Westword: Can you talk about the significance of twenty years on the BBC spreading music?
Pete Tong: I don't think there's another radio station on the planet that quite has the impact that Radio 1 has, an international station that still desires a huge audience. And I think in all my experience traveling all over the world and listening to radio stations -- although there are some good ones -- I count myself fortunate to be part of BBC Radio 1. To end up being there twenty years is something really special.
From my earliest memories of a kid, that's what I listened to. It came off the back of the success of the pirate stations in the '60s; that's why it was invented, because there was such a demand in the U.K. post-Beatles for a non-mainstream radio station. And that's why Radio 1 started, and it always had a kind of dual purpose. It had its daytime programming with the masses and playing the popular music of the day, but also dedicating so much time and energy into supporting new music and giving people what they didn't know.
And over the years they attracted the leading experts in the field of rock music, like John Peel with alternative music, and myself, and soul music before me, and the whole era of house music and electronic music and, beyond that, hip-hop. It's an incredible station, there's no station on the planet as dedicated to breaking new music. It's a special feeling.
What's changed in your own show throughout your years at Radio 1?
The music's changed a little bit, because obviously, the music made now is different, but the actual ethic, the reason to be, is pretty similar. It's always been about trawling the electronic world of music in the broadest possible sense. My thing's always been about bringing what I feel is the next wave from the underground into the mainstream.
If you imagine a fishing scenario, I'm always looking 25, 50 meters below the surface. You can't super-specialize and please everybody. If I can pick the right things at the right times, I feel ready for a bigger audience. I don't turn water into wine, I just speed up the process. Some people say "Nothing happens until you get played on Pete Tong" -- I don't believe that. I'd like to think that I've got a bit of a cone, I can blow it out and get it to a bigger audience.
You travel all over the world playing music. Can you tell us what your perspective of the American electronic-music scene is like these days?
It's, without question, in my lifetime, the biggest explosion there's ever been in America. I think it's fair to say it's bigger than disco now. Disco was the last time dance music had such a grip on the mainstream of America, and then it died a horrible and very public death with America turned against disco, all those images of twelve-inch discs being burned in baseball stadiums.
The floor-to-floor rhythm has moved hip-hop out of the influence of pop music, from the most commercial ... it's had a huge effect, where the pop stars of the day are turning to dance producers and dance writers to supply the ammunition for them to keep evolving in their career. So on a level of impact, it's never been greater.
But over the years, I've seen America flirt with electronica, get quite interested and then move away again, back to the time of the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, when they got embraced and put on all these festivals, but there weren't roots. It wasn't very sticky.
The difference is there are real roots now, the festival circuit has been getting to a level of popularity that has surpassed that of Europe. If you look at Electric Daisy Carnival and Detroit Electronic Music Festival and now Electric Zoo in New York -- I could go on and on -- they're all serious festivals bringing in serious numbers. It's not necessarily pop-driven; it's not like they're all booking the Black-Eyed Peas. It's got an awful lot more below the surface. I think that's why America is leading the world in terms of business and turnover and size.
And the third thing I would say, there's now a consistent conveyer belt of new names coming through, whereas it was dominated by Europe and England. With Skrillex and Kaskade, there's a lot of new talent coming from America, and it's exciting. I was having a conversation in Vegas a couple of weeks ago where maybe the next stage is we'll start to see a bigger influence on the rest of the world from American artists for the first time in a long time.
