Jon Pleased Wimmin has been an icon of the UK house scene for more than three decades. He first gained recognition as part of the cabaret act ‘The Pleased Wimmin’ at Glam at London’s Milk Bar, run by Danny Rampling, before moving behind the decks himself and opening his own Soho club, Pleased.
It was his 1995 track Passion, a cover of The Flirts’ hi-NRG track of the same name, that saw him elevated to pop star status, with both it and follow up Give Me Strength hitting the Top 40. He also released singles including Our Lips Are Sealed and European Love on the Wall of Sound label, under the moniker The Visitor, and has remixed artists such as Erasure, Divine, U2, Cerrone and Paloma Faith over the years.
A period of self-imposed exile followed, with Jon reviving his ‘Pleased Wimmin’ identity a couple of times during the 2000s, before properly rebooting his career in the mid-part of the last decade.
He continues to be busy on the production front, with his latest release, Higher (alongside Bristol producer Dave K) out now on Manchester label Sprechen – check it out here – and a new remix of Passion due out in October on Full Circle.
This coming weekend, Jon Pleased Wimmin plays the Love To Be… festival in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, on a lineup that includes Armand Van Helden, The Shapeshifters, Marshall Jefferson, Ultra Naté, K-Klass and more. More information and tickets can be found here.
909originals was delighted to catch up with him.
Before we get started, I saw an interview with you where you were talking about DJing in The Kitchen nightclub in Dublin. I used to work there, actually. You played there quite a bit, right?
Yeah, I played The Kitchen quite a few times. I did a night really early on – it might have even been the opening weekend. It was something for MTV, and my DJ partner was Sister Bliss from Faithless, who’s a friend of mine. I went back and did it a couple more times after that.
I’m quite good friends with Gavin Friday. I went over and hitched over when I was about 16 to stay with the Virgin Prunes. I was a big fan. And I stayed in touch with him. He came along with a few other people, and took us to a place that was called Mr. Pussy’s Café de Luxe, do you remember that?
Yeah, I remember Mr. Pussy’s. You had to knock on the door in the right order to get in…
Yeah, and then they would ask you what you wanted to drink – ‘white, brown, or red?’ I remember there was a drag queen there called Chutney Houston, which was quite funny.
I want to start by talking about some of your current projects – Higher, produced alongside Dave K, is just out. You’re working with Dave quite a bit these days?
Yeah, I did one last year with him as well. I met him when he did a Funkagenda in Bristol I used to play at, and we just got chatting. He’s a really good guy.
You’ve also worked with Paul Morrell on a new mix of Passion, which is due out soon. That’s obviously the track that established your production credentials. For yourself, what’s it like revisiting a track like Passion?
I got so sick of it at the time, and I didn’t play it for years. Everyone used to go, ‘Are you going to play Passion?’ I bloody hated it. It was fun at the time, but it dated very quickly. In terms of the new mix, I always wanted to do a mix that I could play now without cringing.
That’s what we’ve done – we’ve de-cheesed it and made it a little bit deeper. It’s still got the essence, you know? It’s still got the piano, but we’ve made it a bit tougher with a totally new bassline that’s deeper and bouncier.
Is it closer to the original, would you say?
Not really. I mean, it’s still very housey. There’s a bit of a ‘David Penn’ vibe with the piano now, rather than a ‘Christmassy’ kind of vibe, if you know what I mean.
When I was researching this, I came across a video of you performing Passion on The Word, lolling around on a piano.
Well, I wouldn’t call it performing [Laughs]. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Just before the camera was on, they went, ‘Whatever you do, don’t get on the piano, ‘cause it’s not strong enough’, so of course I couldn’t get on there quick enough.
It’s interesting what you’re saying – I interviewed CJ Mackintosh a couple of years ago, and people used to say to him, ‘Are you gonna play Pump Up the Volume?’ And he was like, no, absolutely not. But then he came around to the fact that people want to hear it, you know? It’s like asking Joey Beltram ‘are you going to play Energy Flash?’, or Jeff Mills with The Bells. The symbolic tracks. Have you come around to appreciating Passion again?
A couple of years ago, a record label, Full Circle, came to me and said, ‘we’d really like to put Passion out again’, and I was like, ‘well, if you want to do it, do it, but I don’t really want to be involved because I’m over that now’.
Anyway, they put it out, and then loads of people – young DJs – started playing it across Europe. A producer named Demi Riquísimo was like, ‘I really want to do a mix.’ So they got in touch and said, ‘well, look, this guy wants to do a mix, and we’re thinking about putting it out again with a few mixes. Do you want to do one?’ I said, ‘yeah, because if we’re going to do that, then I want to have one that I’ll actually play myself’. So that’s what we’ve done.
I’ve been playing it the last few months and it sounds really good, actually. I played at Pikes and 528 in Ibiza, and at festivals and stuff, and it seems to be going down really well. Also, it doesn’t make me wince, so that’s good.
It’s interesting what you say about updating Passion – when you play out these days, you probably have a mix of older heads who haven’t seen Jon Pleased Wimmin play for 20 years and a whole younger crowd as well. So you have to find a balance. What sort of reception do you get from younger audiences?
It took me a couple of years to really fine-tune it, but I think I’ve got it just right now. I don’t really play many original mixes of things, because in lots of cases the production is a bit dated, and a lot of this stuff, if it’s ripped from vinyl, just doesn’t sound very good.
So unless you’ve got a really, really great digital remaster, it’s basically all about re-edits and new mixes of things that keep the essence but have a modern edge. It needs to have that toughness in it; otherwise, it just loses impact in the club nowadays.
A lot of those old mixes were only ever released on vinyl. So with the encroachment of digital, they’re increasingly difficult to play out now.
Yeah, they really are. Maybe there’s some technology on the horizon where you can really capture vinyl properly onto digital without having to do too many tweaks – it’ll just make it sound a lot better.
Although, the thing is, back in those days, the records were pressed pretty badly as well. I think everybody was off their heads. No matter what you do, it’s gonna sound shit, isn’t it?
In terms of how you see Jon Pleased Wimmin in the current dance music landscape, do you see yourself as a keeper of the flame, or are you still a bit of a boundary pusher? I mean, you obviously don’t want to be seen as a legacy act, I’m sure.
No, no. In terms how I’m seen, I don’t know. That’s not really for me to say, isn’t it? People ask me to play, and if I want to, I do. I’m not really one of those ‘career DJs’. If I was, I’d be a multi-millionaire by now. I just follow my heart, and do things that I think are going to be fun and that I’m going to enjoy.
You’re going to be performing at Love to Be festival. What can we expect from your set there?
Well, what I’ve been doing for festivals is like a mixture – playing new music with hints of the old stuff in it. Or to put it another way, old stuff with a modern twist.
I know you’re a big fan of underground, sweat-dripping-down-the-walls sort of clubs. How does your preparation for a festival differ from a club set?
I have to have a few avenues I can go down, because sometimes the crowd really want to go for it. But normally, if it’s a great big outdoor event, people tend to want happy vibes. It’s good to be prepared for all eventualities. really.
Over the last couple of decades, Jon, you’ve stepped away from dance music from time to time. I know there was one career break in the late 90s. I think there was a second in the 2000s, was there?
Yeah, I took about six or seven years.
Do you see it as cyclical, that you go through phases and then have to have that reset artistically? Or is it just contextual at the time?
A lot changed. I moved up to Scotland from London, and I was a bit burnt out. I’d been on that treadmill of playing amazing clubs while they were building to a peak.
And then, in many cases, I would playing the main room, but the music changed to stuff I wasn’t really keen on, like trance and hard house and things like that. I would never play music I don’t like. So I would ask, ‘can I do the back room?’ I did the back rooms at Cream and different clubs, which was fine for a while, but then I just needed a break. You can have too much of a good thing, can’t you?
Some of your club nights got to the point where there’s nowhere else you can go with them, in a way. I’m thinking of your night Pleased, in Soho, for example.
Yeah, everything has its lifespan, doesn’t it? Having that break really helped, though. I thought, ‘that’s it, I’ll probably never DJ again’. I thought I’d probably never do drag again either, because I was like, ‘I never want to shave again’.
I can imagine you with a big scraggly beard.
I went to university and did a degree in pop music, which was great – I got a first. I was the biggest swot.
But then the whole Drag Race thing started up, and loads of friends were like, ‘Oh, we’re doing events, do you want to come and DJ? Do you want to do this? Do you want to do that?’
I did a few bits and bobs, and just through people seeing it on Facebook, the snowball started up again, like it did in the early 90s. You get asked to do something, people hear you, then just before you know it, you’re working every weekend again.
But on your own terms, in this case.
Yeah, exactly. Without that break, it would never have happened, I don’t think.
It’s interesting you mentioned Drag Race, because in a way, you played a role in breaking down barriers around gender expression and dance music back in the ’90s. And now, obviously, the conversation about inclusivity is all very front and centre. So you were somewhat ahead of your time on that. How involved are you in the gay community?
When I first started, I was more involved with it. I used to go to clubs like Kinky Gerlinky and perform there, and I DJed at Heaven for a while on Saturday nights. Then I got invited up to do Back to Basics and Venus in Nottingham, and Cream in Liverpool, so I got taken away from the gay scene.
But I’ve always liked to do not what I’m expected to do, you know? Preaching to the converted isn’t really my bag.
You’ve always been defined by the music. It would have been very obvious, and it would have been easy – low-hanging fruit, you might say – to be more defined by your look?
I’m glad you said that, because it was never the case that I thought, ‘oh, I can be a drag DJ’. I was performing in drag long before I was DJing. I studied fashion, so I’ve always loved dressing up, basically.
These days, the pendulum has swung a bit too far I think – everything’s kind of separated again. You’ve got queer clubs and then straight clubs. An inclusive club should be for everybody. That’s my idea for a great night.
I came across a quote of yours that you ‘take music very seriously, but not all music has to be serious’. In terms of finding that balance between the craft and the playfulness, is that more difficult now, with music becoming more commercial, I wonder?
I think it’s inherent in everything I do – that sense of humour. There’s always a cheeky nod in there somewhere, whether it’s a little bit of Depeche Mode or a bit of Kylie sneaking in when you least expect it.
I’ve always liked surprising people, so they don’t know what’s coming next. I can’t help myself, really. It’s not something I plan to do; it’s just what I do. 🙂
Jon Pleased Wimmin plays at Love To Be festival in Harrogate on 6 September. More information and tickets can be found here.
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