Drake’s Radio 29: Raife Burchell

There’s nothing like the thrill of finding a new band and making them your entire life, so completely  does their music change you. A transmission from a new world, with its all glamour and possibility, that’ll change how you dress, the clothes you wear, where you go, what you want to do.

These are the exciting, rapturous, moments Raife Burchell track in this latest edition of Drake’s Radio, from the first time hearing The Jam, to a short lived fascination with breakdancing, meeting Prince in Copenhagen to Oasis’s reunion last summer. All momentous moments in their own way.

This wide variety of influences might go some way to explaining Raife’s Renaissance man tendencies. Producer, soundtrack supervisor, drummer, raconteur. We meet him at the apartment he’s been staying at in New York, on a suitably cinematic rainy afternoon, while he’s been working on Paul Banks of Interpol’s solo record. English by birth, Raife has spent his career traversing the globe, heading wherever the music has taken him: London, Berlin, New York, LA.

He spent his formative years playing in bands, before moving into production, and music supervision, most recently working on the soundtrack for Die My Love with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattison. As well as being a longtime customer of Drake’s, he’s one of the most stylish men we know.

So one rainy afternoon in New York, we decided to grill Raife on the musical moments that have defined his life and style, and how the two often inform each other.

Crosstown Traffic

I was about five years old the first time music really hit me. It was on a hot summer's day and my dad was having a beer in his favourite pub. I was standing there with my arm wrapped around his leg while he played the fruit machine.

The sun was pouring through the windows when a set of thunderous drums exploded from a dusty brown speaker high up on the wall like a bomb had gone off. It was Mitch Mitchell playing the opening to Crosstown Traffic. I'd never heard anything like it. I was completely transfixed. Everything else disappeared.
As I stared at the speaker, all I could think was: "I want that. Whatever that is... I want that."

Songs In The Key Of Life

My dad was absolutely obsessed with Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. He'd slam the cassette into the tape machine of his blue 1979 Ford Capri and teach us all the backing vocals while he sang Stevie's parts. I still know every single harmony line on that album.

But no one shaped my taste more than Jamie, my older brother. We lived in a sleepy seaside town, and he introduced me to so many artists I never would have discovered on my own: Thin Lizzy, Van Morrison, Fugazi, Al Green, The Band, Talking Heads, The Specials, Muddy Waters... the list is endless.

The Jam were the first band that really bonded us, though. It wasn't just the records. It was the clothes. The hair. The attitude. The energy. I remember my dad taking the two of us up to London one day so we could buy boating blazers and Sta-Prest trousers. That whole obsession was about being a little bit like Paul Weller and a lot like my brother. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today without Jamie's unwavering passion for music. He showed me the way.

Bruce

My dad took us all up to Wembley Stadium for the Amnesty International concert in 1988. Bruce Springsteen was headlining, but we weren't fans; we were there to see Peter Gabriel and Sting. The plan was to hit the road before Bruce came on. But as we were getting ready to leave, my dad said, "Let's stay for one song and see what all the bloody fuss is about."

The lights went down and the low din of a Hammond organ rang out. Bruce strutted to the centre of the stage, grabbed the microphone and shouted, "One, two, three, four!" Then... bang. Born in the U.S.A.

It was unreal. As that first snare drum hit, it felt as though the entire world disappeared and I was standing inches from Bruce's face. He had me, and every single person in the stadium, in the palm of his hand. As I stood there completely transfixed, that voice in my head came back: “I want that. Whatever that is... I want that.”

Off The Wall

My brother got really into Michael Jackson, so naturally I did too. We'd end up having marathon dance competitions in front of the mirror to his vinyl copy of Off the Wall.

I got so into MJ that I asked my mum to buy me a pair of tight black trousers, taken up just enough to flash my bleach-white socks as I moonwalked around the kitchen wearing one glittery glove. I don't remember anyone in my family giving me any stick about those outfits. That's either selective memory, or they were all being incredibly kind, because I must have looked like an utter tit!

Breakdance

The summer after that Amnesty concert, I fell deep into a breakdancing obsession. I used to play Chaka Khan's I Feel for You while attempting the world's most god-awful headspins in our living room. I'd walk around our local town centre carrying a huge piece of cardboard under my arm, challenging random kids to a "break-off". I was completely obsessed with that look as well: the headbands, the parachute pants and the Hi-Tec high-tops.

My mum passed away last year, and my sister found the red studded belt I used to wear tucked away in one of her drawers. I couldn't believe she'd kept it all those years. Looking back, none of it was ever really about the music or the clothes. The Jam, breakdancing and every new band that came along were all just giving me another piece of the puzzle.

The Purple One

I'd rush home after school and sit for hours watching back-to-back videos on MTV. One of those videos was Purple Rain, a song that's stayed with me my entire life. Every time I hear it still, and I mean every time, I stop whatever I'm doing and turn it up super loud.

Prince, more than any other artist, has always been my one. I've seen him play tiny venues and huge arenas. Every time he walked off stage, I'd think, he can't possibly go back to a hotel and just be normal.

Years later, just after I'd stopped touring and started my company Dirty Soup, I was lucky enough to spend some time with Prince at his hotel in Copenhagen. We chatted and ate freshly baked lemon drizzle cake before Larry Graham and Janelle Monáe turned up with his backing singers. They all eventually started praying together. I quietly ate my cake.

At about two in the morning, a bunch of cars turned up and we were all shuttled across town, where Prince and Larry Graham played another marathon jam session of funk covers to about two hundred fans in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city.

I was asked by Prince's security not to film anything from the side of the stage. It was the one and only time I ever broke "the code". I've still got the footage, and I watch it back whenever I need a little shot in the arm from the Purple One.

I've had so much fun over the years. I've danced with Madonna. I've had a pint with Paul McCartney. But nothing comes close to that night in Copenhagen. I was on Planet Prince for one night, and my suspicions were right. It was anything but normal. I was living in New York when he passed away in 2016. That one really hurt.

The Chelsea Hotel

New York has always played a central role in my musical life. My first ever paid gig as a drummer was for a singer signed to Virgin who happened to live at the Chelsea Hotel. I was living on Ladbroke Grove at the time, and she fancied a change of scenery for a while, so we did an apartment swap.

Her pad was at the front of the building, right next to the sign overlooking 23rd Street. I was 25 at the time, and I had no idea what I was walking into, or quite the magnitude of the place. Bob Dylan. Leonard Cohen. Patti Smith. Janis Joplin. Sid and Nancy.
Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Winona Ryder were always wandering around the hotel, alongside a cast of wonderfully wild characters. It was the first time I'd experienced music, film and art colliding so viscerally in one place.

My biggest influence back then was another one of my brother's tip-offs: the one and only Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. I was completely obsessed with Russell Simins' drumming on Acme. I still am. The guy's a beast. While I was living at the Chelsea, I was lucky enough to see them play at CBGB. They were recording a live show for Japanese television, with only about fifty people in the room. It remains one of the greatest and most feral gigs I've ever seen.

I Still Want That

One of the best things about being a music supervisor is that I've had the chance to work with so many of my heroes, Joey Waronker being at the top of my list. He's played drums with everyone from Beck to R.E.M., Leonard Cohen and, most recently, Oasis.

About ten years ago, one of my dearest friends, the director Ringan Ledwidge, asked me to work on a really wild Nike project he'd just shot with Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. Welanded on making the entire soundtrack using nothing but solo drums. I got a message to Joey, and a couple of days later he invited me over to his studio in LA to create an incredible six-minute solo drum piece.

After that session, Joey and I stayed in touch. Early one morning a few years ago, we met up in Echo Park and were demolishing a stack of delicious pancakes when I asked him what he thought about Oasis potentially reforming. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights and just said, "Well, Raife, I can't talk about that," then quietly passed me the maple syrup.

A few months later, Joey was announced as the band's live drummer and very kindly sorted me a couple of tickets to their final show at Wembley.

I've played and been to thousands of gigs, but when they played Don't Look Back in Anger and ninety thousand people ripped into the chorus with Noel, the feeling was beyond anything I'd ever experienced at a concert. It transcended music.

I looked out across the crowd, everyone singing at the top of their lungs with Noel, then down towards the spot where I'd stood all those years earlier with my family, watching Bruce Springsteen play Born in the U.S.A. And it hit me so hard, what an extraordinary life music has given me.

The most beautiful thing about all of this is that I'm still saying exactly the same thing I said all those years ago: ”I want that."