Noel Watson

I nearly got there, yeah. The people that I met along the way kept inspiring me. Your Neneh Cherry’s your Bruce Smith from the Pop Group and Mark Stewart, Sean Oliver from Rip Rig & Panic, Malcolm McLaren, Tom Binns, Comme des Garçons people and staff. They just all continually inspired you to reach a higher level. All the DJ’s that I met as well through the scene.

It’s just important to stay aware of what you’re doing when you’re doing something artistic and creative and not let yourself get waylaid by the other side of it, which can take you to different places and you’ll meet different people who are not so creative and will latch onto you and create havoc for you in your life as well.

There is a long of hangers-on and there’s a lot of people who pretend to be something and that they’re not. There’s even people on the scene now who pretend that they did this and they did that. I know they didn’t because I was there and I was doing it. It’s cool. It’s cool.

Audience member

[Inaudible]

Noel Watson

Yeah, yeah, cool. That’s really amazing. That’s good. That’s cool. It’s nice to know that people are aware of it. Sometimes I think nobody gives a monkey’s any more and nobody even took any notice of this. It’s nice to know that some people cared like yourself and you’re here today. So, thank you. That’s really nice. I really appreciate that so thank you.

Todd Burns

Thank you, Noel for being here.

Noel Watson

Thank you everyone.

Todd Burns

I really appreciate it.

[Applause]