DJ Harvey is recounting the time his friend Larry Levan went out on the prowl not far from the Guardian offices. It was the early 90s, when Harvey was at the height of his notoriety, and he motions in the direction of his old flat near the canal, where Levan would often crash after playing at his Covent Garden club, Moist. “We’d gone to this African boutique in Morden where he bought a pair of lime green, croc-skinned shoes, a jacket with padded shoulders and studs all over it, and a baseball cap that said something like ‘SLUT’ on it,” he laughs. “I said, ‘Are you sure about those?’ but he was sure. He went out and had a real good night trawling the back streets of King’s Cross for trade. He came back the next morning stinking of piss and covered in all sort of fluids.”
It’s his fondest memory of Levan, who has been much mythologised in clubbing history as one of the greatest DJs who ever lived, and whose Paradise Garage residency in New York set the bar for how to work a club. But Harvey is on his way to earning a similar place in dance music legend. Unwittingly, he’s managed to cultivate a hazy folklore around his career as an all-night DJ, producer of disco and beardo-house and all-round dude. Some of it’s true, like how he was one of the first people to bring Levan and his pioneering house sound to the UK. Or how his last two “homecoming” shows in London sold out in a matter of minutes. The story about Beyoncé being turned away from one of his Sarcastic Disco warehouse parties in Los Angeles, not so much. He’s half-man half-myth, a dance music Zelig whose decade in exile from Europe, coupled with a scattering of influential but underground releases as Locussolus and Map Of Africa, have compounded his reputation as, well, a bit of a don.
His fans, subsequently, speak of Harvey with the kind of reverence reserved for their mums, or mystic healers. He’s been described by writers as “one of the last true party adventurers”, a “cult leader numero uno”, and – definitely the sort of thing you’d want on your headstone – “if Keith Richards was a DJ, he’d totally be Harvey”. But while he enjoys the compliment, he’d rather be Frank Zappa. “He’s naughty, and an intellectual, and dangerous,” says Harvey, running his fingers through his oil-slick hair. In truth, he gives off a Lillian from Shameless in Boogie Nights vibe. He calls women “chicks” like it’s the 1970s, as sleazy as the ’tache that curls around his big-toothed smile, while current electronic trends are just “Erectile Deficiency Music”. You know he hasn’t ever sent a tweet, otherwise he’d have felt the full force of fourth-wave feminism.
Cambridge-born Harvey Bassett’s cult points started totting up during a stint as drummer for the John Peel-endorsed post-punk band Ersatz. But a trip to New York in the 80s introduced him to DJing and he joined local acid house crew TONKA Hi Fi, who would throw weekend-long parties in Brighton and London and changed the lives of hundreds of people coming up on ecstasy. In 1991, he became a resident at Ministry Of Sound, by which time he’d become known as a heroically eclectic selector, spanning freaky disco, Balearic oddities, new house, space-rock and anything with a bonkers bongo breakdown. Hips were dipped and facial fuzz was stroked at the same time.
This kind of mixmastery might come off as effortless, though Harvey insists with his typically wry sense of humour, “I’m in a state of total panic
for seven hours, working really hard to mix the record that’s playing and fending off the person who’s trying to tell me how great I was in Sidcup in 1985.” Grown men have been spotted crying on his dancefloors, though this may or may not be another myth. In the early 00s he went Stateside, via a stint in Hawaii as a partner in a Honolulu gallery and nightclub. But visa issues meant that he got effectively stuck in America and was unable to leave for the next decade. Or perhaps, with all the sun and surf, he just didn’t want to.
Like most great rock’n’rollers, Harvey’s fantasy and reality is blurred – or at least that’s what he wants you to think. On the one hand, he boasts about liking to carry guns because they’re “sexy and glamorous” and tells me incredible stories, like how his “uncle was killed by his record collection falling on him” and how he’s off to have some bespoke £6,000 boots made after our interview. On the other, he professes his love for The Real Wives Of Orange County, which he watches “in bed with a cup of tea and a slice of wild berry cheesecake”. But while he’s talked candidly before in interviews about how he used to take “absolutely everything”, these days
he errs more on the side of reality. He’s been off the “everything” for three years now, and there’s a glass of sparkling water perched on the end of the table.
“There was a point where I thought, ‘Shit, I’m going to wake up next to a dead girl in a motel,’” he admits, bluntly. “That’s when I thought that maybe I should sort of calm it down.”
The closest he gets to a high now is cruising around Laurel Canyon on his motorbike. His latest project, DJ Harvey’s Wildest Dreams, is the ideal soundtrack for that, a road-trippy album that he calls “Californian satanic rock with a surfy edge”. Its cover is a homage to Randy California’s 1972 album, Kapt Kopter And The (Fabulous) Twirly Birds, a psychedelic LA wrecking crew that Harvey wanted to emulate. “I did worry that people were going to think they were too similar, but what is it they say? ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’?” he quips. “Just when you thought Led Zeppelin made everything, you work out that they just stole everything Bert Jansch ever did.”
Surely he must have had some Led Zep-rivalling moments in his time? “See, the whole rock star thing is odd,” he begins. “I think rock stars want to be DJs these days. So you probably should ask what’s your favourite DJ moment that rock stars would aspire to?” The ever-so-slippery Harvey is suddenly cautious about glamorising the kind of lifestyle he appears to have led. “I mean, what’s considered rock’n’roll? Underage sex? Playing with guns? Intravenous drugs? That’s just really bad behaviour. We celebrate people like George Best who drunk himself to death. It’s bullshit.” He breaks into another mischievous grin. “My greatest rock star moment is probably having the longevity to keep making music for 40 years.”
DJ Harvey’s Wildest Dreams is out in the UK on Monday on Smalltown Supersound
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