Looking forward to this year’s Electric Picnic with bated breath? From the sound of things, you’re not the only one. Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, is a longtime devotee of the festival circuit – so much so, he now boasts his own backstage ‘patch’ at Glastonbury.
“I have to have a Winnebago (camper van), mainly ‘cos I’m just too old to camp,” he explains. “I’d get me records nicked. Emily Eavis (daughter of Glasto supremo Michael Eavis) sets aside the same area each year, so we’re kind of protected.”
Nifty it may be, but the final word in luxury the Winnegabo isn’t, he admits.
“The Winnebago sleeps eight – we always get the same one every year, with the broken toilet door – and if it’s muddy everyone has to take their trousers off before coming in.”
By the sounds of things, Cook has started a fad. “The Chemical Brothers have a Winnebago, and my manager has another,” he resumes. “Some people go every year, whether they’re playing or not. For instance, Joe Strummer was a regular and is very sadly missed at this time of year. We always get 25 tickets for it, so we become very popular indeed right beforehand.”
Fresh from Glastonbury 2005 (he stayed almost a week), Cook is more than familiar with the various trimmings Electric Picnic revelers can look forward to.
For a start, Stradbally Hall will host its own Lost Vagueness area, as well as the much-lauded Silent Disco that this year’s Glasto fans flocked to in their droves.
“I’m really intrigued about the Silent Disco,” muses Cook. “On the Monday of Glastonbury, I met the guy who does it – he says it totally works. If you think about it, it’s a really simple idea. I’m surprised no one has tried it before.”
He’s expecting great things from The Flaming Lips too: “I think they did something similar where everyone was in a car park and tuned their car radios into the radio frequency when the gig was on. It was like a drive-in gig, coming through your booming system or something.”
Not that the ‘Lips need rely on gimmicks, says Cook: “The Flaming Lips always give a great show. Last year, at one of their gigs, me and Zoë were going to be dressed as bunnies (flanking the band onstage) but they only had one outfit between the two of us. We didn’t want one to do it without the other, so we decided not to do it.”
Though the summer-tinged, crowd-pleasing element of Fatboy Slim’s music renders him something of a festival staple, Norman has only played the open-air stage a handful of times. He’s more of an indoors bloke, really.
“I was always reticent to play outdoors…even at Glastonbury I was always in the Dance Tent,” he admits. “I wasn’t even sure if what I did worked outdoors. I’m always worried about the weather. It’s hard enough for people to stand around in the rain watching a band. It must be even worse watching a DJ."
In fact, he didn’t venture outside of a big-top until 12 months ago. “I broke my cherry at 2004’s Roskilde festival in Denmark. That year, Bowie did his back in, so I was the headliner on the Saturday. So, we’re watching the rain come down all day, and there’s an hour changeover, from Massive Attack to me. The crowd is sitting there in silence, and I’m thinking, ‘Who will sit around after three days in the mud at 1am to watch me?’ Turned out it was the best crowd I ever played to.”
On the same subject, Cook counts his impromptu Lost Vagueness appearance last year as among his more bizarre festival moments.
“I was supposed to play the Glade as ‘Drunk Soul Brother’. But it became quickly apparent that our thinly veiled pseudonym hadn’t fooled anyone,” he laughs. “We thought of all those people trying to make their way up to the glade and getting lost, so I played unannounced at Lost Vagueness. It was the smallest festival show I’ve done. I walked on and the crowd was like, ‘Fuck me, it’s Fatboy Slim!’, and went nuts."
His set was carefully tailored to the Lost Vagueness vibe.
“I had these can-can girls onstage with me, and every time I turned around to get my records, all I could see was a wall of arse, literally. It was hard actually, when you’re working alongside your own 20 personal lap-dancers. You just don’t want to see that much arse and breast of an evening. I was like, ‘easy girls’, so they started flashing me. But hey, it’s better than working in a factory plucking chickens.”
Thankfully, his Main Stage appearance at this year’s Glastonbury was a much less bootylicious affair.
“I was 30 feet in the air on scaffolding, surrounded by the biggest LED screen ever made in Europe,” he recalls. “It was quite lonely, so I got me mates and Zoë to dance on the stage, so I could see a friendly face and have someone to wave to. It’s been interesting trying to raise our game; normally I turn up with a bottle of vodka and a Hawaiian shirt.”
For Electric Picnic, Cook promises to deliver something spectacular.
“I’ve got tons of ideas, don’t worry about that. It’s just a question of budget,” he announces. “It’ll be like U2 without the money. I’ll still play the same shitty records, but it’ll look better. As ever, it’ll be me playing records getting a bit over-excited, with my manager shouting at me that the records will fall if I jump up and down too much.”
While Cook and his posse have accustomed themselves to the mud-splattered festival grind (albeit with fringe benefits), he maintains that the ‘boutique’ feel of the Electric Picnic is certainly more up his street.
“Basically, it means I’ll have a good time at the festival,” he explains. “I love festivals where people make a special effort to be kind of stupid. Some of us are getting a bit older. We just don’t want to stand there and watch bands. We want to have fun. For that reason, I’ve still not been to Reading (the festival, not the town, one presumes). I’ve no interest in going there. If you add culture and surrealness and lunacy to something, it goes a long way.”