Andrew Weatherall

Form Two Lone Swordsmen, and end the decade by creating electro clash through a compilation LP, all while sporting tattoos, brothel creepers, and leather trousers.

I'm Miranda Sawyer, and this week on Talk 90s, I am delighted to be talking the late, great Andrew Weatherall with Jono Burgess and Jim Butler from the amazing publication, Disco Pogo, who recently published a fantastic tribute to Weatherall that was so brilliant and so popular it smashed into the Sunday Times top 10 bestseller list, which we will cheer.

Hooray.

Hooray.

But Weatherall, crucially, is an indie kid.

Um, I think Terry Farley says, "We read Blues & Soul.

He reads NME." So but yeah, we first hear of Andrew Weatherall not as his name but as The Outsider, uh, which is a brilliant pseudonym because he, he's like an outsider all his life after that, really.

But he, he calls himself The Outsider in Boy's Own, and, um, he writes-

we're back voices radio aki tell us a bit more about this track

well it was a massive track it just happened naturally lots of people started going mental about it it was it was getting played in all the underground clubs uh you know we we were kind of like overtaken by how much people loved it then we were talking to great remixes at the time people like andy weatherall Rest in peace.

Yep, rest in peace.

And he said, it doesn't need a remix.

night, don't you want to treat it right? Over by the boulevard Someone gave me his card and said

gonna have to let this one roll the magnificent Andrew Weatherall remix of Saint Etienne's Only Love Could Break Your Heart gotta send out a YouTube channel couple of times recently we even very briefly played back-to-back last night hope you got home okay my brother you were crashing.

The DJ eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders, Cease!

That boy needs therapy.

from one to the other and there's no interruptions and no, you know, but it felt very different then because you could do something and DJs might look at it and go, oh, well, okay, I can't.

Say, for instance, SoundSource take me up It was, I think, Andy Weatherall.

I did like an intro to it, this big kind of hands in the air sort of moment, and the beats came in.

And he didn't use any of the rest of the record.

like the hacienda

like the hacienda so obviously because it was kind of near we were like a little almost satellite city away from manchester and there was a kind of cool cool people in chester then and we all had a little sort of scene and um yeah so that's how that's how i started going and i was i was working in this shop called cafe society which sold um 501s and vintage stuff like leather jackets and stuff and we had like tapes sasha tapes graham park tapes andy weatherall tapes you know under the under the council because everybody that were you know and also you'd see someone because there was no social media if someone had kickers or travel fox trainers you'd be like you

know what scene they're into

D'Anda or Lakey Podrant Park or something like that.

Well, it's made in Uxbridge, basically, this tune.

And Andrew Weatherall got hold of it.

And he played it, and apparently it was the last tune of a Boys' Own Weekender, East Grinstead Weekender.

It was Andrew Wetherill's last tune and the very last tune of the Boys' Own East Grinstead Weekender.

I was like, oh, amazing.

And back in them days, I didn't really used to go out.

I used to just... sit in my bedroom playing with my machines as a matter of fact this is how embarrassing is this so basically i uh for my 21st birthday i just sat in my studio feeding the manual for a 909 drum machine of how to use it and then just sat there kind of doing that and that was my 21st birthday but anyway so andrew weatherall got hold of this mix and then this bootleg and by that time I'd already started doing music I had my own little studio I'd already started doing music I was working with Dean Thatcher and we were putting I was in the aloof and we started doing you know little bootlegs that became actual tunes in the end one of them was called Never Get Out of the Boat that Pete Tong signed to FFRR and so I was starting to make inroads in music and then One of the things about working with Dean Thatcher was, and the aloof, was the fact that Dean was the resident club called Flying, which was in just sort of a solo theatre club, which was just underneath the Astoria, around the back of the Astoria.

So I started going to that.

I

mean, eventually, Andy Weatherall lived next door with Lizzie, bless his soul, and then Makita Oliver was on the other side.

It was covered in people, like, that area, eventually.

It was, yeah.

You know, and if they feel part of the gang, in a good way, not a gang in a bad way, a music gang, if they feel part of something, they kind of stay with you.

And the magazine was... fun and it was supposed to be fun it wasn't supposed to be taken too seriously i mean and andrew when the magazine finished it really finished because he said i'm like 27 now i can't be telling 18 year olds what to wear and what to listen to

this would be andrew wetherall i take it just in case any listeners are confused

yeah yeah I spoke to some younger kids who used to come to boys' home parties who were really into it and really kind of switched on.

And I said, look, if you want to just run with this, we're all going to just step back and leave you to it.