“Weatherall remix changed my life” – Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller
“There were no drugs involved” insists the award winning artist
Jeremy Deller has been describing a moment of personal revelation on hearing the Andy Weatherall and Paul Oakenfold mix of Happy Monday’s ‘Hallelujah’.
Deller told Radio 4’s ‘This Cultural Life’, which details moments of great influence on artists, that he knew his life was being changed as soon as it began. Citing ‘1989-1996: Going Out’ as one of the major influences on his artistic life, he recalls hearing the mix in a Kent nightclub for the first time.
Asked to describe the scene, he said: “I just liked being in places with music being loud. It’s probably why now my hearing is in such a state. I’m not at some trendy club or rave. I’m in a nightclub in Beckenham called Langtree’s, this incredible club on a two floors. I think it had a goth theme previously because it’s got a giant bat on the ceiling.
“Upstairs was indie crossover dance music, downstairs was just dance music, and I went there between 50 and 100 times over a period of a couple of years. I remember one very, very important moment when I heard a song by Happy Mondays called ‘Hallelujah’, this remix of it by Andy Weatherall.
“It’s amazing, super atmospheric. It starts with this Gregorian chant, then bass comes in. It was like ‘wow, this is amazing, this song is amazing’. I just thought, this song has changed my life. It’s articulating something to me, like maybe my life needs to change, and this song is changing my life for me. The door is opening, I’m going into the next room now, and this song is heralding me into a different kind of life.
“It’s very difficult to explain – I mean, I have explained it, but maybe it’s difficult to believe. There were no drugs involved or anything, but I knew, at the end of the song I’d be a different person.”
Deller’s art has consistently used both rave and rock music as a source. His 2004 prize winning entry for the Turner Prize included a project to get brass bands to play acid house hits, backed up with a picture called ‘The History of The World’, which linked M25 raves and Castlemorton with the Miners’ Strike and civil unrest.
In 2013, he represented the UK at the European art expo Venice Biennale and gave visitors a 7″ single which included a recording of a brass band playing A Guy Called Gerald’s ‘Voodoo Ray’, alongside versions of David Bowie and Vaughn Williams pieces, under the banner The English Magic EP.
Most recently, in 2020, Deller created a TV documentary ‘Everybody In The Place: An Incomplete History Of Britain 1984-1992’, which took its title from an early Prodigy single, about the rave and acid house movement and its siesmic effect on UK society and politics.