I thought I would be dead by 50, I am blessed to be here...
Goldie thought drugs and partying would end his life early. However, since devoting himself to yoga, he is more productive than ever before. Ahead of his tour, he discusses legacy, spirituality and why he voted for Jeremy Corbyn, with LAURA HARDING
GOLDIE always thought he would be dead by now. He was pretty sure his years of drug abuse and partying would mean his time would run out long before he marked his half century.
But now he’s 51 and anxious not to be late for his hot yoga class, which starts in 45 minutes.
To say one of the founding fathers of drum ’n’ bass is a reformed character would be an understatement. He’s been living a different kind of life for many years now, but he’s still aware that it could all catch up with him.
“I am looking at whether or not I can get to 70,” he says. “And whether possibly genetics will allow me to get to my 80s.
“My dad is in his nineties, my granddad lived till he was a hundred and something, so maybe genetics will help, we will see.
“For a long time I thought I was going to die in my forties. I thought I was going to OD for a start, I thought I would have ODd a long time ago and I kind of accepted it.
“There were times when I wobbled and thought ‘This is it, I’m gone’. So now I wake up and the first thing I say is I’m really blessed to be here and I’m grateful for this day.
“I don’t know if I will make it past 70 but I’m hoping I will, I’m just taking every day as it comes.”
Age and change have brought him a great deal of introspection, but they have certainly not mellowed Goldie out.
Sitting in a noisy hotel bar, sometimes he lies almost horizontal in his seat, sometimes he taps his fingers on the table, other times he whips out his phone to play tracks he’s working on with his engineer James.
He sings, mimics a drum beat, and bounces between conversation topics, often not finishing a train of thought before moving on to the next.
So while Goldie – who is touring the UK and Europe this summer – is happier he’s getting older, he is still a big kid at heart.
“I’m 12,” he says. “I refuse to grow up. I have a mental age of 12, I see the world as a child.”
Looking over to the radio playing at the table next to us, he adds: “I’m wondering whether or not that radio sounds like a transistor radio I first took apart when I was eight.
“I don’t focus on stuff. When I was young I took a transistor radio apart and now I can actually smell the electrics inside it. I know what the electrics smell like. I’m not wired the same and I choose not to be wired the same.
“I think the adults in my life didn’t show me much so why should I listen to them?”
This is perhaps not so surprising. Born Clifford Joseph Price in Walsall in 1965, Goldie had as tough a childhood as one can imagine.
His father Clement disappeared shortly after he was born and his mother Margaret put him into care when he was three, keeping the other kids at home.
While he was eventually reunited with his mother, he found sanctuary as a graffiti artist in the emerging street art scene.
Now he’s keen that his art and music leave something positive for his youngest daughter Coco.
He also has a son, Jamie Price, who was jailed for life in 2010 for killing a rival gang member outside a Wolverhampton nightclub.
“I think the art and the legacy might make money so my daughter won’t have to work as hard,” he muses.
“I think it’s important for human beings to leave a positive legacy of something behind anyway.
“Why are there statues in London? There are people who had great wealth in this country who left a lot of money for people that were below the water line. There should be a lot more of that now.
“I think people only see the immediate, I am no spring chicken and neither am I a politician, but I am trying to find myself spiritually.”
That word – spiritual – comes up a lot. He says he’s spiritual rather than political, but he backed Jeremy Corbyn in the last election.
“When yoga people generally do politics they are not the people that are going to push the button tomorrow and kill us all.”
He adds: “I don’t think Corbyn is the best choice but better the devil you know than the one you don’t.”
Goldie’s latest record, The Journey Man, came out in June and got its name because “the Journey Man is incomplete, he wonders around and never really completes anything, there should be a humbleness in that, you can’t think you’ve arrived”.
He adds: “There is truthfulness in the music sometimes, it doesn’t sound like anything else.
“It doesn’t mean it’s the best but sometimes people want to be in denial. It’s easier, it’s safer not to listen.
“It’s safer to put your helmet on and just go through it all.
“I think life should be important, whatever you do. If everyone made music like me everyone would be a bit too depressed or elated, one of the two, I’m not sure which one.
“I just think you will be able to play this album in 20 years and it will sound great.”
He is minutely involved in every aspect of the making of his music, in constant conversation with the team he works with, and he will listen to it long after it’s finished.
He says: “People get that mixed up a little bit, thinking ‘oh god he’s really full of himself because he listens to his own music’, but no, I listen to a resonance that is channelled by something far greater than I am.
“I’m just channelling it, it’s not me that made it and I can listen to it like it’s not me that made it.”