I'm not going on stage anymore without musicians. I did this hip hop thing, and we had all our beats on dub plates, and I had my DJ play them. And it wasn't until I did a gig with Jah Wobble, in 1990, 1991, something like that, and I fucked up on stage: I was doing this rap, and this girl was there in front row. I looked down on here, and she looked right back just smiling at me. The girl was drop dead [gorgeous]. And nothing happened, I couldn't say a word anymore. And it was really a complicated bit of music in something like 13/8, or some stupid time signature, as Wobble didn't like 4/4 for rap. He just wanted me to rap over some weird signature. And I was like 'shit, I fucked up'. So I was looking over at Wobble playing the bass and I thought he would be really mad at me, but he was actually laughing his head off, laughing his tits off (smile). And because he was laughing, he started to play his bass really hard. And because of that, the drummer started to hit the drum really hard. The whole music went 'bam', just because I made a mistake. And I was just like 'this is what we were missing all the time'. Because you take your dub plate, or your minidisc, to Japan, to Brazil and it will always sound the same. With a live band, every place you go, city to city, it's different. Even if it's the same song, it will be different: slower, faster, more power, less power, more sensitive, more crude, it depends on the circumstances. From that moment on I was: 'musicians for me, that's it'. I have a DJ too, if need be, or sometimes for the house songs with Faithless, we use a machine to give us the 'tuff, tuff, tuff' and the 'na, nana, na' sounds, basically, cause that's what house music kinda is. So we have that sound, cut the keyboard parts, that La can't play, because she only has two hands, and the rest is all live, on the top, we just play around that.
It just makes such a big difference when you got people and can you see them sweat, you can see the drummer really working, and you can go 'yeah, come on' (smile).
I yelled at them last night! It's probably the first time. It was in Madrid. We have just done Barcelona. And that was like 400 paying customers, and 200 invited media type guests. And the four hundred people was just getting down, Barcelona was just a fabulous gig. Brilliant. And then we got to Madrid, and nobody told us, and I usually make sure that people tell us, that the ratio was completely opposite: two hundred paying customers and 400 invited media people, that were just standing there, going 'impress me'. And we did our first three songs and were giving everything and the media just gave a muted applause. Definitely not like Barcelona. So we knew that we had to work to get the mood. It was like being in a fight, and you know that you are better than the other guy, but you can't knock the fucker over: he just won't fall down. And you just keep hitting him, and eventually he falls down. I think it was the last two numbers that we finally got 'em. And I think we was half way through, I think it was "Salva Mea", and the song is hard, and everybody was giving everything, and I was looking at the crowd and was thinking: 'one more push'. And I was just turning around and was yelling 'come on!!'. I swear to God, everyone was already giving their best, but still the musicians went another level up. Then I knew: now we got them. We murdered them (smile).
I spoke to a girl in Newcastle, and she'd seen us five times that summer. I was just 'what? how on earth could you stand it'? I mean, I love music and there are some bands that I adore. But I don't know about five times. She said to me 'when I come out of a Faithless gig, I feel absolutely brilliant. The next morning, I feel brilliant. Sometimes it lasts for five days. I feel brilliant every day'. For me, this is like what I mentioned before: that when someone really happy walks into the room and you feel really happy suddenly. Because we are being as honest as we can be, then others people creativity and genius is being raised up. And they are seeing it, and are feeling it. Because the next day they are not at the gig, and the day after, they are still not at the gig, and the day after that. And the gig is now three days old, and they are still feeling that creativity that genius, that good feeling, that's valuable. Because that is teaching them, if you like it, it belongs to you. And it has fuck to do with me, I might have stimulated it. But really that's yours.