Fatboy Slim set to party in Brazil
Fatboy Slim is heading for the sun, and who can blame him? He’s only just finished clearing up the damage from a terrifying storm that hit his home on the beach near Brighton, England, on Valentine’s Day.
“It was quite scary,” says the dance-music superstar otherwise known as Norman Cook. Huge waves threatened to engulf the house while he and his young family were inside.
Thousands of stones from the beach strafed the full-length windows with the force of bullets, while Cook was inside with his wife Zoe Ball, a television and radio presenter, and their two children, Woody and Nelly, aged 13 and four. They fled upstairs for safety, although the tops of the waves hit there, too.
Cook has sold tens of millions of records over the past two decades as one of the few superstar DJ performers of electronic dance music. You may also have seen Cook at the closing ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics, riding on a giant octopus.
Today, the 50-year-old showman is a friendly, slightly edgy geezer in Doc Marten boots and skinny jeans, with close-cropped greying hair.
His home is hidden away, and the family can step right out on to a private beach. Particularly now that the decking has been smashed. “Nature came and took it all back.” Who wouldn’t want to head for the sun after that?
Cook is off to Brazil to prepare for the soccer World Cup. He has been the England team’s unofficial partystarter since the 2002 tournament in Japan, and now performs DJ shows for the fans and locals to coincide with the games.
But there is far more to it than that. Over the past decade, this Englishman has become the toast of Brazil, playing to phenomenal crowds. His biggest show so far was to 360,000 people on a beach in Rio.
“I am more popular there than I am in England. It’s an ongoing mutual love affair. I was gobsmacked. I went right to the other side of the world, where I didn’t speak the language, and I played my tunes and they went: ‘We like this. We get this. We like you.’”
Meanwhile, Cook is putting together an album that he hopes will become the unofficial soundtrack to the World Cup. Fatboy Slim Presents Bem Brasil, to be released May 26 on Decca, features original Brazilian recordings remixed by dance producers and DJs.
Cook championed rave culture in this country back when it was seen as a threat to society — but it has become so mainstream that he was asked to perform at the Palace of Westminster last year.
These days, he follows the sun for 12 months of the year, performing DJ sets in faraway places during the winter, then hopping to Ibiza and all over Europe at weekends during the summer. “I can be here with the kids during the week.”
What is it that makes people dance?
“Celebration, lust and inebriation,” he says, grinning. “On a good night, all three. As a DJ, I think your job is to have more fun than the people in the crowd. Then they want to buy into what you’re doing.”
That’s interesting because Cook is usually one of the few sober people left in the arena.
“I bought myself an extra 10 years as a DJ by quitting drinking. I definitely couldn’t have carried on the life of a partying DJ. I would have been either burnt-out or dead by now. For now though, he’s loving life. “I’m going to Brazil to play my tunes and help people party. On my days off I can watch (soccer). It’s a no-brainer really, isn’t it?”