Heidi Lawden’s Experiment in Modern Music
From being a London it girl as a teen, to becoming an international nightlife power broker, Heidi Lawden has many “tales to tell from the world’s best dance-floors” and a lot of them have been in New York. As the manager of Harvey for 30 years, Heidi has helped him become one of the most sought after DJs, and that’s just a part of her story. She’s a brilliant DJ herself, of course, and also one of the greatest agitators of Los Angeles’ club scene, where she’s been living since the early 2000’s. She could easily “switch coasts” though, considering the influence and inspiration New York has have on her life and her music path. Here are some of her tales in words and records.
Photos: Heidi Lawden
NOUVEAU YORK: Wild times. How have you been?
HEIDI LAWDEN: On a personal level, we’ve been good, all things considered. My extended freaky family all lives within biking distance from each other in Venice and we’ve kept to this pod largely to stay safe.
NY: And on a more global level?
HL: I’ve been feeling immense compassion for everyone’s struggles, baffled at the state of the US, the UK and beyond and the direction we’ve been headed. I’m hoping for some relief, but honestly not feeling huge optimism for it some days. We had a mini global revolution and I don’t want it to let up or not affect any changes. If we go back to the same way as it ever was, I think my head will explode. We’ve lost a few friends and family this year too, that’s never easy, but it also brings about a sense of determination to forge more relentlessly than before.
NY: Did you stay busy while all the clubs and festivals have been shut down?
HL: We launched a label for Harvey (Harvey’s General Store) that I am running. And I’ve been hosting a market stall at the Santa Monica Antique Market, selling off some of my vintage clothing archives twice a month. I’ve been doing that mostly because I miss creating a vibey zone to connect with people. We have some nice clothes and shoes, some zones to sit and of course a nice playlist!
NY: Let’s go back in time. As a child and a young teenager, living in the North of England, you said the first tales you heard about going out dancing were from your mother.
HL: My mom would go to see bands and to local bars and clubs, but she wasn’t really a clubber per se. She was so heavily into Motown and Stax and had a collection of 7’ that we would play. She was kind of a hound for music too, and she would have this set up with a mic that she would place next to the speakers to record songs to tape as they came on the radio. So I guess collecting music started there!
NY: Did you start buying records at that time?
HL: We had one local record store and I’d go there on weekends and play things that looked nice or with glamorous pictures. Like most people, I was very obsessed in reading the sleeve notes on records, so I’d also look for the producers or players of the things I liked, and take them into the listening booth. As a kid, I would sing myself to sleep, pretty much as soon as I could talk. If I wasn’t singing in there, I was dancing, my bedroom was my own personal disco.
Heidi and DJ Harvey at Ministry of Sound, London. Photo by Gary Ward.
“ Some of the first imagery from New York was breakdancers and hip hop, so it formed an early opinion that I had of the city.”
NY: One first record from NY that you remember?
HL: Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”. It inspired all my dreams of getting to New York as a kid. As a teen in a small town, with music being the global voice from the world, I was into all of it! Disco, hip hop, UK indie bands, just a massive love for music. Some of the first imagery from New York was breakdancers and hip hop, so it formed an early opinion that I had of the city, hearing about boroughs like South Bronx, then Biggie and later Wu Tang. Of course, I wanted to seek that out and soak it all up. Even today, living in Los Angeles, I always toy with the idea of switching coasts, New York is one of the greatest cities in the world to me.
NY: Another main source of your inspiration at that time, for music and fashion, were two magazines: i-D and The Face, which had a tremendous influence on youth culture in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Do you remember a specific cover that stuck?
HL: I would pour over any fashion magazine I could get my hands on! There was of course the legendary first issue that was almost a fold up leaflet. My copy is probably buried deep in storage! Living in a really small town, it wasn’t much, but I would copy the styles, read about new music and have my grandma (who was an excellent seamstress) copy clothes by the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier, BodyMap [laughs]… Not easy, but somehow she pulled something off for me. I would read the articles time and time again about clubs like Taboo and wanted to be there. I kept and collected magazines religiously and had a garage full of them before I moved to the US.
NY: You moved to London when you were 14 and started going out. In 1991, when the club Ministry of Sound opened, you began working there. In its first decade, it was certainly one of the most important clubs in the world. It was directly influenced by the Paradise Garage and Area in NYC…
HL: Justin Berkman, who founded and built the club had lived in NYC for a bit and so it was his dream to recreate that experience, focusing great attention to detail in the sound system. The UK did have purpose-built clubs, but they were “top 40” ripe places like the London Hippodrome, so not for us at all. The Ministry’s room is a hexagonal shape with a sprung dance floor. The sound treatment and even the tunnels you enter the main floor were designed so that the sound doesn’t escape. The room was absolute perfection. The DJ booth was in another room with a window to see the dance floor. Even that was done to not interrupt the sound flow in the room. Before the club opened, Justin invited us to see it and we knew or rather hoped it would be successful, as it’s in Elephant and Castle [neighborhood] which was a clubbing stretch at that time.
NY: Let’s go dancing. You selected “A little bit of jazz” by The Nick Straker Band as one of your favorite NY records.
HL: It reminds me of my first ever trip to NYC and going to The Loft for the first time to hear David Mancuso. [NY legendary DJ] Kenny Carpenter took us to some party that was for dancers. We walked into this and people literally were writhing on the floor dancing. It was New York just like I planned it, skyscrapers and everything.
“On subsequent trips to NYC, I would literally go to any and every club I had even heard a rumbling of.”
NY: How did you first hear about The Loft and David Mancuso?
HL: All of this is pre-internet, so the stories were one on one or passed along second hand. We’d heard about David Mancuso or Nicky Siano who we were told people would call ‘The Father’. I read “Dancer from the Dance” around this time too, and it was really evocative of what I hoped we’d find. There were holy grail records and [Chicago early house DJ] Ron Hardy’s mix tapes, but it all lived in my mind and imagination via these stories we’d heard.
NY: What did you learn from your first night at The Loft?
HL: I went to New York with Harvey, it was my first time. It was before the opening of Ministry of Sound, and even though we’d both deejayed and promoted plenty of parties independently at that point, the thought that one DJ plays all night long was something that inspired me by that day. We both thought it needed to be brought back in the UK. It was that idea that inspired a few one off parties with Harvey at the helm all night, and then the beginning of [Harvey’s legendary London weekly party] Moist. At that time in the UK, club nights with a laundry list of DJs were gaining popularity and nothing against that but we knew we wanted to be different. Harvey as a DJ was up to the task and we loved the idea of the night being a journey. Everyone arriving then off you go, lots of shared, timed euphoria. We knew we’d done the right thing even if at first it wasn’t the popular thing. If we had a guest DJ, Harvey would open for them and then they’d be off to do their own thing, tell their own story till 6am.
NY: Besides The Loft, which other clubs did you go to?
HL: On that first trip, we barely scraped the surface, but on subsequent trips I would literally go to any and every club I had even heard a rumbling of. In NY all the clubs had epic sound systems at the forefront and incredibly skilled DJs: technique, programming, reading the room. It was just an incredible time to feel it first hand. I would go see every DJ I could, Frankie [Knuckles], Timmy [Regisford], Junior [Vasquez]… Then I was also super into the hip hop nights like Sundays at Tunnel. It was incredible to have Ministry of Sound back in the UK to be able to invite these New York DJs to play. It was a room worthy of their talents.
NY: After working for Ministry of Sound, you started managing NY artists in the UK, like Master At Work and Roger Sanchez…
HL: I was asked to go work with [London music manager] Marts Andrups. It wasn’t an easy decision I was so emotionally invested in Ministry of Sound, but I thought why not. I wasn’t DJing as much at this point and was more in the background booking DJs, naming and programming rooms. ‘Rulin’ (Ministry of Sound’s Saturday night) was my brainchild, I loved Jim Masters and Caroline Prothero two co-workers that remain friends to this day.
NY: What did you like about Marts?
HL: He was an absolute genius, an incredible person to work with and learn from. His company Unmanageable also helped people like Trevor Jackson and Ashley Beedle. On day one, he gave me a copy of [the biography of Led Zeppelin] “Hammer of the Gods”, “lesson one read this” he said with a smile – I read it cover to cover in one night, next up was a Michael Ovitz book [Laughs]. I just can’t say enough about Marts and the influence he had on me. We both loved hip hop and we adored Lo-fi house. He was an old punk rocker with stories for days. We loved Kenny (of Master At Work) and shared a respect for his talent in the way his love of hip hop shone in his house productions with Louie Vega. Same thing with Todd Terry, they knew their way around a SP1200 [Akai drum machine and sampler] and that really appealed to us. Marts passed and I completed a few midpoint albums we had in the pipeline, an album we had planned with Kenny was shelved (something we both agreed was the right call) and honestly I wasn’t into being just Roger Sanchez shit kicker.
“The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, but I’m focused on how unbelievable it’s going to be when we can get back to it.”
NY: Another NY hip hop record you picked is Bronx Dogs’ “Tribute to Jazzy Jay”.
HL: That record reminds me of what listening to New York radio feels like. I remember we would buy [NY hip hop DJs] Marley Marl and Red Alert’s mix tapes from Camden market back in the day, and this track gives me all those feels.
NY: When visiting New York in the early 1990’s, tell us about a classic NY hip hop day and night with Heidi, listening to another of your choice, Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz’ “Déjà Vu (Uptown Baby)”
HL: On a particular trip with Marts, we’d go to all the labels by day. I remember being given promos of ODB first 12-inch with the sticker on the front. It influenced Marts’ label releases, we’d want our 12 to look like early hip hop promos with stickers on the disco bag sleeve and notes scratched into the run out groove. Anyhow Marts was friends with [NY DJ] Jules Gayton and he’s still a friend and incredible hip hop DJ. His nights have been immortalized in rap records, so we’d get on the guest list for his nights and whatever else he recommended. We’d also go to whatever pop up party Lysa Cooper was throwing. Then I’d keep it going at Sound Factory afterwards! [Laughs]
NY: Any shopping?
HL: I’m a sneaker head and always have been since Run DMC rapped about my Adidas (even though I’m a Nike head), so I’d always arrive with a half empty suitcase and fill it with sneakers and Supreme and other labels like Pervert which was big at that time. It was an absolute golden time in New York. I would visit Tommy Boy and get hooked up with test pressings. I still have my Tommy Baby tee.
NY: The last record you picked is “Rhapsody in Blue” by Gershwin. You said “I can’t think of NY without hearing this in my head”. That piece was premiered in NYC in 1924 at a concert called “An Experiment in Modern Music”, the perfect definition of what clubs and DJ culture are at their best. Do you agree? What is your latest experiment in modern music?
HL: Yes, I 100% agree, I love to honor the past, but what’s going on right now and what’s to come tomorrow is what keep me interested and invigorated. My partner has his label ESP institute and even though he first found notoriety with his Lovefingers deep digs site, his label is all new music. That’s the soundtrack of our home life. We share a love for the new and delight in introducing one another to new stuff. The other day, we watched the new LCY video and I thought waaa waaa for everyone that already made their year end lists, because this just became one of the best things of 2020! I have such love for footwork, drum and bass and UK garage, that was another UK scene that took me over at its inception. Clubs like The End, Heaven and Fabric in particular are the more well known clubs that flew the flag for these sounds and that whole time was as exciting as any other I’ve witnessed or been a clubber at. That sound will always get me up out of my seat, the newer producers are killing it right now. For me, it’s so exciting. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, but I’m focused on how unbelievable it’s going to be when we can get back to it.
“We want to elevate LA and its DJs with all that we do, and it’s all on hold, but we’re constantly thinking what next.”
NY: In the early 2000’s, you moved from London to LA with Harvey. You said: “We both shared a California dream brought about by our impressions of 1960’s-1970’s California.” Was that Californian dream stronger than your early love for NYC hip hop and house scene?
HL: I was certainly into the California dream. I’d always wanted to come to LA. It evaded me for a time and I always went to San Francisco, but when I finally got to LA, it felt great and it became a new dream to come here and kind of live a more balanced life. There were some days when frankly it was a bit too sleepy for me. I embraced what nightlife LA had, but often thought why are we not in New York? But as you know, we went on to help in a small way with the growing of the LA scene, and once that started to happen with warehouse parties and larger clubs like Rhonda, Black Disco, Bears In Space etc. I was back in my comfort zone.
NY: What does the future look like?
HL: I’ve allowed myself to be more in my past recently musically and with things I’ve been involved in, but mostly I don’t wanna rest on any of my past. I’m happy with friends knowing what I’m up to now, I throw warehouse parties here in LA with Masha and Jeniluv, we hosted our own micro festival and we were on track to throw another which will now happen in 2021 or 2022. We had an epic series of day parties planned in an LA park. The first one was slated for April with Honey Dijon, who is just the realest as far as I’m concerned – what an icon – and we had local LA up-and-coming talents on board to play with her. We want to elevate LA and its DJs with all that we do, and it’s all on hold, but we’re constantly thinking what next.
NY: And in the meantime?
HL: I’m just happy making playlists for some friends in the UK that were really down in the dumps due to the shit show of the madness the inept Tory government are doing on a daily basis. We could debate endlessly and add to one another’s misery, but I thought F this, I’m making a playlist with a bunch of old school house, disco, techno and hip hop for us all to dance around our living rooms. It reminds me of those early mixtapes and making mixes for friends back then. Music was my preferred language, as a shy kid, it conveyed all the things I couldn’t myself or allowed me to lose myself so it’s just something I know. There’s lots of cheesy moments inspired by wanting to have my own personal rave for NYE or shared musical experience even while we’re not able to see one another. One of my favorite radio shows to listen to is Ben UFO’s a man of such impeccable taste always with the new new. I’m always torn as to wanting to know what the tracks are, but also not wanting to know, so I can keep that speaker freaker clubber inside me and a little excitement for tomorrow alive.
Heidi Lawden
Soundcloud | dublab
