DJ, journalist and producer, Kris Needs has made a career out of music for the best part of thirty years. Starting off in the 70s, Needs DJed for bands and in punk clubs, wrote for respected music magazines like the NME and edited the legendary Zig-Zag fanzine. In addition, the leading light behind Secret Knowledge lived the rock n roll lifestyle to the max, and can relate stories of excess that will outdo the tall tales of any self-styled acid house hedonist. This is not to say that Needs shares the suspicious attitude to electronic music common among rock n rollers, and has had a creative hand in some of dance music s finest moments. Digital Beat finally caught up with him before a DJ support slot for The Orb in London, and got the lowdown on Needs activities, past, present and future included.
Kris recently finished tours with both The Prodigy and The Aloof. The Prodge dates were hilariously documented by Needs himself in Jockey Slut , the UK dance fanzine. So you ve read the account, he giggles. Yep: missed flights, drunken, debauched behaviour, playing God Save The Queen to thousands of sweaty ravers. How did the unholy alliance of Needs and the Prodigy come about?
I tend to end up working with bands who are mates of mine. I m doing a tour in May with Fluke, and I once survived four tours in one year with Primal Scream!
The Orb are old mates too, and although he was sitting in Alex Paterson s front room listening to tapes of New York radio stations when an embryonic Orb formed, Kris came back from New York to find that they had become a fully-fledged dance act.
Needs spent five years in New York, writing for a hip-hop magazine run by the Tommy Boy record label. This was an exciting time for both hip-hop, and Kris sat there and watched while people like De La Soul, Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa came through.
In the end, the dream of the Big Apple rotted for Needs. I got mugged and slashed up badly on the subway, and Wonder, who I d just met, stuck me on a plane home.
On his return to the UK, Kris could see how contemporary music had developed.
I realised that I d missed out on acid house, but because I was living with Youth from Killing Joke (who now runs the Dragonfly label), I caught up pretty quickly. Youth took me around to a number of producers, but I wasn t impressed with what they were doing, so I thought, hold on, I ll have a go at this myself.
Although he claims that I never planned to be a producer or a DJ: it was a gradual thing , Needs was a quick learner, and was soon releasing tracks with Wonder as Secret Knowledge. The first track I did as Secret Knowledge was called Make Me Scream , and was played out by Weatherall. He asked me to do a release for the Sabres label ( Oh Baby ), and then Leftfield got me to do Delta Lady for Hard Hands. By this stage I was getting the hang of it.
The next instalment in the Secret Knowledge catalogue was Sugar Daddy , a track that blew away any of the prog house contenders of the time. With a pulsating bassline, eerie atmospherics and what sounded like Wonder having a prolonged orgasm, Daddy was the climax track of the century.
Kris still believes Wonder is the best singer in the world: she sends shivers down my spine , but the band were in an unenviable position when a follow-up was required.
It s unfortunate that we did Sugar Daddy because everything I do is a one-off, and Secret Knowledge will not be doing identikit Sugar Daddies . At the same time, everything we do is led by our emotions.
The group s feelings influenced the content of their debut LP, So Hard. When we recorded the album it was during a time when a lot of relationships were collapsing, and it translated onto the album, states Kris. Maybe that s why DeCon didn t like it: it wasn t happy like K-Klass, and was probably ahead of its time.
So Hard was released last August by DeConstruction, much to Needs annoyance. Record sales are always at a low during the summer months, and according to Kris: The album was buried by DeCon, and in real terms we got dropped by the label.
However, Needs was also dissatisfied with the artistic content of the record. To be honest, I was unhappy with So Hard. The engineer wasn t up to it, and couldn t twig the freeflow of ideas I had. I thought it sounded good at the time, but maybe that was to do with the skunk we were smoking!
Despite a disappointing debut album, Needs soon bounced back, and remixed A&E Department s storming acid techno number The Rabbit s Name Was . . . Having waived his usual #4,000 remix fee, Kris was rewarded in a different way.
I ve always believed that what comes around goes around, because remixing A&E meant I teamed up with Dave the Drummer. He s the best person I ve ever worked with. The pair have completed a bangin techno version of Jam & Spoon s classic trancer Age Of Love , and have just recorded Serious Mindfuck , a hard techno response to the recent death of Kris wife and the departure of his girlfriend.
What makes Kris Needs so interesting is not really the excessive lifestyle, but more his knowledge of and passion for all types of music.
I don t see any musical boundaries and would never think that I m in one field. I just like playing music. If I m playing out at somewhere like Voodoo ( Liverpool s techno mecca) or the Heavenly Social, the mission is always to blow the roof off, be it with acid techno or disco. I ve got over 33,000 records at home, so I ve a lot to choose from!
In spite of his touring schedule and journalistic commitments, Needs has found the time to record a new Secret Knowledge track, Let The Fun Begin on Arthur Baker s Minimal imprint, remix the new Orb single ( Asylum ), work on a disco record with Irvine Welsh , and release a compilation of unreleased tracks from the likes of Primal Scream and The Prodigy, entitled Kris Needs Must .
The space between these exclusive tracks have been filled with spoken-word contributions from interviews Kris did with Debbie Harry and Keith Richards and other rock n roll legends. Apart from a yearning to record a punk album ( punk in spirit and not three chords to me, Planet Rock is a punk record ), Kris Needs still has one burning ambition to fulfill.
When I ve finished the next Secret Knowledge album, I m going to write my book. I don t want to come across as some old fucker, but once you ve sat beside Sid Vicious when he learnt to play bass, and toured with Blondie, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones, you feel that there are stories to tell. I d make a film as well, but I don t know who I d get to play me!
Impersonating a unique character that dance music desperately Needs if you ll pardon the pun must be tall order to follow. n
Kris Needs plays Waterford s Club LA on April 11th with Claude Young as part of the Heineken Weekender.