IN THE MIX
Fatboy Slim prepares for UK tour
FATBOY Slim has played to 250,000 people on Brighton beach, at the Olympics closing ceremony, the Houses of Parliament and in a tower 531ft above the ground. But his newly-announced arena tour is where the DJ who’s brought communal euphoria to clubbers for over 25 years is planning to get really ambitious…
For a DJ who’s played to millions of people around the globe and racked up timeless floor-fillers such as Praise You and Eat Sleep Rave Repeat along the way, it seems strange that it’s taken over 25 years behind the decks for Fatboy Slim to head out on his first ever arena tour.
But the delay makes sense once the man himself explains the planning necessary to make arenas feel like proper nightclubs for the six-date tour, which starts next February.
“An arena tour was something I didn’t think we could pull off before,” says Fatboy, aka Norman Cook. “Trying to get a good atmosphere in arenas when you’re not a big rock band is quite daunting.” The secret to making the shows feel as intimate as any great sweaty club is that Norman will be playing in the round, with the stage in the middle of the arena. “I like being among the crowd,” explains Norman, 55. “That’s what gets me excited and makes me perform more. I get more involved. Playing in the round is the best experience ever, because everywhere you look there’s people. Everyone is in touch and accessible. I’ve always been into the idea of collective euphoria – people having the same experience, getting a collective high. And playing in the round in a circle increases that feeling of community. People want to escape into another world of stupidity and sexy abandon, and that’s what I bring.”
As if that’s not enough, the shows will also have Rave Ushers helping fans on arrival because, as Norman admits, “If you do a show in the round, no-one quite knows where to stand. Normally at a concert, people go ‘Right, I’m going down the front!’ or ‘No, I don’t want to get crushed.’ As it’s in the round, people often aren’t quite sure where they should be in the room, so our rave ushers dance around people and shepherd them to where they’ll be comfortable, in a very absurd way.”
Committed clubbers can also get “smileyfied” by the patented Fatboy Slim Human Acid Converter, which turns regular concertgoers into walking smiley-faced Acid House cartoons. “The Human Acid Converter is a long Portacabin where you go in one end and emerge at the other as a Heath Ledger-style smiley demon,” laughs Norman. “The bigger the show, the more you want to break the ice. If you’ve painted yourself as a walking smiley,
‘‘
An arena tour was something I didn’t think we could pull off before
you’ve pretty much lost your inhibitions by that point!”
The tour sees Fatboy Slim play to well over 60,000 people, with the show at Birmingham Arena featuring the biggest dancefloor ever seen in the city. Yet Norman insists his ambition now isn’t to make his shows bigger, but to make them more interesting for everyone. A case in point came in July when he DJ’d at the i360, the newly-erected 531ft-high tower in his hometown Brighton. “That was a big moment in my career,” he recalls. “I must admit, I wasn’t fully focused, as I kept thinking ‘This is great!’ I was literally high as a kite, playing 500ft above my hometown and God had graced me with a beautiful sunset too.
“We’d been warned not to jump up and down too much, as it’d destabilise the tower. And of course, with every bass drop, people were getting more and more excited. It was like a big house party in mid-air, and the whole pod started rocking. By the end, everyone was thinking ‘Well, if we die, what a way to go!’”
Fatboy Slim’s affinity to Brighton is so strong that Brazilian footballer Bernardo, newly signed to Norman’s beloved Brighton & Hove Albion for £9m, said in the club’s matchday programme recently that one of the reasons he joined Brighton is because he’d heard how great Fatboy Slim’s Brighton Beach concerts were.
“My heart skipped a beat when I read that,” admits Norman. “That’s one of those moments where you just think ‘I love my job!’ To have a legacy like that is such an honour.”
Fatboy Slim, SSE Hydro, February 19.