Speaking from Sydney, Australia, the house DJ and Shoom founder Danny Rampling talks to Louise Gray about his long and profound friendship with DJ, producer and musician Andrew Weatherall, whose untimely death was announced on 17 February 2020. Weatherall’s legacy, Rampling says, is up there with Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan

Danny Rampling: It’s heartbreaking, this passing of Andrew, it’s been a heartbreaking week, every day for the past week… It’s surreal, it’s unbelievable what’s happened. I first met Andrew in 1988. He came along to Shoom at the [South London] Fitness Centre with Cymon Eckel and may have been with Terry Farley, though I think that it was either Cymon or Terry who introduced me to Andrew. Just briefly. And then a short while after he was playing at a party in this – I don’t know what it was – it was in Chapel Street in Islington, it was a guy called Bobby Collins, he was an actor at the time...

Louise Gray: He was the rollerskate bloke.

That’s right. He was in Cats or something. [Actually Starlight Express.] Good memory! Anyway, this crazy party took place on the Sunday night [Shoom ran on Saturday nights from approximately 10pm–6am] and somebody said to me, ‘You’ve got to hear Andrew play.’ And then, as the sun was breaking through – downstairs there was a workshop-type place, it was a small club basically, it looked like that, at that time – the light was just streaming in through the windows and Andrew came out and started playing. I was just blown away by the music, all the different sounds that Andrew was playing, really eclectic. The one that really stood out was Chris & Cosey’s “October (Love Song)” [1983]. I’d never heard that track before. It was a real moment. This whole thing had been going on all night and Andrew, for breakfast, served up this. That was the same morning, I asked Andrew to come to play Shoom. A lot happened that morning, but [that] Chris & Cosey [track]: you can really hear the influences – apart from Throbbing Gristle, whom Andrew loved – you can really hear those influences throughout the production history of Andrew’s music. I treasure that song. It’s a wonderful electronic industrial song. It still sounds good in the present. He gave me a copy of it. I’ve still got it at home. That is the record for me that epitomises Andrew and which will remind me of Andrew eternally.

Did he play it at Shoom when he came?

Yes, he did, yeah. It was an Andrew favourite. And then I started playing it at Shoom. I gave him the credit, that this is an Andrew record, which it was. He brought Genesis P-Orridge down to Shoom. He loved Throbbing Gristle; I don’t know if you remember…

It’s funny. One of my memories of the Fitness Centre [in 1988] is of being in the middle of the crowd, dancing, God knows what time in the morning it was, and there was all that strawberry smoke that you used to use –

Yes. [Laughs]

– and the smoke parted for a moment and there, suddenly, standing in front of me, was Genesis P-Orridge and his partner… Genesis in all his Genesis-ness and the rest of Shoom going on around me… It was a startling vision.

You had to think twice. You had to think, am I really seeing this? I remember meeting him. Andrew introduced me to him. He’s a very extraordinary, very unusual character. He came a couple of times, actually. I remember the first time Andrew introduced me, Genesis had these, um, tights, I think they were white tights, and these very – which century? – shoes. He was just complete wacky, an extraordinary character, and one of Andrew’s influences. Andrew was pretty obsessive about certain people, record labels and chapters in time or history. He was very knowledgeable, an oracle of knowledge. He acquired all this knowledge about music and art and fashion and history… the conversations we used to have were so inspiring. I learned so much from him. I didn’t know much about Timothy Leary and William Burroughs as a young 20 year old guy. Andrew had this vast knowledge that he’d share. He compared Shoom and the Shoomers to the Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey – that was Andrew’s viewpoint on the early Shoom days. He came along and totally embraced it and loved the spirit of acid house.

We used to have these conversations that would go on for hours. Banter and laughter and role-playing. It’d often turn into sketches out of Monty Python. It was hilarious at times – Andrew’s wit and his dry humour were exceptional. He’d bring out the best in you, he really brought out the best in people. He’d bring out your comical side. We used to have some brilliant times. We used to go to Pete Heller’s house and have chill-outs on Sundays after Shoom. It was a really special time.

I think in the summer of 88 or 89, Andrew, I think, came up with the name South London Sports & Social Club, which was a maisonette in Battersea that a guy called Nick Price lived in. Nick was this pretty wacky character from Battersea and – bless him, he passed away a few years ago – but we used to gather there. I introduced Andrew to Chris Abbot who went on to Creation Records [as A&R man; this introduction led to Weatherall’s ground-breaking production for Primal Scream’s 1991 album Screamdelica]. We used to be there to share music and really, just… the whole movement and the ethos behind it was a lot of those conversations that went on there. The scene was developing and so many good ideas were shared and influences with each other that underpinned those early days of acid house and Shoom and Boy’s Own. Those after-gatherings were very inspirational. We’d share music and then Andrew would come over to my place as well, and play music

I can remember once I was living in Camden Square. I had my decks on the floor, I didn’t have them on a table or anything at that time. It was this small one level property that I was renting. I was greatly inspired by Andrew; I loved his mixing, and everything was brilliant. And I can remember [my then wife] Jenni saying one morning – we were having an afterparty and Andrew had been playing for hours on the decks on the floor, sitting down. It wasn’t every girl’s cup of tea. Not a lot of girls really liked that early sound because Andrew was very into the dub reggae influences – and Jenni saying, ‘What’s all those pots and pans bashing about in there? It sounds like a load of pots and pans bashing about!’ I said, ‘You cannot be serious. This is brilliant!’ But it was, in a sense, quite a boysy, quite a bloke’s sound, Andrew with his chunky sound and tough beats. That was Jenni’s view one morning. Andrew chuckled. That was the description. He found it rather amusing. He was great at self-deprecation.

I know those chill-out conversations that you mean. I have memories of lying around other people’s floors in 88/89. They were special.

88, 89, the Summer of Love. And then in 90, Ibiza, that was great; and then 91, the merging of indie bands and dance, and then we kind of went our separate ways, in a sense, and things changed. I desperately miss those times. They were so special, and we were so close and then that closeness drifted apart. We went off and did our own thing. I used to get very nostalgic and long for those days back. There was such an intense energy between core groups of people and then that dissipated and everyone was off doing their own thing.

And everyone was so hugely busy. You were DJing at Kiss FM [Rampling had had shows on Kiss when it was both a pirate station and afterwards, when it received a radio licence and was thus legalised after 1990] followed by the BBC [Radio 1]. You were all working at a very high level.

Yes, after 89 into 90, things had gone up considerably. We were playing around the country and that became the norm. We were travelling up and down the motorway. That was great, but we weren’t a core group anymore. Everyone was off doing their own individual thing. I am just really grateful and glad that we were close, really close, and really good friends for that period… There were periods when I wouldn’t see Andrew for quite a few years and then we’d meet somewhere, and it was back to where we left off. That’s the whole thing with friends. I am glad that I saw him more recently; there was a period of a whole decade when I didn’t see much of Andrew. And then I ran into him at Love Box about seven years ago, he was playing at the Horsemeat Disco arena, playing really good cosmic disco. We had a good catch-up and a good laugh and a good chat and said let’s do lunch. But we never got around to doing that lunch. I did meet him a year after and I invited him to play at Shoom 25 at Cable [London, 2012], and he was initially up for doing it. Andrew was never one for looking back and it wasn’t really about looking back – it was a big event. He did want to do it, but he was booked somewhere else overseas and he couldn’t do it. I did ask him to do some of the more recent Shoom events that he’d hosted, and he was scheduled for the date we have at the end of this year in Brixton but that – it’s hard to accept that we won’t get to play together again...

I am really glad that I got to see Andrew in Hastings not so long ago [in late 2019]. He was playing a weekend in this cool bar, the Marina Fountain, very intimate, about 160 people. I was working on the Saturday in Sheffield; I got back at 2:30pm, just put my bag into where I live and went around there. I was in the pub, skipped Sunday lunch – that went completely out the window – and just had a liquid lunch of IPA and I had a good old shakedown and a dance to Andrew’s music. He was booked for three hours and ended up playing way over six hours and then we had a good chat at the end of the set and a good bit of laughter and he sent me some of the music because I’d turned into a complete trainspotter that day. I was asking, What’s this track? What’s that track? It was a wonderful afternoon, but unbeknownst to us, that would be the last dance we’d have with Andrew. I am just so thankful that there was nothing stopping me going that Sunday afternoon. The intention was set, and I went. I am just so glad that I did go and have that opportunity to have that last dance with Andrew. It was great, I hadn’t danced like that – for hours – for some time. The vibe was great. It was Andrew at his best, loving it. Track after track of really interesting music, unfamiliar sounds, just his style. Just Andrew, Andrew’s style, Andrew out there on the edge.

What do you think his legacy will be?

His legacy is remarkable. The tributes to him, from far and wide, across the world: Andrew was a great artist. He touched so many people. I think he was aware but unaware of the influence he had on people, all the love that he had in so many different areas – and this has become very apparent in his passing. His legacy is that of the greats like Frankie Knuckles, that’s the legacy that Andrew leaves us with. It’s on par with those other greats: [Larry] Levan, Knuckles. Andrew was a remarkable, unique individual character, great style, great taste, a great human being that I am grateful to whom I’ve been a friend over these years. […] He was a creative genius. His influences, as I said, those post-punk, industrial sounds: he loved New Order, he loved Tony Wilson; Andrew looked to him as a role model, and Andrew loved Manchester, that whole punk thing. We shared a similar music history, so those were the conversations we used to have. But he had this unique taste and understanding for music, akin to John Peel – and Andrew loved him, too.

Andrew was a DJ who’d play different genres of music, that expressionism. His taste was not limited to the one particular sound of electronic music. [He was a] classic rocker, punk, rockabilly, techno rebel, the fifth member of The Clash. [Laughs] Definitely the fifth member of The Clash.

Andrew gave me an album once for a birthday present. This is another example of Andrew’s broad taste in music. I had no idea who Daniel Lanois was at the time and Andrew gave me his album Acadie. He said, ‘Oh, you’ll like this.’ I have to say that it took a bit of time to get into it but Lanois – he’d produced Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, all those greats, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno – another producer that Andrew was very much into. Beautiful album, country influences, early chill-out. He was into the chill-out before it became massive and what we know today. Brian Eno and all those experimental, early electronica.

And I was once in Black Market Records [in London’s Soho]. “Smokebelch” [a track by Weatherall made under his Sabres of Paradise moniker for 1993’s Sabresonic] comes from a track “New Age Of Faith”, LB Bad, it’s a track that I used to open sets with at Shoom. It was released in 1989, Nu Groove Records [The True Story Of House Music EP]. That is the basis of “Smokebelch”. We were in Black Market, and it was the Friday [before Shoom on Saturday], and Black Market was the hub; it was the community gathering on Friday afternoon and bartering over the counter. They’d get three or four copies of a record in there and just create this… bartering in the shop, you’d get people scrambling hands up over the counter for a record. Fortunately, I used to have a bag in there, and they’d save stuff in a bag. They’d often have two copies in a bag for me, because I used to buy two copies of everything. And that particular track – we hadn’t gone to the shop together, but Andrew just came in – and they’d put it on and Andrew was, immediately, ‘What is this track? I really want this track.’ I said, ‘There’s two copies in the bag, give Andrew the other copy.’ He went on and made “Smokebelch”, that timeless classic that everybody loves. That’s where that came from, that Friday afternoon in Black Market Records. [Laughs] In 89, spring or summer. I just remember, this packed record shop and us being there together.

You’re playing in Perth later this week. Play one for Andrew.

I will be opening the set with “Smokebelch” on Friday and on Sunday. They’re two open-air events… They’ll be a couple of others, like Primal Scream’s “Don’t Fight It, Feel It”, which is one of Andrew’s ultimate remixes. There’ll be some Andrew Weatherall influences in the set, that’s for sure.

Wire subscribers can read Rob Young’s Andrew Weatherall cover feature from June 1996 (The Wire 148) and Chal Ravens’s 2016 Invisible Jukebox (The Wire 385) in the online library.