Kevin Saunderson - Inner City visions

Detroit is a city with an incredibly rich musical heritage. Over time, it has produced gifted musicians and producers and even spawned entire genres, such as Motown and Techno. Arguably two of the greatest talents to emerge from Detroit’s concrete streets and skyscrapers comes in the form of Inner City. The group's made up of the vocalist Paris Grey and producer Kevin Saunderson, who's often referred to as the ‘godfather of techno’, and rightly considered one of the most influential men in electronic music. Along with his two high-school friends, Juan Atkins and Derrick May, the trio, commonly known as the ‘Belleville Three’, shaped the course of electronic music forever by inventing techno. These days it seems the word 'legend' is casually banded around far too often. However in this case it rightly fits the bill. 

Inner City were incredibly influential, topping both dance and mainstream charts across the world with hits such as Good Life and Big Fun, propelling them to international stardom. One of the original dance acts, with over six million sales worldwide, 12 Top 40 hits in the UK, two top 20 albums (one of which went Platinum), the impact that Inner City had upon the current scene cannot be overstated.

At the end of 2011, after a lengthy hiatus, fans were greeted with the news that Inner City had re-formed, and were to be touring with their first original material for over a decade. Oli Wood caught up with Saunderson for a brief chat about Inner City and their past influences, future plans and online piracy.

When you and Paris Grey formed Inner City in 1987, what was the original aim of the group? Did you set out to make vocal music with great hooks that could be successful in the charts? I formed Inner City with Paris in 1987 and the aim was to have very hooky and catchy songs that could work on the dancefloor. We didn’t know anything about charts. We weren’t interested in charts, that was not the vision. That happened by accident. 



While you enjoyed great success worldwide,  why do you think it was that the UK in particular embraced Inner City so much? I think that Inner City was successful because we did have great songs and it came at the right time. We had dance billboard chart support and success in the US but in Europe and England, we hit the top charts including the pop charts. It was just that time we were involved in and the music just hit for the moment and it was perfect for that. Then dance music was evolving so there were not as many dance acts happening at the time, so those like us who were doing vocal records did well. I grew up going to places like the Paradise Garage listening to a lot of disco music, and Paris grew up in the church and the combination seemed to work.

When you perform with Inner City how would you say the crowds differ between America and Europe? Inner City was very successful in Europe because I think people were just more open minded compared to America. In America we had mild success and dance success but that was kind of it. In Europe, people respected us and looked up to us like any other popular act. We came from the underground to the overground and we were still able to do underground stuff always and stick to our core dance community. So we’d get a lot more media coverage presence in the UK and Europe compared to the States where we kind of didn’t get any press coverage.

You once played on Top of the Pops in the UK, is there a particular place or country you love playing in and are looking forward to returning to? I always look forward to travelling back to the UK because it’s kind of where it took off for us and where it began. And other places in the world, because now especially as Inner City hasn’t performing and doing shows that long, it’s always a pleasure to go places. I like Harlem a lot and Amsterdam always seem to work very good for us. There are loads of places really.

 

What made you re-form Inner City? Have you ever considered touring Inner City without Paris or is she integral to Inner City? Inner City was re-formed because we toured a few years ago and decided that we wanted to go back out, we enjoyed the tour and there was a lot of inspiration. At the same time Paris, my singer was raising her daughter. She graduated from high school just last year, so it made it easy for her to travel all over the world, you know because her daughter could travel with her or go to college. So this gave her a lot more freedom and it was just the right timing I guess. That is the main reason. We know we still have much talent to give and songs to write so it’s just the right timing.

Has the current breed of producers who play today inspired you or do you feel that something is missing from today’s scene? Well while technology has evolved, I think the scene is missing an element where people don’t do more songs or try and produce with songs. So a song can be stripped down to make it as underground as you want, but if you have a song it gives you a real base to work off and that’s one thing that I don’t think is there so much today, that natural great song writing, that’s real.

Inner City are often cited as a major influence on many electronic artists and acts today. Are you aware of this legacy and do you hope to have a similar impact this time around and inspire a new generation? Yes I realise that Inner City was around at the beginning of this whole movement that I was a part of, from techno to house onwards, and I do realise we have influenced many people around the world from generations to generations and that’s fine. We are older now and wiser and we think we’ve still got some of that left in us.

With all the new technologies available to you these days, will you be embracing these and incorporating them into your live shows and productions? Yes technology I’m always for it. I will always definitely embrace technology as much as possible as long as it fits in with my work. On the stage, in the studio, visually, it’s good to use technology in as many ways as possible.

You sold millions of records back in the day with Inner City. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that you would sell nearly as many these days due to illegal downloading. What is your take on this? I’m not real fond of illegal downloads. I think people as artists, we are creative and spend a lot of time being creative, money is not the most important thing. But we also have to live and I think as people are sharing files and doing illegal downloads then it hurts the whole scene in many ways. So I hope that people can learn to respect others material and property and they can come up with a way that files can be legally shared or downloaded . So just to let people know that it does hamper an artists living at times and they need to eat just like you do and that’s why most artists are truly starving artists.

Are there any producers from today’s scene that you would like to work with? I don’t think there is anyone particular I’d like to work with, but there will be some producers I do work with on Inner City material, rather than doing the whole album and records myself.

My writing hasn’t changed you just need to find the time to do it, the right time. It’s still fun, it’s still creative, letting the juices flow, coming up with ideas and experimenting all that is still really good.  

Listen to Kevin Saunderson on Pulse Radio