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 Never
in the field of electronic music was so much owed by so many to one man,
who hardly saw a penny of it and wound up furious enough to practically
invent jungle. Like an everyman in the history of acid house, the story of
a guy called Gerald Simpson is one of cheats, choons and charts positions,
of unscrupulous Indies and monolithic majors. Its a story of ground broken
and money stolen, of records like 'Voodoo Ray', 'Pacific State' and 'Black
Secret Technology'. It's a fable of triumph
over adversity, good over evil, and Like all good cliches, this one has a
happy ending.
June 2000, 4am, Barcelona: on the terrace overlooking the beach at the
multimedia Sonar festival, A Guy Called Gerald is road-testing some tracks
from his new album, 'Essence', sung by his new singer Heather Martin. She
looks like a more serene Kelis with her curly mop of bleached hair as she
takes an intensely focused audience through the pristine drum &
bass-backed and smooth r&b vocal cuts.
Then something bizarre happens. Right in the middle of one of the slowest,
sweetest songs, the till-now composed crowd ruptures into spontaneous
applause and cheering. The song is so bloody good we can't wait till the
end to show our esteem.
Last year, travel book publishers The Rough Guide compiled a couple of
pocket reference books, one called House and one Drum & Bass. A Guy Called
Gerald is the only artist with an entry in both. As arguably the most
creative member in the early years of 808 State - he wrote most of the
acid house classic 'Newbuild' album and originally sequenced 'Pacific
State' - and as a solo artist behind the awesome 'Voodoo Ray', he laid the
groundwork for a decade of British house music. Likewise, for the
pioneering output of his hardcore Label Juice Box, including two landmark
albums - 1992's ultra-rare jungle blueprint '28 Gun Bad Boy' and 95's
mature drum & bass document 'Black Secret Technology' - he'll be
remembered as a true breakbeat hardcore trailblazer.
The Sonar episode gives you some idea of the reaction awaiting his new
album, an exquisite collection of rootsy downtempo and refined vocal drum
8 bass with a bunch of vocalists including Lady Miss Kier, Lamb's Louise
Rhodes and singer songwriter Wendy Page. Begs the question of course,
where's he been for so Long?
"I've been on a mission, working on putting my music out," he says back in
the UK, ensconced on a black leather sofa in the west London mews offices
of his new UK label Studio!K7.
"I had to disband Juice Box and move my studio out to New York. For the
past two years I've been doing my album. And reading a lot, trying to know
more about what it's all about, the bigger picture."
Gerald is getting the bigger picture from his house in Brooklyn - "You get
to see the real New York there. Manhattan tends to be real touristy" - and
relishing the freedom a new city gives.
"There's no kind of rules to the style of music you can make. They've got
more of a jazz mentality, more freeform. Dance music's such small thing
there; the biggest things over there are rock and rap. So everything else
is really small." That affinity for the underground has ruled Gerald's
movements from the word go. Gerald Simpson began DJing in 1985, playing
hip hop and electro in youth clubs around Moss Side, Rusholme and
Longsight, some of the less salubrious areas of his home town of
Manchester. The young Gerald was also a natural born tinker.
"It was a real curiosity when I was a kid, I'd take everything apart,
pulling apart speaker boxes and trying to rebuild them. I think from there
it was just an attraction - synth music of any type really interested me.
Could've been anything, Jean Michelle Jarre, Kraftwerk."
In 1987 he made his way into a studio in Hulme with his mate MC Tunes,
Gerald made his first tune, 'Back To Attack', which he took into the
city's vinyl mecca Eastern Bloc where future members of 808 State worked.
They liked the track and included it on an EP they released under the
guise of The Hit Squad. Next up, a record he made on his very rudimentary
set-up of a sampler, 303 and drum machine was about to change the face of
UK house. 'Voodoo Ray', with its exotic vocal wail and infectious stabbing
melody, was a textbook in deceptively minimal, Detroit-inspired
production. Mike Pickering caned it at the Hacienda as did all sorts
across the country until it climbed to an unprecedented No12 in the
national charts. He didn't see a penny the sales money and this was the
start of a series of exploitative treatment. The head of Liverpool's Rham
Records kept coming up with excuses.
"Well the story from the record label," recalls Gerald, " was firstly it's
not selling, then when it was in the charts, the distributor's gene
bankrupt. At the same time he's bought this sweet shop and a new car. Then
he basically disappeared for a couple of years.
"We managed to find him in the end and at least got my publishing back and
got some royalties. I would say if he's out there, he's probably doing
that to some other poor sod. That's if he's still alive, because not
everybody's as good natured as me."
Is it true you were still working in McDonalds while 'Voodoo Ray' was in
the charts.
"Yeah, I wasn't getting paid for it at the time, and I couldn't sign on
because my record's in the fucking charts. It was causing disturbances in
there, people coming in and harassing me so I soon had to leave."
'Hot Lemonade' soon also came out through Rham, though it was a rush job
says Gerald because the label wanted 'Voodoo Ray' fresh in people's minds.
"It was pretty experimental at the time but it needed a bit more time," he
says. Meanwhile, all the work he'd done with the 808 State boys, all done
on his equipment, Gerald says was done in good faith.
"Not getting credit on the records was the last straw. Leading up to that
was basically working on something and not getting any feedback from it,
or payment. All the early 808 State stuff, the Hit Squad, Lounge Jays and
Massagarama single, I'd been working on a promise, nothing was ever
signed. Even before it got to 'Pacific State', I'd already decided that I
wasn't going to do any more work with them. They said if I did a Peel
Session with them then I would get paid for that. So I did three tracks
for that, of which one was 'Pacific State'. And I didn't see anything from
that till a long time after.”
What were they telling you?
"It wasn't selling, they were waiting to hear stuff from distributors -
you know, when you run a record shop, you've got a million and one
excuses. I'd walk into the shop and I could see the look of dread in
Martin [Price]'s eyes and he just knew that I was going to ask for some
money. It's one of them where you learn to cut your losses and push on."
On the strength of 'Voodoo Ray', a record charting on zero marketing
budget, Sony signed Gerald up, but it was a case of frying pan and fire.
The darkly uncompromising single and album called 'Automanikk' failed to
sell in anything like the same quantities.
"By then I'd been through all the whole business with 808 and Rham, and I
wasn't going to take any more shit. They wanted an LP of 'Voodoo Ray's;
they wanted happy and I wasn't very happy at the time. I was kind of on my
journey to move onto doing other things, to experiment."
During his time with Sony, Gerald was about as far from the mainstream as
you can get - barely, legal in fact, running his Juice Box sound system
with MC Tunes, spinning post-Hacienda after-parties in Moss Side. "They
were always real blues shabin type places - playing all that early
breakbeat stuff like the 'Green Man', Nicolette, 'Papua New Guinea'. Every
time we did a party there'd be police helicopters hovering above and lines
of vans down the road and clubs didn't like that kind of attention so they
wouldn't have any of it."
Gerald's second LP for Sony, 'High Life, Low Profile' was shelved. The
masters are still boxed up at the label.
 "It
was even more Detroity sounding - a bit too hardcore for them. So that was
another cut-and-leave."
His career now a shambles, there was nothing
for Gerald to do but go it alone, launching hi- own label with the Juice
Box name and began ripping up breakbeats and gun-play samples in
apparently musical payback on the mainstream of UK dance music. A series
of early jungle cuts and his first breakbeat album '28 Gun Bad Boy' were
heavy with with rude boy posturing and criminal-minded rage in this 1992,
way ahead of time. Pioneering done, Gerald dug deeper into a more
intricately futuristic breakbeat 'science on cuts Like 'Finlay's Rainbow',
‘Najinzi Zaka', 'Energy' (produced with Goldie) and, still one of the
finest drum & bass artist albums, 'Black Secret Technology'. When things
got busy, he brought in a partner to run the label but still things didn't
go to plan, the two eventually falling out. Always conceived as a
vigorously independent imprint, Gerald's partner complicated things with
"too many major label ideas" including selling to one when he tried to
broker a deal with Island. Gerald took the music while his partner took
the name.
"I don't think he's done anything with it. I think he works in a shoe shop
now actually”, laughing.
One thing: if you hadn't been screwed so often with your early stuff,
would you have been so drawn to the tough jungle sound?
"No, I think I would have gone down more of a soul route. I was always
into electronic stuff, but I was also into the production clarity you get
on a good soul record, so I'm sure I would've gone down that route."
Which brings us back to the Sonar gig, a truly special Live music moment.
Gerald looks set to have the last laugh: a very cool new album, a
five-piece band to tour with, a dream collaboration with Herbie Hancock
and Bill Laswell and a new DJ residency in New York are all his. And boy,
has he earned it.
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