History

Tom Rowlands, brought up near posho Henley, goes to the Hacienda with a friend. Like everyone else there, he ends up onstage shaking a bottle of water, and, come UCCA form time, Manchester is top of his list. Then residing in Herne Hill, South London, Ed Simons makes the same choice, but for other reasons: "I just liked the look of the library."

               1989

October: Tom and Ed sit next to each other at the ecclestiastical module on their history course, and bond instantly over their love for old-skool hip-hop and My Bloody Valentine. Tom: "We'd nip up to Eastern Bloc between lectures and get our hands on the latest Italian piano monster."

Crossing Whitworth Park one day, they recognise a passing skateboarder from his day job at Eastern Bloc. His name is Justin Robertson.

                                    1990

Justin turns them onto the best tunes, and tells them about parties. Tom and Ed's lifestyle departs from the student norm.

Tom: "We started to see people out at clubs, and the next day they'd be there in the same lecture.
There weren't that many people on a history course who'd do that, so we all gravitated together quite naturally..."

At school, Tom already had a band together called Ariel, with two mates, Brendan and Matt. Another mate of theirs, Phil Brown, had started up a label. He releases Ariel's first single "Sea Of Beats," which is later picked up by the Eastern Bloc label.

Tom: "It was literally us making the record and him going off to try and sell them to the people out of the back of his car."

Ed: "I loved the thing of being a friend of someone in a band. It was exciting, bombing down to London with them. One time, we went to this Boy's Own party at this amazing house in the country. Bobby Gillespie and Kylie Minogue were dancing around."

One face on the fringes on their social whirl they would only get to know later.
Ed: "Noel used to go out to clubs. He was one of those people we'd see around and two years later go to each other, 'So that's who that bloke is....'"

                                    1991

While Ariel continued releasing records {'Mustn't Grumble', 'Rollercoaster'), Tom and Ed start a club called Naked Under Leather. Stuck for a DJ handle, they settle on The Dust Brothers, a tribute to the producers of their favorite album, 'Paul's Boutique' by Beastie Boys.

Tom: "We met these two guys in the year below us, Phil South and Alex Kohler. They had the get-up-and-go to sort out a cellar in this pub."

Ed: "You could see the fun to be had out of music, more than just sitting in a club drunk, thinking, 'This is OK.' We thought there was better stuff you could play. We'd really hunt hard for records - the second mix on the B-side of some house thing, then into this break-beat of some instrumental hip-hop track. It was quite like the Heavenly Social - a room full of 100 people out of their minds on beer."

                                                     1992

Suddenly, Ariel is no longer much fun for Tom: "We signed to deConstruction and it just kind of went awry."

Ed: "I went down to see them rehearsing once and they go, 'Oh Tom's done this one.' There's this woman going on about the trouble she was having in her life over this mental guitar. It was called 'Scut'! I really had a long argument with them, like, 'Why
don't you put this one out. This is much better than the other stuff.'"

Ed has never contemplated making music. Unbeknownst to the other two, he and Tom work on a tune inspired by their favourite music - hip-hop instrumentals, Balearic house, Coldcut, Depth Charge and Renegade Soundwave. The result is 'Song To The Siren'.

Tom: "We couldn't find the records to DJ with, so I was like, 'We'll make one ourselves'. None of the records had everything - that hardness and mindfuck thing of techno, with big proper beats..."

Ed: "Sirens, that wailing 4AD vibe, a bassline that came from listening to 'In Dub' by RSW - chuck it all in!"

Tom: "That song was mastered at home on a Hitachi hi-fi, with one sampler, a keyboard and an Atari computer. The hi-fi cost 100 quid, including speakers. Now we've got one pair of speakers that cost 5,000."

Ed gets 500 copies pressed up.

Tom: "Ed's friend at Poly leant us the money. He argued for 10 per cent of all our future earnings. In the end he goes, 'Oh, just pay me back, that'll be alright.'"

Ed: "I went home to see my mum and she goes, 'I've just had a chat with a Darren Emerson. He really likes your record.'"

Tom: "This report came back that Andy Weatherall had played it at the end of his set at a party."

Ed: "Weatherall was bang into the record, so he licensed it to Boy's Own. We did a remix of an Ariel track, 'Tea Baby'. That was Ariel done with in our big Machiavellian plan!"

                                    1993

Their courses finished with a 2:1 apiece, Tom and Ed move to London. They do more remixes (most notably Lionrock's 'Packet of Piece'), and start a residency at Soho's Job Club.

Tom: "We did the warm-up. We'd get there, and the bloke was still cleaning the glasses away."

Ed: "It was natural to use to play dub tunes at the beginning, move up through a bit of hip-hop and then something a bit stupid, a bit of Happy Mondays, Mark Stewart... People were expecting a smooth variation on cocktail house. So it was useful being the two of us - collecting your fee while the other one got the car out by the front door."

                                    1994

Ed: We did 'Chemical Beats', and people really started taking notice. We just played it at the Job Club just before Alex Paterson came on and he was asking us what it was. We were like, 'Dust Brothers, mate!'"

Tom: "We saw Darren Emerson playing it at this party. He had two copies of it, going back and forth... You can't argue with that: you're in a club, the bloke's playing it and people are dancing. That's what's going on."

Ed: "That's how we used to feel when Weatherall started playing record after record of ours at Sabresonic. We'd get pissed there every Friday, and meet all the DJs."

Weatherall hooks them up with Heavenly for management and PR. 'My Mercury Mouth' comes out on Junior Boy's Own and the remix offers flood in: Leftfield & Lydon... Ed: "One time, we met for a drink, and our manager was saying, "We've had a call from The Charlatans, and Primal Scream want a mix, when are we going to do it all?' We did them, and The Prodigy, in the same two weeks. All these bands that Tom and me used to go and see when we were in college."

Tom: "We did all that and then Steve Hall [Junior Boy's Own supremo] goes, 'Shall we make an album now?' We were like, 'Oh, an album!' It was like a mythical thing that we'd never really imagined ourselves doing."

                          1995

The trouble starts. First, the original Dust Brothers decide they want their name back. Then, there's a protracted wrangle with Virgin over how to set up a joint deal with Junior Boy's Own to release the album. In the meantime, the duo crack on and start their residency at the Heavenly Sunday Social.

Tom: "It was really exciting. When we first played 'Leave Home' there, just insane."

Ed: "We'd talk about it all weekend. What would we put on? 'Tomorrow Never Knows', new records we'd bought. It might sound arrogant, but it was the first time that most people had heard this style of music. Hip hop, the headfuck of big rises, scorching acid riffs... It was weird reading how other people took it as a hedonistic drug taking thing, but we always took it as a Sunday night. Bed by one, you know?"

Finally, the album is set for release, but with their sound so established via new remixes (the Manics' 'La Tristessa Durera'), people asked whether the album should be updated.

Tom: "People were weird, like, 'Don't you want to change anything? Add a few new tracks and stuff?' It was like, 'Not at all.' We were so pleased with it."

June: The Chemicals DJ in the dance tent at Glastonbury, and make sure their schedule allows them to stick around and watch Oasis headlining the Friday night.

Ed: "When the album finally came out, some reviewers were saying, 'It doesn't justify all the fuss.' A week later we went to Glastonbury and we saw Noel there. He was like, 'Your... album... is... top!' To be honest, that was all the reviewing we needed."

Tom: "Noel said right then, 'You should do something with me!' After that, we'd been working on the basis of this track for quite a long time and we'd always had this little note - 'Noel question mark'. But inside we'd think, "Hahaha, that's funny, as if that will ever happen...'" 'Setting Sun' has already been recorded postally by the time the Chemicals support Oasis at Manchester Nynex in November...

                                    1996

...But it doesn't come out 'til October as Virgin and Sony (for Creation) squabble over who'll release it. In between times, the Brothers tour like bastards, cause mass indigestion on the Saturday afternoon of Knebworth, do their own headliner at the Brixton Academy and use Heavenly Social crowds at Turnmills as guinea-pig arena for the monster tunes that will make up their second LP.

                                    1997

7 April: 'Dig Your Own Hole' is released. Yowza!