- 2 days ago
Fatboy Slim joins Mile the DJ backstage at Coachella 2026!
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00:00The world-famous KROQ at KROQ. Miles, the DJ here, KROQ music director with the legend himself, Fatboy Slim.
00:06Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
00:09How are we doing, man?
00:09I'm good, yeah, yeah, just got here. Soaking up the Coachella vibes.
00:13Yes, sir.
00:14And immensely looking forward to my sixth appearance here.
00:17I was going to say, you played the first ever Coachella back in 1999, several times in between.
00:22Yeah, I'm like the crazy old uncle who comes back at Christmas.
00:26You have to invite him because he's your uncle.
00:28And he comes back at Christmas to find out how his nieces and nephews are growing up.
00:33And, yeah, every year it's an eye-opener to see how big it grows and how beautiful.
00:39And very diverse and varied as well.
00:41Big time.
00:42Really, that's something that I think a lot of festivals lose sight of the fact that it should be for
00:47everyone.
00:48Coachella, Golden Voice do such a great job of reinventing this festival every year.
00:52In fact, the Quasar stage, which is the stage you're performing on later today, that wasn't here back in 1999.
00:58Or 2001.
00:59I remember when all this was trees.
01:01That's right.
01:01Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:03A stage like that, you play for like two to three hours on the Quasar stage.
01:06A big emphasis on visuals.
01:08I know you're a big graffiti person, a visual person.
01:11What can you do on that Quasar stage that you haven't really been able to do at Coachella?
01:15I'll tell you what you can do.
01:16You get to know people.
01:18Yeah.
01:18Because if you just get like an hour 15 on a main stage, you're just getting warmed up and you're
01:25just getting a feel of it and then you're off.
01:27But for a DJ, I mean a band, you can like shorten your set and you can just get in
01:30there and like wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.
01:32Right.
01:32But a DJ, you kind of, you know, you need the first half hour to get to know people and
01:36then they get to know you, you get to know them, you know, you break the ice and then, you
01:40know, the second hour is always like when the magic happens.
01:43So for a must, it's just more relaxed.
01:45Yeah.
01:45And that stage, I just went up and looked at the stage.
01:48And it's great because I'm not that far from the crowd.
01:50Right.
01:50There's people around you.
01:52Because that's the other thing when you play big stages, it's quite lonely out there.
01:55Is that right?
01:55Yeah, yeah.
01:55It's just like you and a table with a couple of record players.
01:58Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:58Totally.
01:59And I like that kind of communication with the crowd.
02:03So it's quite a low stage, which is nice.
02:05But then we've got the fabulous visuals.
02:07And then the visuals, they just come out of my laptop.
02:10Sure.
02:11But they're on to like the shades of sunglasses.
02:16Okay.
02:16Have you seen the stage?
02:17I haven't.
02:17Oh, I've seen the stage.
02:19Yeah, but I'm trying to picture what your visuals are going to come up.
02:22Well, I'm the nose between the sunglasses.
02:25Gotcha.
02:25Yeah.
02:25Word.
02:26Okay, cool.
02:27Let me ask you this.
02:2827 years ago, you played the first ever Coachella.
02:31We're back.
02:32Anything about crowds that maybe you didn't understand then that you're kind of getting now?
02:36How have they changed over the years?
02:38What's a crowd like in 2026 versus 99 at a Black Boy Slim concert?
02:42Well, there's a lot more phones, let's face it.
02:45Phones is just...
02:46I can't remember if we had mobile phones 27 years.
02:49If we did, they didn't take photos.
02:51That's right.
02:51And they didn't connect with each other and share their photos incessantly.
02:55So, I mean, that's the main thing that's changed about everything.
02:57But it's weird because it's a double-edged sword.
03:00On the one hand, it's a bit of a...
03:02When you're trying to have people in the moment and everybody just vibing together as part
03:07of this big crowd and connecting with each other, it's hard to do that when you've got
03:10your phone in the air.
03:11You know, but other people...
03:13We were talking about actually watching the gig through other people's phones.
03:16You're like...
03:17Because they're in front of you.
03:18Yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:19You end up watching it through their phone.
03:20The phone is blocking the set so you're watching through someone's phone.
03:22The phone kind of takes away from it.
03:23But at the same time, it shows everybody what we were doing.
03:26Because when we first did this...
03:28That's a good point.
03:28There was...
03:29You know, nobody really knew about club music.
03:30It wasn't played that much on the radio.
03:32So, unless you were old enough to go to a club, you had to be over 21 here, to go
03:37to
03:37a club, then you never really know what went on.
03:38Now, it gets beamed around the world.
03:40So, when you go and play, more people come because they know what you like.
03:44People know what to expect.
03:45And it takes it for...
03:47Your relationship with the crowd goes further because of social media.
03:50So, like, the social media side, good.
03:53Selfies, not so good.
03:54But you take the crunchy with the smooth.
03:56It can make the actual show sometimes a little trickier, right, as a performer to try to
04:00maybe connect with them because they're looking at their phones so much.
04:03Is there...
04:03Yeah.
04:03Do you have any tricks, any particular songs that always work?
04:05There's a bit in my set where I get everybody to sit down, right?
04:08Okay.
04:08And I climb down onto the front of the stage where I can...
04:11And everybody...
04:13Normally, people are up for it, unless it's raining.
04:16And you see people getting down.
04:17Then you see this one guy, it's like, he's standing there filming me.
04:20And I'm going, get down, get down.
04:21And he's like, no, I'm filming you.
04:22I'm like, no, get down.
04:23Seriously, everybody around you has got down.
04:25You haven't even noticed.
04:26He hasn't even noticed that there's, like, 100 people all sitting on the floor.
04:29And he's the knobhead.
04:31Excuse my French.
04:33Yeah, he's the idiot who just hasn't realized that he's part of a bigger thing, you know.
04:38Right.
04:39So, yeah, I mean, I try.
04:42I just...
04:42I play to the crowd.
04:43The ones I can see their eyes, I can see they're having fun.
04:46They're the ones that I connect with the most that we...
04:48Us two have a really good night.
04:50And then the other ones, they just film it and show their mates.
04:52And they could tell them I was going, I saw Fatboy Sim, yeah.
04:55He waved at me.
04:57No, he was trying to get you to go down.
04:59Four decades in the game.
05:00Is there a moment, a show, a particular set where you really took a second and looked around?
05:05Whether it was, like, I don't know, you got invited to a house party last minute at some super famous
05:09person's house.
05:10Or I'm just trying to think.
05:11Is there a particular moment in your career where you said to yourself, wow, like, this is my life.
05:17How did this happen?
05:18There's been many.
05:19There's been a lot.
05:23I don't know.
05:24I did a couple of shows on the beach in my home city.
05:27One where a quarter of a million people turned up.
05:29And that was pretty, you know, just to look at everybody in the city that you live in.
05:34And another 150,000 people who have driven down all having a party on a beach and all united.
05:40And for me, that was a sort of celebration with my relationship with my hometown.
05:45And that took a lot of beating.
05:47That was just like, you know, the pride and the, and also the love.
05:52It was back in the day, there were no phones.
05:53Everyone was having fun.
05:54Right.
05:55Yeah, exactly.
05:55Like, in the moment, you know.
05:57So many classic K-Rock hits from Fatboy Slim, Right Here, Right Now, Praise You, etc.
06:03Satisfaction Skink, right?
06:05Yes, come back around.
06:06A bootleg, a mashup, one of the, probably the most notable mashups of all time, been in the mix for
06:10like 20 years.
06:11Officially released not too long ago.
06:13You got the official masters from the Rolling Stones themselves.
06:16Tell me about, like, putting the song together officially and the official release that just came out.
06:22Well, the putting the song together I did 27 years ago.
06:26But didn't you get, like, the original, like, the stems, or didn't they provide you with...
06:29They did give me the stems, but I didn't use them.
06:32Oh, word.
06:33Well, I didn't want to clean it up too much.
06:35I mean, the good thing about it, I mean, the beautiful thing is that we're finally legally allowed to issue
06:40it.
06:40And we'd given up.
06:43We'd asked so many times, and the Stones management just said no.
06:46And then I think they've changed, they've moved on with management.
06:50And so that's beautiful.
06:51But the other thing is, it's like, after 27, it still sounds good.
06:54It's amazing.
06:55I mean, it is what it is.
06:56Yeah.
06:56It's like, it's made of rough old samples and records ripped up and glued together.
07:01And I did, I sort of roughly remixed it from the original version that I've been playing for 27 years.
07:07But I didn't get too into, like, oh, I want to clean it up now.
07:10I've got mixed vocals cleaner.
07:12I tried it, and I thought, oh, no, it doesn't sound the same.
07:14There's something about that grit when you sample off a record.
07:17No doubt.
07:17And also, you know, it's one of those records where, you know, you sampled it, you made the mashup 20
07:23-plus years ago, whatever it was.
07:24But at that point, the song, the original had been around for decades prior, right?
07:28So it's almost like when you created it initially, it was instantly timeless.
07:33And that hasn't really gone away, I think, right?
07:35Because you already kind of remix an older song, and new generations are finding it.
07:40Like, the original is such a classic, and then, obviously, Rock of Ellis County was a big hit.
07:45So it doesn't necessarily mean that adding the two of them together will be bigger than the sum of the
07:49parts.
07:49But it does seem to have a kind of energy to it.
07:53Yeah.
07:54But, I mean, there's so many mashups over the years that, you know, you hear it once at a festival,
08:01you go, ah, what?
08:01Yeah, yeah.
08:02And then there's other ones that kind of stand the test of time.
08:05So I'm glad that that one is, you know, the people.
08:07I mean, that would be the most awful thing.
08:09If I waited 27 years for the Rolling Stones management to allow me to put it out, and then no
08:13one cared.
08:14Yeah, yeah.
08:14Oh, that old thing.
08:15It sounds a bit old.
08:17But, no, it still sounds fresh today.
08:19It sounds incredible, man.
08:20Congrats on the official release, finally.
08:22Well overdue.
08:23I'll get you out of here on this.
08:24Again, you know, been doing this for a long time.
08:26So much longevity, four decades in the game.
08:29What separates, maybe this could be like an advice section, you know, a parse some wisdom on to the up
08:35-and-coming artists here.
08:36I don't really do wisdom.
08:37Sorry.
08:37Well, what do you, like, what separates an artist who's been around for 40 years versus maybe some that aren't
08:45around for as long, you know?
08:46Like, is there a secret to it?
08:48I don't know.
08:49I mean, I don't know how I've managed to do it in the first place, let alone carry on to
08:54it for 40 years.
08:55I mean, for me, I mean, it's just a passion for me.
08:57I love music, and I love entertaining people.
09:07Yeah.
09:08I don't feel like, I think some people maybe with an ego would be like, I deserve this.
09:13I deserve your adoration.
09:15Right.
09:15I'm just like, I can't believe I'm having fun, and I'm still invited to do this.
09:18So, and then during the lockdowns, during the pandemic, when I couldn't do it for a year, then I really
09:26realized how much it meant to me.
09:27And it was like, just give me that, give me this back, give me this back.
09:31And I promise I'll never take it for granted.
09:32I will cherish every moment, and that's what I'm doing.
09:35It's like passion over entitlement, you know?
09:36Do it for the love of the art, you know?
09:38Yeah, yeah.
09:38And that probably is, that's probably the key to longevity.
09:41Big time.
09:42You're a legend.
09:43You're an icon.
09:44Thank you so much for stopping by.
09:46Well, you're a gentleman for some time.
09:47My man.
09:47Appreciate you.
09:48Fatboy Slim, K-Rock, Coachella.
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