Calvin Harris seems fun. Anyone who lies about having their laptop lost (to avoid record label deadlines), gatecrashes award shows, plays dress up in their videos and has “a few” before meeting Kylie Minogue seems like a good drinking buddy. Turns out the reality is a little different.
25-year-old Calvin may be behind chart hits like 'Dance Wiv Me' and 'I’m Not Alone', but his day to day life is pretty subdued. He goes to bed early, doesn’t drink and doesn’t have any hobbies. He’s "boring" and will happily tell you so. That means you have to ask some REALLY dumb questions to get anything out of him.
Mikolai: Where are you at the moment, are you on tour?
Calvin Harris: I’m at home, back from tour.
MN: What do you do when you get back home from tour, does it take a while to adjust to daily life?
CH: Not really. I just sit around a lot and eat. I like to eat food. Watch some telly.
MN: Do you cook as well? Is there a Calvin Harris signature dish you could make us?
CH: No, nothing like that. I’m not much of a cook, but I like to eat things. I’m good at re-heating things. That’s my cooking.
MN: I was reading your bio and it talks about the 'Stadium Dance' sound you were aiming for with this album (
Ready for the Weekend), that sounds like the sort of thing KLF were about back in the day. Where they an influence?
CH: No, not at all. I only ever heard one of their tracks, 'What Time is Love?'
MN: Oh, that kills my next few questions.
CH: Sorry.
MN: Never mind, let’s talk about your old Amiga 500, you used it to make tracks back in the day. Did you play games on it as well?
CH: Shadow of the Beast 2 totally changed my life. When that stopped working I became more interested in making music and started messing around on the Amiga. That game [not working] pretty much launched by production career.
MN: Were you involved in any schoolyard fights over the relative merit of the Amiga 500 vs the Atari ST?
CH: Nah, because nobody else had an Amiga. Or an Atari. This was years after they were popular and the Amiga was already out of date. Everyone had [Sega] Master Systems and consoles. I had an Amiga... I never got into the console thing.
MN: What’s your worst injury ever?
CH: I broke my toe once. I was dancing around in my socks and the floor was sort of slippery and I fell and broke it. This was at home, in my bedroom. I had to go to the hospital so I told the doctor I fell down the stairs. It was shit 'cause there’s nothing you can do about a broken toe, you just have to wait for it to not be broken.
MN: You’ve travelled all around the world these last couple of years, what’s the creepiest place you’ve visited?
CH: I don’t know about creepy, but Istanbul was weird. They don’t really have road rules over there, people just drive. We had this driver, well, I don’t know if he was a driver, he could have been someone they pulled of the street, and yeah... madness. I though I was going to die. But the show was alright, even though no one knew who I was.
MN: Is it weird now playing those shows where people don’t know you are, you know, now that you’re sort of a big deal?
CH: Not really, outside of the UK no one knows who I am anyway.
MN: And what about the US, do you have any aspirations to conquer that market?
CH: I don’t really have the patience or stamina for it. It would be nice, but, honestly, I just don’t have the focus to do it.
MN: How’s the twitter account going? You upset some people this year with your tweets. [Harris ranted about a 2/5 review in the Guardian and YouTube removing one of his videos]
CH: I’m trying to use it less. I became sort of addicted to it for a while, I’m trying to only Tweet relevant stuff... I didn’t mean to upset anyone with it. I think I’m a good person.
MN: Have you upset anyone with it lately?
CH: I don’t know, I probably have.
MN: You mentioned in previous interviews that you got all nervous before you were supposed to meet with Kylie and had a couple of drinks. You’ve since gone on to collaborate with various musicians, do still get nervous meeting famous people?
CH: I don’t get nervous meeting people, it’s the studio stuff. I’m not someone who likes to go into a studio with someone and make a track. I like to work on my own, create something in my studio and then send it to them, go backwards and forwards like that. That’s how the Dizzee Rascal stuff was all made.
MN: What do you do with yourself when you’re not in the studio, do you have any other outside hobbies.
CH: No, music used to be my hobby, but now it’s my job. I don’t really have time for a hobby. If it all goes pair shaped I might tape up bird watching or something. That can be my hobby.
Calvin Harris will the Big Day Out and the following sideshows this month:
Wednesday 19 January at River Stage, Brisbane
Thursday 21 January at The Metro, Sydney
Monday 25 January at Prince Of Wales, Melbourne