Interview with Paul Oakenfold

"Shall we rummage around a bit?" asks Oakenfold, eyes gleaming. "Just take a quick look?"

I, of course, assent.

The room is remarkably barren, but there are a few signs of the Chairwoman’s personal touch: a sentimental photo of her and Guy snuggling, a play table for visits from little Lourdes, a cut-and-paste collage of 80s-era Material Girl photos assembled by the artist Keith Haring. A large black-and-white print of Muhammad Ali leans against one wall, and on a desk is a towering stack of 12-inch records, which Oakenfold rifles through.

"I wonder if mine is in here?" he says, looking in vain for his remix of Madonna’s "What It Feels Like for a Girl."

Oakenfold is a small and compact man, with a broad nose and the ruddy-cheeked glow that comes from a combination of fine British stouts and the bright Ibiza sun. He is pleasant and enthusiastic and laid-back, easy things to be when one’s job is to provide the prototype for Rich and Famous International DJ (not a bad gig if you can get it). In addition to meandering the far corners of the globe spinning discs for glassy-eyed rave kids, Oakenfold is also in high demand as remixer and producer, working not only for Madonna but for heavy hitters like U2 and Snoop Dogg.

Oakenfold seems suitably content with his life of exotic climes and late-night dance parties, but he is certainly not complacent. In a move akin to Dylan plugging in, he has just released a new album called Bunkka, Perfecto Records, where vinyl manipulation and keyboard programming are finally joined by actual instruments. Ready to embark on a world tour, complete with flashy stage show and a full backup band, he’s about to play at International Rock Star.

I did. A lot of people were asking me, "Why are you doing this?" and it’s because I wanted to grow. That’s important for me. I’ve never put myself on the line like this, and I don’t have to. I’m having a good time deejaying, but I want to be at a level where I’m constantly pushing. This seemed to be obviously the next step. I wanted to do an album that really represented me and what my own musical tastes are. So I took bits from my early days of working with rappers and in hiphop to where I think music is headed, which is in many ways toward rhythm and song. I wanted to incorporate all sorts of sound into one. I wanted to work with singers, unknown and known. I wanted to find voices, because I can’t sing worth shit. I tried to use vocalists in ways you wouldn’t expect. Grant Lee Phillips over a breakbeat, Nelly Furtado over something dark and cinematic rather than pop. There was a little bit of self-indulgence on my part with Hunter Thompson, because I’m a huge fan. In the club scene he’s a cult hero.

I tracked him down and called him up and sent him some music and kept on him about it. I told him I would write music around spoken word. We met in L.A., and we’d hang out and have a beer or two and talk about all these different ideas, about Nixon and the hippies. I learned so much from him, about American history and the idea of the American Dream. I was fascinated by him. The speech he ended up doing is about so many different things. About trying to fulfill your dreams. I took it away and recorded it. I played it for him and he said, "All right, go ahead and do it." That’s my favorite track on the album. It was amazing to work with him.

We set it up with three musicians—a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist—and myself on keyboards and deejaying. I’ve got a 30-foot screen and I video-recorded a majority of the singers, so you’ve got Perry Farrell performing, and behind him—I don’t want to give too much away—but we’ve got a journey to go along with the performance. The vocals will be synched to the performance on the screen, but there won’t be a character onstage. I don’t really want to base it on the singers, I want to base it on what I’m doing as a performer. For the first hour it will be me deejaying, and then I’ll literally wheel the turntables off the stage and I’ll go behind the stage, the curtain will come up and then you’ll get the show. I haven’t done it before, so I’m a bit nervous about it. We’re just trying to give people an experience they’ll enjoy. As an artist I need to grow. I’m not going to stop deejaying, but I’m going to try to do something that’s a little bit more cutting edge and exciting, and hopefully people will enjoy it. We’re not trying to replicate the album exactly, we’re trying to leave some element of impulsiveness for the live shows. I think people want that and understand it.

[Laughing] And they certainly won’t get it with us!

Well, you’re locked down as a band, you’re given those tracks in that order, whether the crowd’s feeling it or not. Whereas as a DJ you could be like, "All right, I’ll call out this track and put it in and change this and change that," so you’re working with them. As a band you’re tied to each tune and you have to stick with it, whether it’s working or not. I’m excited and nervous. It’s a big challenge for me.

I hope they dance, but I would like them to watch in the way they watch bands, and 99 percent of the time people stand and watch a band. In clubland they don’t. I’d like to have that change—that there’ll be moments when they do dance, where the energy is there. I have made some of the mixes into more club mixes so that I could make that happen. I’m doing very few slow tracks, because I think my audience is there to dance. I don’t want them to be lacking that outlet. The album is an album that you can listen to at home while you’re doing the Hoovering, but the live show should have a bit more bite. Just because you have a guitar doesn’t mean you can’t dance. We’ve been focusing on merging two kinds of sounds. But I don’t want to go too crazy to where people are like, "What the fuck is he doing now?" It’s a balance.

In making music there shouldn’t be lines drawn. If you like rock, pop, dance, whatever. It doesn’t have to be so delineated. Fuck the purist who says, "You can’t do this!" On this album, the collaborations I fought for I think work. I get stereotyped as this trance DJ, but I’ve worked in so many different genres. I always have. I wanted to show what I love to do on a broader level. It was difficult, but I’m proud of it.