Frankie Knuckles - The Daddy (Of House) Is Back In Town

Feature, By danny corvini, 4th December, 2007

The last time I interviewed Frankie Knuckles back in 1999 he was in the midst of recording a mix for the Mardi Gras ahead of his performance at that year’s party. He was extremely pissed off. Mardi Gras said they were having difficulties licensing the tracks he wanted, and he wasn’t buying it: “I had to sacrifice my art to appease whatever they’re trying to do!” he scoffed at the time. “Do you all think I have nothing else better to do that to just sit back and worry myself about this?”

So naturally when I got the chance to speak to the house music originator again, I was gagging to find out what happened next! Unfortunately time heals some wounds and Frankie didn’t have anything bitter to say at all. “It eventually worked out fine, I got it done and they put it out,” he said, throwing water on my unsavoury thirst for club politics.

On his way back to Australia for Sydney’s Wildlife New Year’s Eve party at the Hordern, Frankie is happy to be returning again to the country that so surprised him back in ’89 when he first visited.

“It was brilliant, it was wonderful, I didn’t think that kind of party went on down there, because it was a classic warehouse party,” he said of the Rat party that he came out here for, also at the Hordern Pavilion. Of course Aussies do love to party and we love doing it with Frankie, the man who gave birth to house music back in ’77 at the Chicago’s Warehouse.

What are your memories from the 1999 Mardi Gras party?

It was wonderful. The thing I probably remember most about it is all the people, there’s great people down there.

And what is daily life for Frankie Knuckles like at the moment?

I don’t know, it depends on what day of the week we’re talking about. Every day is something different.

Are you doing much gigging and recording?

Well actually no, I had a small accident when I was on tour in Europe and I had to come home and have surgery done. I fell and fractured my foot and my ankle.

I hope you didn’t fall out of a DJ booth?

Well, no, off stage. So I ended up having to come home and have surgery done and stay off it and put it up.

So you’ve got a CD out with the rest of Def Mix, ‘20 Years of Def Mix Classics’. Are many of your most favourite house tracks on that CD?

Yes, quite a few. I don’t think I can really say that I like one better than the other because everything that’s on there I’m absolutely in love with, and I just wish there was more that we could’ve added. But then it probably would’ve ended up being a ten CD set!

Do you enjoy the changes in house music today?

I do and I don’t. I’m having a much easier time of understanding it now. [I look back through my library and listen to all this music and realise a lot has changed.] We’re talking 180 degrees away…

Can you identify the time when music started to change, started to lose those qualities?

It was a slow process, I think it really started making a change probably somewhere around the middle to late ‘90s. Because the technology made it possible for anyone to go home and build a studio in their bedroom and make their own music and stuff. Everybody’s sampling everything but not necessarily writing anything original. Also you’re still looking at forms of music like trance and tech house or techno or all those different forms of music, where songs were not important. It moved so far away from the human element, I thought… the songs weren’t there, the voices weren’t there, and if you’re the sort of person who goes out clubbing and you stay out all night long from midnight to 8 then next morning and you don’t hear one song all evening, what have you got to sing about?

What about when you come out somewhere like Australia and most of the crowd might be in the early 20s and are used to a really different dance sound. Is it a challenge?

I used to look at it as a challenge but it’s not anymore because most people know exactly who I am and they know the music I play and the music I make, and there’s a particular sound that I carry with me always and therefore I don’t have to vary on that. Anyone who ends up on my dancefloor who has no clue as to what I do, I don’t alter what I do to appease them that way, it’s just not how I work. That’s like going to a James Brown concert and they expect him to sing The Strokes or something like that. That makes absolutely no sense.

When you’ve been in this business as long as I have – I’ve been in it for 35 years – I don’t alter what I do to appease a certain group. I have an audience of people that have been following me a very, very long time around the world and all I have to do is go and be myself.

Was that the experience you had in 2000 at Mardi Gras?

People were very accepting, everybody’s arms were stretched out, they were very giving and very accepting. I had no problem at all. I don’t usually have a problem when I come down to Australia to play.

When was the first time you came out to Australia?

The very first time I came to Australia was in 1989. I played the Rat party in Sydney in ’89. It was brilliant, it was wonderful, I didn’t think that kind of party went on down there – because it was a classic warehouse party. It was like what we were doing in Chicago, I thought it was brilliant. Apart from seeing people passed out all over the street, laying in the gutters, passed out from too much partying, it was brilliant.

When you come out to Australia you must get a phenomenal amount of love.

I do. And I try and give it back and I try and share it with everyone!

How do you feel about electro and the ‘80s revival?

In a word: whatever (laughs). That’s the best I can come up with. You know when you’ve been in this as long as I have you see it keep going around and coming back around, which is the reason I’m safe and I’m secure well enough in what I’m doing that I don’t have to worry about ending up playing for the wrong audience or having the wrong people in the room. When I look at the retro thing that’s going on, with the electro and the 80s stuff and all of it, so much of it sounds like what I’ve been playing for the longest time anyway (laughs). Except when it comes to electro – I like some of the electro stuff, but you know when you’ve got that minimalist thing going on all night long, where there’s really very little going on in the track, not a vocal going on or anything, for me personally it doesn’t work. But this is for me, personally. To be entertained by it all, it’s not enough to just hear a bunch of banging tracks, I wanna hear the human element and I wanna hear how real it all really is.

You’ve had a holiday and a street named after you in Chicago. That must have been a surprise!

Surprise, surprise!

Are you all set for new year’s eve?

I don’t know how long exactly my set is, I never pre conceive what I’m going to do, I usually wing it when I get in a DJ booth. I know it’s holiday time and every one’s coming out to celebrate and have a good time, and my job is to show them that. And so that’s the best I’m going to do, cos it’s all I know how to do!

Frankie Knuckles plays alongside Stonebridge and Freemasons for Wildlife New Year’s Eve, Hordern Pavillion, Entertainment Quarter.

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