Welcome to Metro.co.uk’s The Big Questions, where we ask the biggest of big questions (and the smaller ones too), and this week we had a chinwag with legendary DJ, Fat Tony…
Growing up on a council estate in Battersea, in South London, the music-maker, AKA Tony Marnoch, tapped into his superpowers behind the decks to play at some of the most iconic nightclubs on the planet.
Although no name-dropper, he has hung out with everyone from Madonna to Sir Elton John, and counts Kate Moss, Boy George and British Vogue’s Edward Enninful as close pals. Recently, he provided the beats for Brooklyn Beckham’s wedding – what we’d give to see VB getting down and dirty on the dancefloor.
However, living life in the fast lane came at a price, and Tony has been appreciably frank about his decades-long battle with addiction – before finding sobriety in 2006.
With his fingers in many proverbial pies, including podcast The Recovery, the 56-year-old recently published his autobiography I Don’t Take Requests.
With Pride season upon us, we caught up with Tony, who lives with his long-time partner David, as he put the needle on celebrating Pride, how he conquered drink and drugs, and finding ‘light in the darkness.’
Let’s kick off with some Pride-inspired questions. What would you say Pride means to you, and has that meaning changed over the years?
Pride means, to me, it gives freedom to be who you want to be. People always still think that we don’t need Pride anymore. We need it more than ever. In different countries, it is no longer acceptable to be who we are.
We need to make it right in those countries by showing our solidarity for everyone else. It’s not about walking down the street and going to a party and enjoying yourself, as much as it about an expression of, we need to show the world that we exist and we’re loud and we’re here.
Can you remember your first Pride?
Of course! I used to go to Pride when it was in Brockwell Park, years and years ago. And then they also had it in Finsbury Park, about 30 years ago. Pride in London started off as a political rally, a march through the streets, then it, kind of, grew and grew and grew. I’ve been going to Pride ever since I can remember, really.
Pride in London is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and great strides have been made since that monumental march. What progress would you like to see in, say, the next five years?
We have these groups who want the ‘T’ taken out of the LGBT. They want the ‘B’ taken out now because they say that ‘bi’ shouldn’t exist within our pronouns. It’s like, hang on, why have we been fighting for 50 years for acceptance, for you to come along and try to do that? The last thing we need to be doing is fighting internally. It’s just sad. Yet again, it’s always a small pocket of close-minded people that try to ruin it for everyone else.
We need to show a bit more love for each other, and that starts with loving ourselves. Don’t throw bricks at anyone else. There’s room for everyone. Imagine what our lives would be if it was just ‘L’ and ‘G’. How boring would that be?
Who was the first person you came out to?
I grew up on an estate in Battersea, and I never had to come out and say I was gay to anyone. I was quite privileged in that fact. My mum always knew, my dad always knew. I never got to the point where I had to say, “You know what, I’m gay.”
Growing up and doing what I did, there was stuff that happened to me when I was young, sexually with other men and [things] like that. There was a lot of shame attached to it, but also at the same time, there was a lot of, ok, well, I’m not going to be pushed around by anyone.
Growing up on the estate, I learned very quickly that the louder I was, the more gay I was, it, kind of, protected me in a sense. It was a superpower, trust me.
Off the back of that, what advice would you give to your younger self?
“Shut up and listen.” Literally. There were so many times where, if I’d listened, I would have taken a different path. My book is called I Don’t Take Requests for that very reason, because if you’d asked me to do something, tell me to do something, I never did it. And you know what, maybe I should of.
Do you still have that approach now?
I’m more open-minded. I’ve learned with age that, being stubborn and stuck in one’s ways never gets you anywhere, it never moves you forward. I’m open for requests to a certain extent. I’m certainly open for advice these days.
I struggled with addiction for 28 years – which is undermining it, it was far more than struggling. I completely ruined my life for a long time with drink and drugs, and that’s because I didn’t listen, I chose not to listen. Before I knew it, I got swept away.
You’ve been very open about your struggles with addiction. When did you realise you had a problem, and do you think being a DJ exacerbated the issue?
DJing became an excuse to do what I did in the end. It was a way and means to get more of anything that I wanted. I knew I had a problem every Tuesday morning when it all ran out; whenever I couldn’t get a drink, I knew I had a problem. When I had a drink, there was never a problem. When I had a drug, there was never a problem. It’s when they run out. That’s when you think, I need to get help. But you never do, because the next day, you’ll wake up and start again.
In terms of your recovery, what strategies and mechanisms did you have in place?
To start off with, I had to change my circle of friends. I had to change my lifestyle completely for quite some time. While you’re in it, you never see where the problem starts and ends. Both of those things are you, it starts with you and it ends with you. But while you’re in that, you don’t see that, everyone else is the problem.
It’s about small steps, really small steps. They’ll get you much further than trying to run the race. Just breathe and take it easy. When we’re in addiction and struggling with drink and drugs, it takes away our self-worth, our ambition. It chisels away everything. Slowly, over time, you get that stuff back.
I used to self-harm and, with that, too, it was about taking small steps to stop doing it.
Listen, when we self-harm – I self-harmed every day by putting drink and drugs in my body. That was self-harming. I remember I went to see a psychiatrist when I was trying to get into rehab the first time. I was sitting there and he said to me, ‘Have you ever self-harmed?’ and I was like, ‘No, why would I ever do that?’ My partner, who was sat next to me, said, ‘Tony, you pulled all your teeth out with a screwdriver and pliers.’ In my head, I thought that wasn’t self-harming. That was the mental state I was in. It’s all attached to addiction and low self-worth, and it all comes from a place of fear. It’s about change.
Statistics show that members of the LGBTQ+ community struggle with substance abuse more than others. Do you have any thoughts on why this might be the case?
Because, when we’re growing up in society, we suddenly come out or find our people, you move from a small town, for instance, you move to London and you want to be liked and seen. You go on the apps, you start meeting people. If you go on Grindr, or any of these apps, people are all high, it’s all about drugs, you get swept away by it. You think it’s the norm, it’s gay culture to do drugs, that’s what we do. Also, we don’t have three children to look after!
You mentioned your book. How cathartic did you find the writing process? Was there a chapter of your life that was more difficult to revisit than others?
It took seven and a half years to write. And it took that amount of time for a reason. There is so much in there that I struggled with, that I thought I’d overcome and moved forward from, that [actually] I hadn’t really even looked at, touched the surface of.
There’s the London’s Burning chapter, which is about Aids and HIV, and my own diagnosis is in there. I talk about when I was diagnosed and how I nearly died of full-blown Aids. I literally had under 150 T cells left. I was classed at one point as [having] full-blown Aids. I talk about that, quite thoroughly, about how I was in a coma for so long and everything, about the fact that they did come along with antiretrovirals and pump me full of it as a trial, and it saved my life.
It’s a major part of my life that I’ve never kept a secret, because it’s not a secret, but I’ve gone in and talked about in depth. Also, the abuse chapter, when I was a child and abused for four years. That’s in there. To write that and talk about that stuff is hard. It made me ill. I was physically sick writing that chapter. For a week and a half, I was vomiting and stuff. It brought up so much.
[On writing about his abuse] For me, by discussing it and bringing it to the surface and talking about it in such depth, I think it’s going to help so many more people to realise that, they’re not alone, it wasn’t their fault, and they’re not to blame.
There’s real light in the darkness. It’s not a book about darkness, it’s about finding the light.
What song holds a special place in your heart and why?
Soldiers of Twilight’s Believe. The words to that song changed my life… I don’t listen to music, I feel music. There’s a difference. It’s like a vibration. During lockdown, I was Djing to yuccas in my garden and palm trees, and I struggled. I wasn’t getting the energy. I thrive off of 10 people, f***ing 20,000 people. It’s all about energy for me. Music is the best drug in the whole world.
Tony’s book I Don’t Take Requests is out now.
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