“Rarely there when you want me, always there when you need me.”

A few wise words from Andrew Weatherall (RIP)

I last bumped into Andrew at the A Certain Ratio 40th anniversary gig at Islington Town Hall. It was a joyous night and grooving along next to him on the dance floor as ACR ripped through 'Knife Slits Water', made the whole experience brighter/sharper.

The fact that he would be dead less than 10 months later was impossible to imagine, as Donald Johnson’s 'KSW' bassline ricocheted off the back wall. 

Andrew ploughed his own furrow, he was a musical savant, a style innovator and as the old phrase would have it "as sound as a pound". 

I still dip back into his numerous mixes, remixes and recordings on a regular basis and I get a huge amount of pleasure stumbling across some of his ancient playlists (a veritable musical Rosetta Stone), always marvelling at his fiercely eclectic approach. I also love his interviews, especially those where the interviewer allows his interviewee's intelligence to shine through. 

To that end, here a few of his wise words that help transport me through these strange days...

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 “I never meant this to be a career,” he said in 2012. “It was just a job that paid for new clothes and records.”

“Don’t be the derivative of the derivative – forge your own path.”

“If a band sound like wankers, I won’t work with them.”

 “The worst thing anyone can say is they don’t like it. If the words mean something, get them out.”

“Rarely there when you want me, always there when you need me.”

“Take reassurance in the glory of the moment and the forever promise of tomorrow.”

 “It’s a lot of work, once you go up that slippery showbiz pole, and it would keep me away from what I like which is making things. I mean, I had a little look in the early Nineties. I stood at the bottom of that pole and looked up and thought to myself, ‘The view’s pretty good. But it’s very greasy and there are a lot of bottoms up there that I might have to brush my lips against. So, maybe I’ll give it a miss.’”

“You’re never going to have that feeling of hearing that record for the first time again, but if you look into the eyes of someone who’s hearing it for the first time, it’s a nice vicarious feeling,” 

And that’s the thing people want; instant response. Someone sends you a text message, if you don’t react within 10 mins, you can sense they’re getting angry. Even I’m guilty of it sometimes. I’ll send a text to someone work related and if I don’t hear anything within a half hour I do start getting a little bit… 

“I kind of write all the time. I have notebooks. I read a lot and I’ve got notebooks full of paragraphs either copied from whatever I’m reading or ideas about short stories or a song based on one concise line I’ve read and then try and expand on that idea. The last thing I wrote was a Malcolm Mclaren obituary for Heavenly’s Caught By The River site. I do enjoy writing tho. In fact Phl Thornton commented, ‘Weatherall is a really good writer when he can be arsed!’ That’s my writing career in a nutshell!” 

“I nearly moved to Dublin about 15 years ago. Yeah Paris or Dublin. For some reason the two cities have a similar vibe to them. Maybe it’s the rebellious history that I’m picking up. I got to the point a few years ago that there will probably come a time when I can’t afford to avail myself of a city that’s got the finest theatre, art galleries music etc so while I can afford it, I’ll stay here. But if that time comes when London doesn’t hold that it’ll be the seaside. The peeling paint of what was once a thriving place. There’s nothing better than the faded glory of a British seaside town in the winter time. The Glory of Gloom as Genesis P Orridge said.” 

 

And my personal favourite and adopted motto: 

 

"If you're not on the margins, you're taking up too much room”

 

Andrew Weatherall (6 April 1963 – 17 February 2020)