Video: No slowing down for Fatboy Slim (From The Argus)
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Video: No slowing down for Fatboy Slim
2:12pm Tuesday 14th February 2012 in News By Neil Vowles
Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim emerges from the dry ice at Fabrik in Madrid on Saturday
He’s been a leading figure in the dance scene for more than two decades but Norman Cook shows no signs of slowing up.
In fact with 75 gigs under his belt in the last year and another 70 already lined up for 2012, his crew say he’s busier than ever.
Last weekend he played packed-out club shows on Thursday night (February 9) in Lisbon, Friday night in Porto before jetting in to Madrid to play the 7,000 capacity club Fabrik starting at 3am local time.
Only a severe snow storm in Bologna, Italy stopped him from carrying on for a fourth night.
Instead he flew home by private jet straight after the Madrid gig to take up his other full-time role as father-of-two.
Norman says that he is much happier with his current work/life balance.
He said: “Previously I would work really hard for six months on a new record and then spend the next six months promoting it.
“It’s much better for me and my life now.
“It’s become more like a nine-to-five job that I don’t take home, it’s a lot more manageable now.”
Energetic show
While I was flagging after just one night, Norman was a constant blur of smiling, bustling energy throughout his two-hour show, revving up the crowd with fist bumps and hand claps.
It’s clear from his performance that DJing is still a labour of love for him, so how long will he keep playing the international superstar DJ?
He said: “I’ll stop doing this when I don’t enjoy it anymore or when the phone stops ringing.
“I think I’ll know when that moment comes but I guess there are a lot of washed up stars who probably have said that before.”
Now crowds benefit from a cleaner-living Norman.
He said: “I think before I used to do it a lot to give myself pleasure but now that I’m sober I do it to give other people that pleasure, that high.
“My manager would sometimes have to scrape me out of bed before a gig and have a quick word before I went on to say what records I was going to play.”
Now that Norman has given up many of the trappings of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, food has become his main passion when touring.
Norman said that a good restaurant is one of the five key criteria when deciding which of the many offers from around the globe he plays.
One of the provisos on the rider for a recent gig in Barcelona was that the promoters booked Norman and his team a table at the world famous El Bulli restaurant – a request that took more than six months to fulfil.
Next on Norman’s gourmet globe-trotting highlight reel will be a gig in Copenhagan to give him the chance to visit Noma, officially the world’s best restaurant.
Norman is in high demand around the globe and no more so than in Brazil where he once played to a crowd of more than 360,000.
Last month, he toured the South American country for two weeks – the maximum he says he will allow himself to be away from his family.
Unusual venues
Norman says with the huge number of offers he gets, he could play a gig every night of the year – and in some strange places.
An igloo in the Austrian Alps and the notoriously hedonistic Manumission in Ibiza top the strange stakes although a recent gig off the Florida coast gave Norman his own version of an Italian cruise ship disaster just one week before the tragic events off the Tuscan coast.
Norman said: “It was a three-day rave on a cruise ship.
“It was crazy, I spent most of the time hiding in my cabin but I did play this gig in a pirate ship on a private island.
“Then we ran aground on a sandbank and we were stuck there for 14 hours.”
Even with his globe-striding schedule, which will see Norman in Australia for a festival tour in March and see him in the Ukraine in time for the European Championships, he follows his beloved Brighton and Hove Albion wherever possible.
He will often stream games online leading to the surreal experience of watching Albion versus Wrexham with Welsh commentary while in Brazil.
Norman said: “When we were coming to the end of the Brazil tour, we were all struggling a bit with being homesick and tired but then I saw the Newcastle game online and that really fired me up.”
Read more about Fatboy Slim's shows at The Amex in the summer and an extended version of this story in the two-page special report inside today's Argus.
Archie Bun says...
2:41pm Tue 14 Feb 12
The headline says 'no slowing down', then he goes on to say how he takes it a lot easier now and it's like a 9 to 5 job that he doesn't take home?