If you’re not acquainted with Mr Robert Owens yet, he’s a legendary American R&B and house-music vocalist who’s performed in clubs from Studio 54 to Paradise Garage. Patrick Cash spoke to him about his legacy and what we can expect from his upcoming set at gay club night Handsome’s first birthday…
Tell us a little bit about Robert Owens for the uninitiated.
In short, Robert Owens is really blessed to still be on this system! But if you want to go a little deeper into it, I just grew up forming groups and putting groups together and I was always the glue trying to hold them together, but it never panned out. I’ve always been a kind of nomadic character, so if something wasn’t working in that area I’d venture into another area. So, eventually I ended up DJing all over Chicago in different places, clubs and universities, and I eventually met Larry Heard and then Fingers Inc. was born and it just evolved.
Did you always dream of being in music or was there one record that just set everything off for you?
From about five or six they were putting me on the table and saying ‘watch him dance!’ I was the entertainment, because you know in the suburbs they only get together on the weekends to play card games, have dinner parties, and the children often were entertainment. I was usually selected to pick the records, put on some tracks…
So you were DJing from the beginning?
Yeah, that’s funny, looking back, I was a selector from the age of 7!
From the kitchen table to the clubs.
Literally!
“We’re all one family from my perspective. Harmony and unification through music.”
Where was the first club you played? What was it like?
I used to do basement house parties with a proper one turntable, a red light in the middle and we’d clean out this basement and charge people five dollars to get in and we’d just pass out flyers all over the neighbouring blocks and stuff and people would come and that’s how we’d get to know a lot of the neighbours and stuff, like that. And then that progressed to a pub, in Chicago, California and LA starting off in pubs, I just went in and asked them if they needed a DJ and got hired!
What can a clubber expect from your set nowadays?
I performed in Studio 54, Paradise Garage, I used to play over here with Danny Rampling, I’ve seen it all, so the thing is my objective is often to go from past to present to future. The future has a lot of possibilities because you know we can speculate on what you think is possible, and the main thing is to see some happy faces and make people happy. That’s the main objective, to spread some harmony amongst all of us.
What’s good about playing the London gay scene?
There’s no place in the world like London. It’s multi-faceted, it’s such a melting pot of different cultures. Here, gay and straight, and this is going back to those famous clubs, it was unified energy between the gay and straight and that’s my objective, it’s always been to bring the two together, because we’re all one family from my perspective. Harmony and unification through music.
What’s the quintessential Robert Owens track that just gets the dance floor pumping and why?
I never set or plan a set, I react to what I see, so I walk in a room and I look at the people, and I draw energy from looking at their faces, and I really try to make myself a part of what’s going on with the people. But if you make yourself a part of the crowd, you react to that crowd, gay or straight. I try and absorb the emotions and feelings and I try to react from that angle. But it’s everything on my back, it’s always escalating, it’s a reaction from looking at people.
Do you have a personal favourite track that gets you dancing when out?
Maybe just for the philosophy: ‘Music is My Life’ by Patti LaBelle. That’s the philosophy and law that you’ve gotta live by.
And finally, do you have any surprises up your sleeve for Handsome this weekend?
Probably! But we’ll all discover them together!
• Handsome is at East Bloc, (217 City Road, Shoreditch, EC1V 1JN) on Saturday 16th November, 10.30pm to 6am.
