Alone he Stands

Calvin Harris is getting too old for this shit. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it past the age of 28,” sighs the 25-year-old pop star wearily, as he discusses his frenetic live show. “I’d feel a bit awkward. You see, my music, it’s really a youthful thing. The reason bands like Faithless or Groove Armada [Harris has toured with both] get away with that type of thing, is that they’re very much in the background at their live shows, with guest artists coming out to sing the songs. I don’t really have that luxury. Unless I changed my records considerably and had guest artists on them, I can’t imagine that I’d be doing a live show like this if I was much older. Sometimes it’d be nice to have a wee rest on stage, you know? Sit at the keyboard. Have something to hide behind. Maybe have a nap.”

You see Calvin Harris is really more of a pop music producer than a hot new pop singer, and he’s more comfortable behind a mixing desk than bouncing up and down (which he does very well) before day-glo nu-ravers and indie-scenesters singing about the 1980s and what not. However, the road to modern pop-production is paved with pop-stardom, and unlike Quincy Jones, Harris had to make his mark on the charts and suffer the adulation of attractive girls with asymmetrical hair, before he got a chance to work with the likes of Kylie Minogue and Dizzee Rascal (and, soon, if the rumour mill is correct, Katy Perry). So his fame may not be a permanent state of affairs, although “it’s nice to get out of the studio... get a bit of fresh air... see the world,” he says.
So how does one go from music making in a Dumfries bedroom to the music charts and packed out arenas? “I got into music when I was very young because my big brother introduced me to it,” he reveals. “When I was much younger, maybe around eight or nine, he used to make me listen to Nirvana and Sonic Youth records and I remember getting an acoustic guitar for Christmas, painting it black and learning to play the bass line to ‘Lithium’. That’s when I got into music but I wasn’t really making it until a few years later. When I was 14 my brother had this Amiga computer. He was going to university and didn’t need it anymore and he let me use it when he wasn’t around. That’s how it got started and I got obsessed with making stuff with this little Amiga box and I got a job and started saving up for little samplers and more music technology. That’s how it all began.”
He was a bit of an anomaly in the Dumfries guitar scene. “Musically in Dumfries they’ve always loved British bands. There’s a kind of obsession with bands like Oasis. So there were a lot of bands and not so many electronic acts. There were literally a handful of people doing dance music.”
Luckily Harris was then discovered by the internet, which Al Gore invented at around this time. “Well,” he pauses for a while, “that’s true to an extent, because after I joined MySpace I added a bunch of A&R men, and I added a guy from the EMI publishing unit who signed me to a publishing deal and that’s where everything else came from, and that came after about eight years of sending out demo CDs of pretty much the same music to everyone I could send them to, but as far as building a fan base on MySpace it didn’t really happen the way it’s sometimes said it happened. To start with nothing was happening online really until after the record came out. There was never a big thing. There was no real buzz.”
He doesn’t get as much time as he likes online nowadays, of course, what with his successful long-playing record I Created Disco and his busy touring schedule. “I can’t remember the day I decided to take a full band out on the road and not just DJ,” he says. “But I’m glad I did because it’s definitely thrown up more fun experiences. It’s certainly more fun than going alone with only your record bag or laptop. Nowadays, I need to chill out more, because I was drinking quite a lot and it made me ill. It wasn’t good for me and I wasn’t getting things done. I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life and I need as many hours as possible with my brain working. So I’ve quit the booze for good. I’ll leave it to the rest of the band. Booze and me are over.”
At the moment he’s spending his free time reading the work of pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell and the autobiography of grumpy Scottish entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne. Meanwhile, his own entrepreneurial production endeavours are gathering speed, and soon, perhaps, he may get to give up that part-time pop star gig he does on the side to make ends meet. “If you said to me a couple of years ago that I’d get to work with and hang out with Dizzee Rascal and Kylie Minogue, I’d have been very surprised. I wouldn’t work with just anyone, though. I have to like the music. I turned down Lady GaGa, because they sent me a song and I didn’t like it. I’ve heard her subsequent songs and it turns out she’s quite good. But the song she sent me wasn’t great, although it’s on her album,” he pauses and looks back over his life much as Citizen Kane did in that film, “anyway, I’ve no regrets.”