ISSUE-22

FROM THE ARCHIVES
You did some of your most famous work in New York,
but you’re originally from Boston. How did you get into
DJing? To get free records, really. Back then DJs didn’t get paid
much of anything. I started DJing in ’73… And in ’73, obviously,
it was just singles. So we discovered that if you got two copies of
the same single, you could extend it by playing a bit of one and
a bit of another. I’d do parties. I actually went down to Brooklyn
and bought a GLI, which was the company that made the first
mixer. So I got one of those and I had a few turntables, and just
started DJing at college.
You went to Hampshire College, which is in Western
Massachusetts, so it was a little bit easier to get to New
York… Yeah, most of my friends at college were from New York,
so we used to go on the weekends. It was like a two-hour [trip].
We’d go to Downstairs Records, which was probably the first
dance-music shop anywhere, I would guess. So we’d go there
and get records and then we’d go to record companies and I’d
say, “Oh, I’m a big DJ in Amherst,” and they wouldn’t know the
fucking difference. So they’d give me all their records.
You did some writing as well, right? At the time, you were
writing for Dance Music Report? I was writing reviews—
again, to get free records. I was working for Tom [Silverman]
and he decided to do a label, which he called Tommy Boy. I was
the only producer he actually knew personally, so he said, “Do
you wanna go in and do a record for me?” And I said, “Yeah,
sure. You’re paying, I’m playing.”
At this stage, your roots were in soul and disco and you
were working on club records. Tom asked you to do a hiphop
record. Set the scene a little bit. Basically, back then
there was no hip-hop; it didn’t exist. But really, the roots of
hip-hop were club music and disco. Kool Herc was playing
breaks, but the breaks were from disco records or any kind of
records. There was no line between what was club music and
what rappers were rapping over. So Tom had this guy Afrika
Bambaataa who had, like, three groups: Cosmic Force, Jazzy
5, and Soulsonic Force. The Jazzy 5 were the most together at
the time. I went in with the band and Bambaataa came in and
we had all of these records, and [we asked], “Which one do you
want to rap over?” Back then you would try to take a current
record that was hitting the charts and do a rap over it. At the
time there were two that we were thinking of: “Genius of Love”
by Tom Tom Club and “Funky Sensation” by Gwen McCrae. I
figured that someone else was going to do “Genius of Love,” so
we picked “Funky Sensation” and called it “Jazzy Sensation.”
And that sold like 50,000 records.
Talk about Bambaataa’s follow-up. Well “Jazzy Sensation”
was successful and we decided we’d go in again. Tom said Soulsonic
Force was next up. I had been listening to a lot of Kraft-
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Q&A
ARTHuR bAKER
A producer helps define the sound of 1980s New York.
PHOTO MAY TRUONG
werk. There was a record shop in Brooklyn, where I lived then,
called Music Factory. There were these two brothers, Donnie
and Dwight, and I used to go down there on Saturday, hang
with them, and just see what was selling. It was a really great
time, the early ’80s—things were really starting to happen in
New York. A lot of good records were being cut in New York and
a lot of good labels were happening, like Prelude. They played
me “Numbers,” which was a Kraftwerk record. I just thought the
beat was ridiculous.
At that time, I was working at Carden Distributors, a onestop
in Long Island. I was making records that sold 40,000
copies and I was sweeping the floor at a one-stop. We’d have
our lunch break, and it was right near the projects. You’d sit
there and you’d always hear [Kraftwerk’s] “Trans-Europe Express,”
the handclaps, the melody. It was really surreal sitting
in the housing projects and hearing that reverberating off the
buildings. It just was very bizarre. But I thought that the beat
on that was too slow. Bam decided that he was into this record
“Super Sporm” by Captain Sky, the break. So we went in the
studio with these ideas and decided we needed a drum machine
because we were trying to emulate the electronic drum sound
of Kraftwerk. So we listened to different drum machines and
heard the 808 and said, “That’s it.” No one had an 808 then.
This is a true story—we looked in the Village Voice and we saw,
“Man with drum machine, $20 a session.” So we called him up
and he said, “Come on in,” and we went into a studio called
Intergalactic Studio.
Appropriate name. Well, yeah, and the Beastie Boys later
made it famous. The programmer of the drum machine had
no idea what the fuck we were doing. We played him Kraftwerk
and showed him what to program. It was through a Neve,
which is an amazing board. It took us like eight hours. I took
the thing home—I was living in Brooklyn—and I put it on and
said to my wife at the time, “We’ve made musical history.”
There was no rap [on it], it wasn’t finished, but just listening
back I knew. When we went in the studio I wanted to make a
record that was going to be uptown and downtown, a record
that people into Talking Heads would play and that people into
Sugarhill Gang would play. We wanted to sort of merge them.
And that had a lot to do with Bam, because he was open to
that. Because, you know, Kool Herc was playing uptown but
you wouldn’t see him playing downtown at Danceteria. So Bam
definitely crossed the boundaries.
What music was being played in clubs in New York at the
time? New York at the time, from ’81 to ’84, was definitely the
heyday of clubs like the Paradise Garage, the Funhouse, Better
Days, Danceteria—those were probably the main ones. These
were not small clubs—they were like 2,000 capacity, and were
just all kicking off at once. Looking back, the best clubs for me
were the Paradise Garage and the Funhouse. Those DJs would
play anything. Larry [Levan] was playing the Clash; he was really
open to anything that would get people dancing. Jellybean,
at Funhouse, used to play a record [called] “Slang Teacher,” by
some band from England, an indie sort of weird record. He’d
play Cat Stevens’ “Was Dog a Doughnut,” anything that would
work. Along with that, guys like Bambaataa and Jazzy Jay were
open to playing Aerosmith, they were playing all kinds of stuff.
So it was really an amazing time, because you could try things
and then bring the tape down to the Funhouse and Jellybean
might throw it on. Once you had the rep, you could have your
stuff played pretty instantaneously. Danceteria was an amazing
club—Madonna came out of Danceteria because Mark Kamins,
who discovered her, DJed there. She was at the clubs every night;
she was just a club kid, really. That’s where it all came from at
that point: the clubs. In the early ’80s, you could go to five or six
places and there’d be thousands of people dancing to great stuff.
You mentioned playing bands from England. There was a
little band from England you did some work with as well.
New Order got in touch with me after “Walkin’ on Sunshine” and
“Planet Rock.” A friend of mine, a guy by the name of Michael
Shamberg, worked for Factory [Records]—the label that they
were on—and he thought we should work together. Ian Curtis
had died six months earlier and they were putting together the
new band. So when New Order came in, it’s funny… We went to
this studio in Brooklyn. This guy Fred Zarr, the keyboard player
who worked on all the Madonna stuff, had a little studio way out
in Brooklyn, Kings Highway. It’s sort of like the Jewish ghetto
thing happening there. There was a temple next door and we’d
bring New Order there and they didn’t know what to make of it.
Their whole reputation was being really dour and moody; they
never smiled. So we tried to write songs together and it wasn’t
really working. They were sort of intimidating [to] me—there
were four of them—and I was really intimidating them, which I
didn’t know at the time. So nothing got done for a while. Then
we went in the studio and the clock was ticking, so we started
writing. From that session we came up with “Confusion,” but
also “Thieves Like Us.” And then they flew off and took the tape
for “Thieves Like Us,” and I figured I’d never hear about that one
again. Then one day about two years later, after “Confusion” had
already come out, I’m going into a club and I hear this beat. I’m
like, “Damn, that sounds like one of my beats!” I finally climb
up the stairs and I look and it’s “Thieves Like Us.” So basically,
they’d finished it up and put it out. But I got my credit and everything.
I just hadn’t really ever expected it to be seen again. I
thought they were going to be some sort of really flash, polished
English band. And they thought I was a flash, polished American
producer. So we were both wrong.
Interviewed by Jeff ‘Chairman’ Mao at Red Bull
Music Academy Toronto 2007. For the full Q&A, head to
redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures.
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