Andrew Weatherall: A Classic Underachiever in His Own Words

A candid 1996 interview from Jockey Slut captures Andrew Weatherall at a moment of recalibration, reflecting on Sabres of Paradise, remix culture, DJ life, Two Lone Swordsmen and his deliberate refusal to turn music into a career.

You could spend weeks absorbed in Andrew Weatherall’s productions and still feel like you were only skimming the surface. By the mid-1990s, his fingerprints were everywhere, not just on defining records and remixes, but on a broader sensibility that reshaped how British dance music moved on the dance floor. Success followed him closely and, just as closely, he pushed back against it.

The below 1996 interview, conducted by John Burgess under the title, “I’m a Classic Underachiever,” was originally published in Jockey Slut and catches Weatherall at a moment of recalibration. Sabres of Paradise had recently ended, he was pulling away from the DJ circuit and the press cycle, and he was openly questioning the logic of careers, ladders and scenes. The conversation is sharp, funny and restless, a snapshot of an artist deliberately stepping sideways rather than forward.

By the mid-’90s, Weatherall’s remix work had quietly threaded its way through a wide swath of British and international music. He reworked material by Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Depeche Mode, New Order, Saint Etienne, Happy Mondays, Electronic, the Orb and Björk, bringing dub logic and freaky rhythms into settings that were starving for his sound. Taken together, the remixes map a period when his influence was felt everywhere, even as he was already beginning to step away from the machinery that financed it.

Reproduced here as part of Andrew Weatherall: A Jockey Slut Tribute, the piece also serves as a portal into Jockey Slut itself, one of the great unsung music magazines of the 1990s. The tribute gathers all of Weatherall’s interviews with the publication from 1993 to 2004, alongside additional features tracing his working life from the mid-1980s through 2020, preserving both a singular voice and the magazine that knew how to let it run.

Jockey Slut/John Burgess: Following the Sabres of Paradise split last year, have you deliberately been keeping a low profile?
Andrew Weatherall: Yeah, relatively so. I fancied keeping myself to myself. I never wanted that much anyway. I was never going to use my real name when I first started, it was only because someone put it on a poster. It just snowballs. Once you start on that ladder, that involves record companies and things, you think you can control it. When you’re on that ladder you’ve got to be prepared to take it to the top, to its logical conclusion, which is a lot of hard work and a lot of aggro. I decided to jump off the ladder halfway up. It wasn’t enjoyable.

Plus there was personal shit going on which affected what I was doing so a different perspective was needed. I’m not using those personal things as an excuse, but it was an ideal escape route because it made me think about things. I thought I’d let other people do the talking and have their picture taken… he says after just having his picture taken.

You don’t seem to be DJing as often either?
The whole thing’s just got ridiculous. I saw a brilliant sticker the other day on a record: “Everybody wants to be a DJ but no one’s got the courage to give up.” That summed it up for me. It’s got so out of control and ludicrous that sometimes there’s no point in fighting back. You may as well stay down and have a laugh.

I see all what’s going on and I don’t want to get sucked up in it. I’d prefer to stay on the sidelines. I feel like I’ve gone back to square one, starting again. Which is why I stopped the label, stopped the band and don’t want to do much press. Start again, that’s when the most fun’s to be had. If you think when a club’s on, the best time’s when it’s building up to its peak and then you’re fucked and it’s downhill from there.

I’m not a great Peter Cook fan, but when he got asked, “What is it like to have not fulfilled your potential?” he said, “Thank fuck I didn’t, what would I have done then?” I’m going to join the Peter Cook Appreciation Society because me and him are quite similar examples of the underachiever. He just did enough to enjoy himself. He’d do an acting job in America, get £50,000 and for six months just sit there boozing and watching telly.

I’m addicted to telly. I love shit telly. I find it so surreal. There’s hours of comedy on there, especially QVC. I’m a classic underachiever that likes to watch QVC. Any excuse to get out of the rat race.

So you feel like you’ve been part of the rat race recently?
Yeah. It was all rules and politics and this person not speaking to that person. I know I’m probably guilty because I have pontificated on various subjects and upset people, so I’m a fine one to talk, but at least I’m owning up to it and saying, “Look, give it a rest.”

I take what I do seriously, but when some people take it too seriously it brings out the yob in me and I want to not give a shit. It makes me want to kick against it. I feel strongly about the music I’m making, but I’m not saving anyone’s life. I haven’t written a play that will last 400 years. I’ve just made a good dance record. It’s just getting it into perspective.

How can you hide though, you’re such a cult figure in British dance music?
That’s half the problem. I turned into this person I wasn’t, and people filled in the gaps. I thought I better not let them down or annoy them if they like me. If someone expresses a liking for you then it changes your attitude.

People used to tell me to play this or that when I’m DJing and I’m like, “Fuck off.” You’ll be playing a house set and someone will say, “I saw you at the Orbit last week, play some techno that will fuck their heads up.” What is the point? Going on all the time and trying to fuck people’s heads up is as boring as playing cheese all night. There’s got to be a balance.

All these people haven’t got a clue about what I’m about. I’m turning into their version of what they think I should be. Get a grip. So I did.

So you do everything for yourself now?
Yeah, but I’ve got all that baggage from years ago. Primal Scream and stuff like that. I still get people coming up to me in clubs saying, “Screamadelica changed my life.” That’s a lot of baggage to carry around, a lot of expectations to live up to.

Admittedly it’s meant I can rest on my laurels at times, but it does do my head in that that record’s changed people’s lives. I better keep up to that life-changing standard, but that was a total one-off that won’t happen again for years. A random thing that fused. You can’t recreate that.

The more time you spend worrying about getting to that point, the more you’re missing the influencers. If you’re just sitting back having a good time, taking it easy, that point will come again. If you worry about it, it fucks your head up completely.

The Sabres split was quite high profile…
Now it’s Sabres who? Because other people have come along. The whole process has sped up as people want to discover the next big thing.

A lot of your peers are doing well on the live circuit at the moment…
If that’s what they want to do. They’re prepared to work harder than I am. I just want to do enough to enjoy myself. It’s not a career. It’s not a job. I’m a lazy bastard, let’s face it.

Fair play to them, I’m pleased for them. I can’t cope with it all nowadays. Over the last two years I know who my real friends are and I’d rather just be with them. I am after a relatively quiet life.

If you get to the top of the ladder you’re in a totally different lifestyle, different ballgame. It’s just beyond my comprehension. I wish I could deal with music biz people and use them, but I physically can’t sit there and talk to them when they come out with all this jargon. It scares me a bit. I can’t relate to it.

The press, the record companies, all splendid people… probably. The whole thing becomes a business and I can’t talk music and business. The words won’t come out.

Why have you got your own label then?
My input into that is finding the tunes. With the business side I’ve got people who work for next to nothing because they love it, taking care of all the shit. If I have to deal with the shit I can’t be creative and bring them tunes. The more shit they sort out the better the tunes.

My life revolves around people who shield me from the real world, which is really nice.

Don’t you think Emission’s acts Conemelt, Blue and Deanne Day may disagree with you and want to do loads of press, tours and become massive?
We’re taking it a step at a time. Conemelt did a little tour. They come to me for advice. They know what the steps are and what happens the further up you go. I’m like, “If you do this, then this will happen. Are you up for that? Are you ready?”

I’m not going to pressurise them into doing a 28-date tour.

It’s quite ironic that one of your heroes, Joe Strummer, is someone who’s shouting the loudest for dance music at the moment.
I met him. I don’t want to meet heroes. I got introduced to him and I was really embarrassed. I was probably just a bumbling knob. Their baggage is cool enough to get away with things.

You said once you’d swap everything to be Joe Strummer in ’76 but he might now say he’d swap the lot to be Weatherall in ’88.
That’s the sort of thing people were saying to me and I was thinking, “For fuck’s sake.” I can’t relate to it because ten years ago I was selling clothes or working on a building site in the summer, and then a few years later people are saying King Tubby this, Joe Strummer that, and it does affect you, thinking I better live up to this.

Perhaps it’s low self-esteem thinking I’ll never do stuff on a par with them, because obviously I have when people say, “This record changed my life.” Without giving too much away, I know how the music’s made. It’s just me and my mates having a laugh, smoking inordinate amounts of pot and making tunes. That’s all it is to me.

Why did you break up the Sabres of Paradise band?
Because it was getting like a job. We were still doing the business. The last tune we did, the Red Snapper mix of “Hot Flush,” was one of the best things we did and that’s why I had qualms about calling it a day. But that mix was done on automatic.

I’d rather do things on a vibe and get off on doing it. I’d come in at ten o’clock and think, “Got another remix to do.” The vibe was beginning to go. If we’d done another couple of remixes we may have ended up hating each other. Rather than that, because we were all mates, I thought we should call it a day.

I like that tradition of bands that do things and then disappear, like Colourbox. They’re still talked about. I think I’m destined to be in the “Whatever Happened To…” column. But little do people know I’d be sitting in a little studio putting out tunes that people don’t even know is me, which I have done. You mentioned one earlier… it has a woman’s touch.

I’d rather be a hidden-away backroom person that people have respect for. I’d rather be here for another 15 years than have a two-year big explosion.

What if “Wilmot” had been a top five hit, would you have killed Sabres then?
It could have been. “The Theme” has been used in the Bacardi advert, it’s been used everywhere. Bacardi are on the phone: “We’ll put money into the promotion, re-release the record.” No.

The money would be very nice. Get some remixes from whoever’s in this week and yeah, Top 20. “Wilmot” with a vocal on could be a number one, but it’s three years old. I’d rather it be one of those ones that got away.

Come back to me in five years’ time when I’m pot-less and sweeping the streets and I’ll be, “Please re-release my record.”

Are you afraid of success?
Totally. Because of all it brings. I’d rather stay comfortable with limits. Have success over a long period of time.

Why did you shut Sabresonic the club?
I think it had done all it could. It’s good to have a rest so people realise what they’re missing. We’re thinking of doing something real soon on a Sunday in central London, starting late afternoon, ending midnight, with food available, bongo workshops, if you could put that ironically.

Music for a Sunday. Two or three rooms, deep house, deep techno, nothing too grating. Even when I was at the height of my imbibing of drugs, I still liked to take it down a notch on a Sunday without being soporific.

You seem pretty content with Two Lone Swordsmen.
It’s a partnership, with Keith Tenniswood. With Sabres there were three or four people and a lot of the time it’s a watering down of ideas. This is only two people, so it’s how I would have wanted Sabres to sound if just I had been producing it.

With their input on Sabres, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, it went off in a completely different direction. Not that I didn’t like it, but it was not how I heard it. This is the beginning of how I hear things.

We’re going to put this album out on CD and then get remixes done, new versions, add vocals, so the whole thing gets bigger. This is just the start, a rough sketch of what’s to come. There’s an overall sound beginning to form if you listen to it on CD as one thing.

That’s what was lacking with Sabres. We’d be doing this track here, this track there. It was sporadic and all over the place with no uniformity. Two Lone Swordsmen is the first development of a sound that will just get bigger.

We’ll maybe do a couple of thousand. I’m really into it, but if everyone else thinks it’s fucking crap then we’ll just see what happens. Hopefully the whole thing will develop as low key as possible. I don’t want it jumped on as the “next Sabres.”

The album’s very rhythmical, almost as complex as drum’n’bass.
Drum’n’bass is an art. You can’t just go into the studio and make a drum’n’bass record. In a year’s time I may make a recognisable drum’n’bass record, but because I’m used to making music like I do then it will have that influence, but it won’t be a direct copy.

I love a four-four rhythm. I love house rhythms. I’m not one to use the phrase “the tyranny of the four-four beat.” It’s not a crusade against that. It’s just that when I’m in the studio for hours at a time, I have to have mad rhythms going on to pick my interest up.

I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz. A couple of years ago I’d be listening to indie albums, but I’ve just cut the rock music out because it doesn’t do it for me anymore. You listen to a Photek record and then a guitar record where I’ve heard all the sounds before. I still like the Manics, the odd thing, but I’ve cut my listening to guitar music down by 90 percent.

So you’re trying to create an original sound with Swordsmen?
It is a developing of a sound. With electronic music there’s so much stuff that’s good but you’ve heard it all before. You’ve got all that technology so you might as well try and do something with it even if it doesn’t work.

It’s a cool little album. It won’t change the world. It sounds really nice, like a soundtrack album. But it’s what it develops into. It won’t set the world on fire, but at least you won’t be able to say you’ve heard it all before. You haven’t.

The reaction I want is, “Cool little album, I haven’t heard sounds like that before.” I don’t want it to be the best thing since sliced bread because immediately people are switched on to it or off it. I just want to put out tunes and not get involved in all the politics.

You’ve been playing a lot more house recently, even DJing at Luke Solomon’s Space.
I haven’t stopped. I’ve played house at Cream for ages. But now the house thing’s come around again people are like, “Oh look, Weatherall’s getting into house.”

Two years ago I’d play Cream one weekend and Orbit the next, playing 150bpm storming techno. What’s really good now is that I’m playing a set and someone comes up and says, “Cool man, wicked tunes, what’s your name?”

People are judging it by the musical content and the DJing, rather than who’s up there doing it. I’d rather have that than people going, “Genius, genius, Andy,” when you think you’ve been fucking arse.

I am a better DJ now. Before I had all this adulation and all I was doing was putting one record on after another. It was probably my eclectic taste in music that got me through. Over the last few years I think I’m worthy of some attention, but I’m not that bothered if I’m not lauded for it. The people I respect are beginning to respect what I’m doing.

Why don’t you make house records instead of all the downtempo stuff you’re known for?
I am beginning to. In the studio we start off trying to make banging tunes and then a wobbly effect comes into play and it turns into a slow wobbly tune. When you’re in the studio for a long period of time and you’re really stoned it does tend to get slow and spacey.

There’s stuff on the album, and we’ve just done some remixes, that stray above 120.

Some of the Swordsmen stuff sounds like a warped Larry Heard.
I’m glad you said that because the new Larry Heard album is my favourite at the moment, that “Alien” record. To be mentioned in the same breath is really nice.

There’s a track on there where the keyboard sounds like one of those cinema organs that comes up through the floor. That blew me away because that’s nothing to do with his culture, but to me it conjures up rainswept seaside towns. It’s called “Alien,” it’s all spacey and cosmic, but I was thinking of Clacton.

Are you still inspired by your London surroundings then?
I get more of a vibe from round here than sitting on a beach or up in the mountains. I like walking round London and round here. You get in a car and there’s an Asian cab company and they’ve got some mental Asian radio station on with all these mad rhythms and sounds buzzing round your head.

Then I get home to Stockwell and you can hear car systems blaring out Mark Morrison. Mad aeroplane noises, industrial fans, cars going by, all making mad rhythms with actual music over the top, be it dub or techno. All these sounds I’m beginning to know how to put on record.

I’m not getting out of a cab and hearing waves crashing and rainforest chants. I haven’t got the sound of a Goa party running round my head. Thank God.

Will you be going on the road with Two Lone Swordsmen?
Because I’m enjoying this and it’s not too much like work then it won’t spoil the vibe doing it live. Swordsman Sound it will be called.

Take over a club for four or five hours. Three decks, samplers, keyboards, guitars, whatever. Start off with the ambient stuff, bring in beats, build the tempo up, bring in records. Start at 0bpm and build up to 160bpm and you don’t see the join.

I’ll be DJing for half an hour, then drop into one of my tracks and just do a whole night’s entertainment. Nights are too disjointed. I want to be greedy. I want to control the whole night.

I’ve spent too much time gobbing off about what other people are doing and wasting loads of energy. Instead of gobbing off about it, I’m getting off my arse and doing something about it. If I fail, I fail, but at least I had a fucking go.