TextMi-Latest: Interview: Jon Fitz
He was born and bred in Stockport. He dances 'like a monkey fucking a football.' He's also a DJ, musician and producer on the verge of greatness. Meet Jon Fitz.
Article posted on 17th May 2006 at 03:00
Canny lad, Jon Fitz. TextMi.com invites him for a few dinnertime pints, hoping to get the local-boy-done-good pissed out of his mind and get a proper good ranting interview. He has two bottles of Bud and switches to orange juice. Meanwhile, his interrogators get slaughtered - forget trying to get that killer quote, after an hour the poor guy can't get a word in edgeways. Thankfully he suffers fools gladly.
A bass guitar player from the age of seven, 25-year old Fitz has taken a strange route into the world of the - almost - superstar DJ. His favourite band is Thin Lizzy, his idol Phil Lynott, his personal Golden Era squarely in 70s funk and rock. Yet in 1997 he tried the decks and loved them. Then it was just a matter of time: today he's smiling like a tanned Cheshire Cat having recently played to thousands of happy punters in Ibiza, done remixes for Moloko and Byron Stingley and seen his (& Jason Herd's) latest release, Just Can't Get Enough, just get signed to Shapeshifter.
He has a live radio set, with Mike Anthony, on Galaxy 102FM every other Friday night from 11pm - 1am (one hour apiece). He's resident at Plush and is booked to play all over the UK before Ibiza beckons again in September. He's got a column in Juice magazine. Mixmag just featured a Fitz & Herd track on its June 2004 'Summer Groove' cover disc. It's all going pretty well for Jon Fitz; from session plank-spanker to vocal house messiah in just a couple of manic years. He can't quite believe it himself.
"It's frightening. Even from twelve months ago, mate. This time last year, I was in Ibiza. I went in Retro one night - Eden - and Mike Anthony was playing, so me being a bit of a weapon that I was, I'm like, 'Give us the mike, c'mon, give us the fuckin' mike,' 'cos I used to do a bit of MCing..." He looks faintly embarrassed and shrugs. We point at the Dictaphone and grin.
"Yeah, get that on tape... Anyway, thank God he never gave me the mike but later on we got chatting and he came out partying with us. Got him leathered. Back home, played him a tape and he was buzzing off it. So he started putting me on at Naked, which was then Smokey's."
Cue for a cigarette, but Jon declines. "Given up. I only smoke after sex. I'm down to 30 a day..." He continues, "Then I managed to clinch a fucking night at North. I was mithering Jason Herd, giving him CDs, 'Give us a gig, give us a gig.' He found out I was a guitarist, so we went in the studio and laid down a track. Only worked with him for one day and we belted out a tune, Release the Pressure, which got signed to Subliminal.
"So he gave me a gig with him and then... it just all went like that." Jon makes his hand take off from the table and into the air. It probably looks like a Nazi salute to the bar staff, although a strangely happy one. And so it should be.
We ask him if he ever gets nervous before a gig, or if anything's ever gone really pear-shaped. "I don't get nervous, just excited. If you did dwell on it too much you'd just go to bits." And it seems even having a pint dropped on a deck can't ruin a night for him. Even though he admits to being a perfectionist, any artistic self-critique waits until after a gig. "You see their faces and they're just... beaming at you. When you get that bit of feedback from a crowd, everyone feels like they're in it together. You know, if you fuck up you can either get pissed off with yourself and sulk or hold your hands up and smile; they laugh with you." Then he says something about everyone being as one before apologising for sounding a bit cheesy and hippy-like.
CDs or vinyl? "You can do so much more with CDs. It's another string to your bow at the moment, but I reckon it has to happen. Morillo only uses CDs and when I was in Ibiza, I watched Mark Knight (CDJing) and he blew me away. Apart from anything else, it's so much less to carry if you've got a half-decent record collection. But I don't think vinyl will ever truly die out."
Time to get to the soul of the man... Would he sleep with Margaret Thatcher for a hundred grand? He laughs, "If I was single, 90 years of age, with both parents still alive." King for a day: who gets knighted and who gets the firing squad? Arise, Sir Phil Lynott. Run for your life, Prime Minister. "Tony Blair's really pissed me off." Best place he's ever been? Iceland, for cheesy and hippy-like reasons. And he really is a perfectionist - when we ask him to sign some CDs he takes a good ten minutes to finally decide what to write (win them and you find out). When told that his mind has gone with all this success, he grins. "Yeah, and another thing that goes is your mind..."
Perhaps Jon Fitz is only half-joking. "I was doing scaffolding for nearly ten years. I was born on a council estate and I worked with my Dad since I was 14. But I worked hard and I still do - I go at everything a hundred miles an hour. I'm really motivated.
"And I love my music... It's like, when I'm there behind the decks and I'm jumping about, it's not false. I'm genuinely enjoying it that much. When you've spent all your life carrying fittings and throwing tubes up in the air and your dream is to play music all your life, for a living, and now you've got the opportunity to do it... I'm the happiest guy in the fucking world."
