"I hated the superstar DJs and all of that culture..."

What inspired you to write 'Last Night a DJ Saved My Life'?

Meeting old clubbers in New York. The one thing that always amazed us was you'd talk to someone in a club and there'd be a record playing, and they'd be like 'Yeah yeah, so-and-so broke that record' and I'd be like 'How the fuck do you know who broke that record?', you know what I mean? It's such a bizarre thing. But the culture of New York is like you have one DJ playing all night in one club every week and that has a huge impact on the sort of music that's played, because they really build up a rapport with the crowd and stuff like that. But also you'd hear something like 'Slang Teacher' by Wide Boy Awake which isn't a very well known tune over here, even though it's British, but over there it's massive and they're like 'Oh yeah Jellybean broke that record at Funhouse' and it's like [amazed face] 'How the fuck do you know?! How the fuck do you know who broke that record?!'. We were just blown away by how much people that were into it knew about the history of New York but it was all oral, it was all passed down. So even if you hadn't been at the Funhouse, someone who had would tell you, and then you'd absorb that information and pass it on to whoever. I was absolutely fascinated by all of that- the fact that all these people had these memories in their heads but none of it had ever been documented. So 'Last Night....' was essentially a book inspired by New York but we didn't have a subject to write about- the editor at our publisher said 'why don't you write about the history of the DJ?' and that was it, that was the angle that we needed. It just clarified things- before that we knew we just wanted to write about dance music's history but didn't have a narrative.

Did you think it was going to be a bestseller when you were writing it?

[Pauses] Not in the way that it's turned out, no. I remember thinking that if we sold 50,000 copies in its lifetime, I'd be fucking well happy. And it's sold more than that...it's sold something like 70,000 in the UK and it's never been out of print, and then it's sold 35,000 in America and I think it's been translated in 5 different countries.

The last chapter is all about the 'Superstar DJ' phenomenon. Did you ever feel that it was all going too far at the time?

Yeah. That's why we kind of wrote a bit of a cop-out ending in '99- there was a Wayne's World style ending- a good ending and bad ending. The reason we did that is we didn't want to end the book on a sour note. But at the time, yeah, I thought it had totally gone too far and I hated the superstar DJs and all of that culture. As good as it was for the individuals involved and the money that they were earning, I didn't think it was very good for dance music and it certainly wasn't very good for the art of DJing. I remember when we interviewed Pete Tong and he said it was a bit of a strait jacket when you're Pete Tong or whoever and you go to a club and they want you to play the big tunes and that's what your job is. I found that really depressing, because you should just be able to turn up and play the music that you really love and are really feeling that day. The great thing about DJing is when it's working well it should be a symbiotic relationship between you and the crowd- so you're giving stuff that they don't necessarily want to hear but you think they'll like but at the same time you're responding by giving them stuff that you know they will like. It's that sort of push and pull between the two- that's what good DJing is about. You occasionally need to throw a bone to the crowd to show you're listening to them and responding to them and you know what it is that they want, but equally you're trying to push and pull them in particular directions to suit the way you want to go on that night. So it's a mixture of the two and I think the good DJ is someone who hears all of those voices in the crowd and responds to them but at the same time doesn't only just listen to that. Because if you only listen to what people say they want then you might as well be a mobile DJ.

Was there a particular low point of the 'Superstar DJ' era for you?

All of that fucking New Year's Eve helicopter nonsense...I dunno, fame is not something that's attractive to me. People that happen to be famous because they've done something excellent is okay, but the idea of fame in itself is actually quite an unattractive thing and people that crave it I think have something deficient in their personalities. I think they see it as a way of making up for those deficiencies- they think that somehow if they're famous the things that are wrong with them mentally will be repaired and it's not like that at all. I just find the obsession with fame such an unattractive quality. I'd rather strive for excellence in what I do that's not defined by being famous. Like our book- it's not a million-seller but it's sort of a benchmark in one way or another for that sort of book- it's far exceeded our expectations. Frank once jokingly said it's the thing they'll put on our gravestones, and he was joking but it's also probably true, it's one of those things that you may never better [laughs]. I can live with that. What I wanted to do was contribute to a culture that I'd learnt a lot from and got so much pleasure from, and to give it something I felt it deserved. The constant for me in what I do is to try and drag working class culture, for want of a better description, out of this cliche of getting pissed on Saturday nights and fighting in taxi queues- there is a little bit more to that culture than things like that. And DJing was very much a working class thing, probably less so now. It was the same thing with 'When Saturday Comes'- for me, writing about football was about demonstrating you were into football without being a mindless thug.