In Depth: An Afternoon And A Lifetime with Mr. C

It’s hard to know where to start when describing someone like Richard West; or a person who’s had a life such as his. Undoubtedly known to most as Mr C, the frontman for the dance music scene born pop creation, The Shamen; he’s not about to live down the shouts of ‘Eezer Goode’ when his name comes up in conversation anytime soon, but there’s always been a whole lot more to the message that rang out in his vocal lines than he’s often given credit for. Having arranged to meet West at the east London studio of photographer, Sarah Ginn, who for many years has been responsible for capturing what goes down post-midnight at the weekends here in Farringdon, we were both in the highest anticipation of what would unfurl in the company of the man behind so much music history. The obvious place to start our conversation with West was with his Superfreq label which, since its re-launch in March last year, has been operating at somewhat of a heady pace in terms of its release schedule. “We're releasing an EP every three weeks so there's a lot of music coming out,” he offers, taking very little time to start enthusing about his more than substantial roster. “There’s Stark who's playing live with us [next weekend]. Amazing music; it's really twisted funky techno with disco overtones. There’s Affie Yusuf who does really cool house on his own and with Trevor Loveys and we've had a couple of releases together as the Indigo Kids. I've also signed Rize to the label, they were Megalon on my Plink Plonk label it's very interesting stuff, very deep and noodley.” “Then there’s my Mrs, Xo Chic, from Dollz at Play,” West continues, listing the more transatlantic artists that orbit his LA base. “She’s also on the label. She's only done one EP but I'm harassing her to get back into the studio. Then I've got the other half of Dollz at Play, Bea Tricks - I've got a release from her coming out over the summer with remixes by myself and David Scuba. There's another British guy but he's living in America: Pete Shaker Bones. I've also just put out an EP by Jay Tripwire - an amazing release - and there’s Jordan Lieb from New York too.” And even amongst all those names, there’s yet still more partners and personalities that make up the Superfreq roster, including David Scuba and Noel Jackson who both produce and release on the label. But, and this is the thing about Superfreq, there’s a whole other side to the organisation; a more immediate club night incarnation that presents their music and their ethos in the physical state. It was two and a half years ago that the party arm of Superfreq first came to our corner of EC1. Long since established at The End, the club Mr C. co-owned and founded, it went on to be a resident fixture at a multitude of international bases with Superfreq regularly holding court at ADE, BPM and WMC. The breadth of the label and party’s operations alone are pretty huge, but that isn’t solely where Mr. C’s pursuits begin and end. During the photo-shoot he let slip that he’d been ordained and is a practicing psychoanalyst. Pressing him on how, for an individual so involved with the promotion and label game, he could find time for it he reveals: “the psychology I learned was through the method acting I studied before I left for America which is based on the teachings of Constantine Stanislavski and Mikael Chekov.” “I was learning psychology as part of the course which gave me a lot of tools to be able to use in real life for helping people,” he continues. “I do workshops where I help people and part of the workshop is psychoanalysis. With my clients, after giving them a toolkit to use to go and take over the universe, I then do psychoanalysis to clear the blockages that might prevent them from doing so.” Talking to him, it feels like there’s a deep spirituality at play in the motivations of Mr C’s order of teaching, though it never gets too dogmatic for someone known for setting out his own agenda. He shares more of the motivations for the workshops and the tools he aims to provide people with: “my beliefs are based on Buddhism but with a twist because I don't stick by rules. I'm a rebel. I'm a rule breaker. So although it's Buddhist but there are points to it that I do go into different directions with I suppose by belief system is a combination of Buddhism and shamanism.” “So I give [people] tools for taking control of your own life. It's about being happy. Everything about my workshop is about finding your own happiness because that's all that's really important in life. It's not about gathering things and collecting things and getting rich and getting famous because a lot of those things will bring you unhappiness and sadness and despair. So it's about finding happiness, finding a way of life where you can constantly be happy. Even when things go wrong around us it's about how you deal with those things and take them on personally.” Going on to touch on the capitalist and consumer driven world we live in, West nods towards how his own path in life had a troubled beginning - starting with very little and even being a victim of sexual abuse he’s created the success and the lifestyle he enjoys today. Even though these ideas were cemented during his studies it’s actually an outlook that enabled him to kick start his life in music and was even the foundation of the message that was at the core of The Shamen’s chart topping tracks… “The first tune that I made with Eddie Richards came out in August 1997 on Eddie's label, Badd. Eddie did the music, Kid Bachelor did the mixdown and I did the vocal - a vocal about the power of meditation and positive thinking and what can be achieved with it. When I was 20! That was 28 years ago! Its 31 years that I've been into positive thinking and it’s what's driven my whole life. I knew I'd be a successful rapper and I went out into the London clubs and got to know the DJs and got on the mic and became really well known for it in my teenage years.” “If you say ‘I want to be a great DJ’ it's quite positive but you're programming yourself to be a wannabe but if you say ‘I am’ a great DJ, then you are. When I gave up my milk round in Camden to become a DJ at the age of 21 people would be speaking to me the following week and I'd say to them, ‘I'm a DJ’ not ‘I want to be a DJ'. But ‘I am a DJ and I am a recording artist’ - even though then I'd only done one vocal on one tune and I hadn't even played a gig yet. If they said ‘oh really what kind of DJ are you then?’ I’d say ‘I’m the best fucking DJ you’re ever going to hear, that’s what kind of DJ I am.’” Evidently it worked out for the young upstart as within 9 months he was playing across the UK and was at the infamous acid house den Clink Street and at the bigger clubs like Camden Palace and Astoria becoming one of London’s biggest DJ’s all within one year. The Shamen was born from the same club scene but it was truly taken to the masses when it reached the UK charts in 1992 with ‘Ebeneezer Goode’. That success brought a supply of cash to West which enabled him to go on and invest in the underground he has always cared so passionately about. “When I did the Shamen thing, I said ‘if this makes it, I'm going to put every penny I earn back into the underground’ - and that's what I did. I set up a studio that cost me the best part of £150,000. I set up Plink Plonk Records and employed lots of people for underground cutting edge music. I went onto release shitloads of music from artists that were developing and unknown and the remainder of my money I put into The End to build a space for them [sic] to play in. Every penny I earned as a pop star I put back in. I didn't buy a house. I didn't buy a flash car every single cent went back in.” The End was one of the first clubs in London dedicated to house, techno and drum & bass forms of club music from its opening in 1995 all the way to its closure in 2009 and similarly, Plink Plonk cut its last track in 2002, leaving behind a legacy of quality music true to the underground spirit. Even though success came thick and fast, there were a few bumps along the way, mainly thanks to some dodgy accounting… “I was in trouble because my accountant fucked up big time. I was in trouble with tax and VAT because I was told it was going to be paid for out of The Shamen money,” but that wasn’t the case and he suffered a harsh consequence. “I ended up £100k in debt to VAT and 150k in debt to Inland Revenue because I spunked it all on the underground. It took me until 2007 to break even. Living hand to mouth, paying it off, paying it off...” “If I didn't put all the money back in I would be minted!” he ponders. “But I don't care about the money. I've got a nice house. I've got a great lifestyle. I dress great. I travel the world. What else do I need? My bank accounts are both empty and I've got to pay the mortgage. It’s hand to mouth because I've invested all my money into the label into the artists and promotion. All the time I'm putting it into other things. I lose money on events putting on good production. I lose money when I could just go and DJ for someone and earn money without doing all the hard work, but it's my responsibility to do what I have to do.” For someone who has already lead a life that has seen them run of London’s most important clubs, lead one of dance music’s premier chart acts and travel the world for the last 30 years, you’d think that would be enough, but he still has dreams to further enable and share happiness. It’s the perfect note to finish our afternoon with him, with Mr C revealing his master plan behind his aforementioned method acting training… “When I'm an A list actor - not if but when- and I'm earning millions, I'm going to put every penny into a new charity project that will be there to develop leisure culture in third world countries. I'm talking all of the arts and all of the sports and to develop that amongst the hungry because I came from a very poor family. I was hungry and my hunger is what's fuelled me as it has for many.” Photography by Sarah Ginn