Giorgio Moroder: The man who made the world dance

He’s the man behind ground breaking disco tracks I Feel Love and Love to Love You Baby, he produced the soundtracks to many of the 80s greatest films, notably Flashdance, Cat People and Scarface, has snagged three Academy Awards, including one for Best Original Score for his work on Midnight Express and he’s produced artists ranging from the late, great Donna Summer to Cher, Daft Punk and RuPaul.

At an exclusive Q&A event in London recently, the legendary Giorgio Moroder spoke to dance blog Resident Advisor about his recent collaborations with Britney, Kylie, Charli XCX and Sia on his new album, Déjà Vu, his career as a DJ, and how times – and technology – have changed. Here’s what he had to say… 

Resident Advisor: You are one of the electro music greats, but that’s not how you started, was it? How did you first start in music in your hometown of Italy?

Giorgio Moroder: Actually as a guitarist – I was never a great one, so I started as a professional musician, and we were bass, piano and guitar. Now, the piano and the guitar, they never work well together, so finally they threw me out of the guitar, so I became a bass player and I played as a musician all over Europe in Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, England. I had one gig in England at the Savoy Hotel. I won’t forget that one. And then, I think I was 27, I moved to Berlin where I had an aunt so I could stay there, I could live there, and I stayed there for 4 years and then finally I moved to Munich.

Of course, one of your earliest and greatest collaborators was Donna Summer. How did you first meet Donna?

I was working in Munich with Peter Belotti, my English co-producer, and one day we needed three backup singers with no German accent, so we found Donna and two other girls and she was great – she was beautiful and a great character and had an incredible voice, so we decided to do songs with her.

 I Feel Love was one of the greatest dance records ever made, but did you make it with the idea that this is going to make people dance? Or was that an accident, a bi-product?

Whatever I do or whatever I did was always based, and always with the idea, let’s have people dance, and especially that sound.

Let’s discuss some of your more recent collaborations. One that’s really pushed you back into the spotlight is of course your collaboration with Daft Punk. How did that come around?

Yeah actually, Paul Hammond who was their manager called my manager and said that the boys wanted to have lunch with me and obviously I was interested. My son Alejandro saw Daft Punk in Coachella in 2007 and they were phenomenal.

They asked me if I wanted to work with them on a song, and I said yes, but didn’t hear from them in several months. Then, I was in Paris at the time, they invited me into the studio. I got there and played piano and composed a song but they didn’t want it – they told me just to tell them the story of my life. I was talking for 2 hours, and they recorded it.

Then about 3 months later they called me back to Los Angeles, where I first heard the song. I was surprised how well they worked my voice into that song – it was emotional too, because you get hear yourself talking about your life and everything you’ve done.

You’ve also taken to DJing again recently. What inspired you to do that after all this time?

I recently did a show in Cannes and then I did my first real show in Brooklyn the outposts, and I think it was a big hit and that’s how I started! I got a lot of requests.

And what do you enjoy about DJing?

First of all, I love dance music. Second, as a young guy, I always wanted to be a performer but I was never able to do it and I was never really pushed hard to become a performer. But now, the DJs of today, they are the stars too, right? I was performing in France at 2 o’clock in the morning, the kids were jumping and singing and I feel like, almost like Michael Jackson.

And are there DJs around today that you admire, that you think you try to emulate?

Oh they are all great. Calvin Harris is probably one of my favourites because he’s not only ia great DJ but he is a great composer. And then the big guys like Tiesto and one of my favourite is Skrillex – oh, this guy is a genius. So those are the guys I really like.

You are about to release your new album, Déjà Vu – your first album in 30 years. Can you explain the concept of the new album?

Since Daft Punk brought disco back, I thought since I know about disco, I should do a whole album about disco. But then I thought, no let’s do some EDM, some disco and the concept was to have a certain amount of known singers, like Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears but then get some new people in and one of the great singers was Sia, who I loved on the Titanium song with David Guetta. Then of course Charlie XCX came and had the big hit with I’m So Fancy and so it’s a combination of fairly well known people with a lot of experience and the young too. Then Mikky Ekko, great voice, he sang with Rihanna, the beautiful song called Stay, so I think I have a good combination of singers on the album.

Sia, like yourself, has been both a front person and in the background as well. I assume there must be a certain amount of mutual appreciation for what you do together?

Just the fact that she sang the song says that she wanted to do it, but interestingly, I never met her. She is very protective, has a lot of people around her, so what I did, which is quite often now in this new world kind of recording, I gave her the track, the top line, and she wrote the melody, she wrote the lyrics, she sang it, she did the background and she gave it to me. That’s how it happens now, where you don’t even meet the people and it’s all done on the Internet.

Are you happy to work in that way compared to how you did in the studio back in the day?

Yeah, the thing which is really tough is recording it because the singers are all so busy so sometimes you send the mix or you send some stuff to the singers and it takes you a week or two or a month. So it’s a little frustrating from time to time, but all in all, that’s how it is now so you have to adapt.

And I wondered if you had any plans to maybe tour this album? A couple of years ago you were talking about an idea for a Vegas show, My Night in with Giorgio.

Well I doubt that I would get any of the singers that are on the album to come and perform, maybe one show! Actually, I went with Kylie Minogue on her tour in Australia, and that was quite interesting. The first time I’ve performed in a big arena with the main act and the first two shows in Perth and Adelaide didn’t go that well. Because people were still coming in and they all came just to see her, but then Melbourne and Sydney was great and then at the end, Brisbane was fantastic.

How many people was that for then? It must have been huge.

Yeah, it was basically around 8,000-10,000 people.

Amazing. And one of the other huge collaborations on this album is Britney Spears. How did that come about, because that’s a cover of Tom’s Diner right?

Yeah, Britney asked the record company if they could ask me if I wanted to produce it. I think that was one of the songs she always wanted to do, but never had the chance. I loved the original anyway, so it was great to do that for her.

I love the way she did it.

You’ve been such a huge force pushing music forward technologically and stylistically. Do you have a sense of what the next big shift in music will be? What’s going to be the next big move in the future of music?

First of all I don’t know, and second if I would know, I wouldn’t tell you (laughs).

Did you ever imagine that you’d be so busy in your 70s?

No, no, I was happy not doing anything but I’m ever more happy now that I am busy.

The event was held in support of Bridges for Music charity, with all proceeds going towards the construction of a new music school in the township of Langa in Cape Town.