Remixing Biographies: Gilles Peterson
This is a rewrite of Gilles Peterson’s biography, using material found in an interview at the Red Bull Academy, a profile in the Financial Times, a profile on the BBC’s page, a profile in Le Monde, and his own blog. An attempt at improving the basics — using the active voice, removing clichés, putting the emphasis on the right places, fixing punctuation and spelling, and generally shortening things — it is also a personal exercise in applying “The Elements of Style”.
Music producer, festival organizer, label owner, radio host, DJ, and occasional remixer; Gilles Peterson — born Gilles Jérôme Moehrle to a French mother and a Swiss father in the Norman town of Caen— is the factotum of the contemporary global music scene.
Coincidentally born in the same year as his favorite jazz album — “Speak No Evil” by Wayne Shorter, the listening experience of which Gilles describes as “cheaper and more effective than the best therapist”— Gilles was introduced to the power of music at a young age. On a summer holiday spent at his grandmother’s hotel in Northwestern France, the bored Gilles was wandering about town when he stumbled upon a record store. Inside, the energy of an album instantly took him out of his slumber: “Percussions Brésiliennes” by Ney De Castro.
Growing up in London in the 70's, a teenage Gilles fell in love with the record collection of the older sister of a friend. He remembers, “A Bobby Caldwell record, a couple of Earth, Wind & Fire albums, and a Cameo album.” His reaction to hearing those play was to hurry home and sell all his belongings — to the later surprise of his parents, who were away for the weekend — and acquire a Citronic Thames, a kind of prehistoric DJ setup; a budding DJ career ensued.
Gilles immediately understood what it took to get your break as a club DJ: a following — bring along an audience who buys drinks, and promoters will let you warm-up for a more famous act. If renting a bus for 50 people to take them to a club in a faraway suburb was what it took, Gilles would do it — no efforts were spared to get people to come and support him. When Gilles started going to Ibiza in the mid-80’s with Nicky Holloway and Danny Rampling, the same logic applied: offer cheap plane tickets and fly hundreds of people in from London.
In the early 80’s, inspired by Radio Invicta, the first pirate station in London, and the likes of Greg Edwards on Capital Radio and Robbie Vincent on Radio London — from whom Gilles got his first play of “Nights Over Egypt” by The Jones Girls — Gilles started a pirate radio of his own. With the help of his father, he would drive to a higher point of town a few miles away from home to setup an areal in a tree; their car’s battery powered the radio transmitter. These one hour broadcasts of music, which Gilles would have previously mixed on a tape in his backyard, also announced the phone number of a booth in the nearby pub; cramming into the phone booth, Gilles would wait with his father for the one or two callers-in on the show — the excitement experienced in those moments gave Gilles the inspiration for a lifelong pursuit in broadcasting.
In those early radio days, Gilles stayed in touch with his French roots; going back to see his grandmother every year, and tuning in on Radio Nova. He remembers the eclecticism of this French pioneer radio station as an inspiration because “British-ness was about, you have to belong to a camp, you have to be part of a tribe. In France it was much more open, much more arty, much more like, Whoa.”
One day, Gilles got a call from Bob Tomalski, the engineer who had built his transmitter and who also worked for Radio Invicta; the pirate radio had been busted and was in dire need of a transmitter. Gilles gladly borrowed his, and to thank him, Invicta offered him a break: a show on the station.
Gilles later moved to the BBC’s Radio London — this time clearly a duly licensed broadcaster — where the late evening show “Mad on Jazz” was to be his musical home in the late 80’s, and the place for the serendipitous meeting of three of his idols: jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, jazz singer Mark Murphy, and poet and musician Jalal Nuridim — who reminded Gilles that “the music industry is 95% business, and 5% music.”
A radio career progressed with shows on Jazz FM, Kiss FM, the BBC’s Radio 1 and Radio 6, and his latest venture: Worldwide FM. In parallel, Gilles also supported musicians by founding several labels: Acid Jazz in the late eighties, and later Talkin’ Loud; His current home is the independent label Brownswood Recordings. His support extended into charity when he founded the Steve Reid Foundation in memory of the legendary jazz drummer, and in support of musicians experiencing financial difficulties.
Over the years, Gilles remained involved in club life; Friday nights at the Electric Ballroom, and later the Sunday afternoon parties “Talkin’ Loud & Saying Something” — whose time slot enabled to attract a varied crowd — co-hosted by Patrick Forge at Camden’s Dingwalls. Music festivals are another mainstay for the overactive Gilles; besides making regular appearances as a guest at festivals worldwide, he co-founded Worldwide in Sète, and We Out There in Cambridgeshire. A book, “Cuba: Music and Revolution”, co-authored with Stuart Baker, about the cover art of Cuban music during its revolutionary period, provides further proof that Gilles still has plenty of energy.
His secret for remaining so active? Running, of which Gilles does about ten miles of on most days; he once ran the New York Marathon in four hours and eleven minutes, followed by a set at Le Bain — the rooftop discothèque of the Standard Hotel — of a symmetrical four hours and eleven minutes.
Today, Gilles continues to wear different hats, and to travel extensively either to play music, or to support others in their musical pursuits — always with a singular purpose in mind: to fuse the classic with the modern in support of contemporary dance music.
