20 years later Mary Anne Hobbs is saying “I can’t believe that you wrote this track for him and I’m going to play it on this show.” That’s all that matters to me. When he turned around to me and said “What’s that line, sunshine?” and I said sorrow lies in sculpture? Leonardo Da Vinci did sculpture…” He said, “Do you know that a sculpture already exists inside the marble, all you’ve got to do as an artist is blow the dust off.” Just keep the water clean that you are using at the time with a mallet. Sounds like he had a big impact on you? What other artist could tell me that? I can’t say the same…I can tell an artist like DepBoy, who we just signed, a few anecdotes or can tell him something to believe in, but as far as Bowie is concerned, it has an impact in your life, this is a guy we all grew up with, not everyone grew up on my music, but this is a guy, the consensus of British music is all grown up on. And for him to say that to me was a massive thing. Going back to your point, what does it really mean to me. What matters to me is the label. Yeah, definitely. Tell us more about Metalheadz, how do you keep the label current? I would say from 2001 to 2006 wasn’t the greatest time for Metalheadz because people forget that we actually have to wait for a generation to grow up, because our generation went away and had kids, the new generation hadn’t found dubstep yet. So when that finally starts happening, you’ve got all these kids growing up on music thinking “My dad used to listen to this.” Are you listening to your dad’s iPod or your dad’s record collection? There is a big difference. Anthony is probably the strongest label manager I’ve ever had. Anthony came in, his old label Dispatch is based on a Metalheadz label release, I’d employed various people before to look after it while I was away and I made some wrong choices. My wife said the same thing to me, “You always choose people that you have massive expectations for and kind of fall short a little bit”, but it’s my process, that’s the way that I grew up. You give people opportunities, in a modern world of business that doesn’t really translate. It was a learning curve for me because that was my own doing, but Anthony came and said “Look, this is a business for you, I know you are passionate about it, but
Wolverhampton B Boys at the Lifestyle 85 exhibition at the NEC wearing Kappa tracksuits.
whatever you do, just do what you believe in. So, we are doing this track, I wrote that track for him, there’s not a lot of artists that I know, if you can name five on your hand, apart from band members at the time that actually wrote for Bowie, especially post Bowie, the Bowie that we know. The post Bowie that was searching for artists, searching for inspiration. There is not a lot of people that wrote for him, they might have done a backing music, but not lyrically, so for me to do that thing for me was a massive…at my lowest point like a massive wake up call for me, it was almost a very spiritual moment.