Pete Tong: Essential club DJ

Having just returned to London from a weekend in Ibiza, Tong is currently staring down the barrel of another hectic summer. After launching his own successful Friday night at the Spanish isle’s premier club, Pacha, in 2003, Tong reports that he’s made the wise choice to resume the residency again in 2004, “I’m back at Pacha every Friday for my night ‘Pure Pacha’, which started last year. It’s been an amazing success, one of the best things I’ve ever done, so we’re doing it again this year. It starts in June and runs until October.” Interestingly, Tong’s night at Pacha is his first weekly residency since the early 90s, having focused on international gigs up until now, “I never really anticipated going back into a residency, I was just so busy traveling and what not. I hadn’t really been in a residency since 1990/91, but I just felt now was the right time to go back to it. There’s a very unusual mix, your usual club crowd and then the VIPs as well. It’s a little bit Studio 54 and a little bit acid house, all in the same room!”

Tong set up his own dance label, FFRR, in the late 80s as a subsidiary of London Records. While working on the label he looked after artists such as Salt n Pepa, The Cookie Crew, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley, L’il Louis and D Mob, making FFRR into most respected dance labels of its time. With London Records sold to Warner Brothers in 1999, Tong saw it as his opportunity to bow out of the record business, “Working for a major corporation just didn’t have the same pizzazz or excitement that the previous 15 years had. They were more pioneering times, no disrespect to Warners, but the business was just fresher early on. It’s not as much fun now, and that’s not the fault of any one individual, it’s just the way the market has gone. I think a new era is about to come, people enjoy music more than ever, but it’s just getting them to buy it that’s the problem! A&R when I started was like a personal vision that you lived and died for, but towards the end it had taken a much more corporate focus.”

Known throughout the UK, and since the advent of the Internet the world, for his weekly ‘Essential Selection’ show on BBC Radio 1, Tong’s established skills as a tastemaker are second to none. Tong’s ability to choose a song weeks, or even months, before it’s picked up by the general public sometimes bordering on supernatural, “I don’t really think, ‘god, am I going to make a mistake and this track not be popular?’ It’s just an instinct thing. One thing that I’ve been really lucky about is that my taste, more often than not, tends to be a taste that is populist, meaning I can spot things that other people are going to like. I always say to people ‘I don’t make bad records into good records, I identify the good ones and speed up the process’.” Interestingly, despite his radio work, Tong still prefers to see himself as a club DJ primarily, “I get up in the morning and first and foremost DJing has always been my thing. A club DJ first, and then I followed my instincts from there. Radio was something I did because to be a big DJ when I started you had to be on the radio. Obviously you don’t have to now, but I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Having spent a major part of my career running a record company, the business just isn’t the sexy job it used to be in the 80s when I first got into it.”

Another feather in Tong’s abnormally large cap came in 1995, when he and Boy George mixed the first ever Ministry of Sound compilation, the first – and highest selling – mix album of all time. In the years since, apart from continuing to release his own mixes, Tong has seen the market flooded with hordes of copycat compilations, “It’s still a good art form, but I think there’s too many of them and the audience, in general, are confused. A mix compilation, to me, more than anything is like a souvenir program that goes with your DJing. It should be a personal thing. In the mid 90s it was a gold mine, a good way to make money and express yourself. We sold 800,000 double albums in 1995, and I don’t think those numbers for a mix CD have been seen since, or will ever be seen again. A few years after that you’d be lucky to do 200,000, nowadays it’s more like 20 or 30 thousand. So now, when I do a compilation, I want to make sure it artistically represents what I do, and that’s served me well over the last few years.”

Tong’s responsibilities as an ambassador for the global Heineken Thirst tour are about to head into overdrive. With Paul Oakenfold having taken the reigns in 2003, for 2004 Heineken approached both Tong and DJ Mag World Number 1 Tiesto to act as spokespeople, “Last year was Oakey’s year. He invited me to do the South American leg with him, and I enjoyed it a lot, and they seemed to enjoy me. He couldn’t commit the time this year as he has to finish his album, so Heineken approached Tiesto and I about being the spokespeople. We’re both busy, so we’re sharing the workload. I’ve done Ireland, South Africa, and Italy. Tiesto’s done the bulk of the touring, South America, Central America, and South East Asia.” Tong’s views on the global tour are, justifiably, positive, “It’s a combination of trying to run a party that, otherwise, might not have been able to happen, so Heineken are viewed to be putting something back into the scene. It’s a little bit different to an average tour that either of us would do, better value for money. And then there’s the serious side of it, which is the DJ competition to promote new talent and the art of DJing. We’re finding that a lot of the DJs who are entering are not novices, they tend to be up-and-coming DJs, and the competition has helped them get residencies in their city, or bookings in other countries, and some of them even have record deals.”

You can catch Tiesto judging and appearing at the following venues for Heineken Thirst:

Fri Apr 30, Room680 – Melbourne – National Found @ Thirst Final
Sat May 1, Home – Sydney – Heineken Thirst Main Event
Sun May 2, Family – Brisbane – Heineken Thirst Main Event (BUY TICKETS)

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