Music
5 essential lessons from Andrew Weatherall
The late Andrew Weatherall was one of electronic music's most revered selectors. Here, we revisit the indispensable advice he had to share in a 2011 Red Bull Music Academy lecture.
For more than 30 years, Weatherall had been one of electronic music’s most respected selectors. He first came to prominence during the London acid house scene of the late ‘80s and, over the decades that followed, founded numerous record labels, produced Primal Scream’s seminal record Screamadelica and formed part of groups like The Sabres Of Paradise and Two Lone Swordsmen.
He was also a principled artist who always put music first. Erol Alkan, who once name Weatherall the greatest DJ of all time, said he never had any interest in being a “popstar DJ”.
“I think one of the greatest things about him is his bloody mindedness, how he sticks to his guns and never really sold out at a time when he could have, and done a lot of things for the sake of financial gain.” And as a producer, Alkan says, “he set the blueprint for what many of us are still trying to do”.
In 2011, Andrew Weatherall sat down with Red Bull Music Academy for a 90-minute conversation about his life and work. Throughout the interview, Weatherall dispensed priceless pieces of advice on everything from remixing to rule-breaking and the danger of bringing careerism into art.
Here, we’ve collected some of those lessons from one of music’s true greats. Vale.
Wax is always better
Weatherall was always a staunch advocate for vinyl. “If I walk into a club, I know immediately if a DJ is using Serato and playing MP3s, because to my ears the sound is a little bit harsh in the upper-midrange area,” he said.
“They try to compensate. You get to the mixer and all the EQs are up, they’re trying to put back in the frequencies that have been taken out. And it never works and the sound engineer is scratching his head, 'Oh, the soundsystem doesn’t usually sound like this.' Go and have a look at what software they’re using, go and have a look at the mixer and that will kind of explain everything.
“I’m not totally anti [mp3s], they’re quite useful to listen to stuff, but I’ll then, if possible, go and hunt the vinyl out.”
If your remix sounds shit, make it analogue
When remixing, Weatherall used computers for sequencing and drums. The rest he preferred to do as analogue as possible.
“There’s a certain sound I like you can only get using old tape echoes and guitar amps,” he said. “Our way of doing that for the last 10 years or so is to put it through some valves or a reel-to-reel, just take it out of the computer, even if you’re going back in again, just give it some air.
“If you’re recording something, even if it’s just one element, if it’s a synth, put it through an amp, record it with a mic, so you’ll get the room as well. It may not seem like you’re doing a lot, but the end result...
“I always get kids coming up to me and saying, 'I’ve done a track, but it just doesn’t sound right.' And that’s always my answer to them. Take it out of the computer, buy an old reel-to-reel, run it through that. Buy something old with valves, even if it doesn’t work, but the valves are still operating. And then put it back into the computer. That’s why it sounds like it does. Our studio is a world of echo.”
fabric's Judy Griffith with Andrew Weatherall
© Fabric
Break the rules where you can
Weatherall believed one of the best things you can bring to the studio is an open mind.
“When Orson Welles was asked, ‘How did you make Citizen Kane’ – not that I’m likening myself to the great man – ‘when you were 23?’ He said it was the confidence of ignorance. He didn’t really know what the rules were. That’s what it was like going into the studio at 24, 25. It was daunting, but I didn’t know what the rules were and I used that ignorance to my advantage.
“I’d say, ‘Can we do this?’ They say no. I said, ‘Let’s do it then.’ It was that gung-ho and I didn’t know I was breaking the rules because I didn’t know what the rules were. As you get on and know more about how the studio works, how the machines work, sometimes you lose that bit of confidence.
“The more you educate yourself, the more you realise how uneducated you are.”
Money should never factor into artistic decisions
“If you’re involved in art in any way and you describe what you do as a job, people think you’re somehow demeaning it,” Weatherall told the Red Bull Music Academy audience in 2011.
“They think that somehow art lives in this ethereal world without much basis in actually working. But it always has been a job to me. It’s a great job but I treat it like a job. It’s why I don’t have my studio in my house, it’s because I like to think I’m going to work. I get up in the morning and I go somewhere to work.
But there’s a big difference between that and a career, I’ve never thought of it as a career. I’ve never had a career plan where I’ve thought, ‘In five years’ time I must be at this point on the ladder.’
“Careerism in art in general, not just in music, is a dangerous thing. If your plan isn’t working you can start cutting corners and you may make artistic decisions based on money or where you should be on the career ladder.”
“Careerism in art in general, not just in music, is a dangerous thing."
Genres aren’t worth getting hung up on
In his sets, Weatherall played everything from techno to rockabilly -- which was how he liked it.
“Music from an early age was always an escape route to me. You don’t limit your escape routes, you want to try and absorb everything. Obviously, I knew that’s a dub record and that’s a punk record, but I’ve always been of the opinion that you never limit your escape routes.
“I’m aware of genres but from the age of 12 or 13 I didn’t want to limit my escape routes so I embraced pretty much everything.”
Read the full transcript of Andrew Weatherall's Red Bull Music Academy interview here.