D-Ream Interview 12-12-2023

D-Ream, consisting of Peter Culler and Alan Mackenzie, defined an era with their hit song "You're the Best Thing." Peter started as a self-taught guitarist in an indie band before signing with U2's label. Alan, on the other hand, had a passion for music from a young age and became a DJ in the house music scene. They met at The Brain Club in London and combined their dance floor knowledge to create records. DJs became more creative with the introduction of samplers and keyboards, and sampling allowed for the discovery of new talent. "You're the Best Thing" evolved over two years and went through various remixes before becoming a hit. It was initially released on a white label and later signed by Warner. The song's success was due to the support of a larger company and re-releases in different forms. Now it's given a few bands to define an era with their presence and even fewer to define an era with one song, but D-Ream did that, they did it in a very fine style and they're here with me today, Peter Culler and Alan Mackenzie, a very warm welcome to you. Hello. Hi Trevor, thank you for having us. It's great to have you, it's great to have you back as well, you've been back a few years now but let's look back though to the very beginning, two very different individuals from different backgrounds. Can we start with Peter and your background, which is guitar driven indie, the indie scene of Derry. Tell us about your beginnings as a musician. Well thank you, well I picked up guitar, I think I must have been about 10 and I kind of was self-taught really, I just looked at the kids on the screen and tried to copy that what I could see on TV and then I picked up what I could. I ended up in my first indie band when I was about 15 I suppose and then yeah, I stayed with them until I was 18, 19. I learned a lot from that because the scene then was very small in Ireland but by the time we finished within a few years we'd signed to Mother Records, U2's label and they were U2's way of putting something back into the community I suppose, they had a homegrown label to nurture Irish talent. So yeah, we were signed to them along with people like Tuesday Blue and the Hothouse Flowers and what have you and yeah, that helped to move to London. The deal didn't work out and the actual song that we were recording was a version of Blame It On Me, believe it or not, which was on the first Dream Room album, Dream Room 21. But yeah, I found myself on friends' floors but as a musician I started to learn about computers and samplers and I was always trying to learn how to make records and that led me to going out into the early house music scene in London with some friends and I went to this place called The Brain and Wardour Street, kind of a melting pot of honeys, lovies and that kind of people, they were all creatives and Alan was the resident DJ there and that's when our paths crossed because I mentioned to him at the bar that I was struggling to make records sound as good as the ones he was playing and so then yeah, he decided to come over to the studio that I had then and this must have been 1990 and yeah, the first track we worked on was You're The Best Thing that was on the mixing desk. And that should be the point at which we bring in Alan McKenzie. Tell us about your background. I was just, I wasn't very musical, just usually up to Scotland and my dad collected records for a while, didn't collect records, he bought records. I used to listen to the Top 40 show on a Sunday on the radio, record it with my brother, sing all the songs and stuff. My brother used to write songs together as well, which were obviously very bad, but we used to do that. He's not played any of these to me. No, I've just got them all. But we were very young, that's what we did. I just loved music and we just bought records with our pocket money and stuff, my brother and me. And that was it. And then when I moved to England when I was 15, my friend was a hospital radio DJ basically and he had a lot more musical, so we got into that. And I just got into that and started playing records. This would be the late 80s, well, yeah, 86, something like that. And that House Music thing started coming out, that Acid House thing, that nasty Acid House thing, and I started really getting into that. And it just sort of, I just got right into it and started getting gigs, lots of gigs playing at the start in the Boston system. And I was just doing parties all the time and started DJing in nightclubs. So that's, well, that's how I got to the Brain Club where Pete and I bumped into each other. What I'm thinking about now is that Alan paid his dues in the DJ world and was going from the ground up. And then I've been on various bands working as a musician and paying my dues from the ground up. And when we actually met together, we were still working our way up the greasy pole. So we met at an early enough time in our lives where we could try and do something interesting. I'm just seeing that now. It was a fascinating thing to me because I played in covers bands in the kind of mid-70s. I'm a little bit older than you. And DJs in those days just played records. They were on before you, they were on after you, on the same bill. But they just played records. And there was no interaction between the two of us. You know, the musicians union was very anti-DJ and we kept apart. It was the time when you two worked together. DJing became a much, much more creative scene. Why is that? Was it the introduction of samplers and keyboards? House music was a thing, wasn't it? And we got these crowds together. We worked, I suppose, it got a bit of a frenzy. You know, as much as we were playing other people's records, essentially, which we were, we worked to create that sort of thing. You liked that thing, didn't you? You saw that. You could stand there playing your records. You were like a god, a priest who's pulpit. You know, it's just... DJs got to be at the same level as musicians insofar as they were becoming stars in and of their own right. And they were doing really interesting things. I mean, the clubs I went to, when Alan was playing, you go on a bit of a journey if it lasts up to two hours. But that was the sort of tribalism of it. It had this kind of psychedelic experience to it because you were really transported. It gets great, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't have that kind of elongated focus and sort of something where the lights are out. And you could be anywhere. It just takes you to a different sort of a higher level, if you like. But when I was watching Alan from the side of the DJ box, which is my sort of favorite perch, I was able to see the highs and lows that he could create within the set. When it came to working in the studio, we were able to put that dance floor knowledge, as it were, into the records. And that's why we converged. And the thing is that I've never been very snobby about these things. Because at the end of the day, what you're doing is entertaining people. Yeah, exactly. And I like that DJs could sample other... We don't do it so much, but that you could sample other people's records like Daft Punk and make a whole career out of cutting up other people's records. But that's great, because those people who we wouldn't have known about have been brought into the limelight. So I think it's good. Musicians are probably more honest than the ones who say I was influenced by, who've actually just done a steal. So yeah, I think it's interesting. It certainly is. Sampling is something that fascinates me. And it's something that composers were doing in the 1950s with tapes, and sampling sounds like Stockhausen recording a choir boy, and using that as the entire basis of a piece. Let's talk, though, about You're the Best Thing. You had a couple of attempts to get it further up the charts. It's fascinating how your songs evolve. You're the Best Thing and Things Can Only Get Better are wonderful examples of how a song evolves and then becomes a hit, rather than is a hit straight out of the gates. Tell us how You're the Best Thing evolved. Well, as I said, the time that Alan came over and we started working on it, it was in its embryonic stage. But one of the first things that happened was he asked me to change the intro. So instead of having it, you know, I was pretty much four bars or something over the strings, and then into the song, he was like, make that last for like 32 bars. And I was going, well, that's crazy. No one's going to listen to that. He said, it's not for you. It's for DJs to lock on from previous songs so they can synchronize the beats. And that was brilliant because that just changed. And then I began to think, well, we can make this any length we want. We don't have to go in and add to it. So we don't have to have it in the jukebox format. You know that three-minute thing on radio? That's come from the attention span that people got from the jukeboxes. They were restricted to two and a half minutes. So all of a sudden, we were back to like, well, this doesn't really matter now how long it is. And the original version of it was, what, seven minutes or something? And then by the time we got to Top of the Pops, we had to cut it down to four minutes. But actually standing there on the day just before the cameras were rolling, they only cut us off after two minutes. And I was livid. Absolutely livid. But I do remember thinking, I'll bite my lip on this one because I'm just in another world. And we've got the opportunity here to do something with it. So it did evolve. It took two years or so. And then eventually, once we got our version together, it was given to Sasha, who remixed it. And Pete Tong essentially tuned it. And then, which way was it? We did ours first? Yeah, we did ours first. It came out on a white label. FXU was Pete's manager. It came out on that first with our version and a couple of remixes we'd done. And then Pete Tong actually made that. And then it was a Sasha remix. I mean, always we were pushing the same original version. It's just because I think we did it on a white label. It got signed to Rhythm King Records. Who released it. And they weren't as big as obviously Warner's. Well, they were big enough. But they also got back number 72. And then it was slowly built. So essentially, it's the same record. Then Warner signed it. And then they got David Morales to remix it. Well, that was later on. So it's the same record being pushed. But it's a bigger company pushing it and getting a bigger audience. And it's a re-release. So it comes out in various sort of guises. By the time that Paul Oaken called the Perfecto Mix to come out, it was just ripe to be, I think it got to number four at that stage. So yeah, was it three or four? Yeah, another three I think. So it just really helped it sort of build up. And the thing about the public is, you know, to get the public's attention is very, very difficult. People have got busy, hectic lives. And so we kept on putting it out again. Because then people were going, oh, Dee Ream. And they go, oh, that's the best thing. And they put two and two together. Oh, that's that singer. Still at it. Still at it, yeah. It's very like our approach when we're selling advertising to a potential client. They'll say, you know, well, how long will it take for sales to take off? And you say, well, it's a matter of just getting your name into people's homes and workplaces. And then it enters the collective consciousness. And then the next time people want a plumber, they'll think, oh, there's that plumber that advertises on that radio station. Same with you. People will mention your name. Oh, that's hilarious. I actually had my boiler being served to them this morning by my favourite plumber, Steve Caston. I swear to God, he just left about an hour ago. And they're bloody hard to get hold of. That's why we're here. And we're over in Donegal. So there are workmen over here in such demand. So if anyone wants to come over and make a fortune, please come over here. If it is, you're right. I mean, it takes a while for people to join the dots, and even now, people think we've been gone for years, and we haven't. We started again, making music again from 2008. We're on our third studio album outside of Warners and The Hype Machine. But we're still us. We're still doing what we do, which is, I don't know, bring joy to people, have fun live, and something that people can play at home and enjoy. We're not going completely easy listening. There's still some kick-butt tunes there. But we're still doing what we do. Coming out 30 years after Things Can Only Get Better is number one. It's really just a moment in time that we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of that. And we're both sitting here going, my God, that's 30 years. And it's easy to say, rolls off the tongue quickly, but 30 years is a lifetime. Absolutely, yeah. More than a lifetime in some cases. Before we talk about Things Can Only Get Better, which has a wonderfully convoluted history, let's talk about your touring keyboard player, a certain Professor Cox. When I mentioned to someone yesterday, oh, I'm interviewing, do you read tomorrow? Oh, are you talking to Brian Cox? No. He was a touring keyboard player. Tell us about Mr. Cox and his driving abilities. We were Brian's summer job, according to him. And the guy that gave him the chance to dip in for him, a fellow called Drac, he said, look, there's this band, they're from London, they're not too much, they're not really going anywhere, but if you want the job, it's yours for the summer. And next thing I know, Brian being a mathematician physicist is not very practical. So we used to take our life in his hands when we'd arrive at maybe half the venues we were scheduled to play at. So we got him off deriving and de-map duties. And we got him into doing the keyboard. So that was great, because he really fitted in with us and our ethos. And that's when he became a member of the band. I think he left in 95 because he was going to finish his degree and become a professor. And we were heading off to Australia on the Australian leg of our tour. And he just couldn't finish his degree unless he stayed at home. And I did promise him his job when the band came back, if we were still going. And, of course, in true pop music style, we were on the Descent. And Brian was on the Ascent. And it's been brilliant. He's been great ever since. So we're very, very fond of Brian. Hoping to see him in January when he's here on tour in Northern Ireland. So, yeah, we're still in touch. Right. Explaining the universe to music. Why not? Well, yeah. I was talking to him one day and I said, Brian, you know, you spent some time with us on the tour coach explaining very, very complicated ideas to stupid people like me. And he was like, you know what, Pete, I'll give you that. So we just sort of thought, that's Brian all over, you know. And even today, if I go to the shows, I did my best at A-level maths. And that's about as far as I got. I understand the countenance and I do the statistics. And that's it. Let's talk about Things Can Only Get Better. Another song with a convoluted history. This seems to be a common thread with D-Room. Certainly with those two songs anyway. Things Can Only Get Better. How did that come about? It's a song that I wrote I was in a band between my indie band and settling down in London. I was working with a guy called Jamie Petri. And he was the first time I co-wrote with anybody. And he was into soul and stuff like that. And we had a band called Jordan. So we were working on a thing that was very like Sympathy for the Devil. But we didn't have a chorus for it. And I was working as well at the same time in an office like Ricky Gervais' office. It was quite viper-ish let's say. With their sharpened wits which was turned on each other. And one day someone said something that really got to me and I was a bit teary. And the girl in front of me ran a gift, a rolling gift sister-nose vest to her and says, Cheer up Pete. You know what they say? Things can only get better. And being Irish, I'd never heard the expression before. But immediately, if you're a songwriter you just switch on the songwriting mode. I took my Walkman and I ran into the toilet and put down this idea which was the basis for that. And so we finished the song but it sounded more like Sympathy for the Devil as I said. And then within about two years I was getting into house music. Alan and I were working on a thing for Baby Tune which is a remix we had at the time. And I just, this idea the hook came into my head not the rest of the song. The rest of the song didn't work but just the chorus did. And Alan was, what the hell is that? And so we wrote this old song and it fits this remix. And then we took it to the Club Balance had a new residency a place called Maximus Love Rance that was down in Leicester Square underneath an old cinema. And it was an old sort of 50s, 60s velvet, red velvet, velour, black you know it was really it was designed to make the mind boggles as to what kind of events occurred down there. But we were up to the same old tricks as well, all these boys and girls just hedonism, it was absolutely hedonism. And we played out this embryonic idea which is on this CD the best thing that's just come out on Friday. And we played that and the place just lit up. And by that time it took about a year or two later we got a few remixes done well it was our mix that was the one Danny Ramplin's was OK but didn't do what ours was doing. And it just started to light up through the clubs. Initially we couldn't make that chorus work and we had several attempts of going into the studio to get it sounding right and every time we went in we'd have a new bunch of singers come in and help us sometimes professionals, sometimes friends. And then somewhere within a few months of release when the pressure was on to get this thing ready my producer Tom Fredericks came in and he pulled us into the studio and on the faders he brought up the first session with like 30 voices on it then the second session with just as many voices on it and then the third and he panned them left, right and in the centre. And we had this massive choir you know like a gospel choir nearly and we were going that's it, that's the sound and then things were going to get better it was really in your face and we knew we had it then and by the time we got the record out there, again it just ripped up through Clubland on word of mouth. Absolutely. I was going to say gospel choir, I was going to say it sounds like a gospel choir on there and I love songs that mix and meld different styles and that's almost a perfect example of it that gospel choir and the dance element as well. We've still got blues elements in a lot of our work is blues elements and then we've got that kind of lovely stuff that we found out, operatic stuff and then stuff from the sort of post-punk era that's more electronic, so it's all in there it's just we sort of visit it and we pluck from all these different genres willy nilly just to if it sounds right then it works. And let's I want to this point to bring in the role of music in your life Peter you were adopted as a youngster but you found out something about your birth parents later on in your what early twenties it fascinates me, tell us about that Well what I found out was well I knew from very very early age that I was adopted so there's a big thing here in Ireland about the mother and baby homes and a lot of youngsters, people, now people my age from that era had a terrible experience where they were found out, adopted off because of the just the shame of out of wedlock births I had the opposite experience, I got great parents, I got these I was given, gifted Monica and Les, my dad's from Didsbury in Manchester, my mum's a simple local Irish girl from Derry, they fell in love after the war and he moved over here and they were my parents and they encouraged me to do everything like from painting and drawing to playing my guitar and I couldn't have wished for better, but when I was 21 I met my natural mother because the Catholics changed the law, they were lying and said they didn't have any records, of course they did and yeah they I can't remember, John Paul opened up the records and yeah the next thing I know is over meeting my natural mother, my birth mother but I brought my adoptive mother up with me and it's interesting because she said the first time I met her she said well you smoke other people's cigarettes, I said yeah she says there's spit of your father and she was the singer in the band and he was the guitar player in the band so that's when I realised it was all of the blood and it explains why I'm compelled to do this, you know I don't choose to do it, but it's just like it is what I do It occurred to me that's what you're hearing and you really mean it It occurred to me when we were just talking about the mixing and melding of different musical styles you obviously have a great knowledge of various types of music various genres of music I think it does come from that curiosity comes from that lineage, that show band tradition isn't it? I grew up on country because that's a massive thing here in Ireland my dad took me to my first gig with Johnny Cash in 1976 at the Royal Opera Hall Alan grew up on soul and funk and that sort of stuff that's kind of there I was in an indie band so I was playing our version of Aztec Camera and REM all of that stuff is behind us when we come to do this Now let's talk about the late 90s disillusion seemed to set in from a certain point, disillusion and taking back control seems to be a theme of both of your careers tell us essentially what happened, why you took a break and why you came back Coming back season we just met by chance so we've had a break if you're not having hits and things aren't working then it's easy to get out of these things and if it's not how you want it then it's easy to get out of things and for me essentially I left Aston's first album because I didn't want to be a pop star I didn't like that whole scene I wanted to make more music and not be part of that machine, that hype machine the record labels telling you what to do all that sort of stuff, not for me so for me coming out it's easy and then getting back I'd say we just met by chance and we thought let's do this and since then we've been making music we make it on our own it's well to say we do it on our own if a big label's coming up with loads of money to back it I'm not saying we should say no to them that's not happening, so we do it ourselves so we make what we want we want to make and we put it out ourselves so this is really on our terms now did you say disillusionment, I got to the stage before the Labour Party thing I got to the stage where my label were saying all the wrong things and doing all the wrong things and I didn't want to be with them then either, by 95 they buried the power at the pressing plant so we lost two weeks of promotion at Club I don't even think it hit the 40 just the number 40 so I walked out of that in hindsight I should have gone to the guys above the guys who did the evil deeds but you know what, it was time to move on, Alan wasn't around I wasn't feeling it to be honest it was so intense that I needed some time out I really did it must have been an intense period you're told to take that so you had all these screaming young people in the audience in front of you every night and the pressure there must have been immense no that was actually great fun we it was a totally different world to ours, you're talking the places we inhabited were just little night clubs and what have you, but I have to take that with stadiums so things on a much grander scale the sound of those kids though before that came on, that screaming that's something I'll never forget it was so cutting and then we used to thank the fans and take that for letting us play with them before we knew it, it was actually this time 30 years ago we were on tour with them we'd just finished in November this time 30 years ago we were getting all these youngsters into what we were doing and they really on top of the clubbers put us at the top of the charts in January 30 years ago so you meet again in 2008 and there have been a couple of albums since then in memory of Open Hearts, Open Minds and you have a new album out out what, only 3 or 4 days ago on December the 8th, tell us about that it's a bit of an anthology it's the label we're with now who we call on the music with to celebrate the 30 years of things being number one so we got in touch and we thought we'll help them with it go through the tracks we want what we wanted to do with them so they've been remastered, we've found some demos that haven't been released, things that haven't been on streaming sites, some live versions so it's not just a basic greatest hits thing, it's a bit more to it so for people fans who follow us, it's something they haven't got and for new people coming in realise there's more to us than just these few songs and it's while we're recording a new album it's something that we can bring in and just keep people interested while we're doing that and I noticed you're on Bandcamp these days which so many well-known musicians are, again it's about taking back control isn't it oh yeah, I love Bandcamp it's a big original material having that thing where you can put it out and you're in control of it completely, they take the cut but it's not just a huge cut you're making some money from your own music which, once you've signed off to a label you can wave bye bye you can wave bye bye to anyone but then you also wave bye bye to ownership, this is what Prince was complaining about and then you're restricted in what you can release we're really not having anyone telling us what to do, what direction to go in and see I like that because that means you're getting the artist direct if you know what I mean, so you can you're in control of the means of production as Mark's put it yes, yeah so, well I have to say more power to you for doing that you know, on behalf of musicians everywhere, I think that's a great thing to be doing I mean you see Taylor Swift taking back control of her output as well which you know is an incredible thing to be doing you have been touring there are tour dates coming up aren't there we're putting some bobs in at the moment we're hoping to get something together for the autumn when we've got the new album out and that's when we'll try and get some new things in, there are some dates already in I think some in Scotland, Ireland, a few in England and hopefully there will be more I think around this time now you get less and less dates in because everyone's thinking about Christmas and stuff so hopefully there'll be a lot more coming in but if people are thinking about Christmas presents of course, there are vinyl versions of your work out so people can get wonderful artefacts of a vinyl LP for Christmas, which is great best Christmas present ever I had a friend send me a Christmas card and you know what he put in, I'm about to show it to you you know the Beatles, the Love CD he put a copy of that in there for me and it's a really nice feeling a bit of vinyl wonderful, so buy lots of vinyl buy Dee Reen's new album for Christmas presents for all your loved ones Pete Kemmer, Al McKenzie, thank you very much indeed for joining me today Thank you for having us Kevin and a Merry Christmas to you sir Cheers Thank you