Arthur Baker: "I’ve been asked about ‘Planet Rock’ probably more than anything I’ve ever done"

A celebrated producer and remixer known for his work with the likes of New Order, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and the Pet Shop Boys, Arthur Baker recounts his fascinating life story in his new memoir, Looking For The Perfect Beat. Brought up in Boston, Baker relocated to New York and became central to the city’s ’80s club culture.

He first came to prominence after producing the 1982 track ‘Planet Rock’ by Afrika Bambataa and the Soulsonic Force, a landmark in electro and hip-hop that remains iconic in the 21st century.

“It’s great that it still sounds futuristic after 40 years,” enthuses the now 70-year-old Baker from London, still sporting his distinctive look of long hair and beard. “Particularly the instrumental side, I never got bored of it. I went through phases with the raps, even though the raps have different hooks and stuff. But the instrumental side also has those hooks too.

“As I say in the book, I’ve been asked about ‘Planet Rock’ probably more than anything I’ve ever done. So yeah, I’m privileged to have been involved and made the record, for sure.”

Subsequently, Baker would be hired as a remixer by a notable array of artists, including synth-pop legends the Pet Shop Boys, who invited him to overhaul the likes of ‘In The Night’ and the classic ‘Suburbia’.

“It was more being friends than working with them,” Arthur considers. “When I did the remixes, they typically weren’t around. But we’d always go out for dinners and stuff – we were more mates. I don’t know if I met them through the mix, or once I met them, I did the mix. But we did have a lot of meals out together.

“My ex-wife Tina became friends with Vicky Lowe, Chris’s sister. But I would have loved to have actually gone into the studio with them and done a collaboration from scratch. It never happened, although I did try to make it happen a few times. But they were really tuned into what was happening and so was I, so there was mutual respect there.”

Baker notes how the duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe were inspired by the NYC club scene.

“They had come to New York really early in their careers, when they were doing ‘West End Girls’,” he recalls, “and they had hung out at Unique Studio where I was working. They tracked down Bobby Orlando and that was how he ended up producing one of the versions of ‘West End Girls’. Obviously, they were into the New York sound and they had me do some mixes, and Shep Pettibone too.

“They were hooked in, and we did some big dinners with them, Shep and Junior Vasquez. We had some classic New York nights out.”

‘West End Girls’ is one of my all-time favourite songs.

“It was very unique when it came out, with the spoken word/rap delivery,” says Arthur. “The vibe of it was really cool – it was a New York thing, but it was about West End girls. When it came out, it perked up all of our ears and we took notice of it over here.”

Another notable moment came with Baker’s reworking of The Rolling Stones’ 1983 track ‘Too Much Blood’.

“They just let me do my thing with ‘Too Much Blood’,” says Baker. “I don’t know if they ever really saw it as a hit single. I wasn’t approaching it to make a hit, I was approaching it like a more danceable record they could break in the clubs. Mick Jagger did come by the studio and I describe it in the book.

“He liked whatever I’d done enough that I ended up getting a call for ‘Just Another Night’, a solo track. That was right afterwards, and I heard things in that I thought he would like. I think he had been out of town, in Brazil doing a film with Julien Temple, and then he came back and listened to it. He was like, ‘Why do you have horns in it? And background vocals?’

“I’m like, ‘Because it sounded unfinished to me and I thought that was the right approach. And you told me to do whatever I want.’ If he had said, ‘Don’t put backgrounds and horns on it’, then obviously I wouldn’t have done it. I would listen to the artist. He had Sly & Robbie playing bass and drums on it already, and I mean, Dylan used them.”

Baker is on a roll.

“It was already going in a direction,” he continues. “Back at that point, there was Billy Ocean, ‘Caribbean Queen’ – it was that sound. His rhythm track was similar, and I just thought, ‘We’ll make it more ’80s.’ It was the ’80s! It was like Michael Jackson, Billy Ocean and that vibe. I name-checked Keith Diamond, who was Billy Ocean’s producer – and a year later he hired Keith Diamond!

“And on the backing vocals, I used Lisa Fischer and Cindy Mizelle, who were both signed to me. And Lisa ended up singing with the Stones for like 40 years. I have said, I would have made a great A&R person for the Stones, because a lot of other ideas I had, they did 10 or 12 years later. I always thought an acoustic blues album would be great, and then they did something like that.

“I was a fan of Beggars Banquet. To me, that’s one of the top five albums of all time. The depth of the music is incredible, with tunes like ‘Street Fighting Man’. And then you have all the country blues stuff – it’s just a great album. I mean, I love Let It Bleed – ‘Gimme Shelter’ is one of my favourite songs ever – but Beggars is right up there.

“So, to be able to work with him was great. But he could be an asshole!”

As well as co-producing the all-star protest song ‘Sun City’ with Steven Van Zandt, Baker cites his career highlights as working with soul legend Al Green and songwriting genius Bob Dylan.

“I loved it,” he says of his work on Dylan’s 1985 album Empire Burlesque. “He was one of my icons as a kid. I was in high school in ’73, and I did my final paper on the poetry of Bob Dylan. Twelve years later, I was in the studio working with him. You could not make that shit up – it was just insane, seriously. Everyone who works with him says the same thing. He likes to take the piss – he’s a joker guy.

“He’ll test his boundaries with you. Never evil or malicious really, but he would do that. Either you play along, you play dumb, or you call him on shit. I did a combination of all three, because he is Bob Dylan, you know what I mean? The people I’ve worked with who affected me in that way were Dylan, Jagger and Al Green.”

Finally, perhaps Baker’s most revered work of all is with New Order, especially ‘Thieves Like Us’. Was he surprised at just how successful those collaborations became?

“No, I wasn’t really,” he replies. “It was this collaboration that happened quickly. All those records, you would not labour over them. You would treat it like you had 10 hours in the studio. You’d go in and create something, and if it was good enough, the label would say, ‘Okay, well, here’s 10 more hours.’ So it was really like demoing, and then going in and putting it down, doing a rough mix and seeing how it would go.

“It’s interesting, because in those first sessions, we did ‘Confusion’ and ‘Thieves Like Us’ – we wrote those songs. I have a Looking For The Perfect Beat podcast coming, and one of the first people I interview is Hooky – I also interview people like Irvine Welsh, Stuart Braithwaite and Kieran Hebden. But Hooky said, ‘I had a shock last year because I found a cassette of ‘Thieves Like Us’ from New York.’

“I literally found that a few years ago, and he said, ‘Damn, we had all the music written.’ He always thought there was a beat, and they went back to Manchester and just did a whole new thing, but it wasn’t true. I was involved in writing the entire song, named it ‘Thieves Like Us’, and then wrote the entire music with them.”

He reminisces further on their work together.

“Then it would be just finishing up things like ‘Touched By The Hand Of God’ and ‘Let’s Go’,” says Arthur. “Those are both from the same project, which was the Salvation! movie. So I ended up finishing up those two – one 10 years later, ‘Let’s Go’. Also, I think I did a really nice mix on ‘1963’. And I’m still friends with both sides of the battle in the band!”

Looking For The Perfect Beat is out now.