Culture That Made Me: Gilles Peterson on Tony Cascarino, Level 42 and Ezra Collective
Gilles Peterson plays Cyprus Avenue during the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival. Picture: Benjamin Teo
Gilles Peterson, 59, was born in Caen, France, but moved in childhood to south London. Since founding Acid Jazz in the late-80s, he has been the engine behind several influential record labels, and he has compiled more than 100 albums. In 2004, he was recognised for his work supporting the UK’s underground music scene with an MBE.Â
His primetime Saturday afternoon show on BBC Radio 6 Music is one of the station’s most popular music shows. He is an ardent Arsenal football club fan. He will DJ at Cork’s Cyprus Avenue, Sunday, October 29, as part of Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.
As a teenager, the group I became fanatical about was Level 42. I went on my own to Guildford, the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, or the venue in Victoria — anywhere near southeast England — to watch them. I was the kid who was there outside the changing room at the end of the night trying to see if I could catch a bit of energy from Mark King, Mike Lindup, or the Gould brothers. Years later, I met Mark King in BBC Studios. He told me he was a fan of what I did and I told him all about my childhood years as a Level 42 mega fan. So we've become friends.
The late 1970s was an effervescent time for music. I remember my New Romantic mate introduced me to Tubeway Army and Gary Numan. We saw them at Hammersmith Odeon. It was a significant moment. The badge I wore was soul boy, jazz-funk, going to soul weekenders, but I remember seeing Tubeway Army and thinking everyone looked the same, all dressed up, wearing makeup, and I felt like an outsider. It had a profound effect on me and I loved it, and I loved the music. Now, I listen to that music, and it’s more than nostalgia — I appreciate it was forward-thinking. It connects with groups like Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, techno, and electronic music that I love as well. It sowed the seeds — my career allows me to be eclectic in my taste.
A really good book about football was Tony Cascarino’s autobiography. I enjoyed the fact he travelled and he spent time in France and in the lower leagues. I dug it. It was the first time I felt the heart of a player come through the pages. Until then, most football books I'd read felt very ghost-written.
People associate me with jazz. Jazz has always been a dirty word, especially in British popular culture, which I never understood. When I was 16, 17 and I heard Paul Murphy DJ’s set, playing Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and there were 200 kids my age going crazy to it, it was a remarkable experience. I could relate to it — young people, not old people, getting dressed up and chatting up girls and boys, dancing to this music. Once you have that experience, you appreciate jazz is unbelievable. My whole journey's been 'how can I get people to understand that moment when I first heard 'Love Supreme' by John Coltrane'.
by Wayne Shorter is the ultimate jazz record. Jazz gets better with age. It's like all good things. For me, it's therapy and it's calming and it's existential. Jazz can transform your mood more than any other music, not just happy or sad. It can fix shit for me. The record I reach out for when I need healing is that record.
One gig that I was really satisfied with this year because I’ve championed these guys from the beginning — so I suppose there's a professional reason for enjoying it — was the Ezra Collective. I first released them on an album called nearly 10 years ago. It was a celebration of the new, emerging British jazz scene. They won the Mercury Prize recently, the first time a jazz group won it. They closed the festival at this gig in a way that made me go, wow, this is the most explosive group. I remember being blown away, and I've seen them a lot of times.
The best autobiography I've read about hip-hop is by a guy called Dante Ross. He was the first Elektra Records guy to have his own A&R department dedicated to hip-hop. He started off with Def Jam. He was involved in bringing people through like Leaders of the New School. He worked with House of Pain funnily enough. His story goes back to living in New York with the Beastie Boys, working at Tommy Boy Records. His way with language and stories is second to none. I'm ready to read this book twice.
The Ryūichi Sakamoto documentary is great. He’s the ultimate music man, being part of the Yellow Magic Orchestra and having done all those film soundtracks and so on. I interviewed him a few years ago. I remember him telling me his greatest musical moment was hearing water melting in the Arctic. In this documentary, though, he was battling cancer. He was obviously going through a very difficult time. That gave the documentary an extra dimension. Its lens was very real. Sadly, he died last year.
I enjoyed Henry Threadgill’s autobiography. He's an outsider jazz musician. Outsiders write the best books because they're on the fringes. There's always more struggle involved in their life and career so it's a more interesting place to read from. They have good tasty stories because there's a lot of disappointment, and jazz guys are brilliant because they’re usually educated and articulate.
is a music documentary by a director called Jake Meginsky, who is an interesting electronic musician himself. Milford Graves was a drummer. He wasn't famous the conventional way, but in the world of free jazz and improv, he was a leader. He studied martial arts as well. He was a teacher and a community leader. He was also a gardener. He made food with his plants. This is in the middle of Queens in New York. His house was GaudĂesque, but he’s also got his relationship with the soil and the earth. The music and visual combination in the documentary is incredible — you get into somebody's world, their life, and work, with music as the soundtrack. It's all-encompassing. One of those documentaries which you come out of feeling really lifted.
