Derrick May

Hi-tech soul

Interviewed by Bill and Frank in Knightsbridge, Aug 30, 2004

The story of Detroit techno is a tale of dislocation. If you’re a stroppy black kid growing up in the soul city of Motown, what better musical rebellion than to fall in love with eerie European synthesisers? Forced to summarise the Belleville Three it would go like this: if Juan is the musician and visionary, and Kevin the traveller (he’d seen New York’s dancefloors in action), then Derrick May is the energy source. And he burns bright. Starting as a self-confessed square in thrall to the streetwise Atkins, Derrick was Juan’s relentless promoter, driving his records over to Chicago and reporting back on the exciting club scene there. Only after an extended apprenticeship did he turn his hand to production, but when he did the results were phenomenal. After filling up a laundry basket with cassette scribbles, in quick succession he gave us the soaring uplift of ‘Strings Of Life’, and the chilly angles of ‘Nude Photo’ which blew away the past with its alien mathematics.

It’s Carnival weekend and Derrick is in London to DJ for a Faith boat party. We start by grabbing something to eat. As the Lebanese snacks are gathered to take back to the hotel Derrick offers a commentary on the various female forms that enter his field of vision. Meanwhile, he’s having a protracted, often heated conversation with someone in Detroit about the city’s techno festival. Girls are never far from his mind and his phone is never far from his ear. Back at the hotel we drink wine in a deserted basement bar, where Derrick provides an epic three hours of energetic conversation.

So Derrick, your life, everything. Are you ready?

Everything? Fuck you! Yeah, I’m ready. Go ahead.

Radio was your biggest influence?

Yeah. We certainly heard the Electrifying Mojo on the radio, which changed our lives. Mojo was on the radio every night. He used to land the mothership, he used to use the intro to Close Encounters, and then he’d land the mothership, play some Jimi Hendrix, then he’d bump into Funkadelic, then he’d come out with some Prince. Play whatever. Some psychedelic cool stuff, some funky stuff though. And all these were defining moments in what we did.

When I heard my first really funky records it would be… Kraftwerk, Cameo. The first really strange shit I got attached to was hearing Michael Henderson ‘Wide Receiver’, The Bar-Kays. Those were the first records that really made me realise that something was different. So radio was definitely important, yes.

Back in your early childhood Detroit was still quite a lively city wasn’t it?

When I was a kid I do remember there being a lot more business on all the avenues, in all the local areas. There were small businesses, family businesses, a shoe-store, a fabric store. And people walked on the street a little bit more than they do now. It seems like Detroit had went through the worst in the period during Reaganomics. Apparently not true, because Detroit is going through an even worse stage now.

The normal story of a kid growing up in the suburbs is that the city has a real pull. Did Detroit not ever have that for you?

I lived in the city until I was 13. And then we went out to the suburbs for three or four years, then we moved back. Those four years were probably the most defining years of my life. There’s always this misconception of where we grew up. I mean we weren’t country boys. We weren’t from small town Belleville. We moved to Belleville, all for different reasons.

You were black city kids living in a white suburb. What was that like?

It was interesting. I remember the first day of school. We went to sit down for lunch. If you just imagine this massive lunch-room with all these lunch tables. And I had spent all summer long getting to know the kids in my complex, and they were mostly white kids. Troy was my best buddy all summer. I’m right behind him, and I got my lunch, I went and I sat down with Troy. And I’ll never forget it, because all the white kids at that table looked at me. They gave me this really strange look. So I noticed it, but Troy didn’t. But then a black kid came up, and he looked at me and said, ‘Hey man, why you sitting up here with all the honkies?’

And I looked at him and I said, ‘The honkies?!’

Then a school teacher came up to me and said, ‘You should be sitting back there.’

No! For real?

He said, ‘How come you’re not sitting back there?’ In a nice way. But he asked. The third day one of the black kids was in line, he said, ‘Hey man, come sit with us.’ So we went and sat with these black kids, in the very back of the lunchroom in the corner. Every single person at these four tables was black. And the other 40 tables were all white kids. And these black kids, they would stand up and throw French fries at each other, and just scream obscenities, back and forth, and it was a culture shock for me. It blew me away. I had never experienced voluntary segregation. And I think that changed me. That was a defining moment in my life, because it put me… it made me feel outside who I thought I was.

“  Juan, myself and Kevin, we come from middle class, upper middle class families, so most of the people we associated with were upper middle class to very rich. ”

Is it fair to say you were a loner or an outsider?

I was. And I pitied these people. I sat back there with them for the rest of the year with pure disgust. I found myself entertained by my own people. I felt like, ‘This is fucked up.’ And I made a promise to myself that I was going to be better than that.

How did you meet Kevin [Saunderson]?

We came together through sports. We played together on the teams.

And you and Juan [Atkins] met through music.

Juan and I came together from his brother Aaron. Originally it was because Juan played chess, and I played chess.

How did you bond with Aaron then, if you were friends with him before Juan?

Aaron used to tell me he had a car. I didn’t believe him, then one day he shows up, 13 years old, at my front door, with a Fleetwood Cadillac [laughter]. Know what I mean? Big red crushed velvet, Aaron was chillin’ man. He had the Funkadelic pumpin’ through the sound system, he let the windows down, it was almost like a Cheech and Chong movie: out comes this big thing of weed smoke. And it’s, ‘We love to funk you Funkenstein, your funk is the best…’ I was like, wow! This music, this car, this guy! He took me for a ride and it changed my life.

And you met Juan through a cassette tape?

Juan, he was basically an introverted guy. He used to play his bass guitar, without an amp, everywhere he went. Just sitting there in the kitchen, just plucking. Juan never really left the house much. He loved people, but he was really just a quiet guy. He would pluck-pluck and write, pluck-pluck and write. He wrote his lyrics, he wrote his own notes. His dream from the age of 12 was to be a musician. He knew what he was going to be. He told me when he was 16 years old he was going to make a label called Metroplex.

First time we met he looks at me and he instantly doesn’t like me. Because I’m a complete square. I mean these guys come from another side of town. They’ve come up another way. I’m just a square kid who likes to play baseball, watch cartoons. I believe everything my mother tells me. Then some years on we became, not exactly friends, somewhat acquainted through playin’ chess and through me coming to the house every day.

I left a cassette tape at Juan’s house by mistake, and Juan apparently used it. And I said, ‘Can I have my tape back?’ And he said to me, ‘Well listen man, to be honest with you there’s some shit on the tape you’re not gonna like. Let me just give you another tape.’ But I said, ‘No give it back to me I want my tape.’ And what was on the tape? Giorgio Moroder, some early Tangerine Dream. It was completely psychedelic. When I went back and told him I liked the music, that’s when we became friends. And I became his protégé. From that day on.

How quickly did you two start DJing together?

Immediately. During the next couple of months.

How old were you?

Fifteen. We decided to call our company Deep Space Soundworks. We weren’t great. Juan was my teacher and Juan wasn’t the greatest DJ in the world.

Where did that name come from? It’s quite techno.

Juan. It’s his thing. His first record label that they put Cybotron on, was also called Deep Space, in 1980. It was all part of his thought process, where he was at.

Was DJing a serious thing, or just a hobby? Did you get gigs?

Not until we were like about 17. Our first gigs were for local promoters. See in Detroit we had a really developed scene. Unlike any other city. I’ve never seen it anywhere in the world, the way we did it in Detroit.

The high school parties?

The high school scene was amazing. All the young high school kids would dress really nice, you had guys wearing Polo, and Versace, and all this ridiculous stuff in high school. It was amazing how much money these parties were making. People were charging $25 to get into the parties.

So where were these kids getting their money?

Well, keep in mind, this is important. Juan, myself and Kevin, we come from middle class, upper middle class families, so most of the people we associated with were upper middle class to very rich, black people. There was no abject poverty around us.

So socially these parties were very exclusive?

They were highfalutin’. Teenage kids with money.

And was it racially mixed?

Yes it was. Most of the black kids who would come to our parties were at private schools. Girls from the Mercy school. At that time it was a $10,000-a year school. There was a whole social element involved in it.

It sounds very much like a fashion scene.

It was. It was very posey.

So was the music important or just a soundtrack?

It was very important, because if the mix was not right, if the DJ had a bad mix, they would not dance. Jeff Mills, myself, Delano Smith, Mike Clark, we all come from that scene. We were all part of that high school scene. Because those kids were our guinea pigs for the music.

What were you playing?

We played anything from Thompson Twins’ ‘In The Name Of Love’ to ‘Call Me Mr Telephone’ [by Answering Service], to ‘Capricorn’ by Capricorn. We debuted ‘Cosmic Cars’, one of Juan’s records, at one of those parties. We played Risk ‘Loving the Music’, ‘Feel The Drive’ by Doctor’s Cat…

So there were all these high school parties with names taken from European fashion magazines: Charivari, Gables. Where did you fit in?

They were the establishment and we were fighting against them. There was a competitive company called Direct Drive, and we hated those motherfuckers. Because they played this prissy disco music. We hated prissy disco music. We were playin’ a lot of new wave stuff though, too. You would call it new romantic. We played The Plastics, the Japanese group Diamond Head. We played the B52’s. We played that at parties, people would be tripping.

And you and Juan were getting pretty deep about the music you played.

Music was becoming our common denominator. We would just sit in his bedroom and analyse records. We would just put on a piece of music and try to figure out what that person was thinking when they made that record. And this would just be our days: full-blown. We also had a pair of turntables, this crappy mixer that we borrowed, and we would sit in Juan’s bedroom, with these few records and just mix them over and over again. Constantly mix the same records.

You were really intellectualising it. You’re not hearing records in clubs; you’re hearing them on a radio or at home, and talking about them. That must have changed the way you saw music.

That’s exactly what it did. It changed the way we saw and felt it. Because for us it wasn’t a vocal record we would analyse. It was always an instrumental. And there wasn’t that much instrumental shit out back then, so we were really caught up. Like we heard Manuel Göttsching [‘E2-E4’], and we just listened to that shit for hours man: days, weeks, to try to like figure out what somebody was thinking.

Did you reach any conclusions?

That that person was deep, or that person was thinking about some politics. I just know it helped me develop a sense of conscience, of direction, of where I thought you needed to be to pull this shit off.

How would you come across records like the Manuel Göttsching?

We only had a cassette of it from the radio. Juan was in New York and he heard some DJ play it on a mix. And he recorded it. We would just talk, until both of us fell asleep. And we did this for years. It was what we did: analyse people’s tracks.

Did that connect with your DJing?

Completely. I learned that there’s always once upon a time in a record. Make sure the story has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. I listen to music now it’s like one long breakdown. It taught me that consciously you have to give this a story. You have to give it some sort of sense of purpose.

What was the pull of instrumental music in particular?

We were just anti-vocal. We just thought the vocals were stupid. Talking about love and gettin’ some pussy and you broke my heart [a bored sigh]. Oh, this is ridiculous – nothing political, nothing conscious.

Now Chicago. Chicago was a huge influence, right?

Oh yeah. I used to drive to Chicago. And Juan didn’t care for Chicago. He thought the whole Chicago house music scene was gay. Juan was like, not with it, at all.

How did you hear about the scene there?

I drove up to Chicago to visit my mom. My mother had moved there from Belleville – I moved in with Kevin’s family so I could finish the school year out in Belleville. And it was an amazing visit. I remember getting in from the train, and the very first thing I heard on the radio – now this is at midday, mid-fuckin’-day, my mom has the radio on, it’s low, casual volume, nothing big – ‘Feel The Drive’ is playing! I never heard that muhfucker before: ‘You must feel the drive’ [hums it].

So it was a revelation to hear that kind of music in a mainstream setting.

Yeah, because Juan at that time had already made his Cybotron records, and we were trying to figure out how to get them played. See, there was a period when Juan thought that there was this vast ocean and in it was him, in a rowboat with no oars. And there was no help in sight. He had this creative brilliant idea and there was nobody out there to share it with and no-one would ever understand him. He wouldn’t be saved. And when I heard this shit, it was like a beacon. It was like a lifeboat.

How did you discover the Chicago clubs?

My mother lived in a really nice area, so I just started walking, and I found a record shop called Gramaphone. And somebody tells me about another called Imports Etc. and every time you walk in you’d hear a record playing, maybe ‘Time To Jack’ by Chip E, or Jesse Saunders, and that’s how I discovered all this music. And this is how I learned about Frankie Knuckles. People would say, ‘Frankie’s playing the hell out of this, you gotta have that.’ No other description.

And that was enough.

Yeah, booom, outta there. Or Ronnie is playing this, and you must have this. Who is Ronnie? Who is Frankie? Finally the people working there told me where to go to hear them play. And being the young kid that I was I didn’t have any friends in Chicago, I just went by myself. I went to the Power Plant.

“  I exploded, I just fucking lost it. I was right there in the Music Box with them kids, jumpin’ screaming dancing, every week. I was shirt off, going nuts, grabbing girls. ”

What was it like?

It lifted me off my feet. I was elevated. I can’t explain to you any better than that. The party would go till dawn. You paid 15 bucks to get in, and you’d hear Frankie Knuckles, and he was nothing like he is now. He was unbelievable. He played Front 242, he played Frankie Goes to Hollywood, he played disco, he played Chip E, he played all this music.

And then I finally heard Ronnie. And this time, I wasn’t elevated; this time I was flat-out fuckin’ busted down. I was beat up. I couldn’t believe it. Frankie was my man, I loved him, he set me up for life, but it was Ronnie that moved me to the ultimate level of knowing that I could do this shit. He is the one who made me realise that my teachings from being around Juan, from growing up in Belleville, from listening to that cassette, from listening to my stepfather’s record collection, and learning how to pause button with Juan, and always wondering what the future was, and contemplating people’s music, it all came under this one basic raw element that this motherfucker right here had painted on my face. First, he painted it out simply: it’s all in your soul. Just whatever you feel, just let it out. And I exploded, I just fucking lost it.

And I was right there in the Music Box with them kids, jumpin’ screaming dancing, every week. I was shirt off, going nuts, grabbing girls and freaking with girls. And I brought all my friends there. I brought Kevin Saunderson there. And Kevin made a record called ‘Bounce Your Body To The Box’. It just changed everybody’s life.

Did you hook up with any of the kids who were producing these tracks?

I actually sold Frankie Knuckles a 909. Everybody was producing music in Chicago, nobody had a 909, I had an extra one. So I took it to Chicago, I needed money, I had two – and I should’na had two to begin with. And Juan said, ‘Don’t do it!’ And this was when they had made their first records. I think Chip E had made ‘Time To Jack’ and Steve Hurley had made ‘Jack Your Body’, And Juan said, ‘Man, that was the biggest mistake you ever made.’

Did going to the clubs in Chicago give you an impetus for making music?

Going to the clubs in Chicago, and also hanging out with Ken Collier. Ken Collier was easily one of the top DJs I’ve ever heard in my life. Him and Ron had this similar style of mixing. Ken was a drop mix kind of guy, and to drop a mix is harder than blending. When you drop a mix, that shit has to hit. ’Cos if you fuck it up, it’s dry. When you drop a mix it’s like an explosion.

When was the first time you saw Ken Collier?

It was our first gig worth anything. We were known as guys who played weird music. But cool music. Now there was a period in Detroit where people had lawn parties, at night. You charge 15 or 20 bucks for people to come in to the house, at affluent houses in affluent neighbourhoods. This one promoter, Darryl Tiggs, he didn’t have no nicest houses, he had some fucked-up houses in the middle of nowhere. But he played all kind of crazy music. He called his parties the Pink Poodles.

So basically we solicit Darryl for several months to let us play one of his parties. And he said, ‘Okay I’ll let you guys warm up for Ken Collier.’ So we ended up showing up at this party at a place downtown called Downstairs Pub. The turntable was already set up and we didn’t have slipmats, we didn’t know what the fuck a slipmat was. We had the rubber mats on. So we’re playing shit like ‘Trans Europe Express’, all this stuff. He had this really black, kinda cool crowd, they’re standing around, drinking their drinks, not one fucking person is dancing. We’re playing the Bus Boys, and all that kind of shit. Muhfuckers are not dancing.

Ken Collier arrives, and this is the first time we ever met the man. He’s about six foot two, husky fellow, had on this big be-bop leather jacket. He walks in with his record crates, he has people carrying them for him, and he takes out a record and he takes our slipmats off, and he puts on a real slipmat. He pops his record on. ‘Double Dutch Bus’ [by Frankie Smith]. Fuckin’ place went off. In ten seconds the whole floor was full.

“  I made about 300 pieces of music. I put them all on cassette. I had this basket, what most people put dirty clothes in, it was all cassettes. To the brim. All these first versions of things. ”

Was he getting the same kinds of records as the guys in Chicago?

No, he was just getting records from the record pool. And Ken wasn’t really interested. He just had his own sound. He was very much into a gay funky sound. He was very much into ESG, that was his thing. He wasn’t into mellow records, he was into uptempo music. He’d look for obscure shit, but it had to be funky. If it had a vocal he was pretty happy with that too. Ken was a big Sylvester fan.

Where do you think Detroit’s love for Europe came from. The European clothes, Italian names?

It was really the fact that people were informed at a young age, from like GQ magazine, fashion magazines. It seemed cool. It looked cool – isn’t that strange, though?

It’s not that hard to understand. It’s the same fascination Britain has for black America.

It’s what you can’t touch. It’s what you want to get into.

It’s so different from your own experience that it’s fascinating.

The difference was, if the kids at Charivari, if they had met people that actually looked like that, if they had gone to Cannes, France, and ran into some guy looking that way, they would have been very disappointed. But it seemed cool, and it gave a lot of these kids another level to reach. The Italian music was also very good. Klein & MBO, all the Capricorn stuff. I was the one who brought it back to Detroit. Nobody had it.

You had to go to Chicago for the Italo stuff?

Yeah. That’s what gave me my edge. There was only one store in Detroit: Professional Records. Everyone went to the same shop and bought the same records, basically. And they were all very competitive. I don’t think there were too many places in the country at the time that had 15, 16 year old DJs getting paid for it.

There was also a ton of British synth pop in the US charts around 1983.

For us that was sweet. We loved that shit. There was a time when Depeche Mode sold out stadiums the size of Wembley, in the States. I though Ultravox were very important. And there was a record called ‘Transdance’ from a group called Night Moves, and I’m sure to this day it was David Bowie, just fuckin’ around.

But Italy was where it was at. And there was a period when the Italy thing dried up, and that was when we got really serious about music. It was, I think, right between the point where Italy dried up and Farley and those guys made their first records. Farley became king with his first records.

So what pushed you into the studio?

I went back to Detroit, and had a real culture shock, going to high school with black kids again. I had gotten some great offers to run track in university. But I just didn’t have discipline. I sort of drifted. I ended up living with my grandfather some days, some days I’d live with Juan and his grandparents, because Juan had also moved back to Detroit. And we had lost contact with Kevin at that time, ’cos he was in Belleville, and there was this period where it was just myself and Juan again. And Juan and I were really close.

Obviously Juan was making records already.

Juan wouldn’t let me touch the keyboard. I was like his protégé, basically. Just told me to sit back and watch. I was his promoter, I was his cheerleader, I would go around and support and tell people in record shops. I took the first 45s of ‘Alleys Of Your Mind’ to record shops and tried to get it played. I got us a meeting with Mojo. That’s how Juan’s career took off.

So how did you come to break away from Juan and do it yourself?

I didn’t really make my first record until ‘Nude Photo’, because Juan wouldn’t let me. I had my keyboards, I had everything, borrowed stuff from him, but I didn’t know how to use it, so I had to teach myself. Just ended up spending the next year of my life hibernating, and every single day working until I developed this thing. I didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t turn on Mojo at all. I didn’t turn on the TV at all. I barely even wore clothes. I ate nothing but cereal, and just basically went inside.

Did you make any tracks along the way?

No, no. I didn’t let anybody hear it, I didn’t ask anybody’s opinion. I made about 300 pieces of music. I put them all on cassette. I had this basket, what most people put dirty clothes in, it was all cassettes. To the brim. All these first versions of things

Finally this kid called Tom Barnett brought me this track he wanted to do, which was terrible. But he had the money to put the record out. So I said leave it with me overnight and I’ll come up with something. So what I did is I made ‘Nude Photo’, and he brought me by something that had a bassline that sounded like New Order ‘Blue Monday’. Basically I thought it was wack. So I did ‘Nude Photo’, and then I did ‘The Dance’. I did ‘Move It’, in one night.

I actually had almost done a complete version of ‘Strings Of Life’ before I released ‘Nude Photo’, but I was afraid… First I didn’t know how to out a record out. I had to go back to Juan. Secondly, I didn’t understand what I had done.

In terms of what?

I was… frightened. It scared me, that piece of music.

You knew that it was great from word go? Or were you scared that it wasn’t?

All I thought was, ‘What have I done?’ When it was finished I hit the sequencer and it played, and it was like a carnival [hums the melody], like a real playschool sound. It was reminding me of my childhood. And then I finally added the orchestration to it and it scared me. I listened to it for 24 hours, really low. I slept to it. I woke up to it, because I hadn’t finished it. I didn’t put the drums or the piano to it yet, just added the orchestration. It freaked me out, so I couldn’t finish it.

It took me six months to put out ‘Strings of Life’. I had Mike James’ weird piano parts to it. He had done his piano a year before, but not for my song. I just ended up running across a piece of it, I chopped it and looped it on top of my orchestration, and it worked perfect. Then, Juan had showed me the fundamentals of editing, but this guy Jay Dixon did the edits. And boy did he do the edits: the kind of edits that make or break a great song. Timely edits, exactly where they should be. That’s why I never want to remix it. Because it’s not just a song that’s been mixed; it’s a song that’s been choreographed.

Why did you want to cut yourself off from other music?

Because Juan and I had always thought the outside influence was the worst influence when you’re trying to create something.

But you can never completely escape your history and your influences. And there are certain things that work on the dancefloor and certain things that don’t.

I don’t think about the dancefloor when I make a track. I don’t know if that is obvious or not.

When you made your first record, what was your ambition?

My first ambition was to take it to Chicago. Then get Ron Hardy and Frankie to play it. I thought if those guys played my record, I made it. I’m a hero. And I didn’t get a chance to take it to Chicago, so I gave it to my friend Al [Alton] Miller. And I remember Al calling me up. ‘Man you’re not gonna believe this. Ron Hardy played your records four times in a row.’

Was that ‘Strings of Life’ or ‘Nude Photo’?

I think it was ‘The Dance’.

How did you see the music you were making?

Soundtracks to everyday life.

The themes of futurology and the decay of Detroit are big in Juan’s first records. Were those ideas in your head as well when you were first making music?

I became completely anti-establishment. I got to the stage where my mother couldn’t even talk to me. I became a hater of politics, a hater of anything that was conforming. I hated reactionaries, I hated the whole idea of being a conservative. I hated the whole idea of walking the planet oblivious. Reagan was president, it was a fucked up time. Detroit was all fucked up, depressed, people were out of work, a lot of young black men were in prison for shit they didn’t do. I didn’t have any money, didn’t really have any particular vision or goal. It made me angry. It made me passionate to a point where the shit came out in the music. I tended to see my music more like a political thing. Like a message.

If they had lyrics, what would the message be?

They would have been records about the future, making reference to what kind of future we might have. You know, shit like that, making reference to somehow saving the world.

Did you see it having a link to the Detroit music of the past?

No. I didn’t disrespect the Detroit music from the past, but I just never made… In Europe you can hear classics on the radio; in Detroit you never heard Motown music anywhere. You wouldn’t go to a bar and hear those old songs. I think the most recent generation of kids don’t know anything about Motown. They don’t even know that Motown is Detroit.

What did you think when all these UK journalists came knocking, telling you you were great?

Blew me away. Didn’t believe it. Didn’t quite know how to handle it. We used to read NME, we learned about European records from NME reviews. And I remember saying it would be a dream to be in this magazine one day.

And when Neil Rushton [of Kool Kat and Network Records] called up about releasing your records in the UK?

Neil called and I couldn’t understand him, ’cos he has that strong Brummie accent. He said, ‘I’d like to bring you to England to meet some people.’

‘Great!’

But then he called me back, he said ‘I can’t pay your way.’ So I had to make a decision: was I going to buy my own plane ticket or was I gonna not go at all and possibly miss this opportunity? Juan said don’t do it. Kevin said pay for it. So I went.

What was the first time you heard the word ‘techno’ used for your music?

Juan said it. Stuart Cosgrove asked him what do you call this music? He had just done a massive interview for the Face magazine. We were supposed to be the front cover, and they needed a phrase. They spent three days with us. John McCready came over too, writing for the NME. This was huge to have those guys fly over.

“  Juan said, ‘We call it techno’. I said don’t say that. I’d kept begging him for the past year not to call this music techno. To me techno was that bullshit coming from Miami. ”

This is when the compilation was coming out on Virgin [in 1988]?

Right. We didn’t understand how huge it really was. So we had a great time with them. We took them to places, we showed them the city, and they got so emotional about it. They didn’t know Detroit was ruined like that. Stuart was making reference to loving Motown; these guys had a true admiration for the city, for what had happened to it, they were shocked.

Juan said, ‘We call it techno’. I said don’t say that. I’d kept begging him for the past year not to call this music techno. He said, ‘Naw man, this is techno.’ To me techno was that bullshit coming from Miami. I didn’t want to be associated with it. I thought it was ugly, some ghetto bullshit. I actually wanted to call this music high-tech soul, from the very beginning. That’s what I thought it should have been called. But nobody liked it, so…

Where did Juan get ‘techno’ it from?

‘Technology’

There’s an earlier NME article where you’re happy to be called ‘Detroit house’.

Yeah. That must have been the first article I had ever done.

And originally, the album was going to be called The House Sound Of Detroit.

We all sat down with Neil and decided what it should be called. Detroit music is not house music.

Was that a way of differentiating yourself from Chicago?

Completely. We respected them and loved them but we also had to identify with us, not them.

It’s quite an irony that a lot of your music was recorded on quite low-tech equipment.

Yeah extremely. ‘Strings Of Life’ was done on a cassette. I never even mastered it to another format. Did it on cassette, up till today. I still have the cassette.

And around the same time you started a club for this music. What was the impetus for doing the Music Institute?

It wasn’t my idea. I wanted to do a club but never had enough dedication to pull it off. My friend George Baker did it, with Alton Miller and Anthony – Chez Damier. When it happened it was unbelievable. We all got involved in it after that. I got this girl from London, Sarah Gregory – she was married to the guy from Heaven 17 – I got her over to do a massive mural on the walls. We put in an amazing sound system in there, pin spots, and just went for it. It was beautiful, man; we had everybody, even Depeche Mode in there one time. It was a juice bar, we had the fresh juices up in the back.

Kevin and myself started travelling back and forth to London, so we’re bringing all this music back, plus we had all the Chicago music, and we had the Detroit stuff, so we blew people away.

And you were resident?

Yeah. Friday nights. It was open two nights a week. Anthony played on Saturdays but nobody would come. They played traditional house and disco, Detroit people weren’t into that.

I was playin house music: Chicago, London, underground music. I played ‘We Call It Acieeed’ [by D-Mob] a week after it came out. I made that Friday night historic. I played ‘French Kiss’ [by Lil Louis] three days off the press. Broke it in Detroit. Played it so much it became plaster on the walls.

“  Techno’s not black, as far as the music business is concerned: ‘It won’t last, it’s just a phenomenon, don’t worry, it’ll go away. I don’t think we should waste any time on this.’ ”

Who were the kids who were coming? Did they have a history from high school days?

Yeah. It was everybody. We had a line around the corner. It was 25 bucks to get in, and we’re talking 1988. It was only open a year and a half. People think it was open longer.

Why so short lived?

Because myself and Kevin, we got busy with our work. Inner City [Kevin’s band] took off. All of a sudden I started getting offers to come play in Europe. I was getting remixes, stuff like that here. I got infatuated with England; I couldn’t leave. The last record to ever get played in the Music Institute was my ‘Sueno Latino’ remix ’cos it came out that week. I remember people were crying on the dancefloor when the last record was played. In tears, in big tears.

Could you define techno? Is it about the purity of how it’s made?

It’s about combining the elements of emotion and technology together. Many, many years ago I played a party and I never forget, the boys came to the front. All the lads, every single one of them, and I noticed that the girls got pushed away. And I realised that if this music went in the wrong direction it would be something that only guys would like. I remember the way guys ran to the front, on the first tough-house records, from Todd Terry. Anything that had a synthetic snare or kick-drum sound, anything that wasn’t organic, the guys just ran to it, and the girls simply got exed out.

What was your inspiration for putting out your own records? Over here we’d had punk to show the way, but how did Juan go about getting it together.

Juan just decided there was no company, in America especially, and we couldn’t see beyond America, he just thought that there was no company in this country that’s going to put this music out from a young black artist. And all we could do was imagine it coming out on a major label. We didn’t know there was any other process.

By necessity.

Right, so Juan bought the book This Business Of Music and we all bought a copy of it and learned the business. Followed Juan’s lead. I helped him shift and deliver records, that’s the way I learned. I picked up where he left off. Transmat’s still going to this day.

Your music is so intimately connected with Detroit. How did it feel to see it selling mostly in Europe?

Made you angry, pissed off. When we put out our first records we sold thousands in the states. We sold tons of records to Chicago and tons in Detroit. Our record ‘Nude Photo’ was on the radio, regular FM daytime radio. In Chicago, The Hot Mix 5, if they played your record you sold thousands, period. Now nobody even knows of Hot Mix 5 in Chicago, house music doesn’t sell. BMX and GCI play nothing but hip hop and contemporary music all day long. It’s like it never happened.

Do you think one of the reasons that radio stations didn’t like it is because it’s the first black musical form in America that broke with black tradition? If you listen to house you can hear the clear parallels with disco, but with techno, although it was clearly influenced by some black elements, it also was very European as far as the music industry was concerned.

It’s not black, as far as the music business is concerned: ‘It won’t last, it’s just a phenomenon, it’s just a thing, don’t worry, it’ll go away. I don’t think we should waste any time on this. Let’s monitor it and watch what happens’ – all of that shit. I think it just got to the point where they realised it was not going away, and they would pick it up on the second wave, which is what they did. They got Moby.

How important has the UK been to you?

Tony Wilson made a comment years ago at the New Music Seminar, he brought his group Happy Mondays with him. I was on the panel with Marshall Jefferson and a couple of other guys. It was full. He said that without England this music never would have happened. And I remember that Marshall stood up and got offended. And people started booing.

What do you think now though?

I believe that without England this music would not have happened – to a degree. The diving board was Detroit, the pool that it dived into would be England.

Definitely Britain first?

Britain is the home of pop culture. The cesspool of that shit.

Seeing the way it was received, did that change the way you approached it?

It gave the music and us market value. Which changed the way we saw the music, and what we saw the music was worth.

Do you think that techno is first and foremost dance music, and secondly it’s the other kind of stuff that surrounds it. The techno culture.

An owner of a record shop in Chicago told me, ‘I’ve got people coming in here and I don’t know how to describe this music, I don’t know if they should dance to it on a dancefloor or if they should take it home and waltz.’ It was never really defined as to where it was supposed to go. We never defined it. We didn’t know anything. I still think today we don’t know what we did. I don’t think until we’re old men, we’re out of the business, we’ll sit back and fully understand this whole picture.

People make techno all over the world now, in all sorts of different flavours. What marks out the style you started?

Straight up driving Detroit melancholy techno music.

You threw in the word ‘melancholy’ as if it was a requirement. What do you mean by that?

I used to ride through Detroit in the middle of the night. And I just want to cry when I look at this place. I’ve always said it’s like the Titanic above water. Like this big vessel that’s just deteriorated: all these steam pipes against the moon, all these massive factories that were just dormant. Like the guy says, ‘Detroit has been demolished by neglect.’ I just feel pain for that, man. And it just comes out. It was always my motivation.

© DJhistory.com

DERRICK MAY SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – Nude Photo (writer/mixer)

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – Strings Of Life (writer/producer/mixer)

R-TYME – Illusion (writer/producer)

A GUY CALLED GERALD – FX (remixer)

R-TYME – R Theme (writer/producer)

SUENO LATINO – Sueno Latino (remixer)

ANNETTE – Dream 17 (remixer)

REESE & SANTONIO – Rock To The Beat (remixer)

INNER CITY – Good Life (remixer)

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – It Is It What It Is (producer/mixer)

BANG THE PARTY – Release Your Body (remixer)

DA POSSE – Searchin’ Hard (remixer)

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – Beyond The Dance (writer/producer)

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – The Beginning (writer/producer/mixer)

DE-LITE – Wild Times (remixer)

YELLO – The Race (remixer)

CHEZ DAMIER – Can You Feel It (remixer)

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – Kaotic Harmony (writer/producer)

SYSTEM 7 & DERRICK MAY – Mysterious Traveller (producer/mixer)

COSMIC TWINS – Solar Flare (writer/producer)

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