Fat Tony doesn’t take requests
Push hedonism too far, too long, and you’re either dead or a survivor. Fat Tony has been responsible for some of history’s greatest extended bouts of carefree craziness, but thankfully he stepped back from the edge in time, and can now regale you with ripping yarns of epic star-studded misbehaviour. From a Battersea council estate, Tony Marnach used his silver tongue to talk himself into an international DJ career across the ’80s and ’90s, putting himself in all the right places at all the right times, until he was playing a host of the most significant clubs in both London and New York. Today he’s an author, activist, fundraiser and a given at a fashion party. Thanks to his gilded circle of friends, few DJs can give interviews this rollercoaster. Whether he’s falling asleep in the Concorde toilet or DJing with Kate Moss at Harry and Meghan’s wedding, famous faces are never far away.
interviewed by Bill in London, 20.11.2018
How did you get started as a DJ?
When I was 16. I was very loud and precocious, a most annoying little queen, and I worked on the door of a club for Rusty Egan and Steve Strange at the Playground, which was at the Lyceum, where the Lion King is now. And every week I complained about the music, saying, ‘Oh my God this music’s atrocious.’ It was Ian Dewhirst. Then one week Rusty said, if you think you can do better, you do it. So the following week I turned up with four records – literally four – and that was it! Within two weeks of that I had a residency there, a residency at the Wag, we started our own Tuesday night there called Total Fashion Victim. Then I took over Saturday nights at the Wag. Then they made me musical director at the Limelight at 19! A fucking fortune! I was travelling the world within six months.
How did you go from four records to that?
It was all about the mouth. London was much smaller then, and the club community was much smaller. Everybody went to the same places and the West End clubs were our social media. So it was about who you knew and how you got there.
I was the first person to bring Frankie Knuckles to London. I had a residency at the age of 18 in New York at the Palladium. [Palladium and Studio 54 co-owner] Steve Rubell was like, ‘Oh my God we need you in New York’. He used to fly me over. Fucking loved it! Used to go every other week. Sometimes I never even played, I was so out of it. But they loved that whole attitude. They bought into that rock’n’roll thing that I was E’d out of my head and falling off the back of the stage. I remember Steve Rubell picked me from the airport the second time I went over and he was like, ‘Today you’re big news but tomorrow nobody’s gonna give a shit about who you, just remember that.’ And I was like, ‘Oh thanks!’

Were you resident at Nells too?
Yeah, that came after the Palladium. I was doing Cafe De Paris on a Wednesday night, another one of those great London clubs that paved the way: this guy Albert from Paris, and me. Beautiful French music like ‘La Vie En Rose’ and stuff like that. Anyway, Nells, they wanted me to recreate the Cafe De Paris in Nells. And I said, you can’t recreate something in London just by bringing over a DJ. A tiny little venue with curtains! I gave it a go, but I just hated it. It was too pretentious and it wasn’t fun. But I have done some pretty amazing residencies over the years.
What’s your favourite?
Probably the Wag on a Saturday night. Attitude at the Wag. We did it for nine years, it was fucking amazing. I gave Tim Simenon his first job, I gave Mark Moore his first job, they all used to come and play for us. The Wag was so straight by that point and I started doing Saturday nights and turned it into the gayest thing ever, but really mixed. Neneh Cherry used to come on the Saturday. That was a great residency. Trade Lite was amazing cos it was another one of those places where you could do what you wanted. XXXL now, love it. Men only, quite controversial. They’ve been turning away trans people.
All that from just those four records!
I never wanted to be a DJ. I’ve always loved music, always had a thing for it, and all my friends were in bands, so a lot of my friends were doing Top of the Pops and stuff like that. So music was always in me, but I never ever thought, ‘Oh I’m gonna be a DJ. I’m gonna practice’. I must’ve been around the world four times before I even owned a set of decks. It was all about, ‘Oh he knows these people, everyone’s talking about him let’s get him.’ It rocketed from there.

What were your real musical passions?
Always disco. First time I ever went out was to Heaven. It had just turned from Global Village into Heaven and the music then was hi-NRG disco so that was always my passion. First record I ever bought was ‘Streetlife’ by the Crusaders on 12-inch and that set the precedent. I love anything that moves me, anything that touches the soul. So when garage came along on the tail end of disco it changed everything for me. Those house beats were everything.
When I was in New York, I used to go to Paradise Garage literally every weekend. I was talking about it the other night with Ultra [Naté] because me and her went to the closing for a day and a half. We were among the last to leave, E’d off our nuts, lying on the roof. I loved house music because it came from that era of Hi-NRG disco.
House is just disco on a budget.
Totally. I’ve never been a DJ that only plays one genre. It’s bullshit, I’m really eclectic. How can you say you’re a DJ if you don’t love all types of music? If you only play this, then you’re a cunt. But my career, it just went up and up and up. Of course, I got caught up in it and so did the drug intake.
You went to Ibiza early on, didn’t you.
First time I went to Ibiza was in 1983 and I went every year after that. I played for Brasilio at Ku in 1983. Me, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan flew over. We did a night called No Sleep Till London. Only went over for one night, I ended up staying there for four months, courtesy of Ku! It was chaotic. In those days we didn’t have roofs. Amnesia was amazing and Sandro and Jose who owned Amnesia, I lived with them in their house.
What was Ibiza like in that pre-house period?
It was an incredible time, cos it was on that tail-end of disco. The insanity they try to portray now was the insanity then. It wasn’t about sexuality, like it was thrown in your face, but you could go and be whoever you wanted to be. It’s a beautiful island, but they let Liverpool and Manchester and everyone take over and it kind of ruined it. You could feel the spirit of Ibiza back then.
Have you been recently?
Yeah of course! Listen, I still love the island. I went over to DC10 a couple of months ago and I played someone’s party over there, but I don’t go to the big clubs. If I wanted to do that I’d hang out in fucking Billericay!
When did you first hear house music?
At Heaven. It was that crossover period from Hi-NRG into house. Straight away I was hooked. Oh my god! It didn’t have that intensity of what everyone else was listening to and it just changed my life. That was it for me: this is the way forward.
Then I did the first house night in London, called Jungle, Steve Swindells night on a Monday. I was resident with Colin Faver. At that time I was still playing a few disco records but kind of taking it into house. All that early stuff by Marshall Jefferson and then turning into acid house.
When I do my corporate things and fashion parties I play half these tracks, they all want it, because it’s euphoric. In the past year I’ve worked with anyone from Prada right the way through. Tonight I’m doing the opening of Richard Caring’s Brasserie of Light in Selfridges. It’s a dream job, I get to play all my favourite records cos they all come from that era.
You had a residency at Fred’s didn’t you?
Yeah, I was a resident there. It was one of the first private members’ clubs. They brought me in while I was running Limelight. I was in charge of the music in the VIP. But by that point I was in the total grip of my addiction. So of course, if you offer me a job where it’s free alcohol I’m gonna be there. By then Trade had just opened [its second room] Trade Lite. I ran up a bar bill of like £170 grand. So every week I’d be playing for fucking nothing, to play my bar bill off, which was hilarious.
Fred’s was amazing. That’s where I met Kate [Moss]. She used to come when she was 15 in her school uniform and get changed in the office. I used to give her long Island ice teas. She’d say, ‘Oh it tastes just like tea!’ An hour later I’d have to put her in the office under the desk asleep on the floor. It was another one of those places that everybody went to: everyone from John Galliano to Lee McQueen and we all went out clubbing at the same times. Nights like Taboo had just finished, and then Fred’s opened and it was the place to go.
Dave Dorrell told me about getting chatted up by Francis Bacon.
Oh yeah Francis was always there. And Dave always played with me there. I was resident on Fridays and Saturday. It was such a cool little place. It was one of the first private members club and you kind of felt special. It was so debauched. Whatever went on behind closed doors, stayed behind closed doors. Good times.

You did a lot of Lighthouse events too, didn’t you, to raise money for AIDS charities.
Of course. God you’re going back now, aren’t you? At that time I lost most of my friends. I lost my partner Tom. I was 22 and living in Old Compton Street when he died. When AIDS came it wiped London out. It completely annihilated our town. I lost probably 40 or 50 of my peers within a year. So it was a priority that we did something about it. They introduced this drug AZT which was killing more people than the disease itself. No one knew what to do, no one knew how to cope with it. It affected everybody. To be involved in those early AIDS parties, we all had to play our part.
Have you got any memory of these parties?
I kind of do and I don’t. I was addicted to cocaine and everything else for 28 years. First ten of those years, I can remember everything. And then after that it got really messy and I stopped travelling. I’d get booked and I wouldn’t turn up at the airport, or I’d get to the airport and think, I’m not going.
Why?
Because I didn’t have a rider at the other end. One of my turning points was, I went to Hong Kong I to DJ and I couldn’t get any coke. There was a shortage. I went everywhere trying to get it. So I ended up doing E for the whole trip. I end up setting fire to my hotel room. When I came round I was in hospital, painted orange, they’d covered me in iodine, because of my burns. I came back to London and thought I’m never travelling again.
When was that?
I’ll be clean 12 years on 12th January. So this was 17 years ago, 2001. When you stop turning up to places, people stop booking you. And that world is so small. I’d be booked in Paris and I wouldn’t go and I’d be booked in New York and I wouldn’t go. I went back to New York this summer after 20 years. I just couldn’t face it because of the carnage I’d caused. So bad! The drama I caused was off the fucking scale. I felt like I had to repair everything else before New York came into play. And I went back and I’ve fallen in love with it again. I’ve got an agent out there now. Just got my work visa granted. It’s all or nothing with me. It always has been, it’s part of my addiction. I’m an addict I know my traits. Yeah, life has got a lot better.
Did you go to [singer and club face] Vaughan Toulouse’s funeral?
He was one of the first ones to die. It was a really big thing. Let me show you this picture, cos Vaughan’s in the background of it. I can’t remember much of it. Sue [Tilley] was there and everyone. I can remember [artist, stylist and nightlife star] Trojan’s funeral. I went with Leigh [Bowery]. I remember it being the most heart-wrenching day, because by that point it was one away from everybody. It was just around us. Everybody was really drowning in it.
What was it like going to Taboo?
It was shit. People go on about Taboo being amazing. Taboo was shit for months. First three months, it was rubbish. No one went. There’d be about 20 or 30 of us there. And then suddenly it got in the papers and that was it. It went boom. It was busy every week. Then it ended! Cos everyone was on heroin at that point – it was right in the deepest, darkest point. So Mark [Vaultier] died who used to do the door. He died of a heroin overdose. Mark Lawrence died. Everyone who used to go there was popping off one by one. It was in the middle of the AIDS crisis. Taboo on a Thursday night used to be the most uplifting part of it. Then it got ruined and full of people wearing kind of cardboard clothes.
Knock off Leigh Bowery?
Yeah and there was only one Leigh. Leigh was incredible, we used to have so much fucking fun. Then it got too busy and died out really quickly. It was a victim of its own success. They moved on and Leigh and Little Tony [Gordon] opened Sacrosanct on Shaftesbury Avenue, downstairs next to the casino, which was on a Thursday as well, similar to Taboo but a bit more pretentious. It didn’t really work. Taboo was our social media so if you went there that was how you got to see your friends. Jeffrey [Hinton] played and Rachel Auburn and Princess Julia. It was just a fun place to be and Maximus was a great venue.
What about your night, Abba?
Me and Dave Dorrell?! [laughs] We really wanted to work together and we started it on a Tuesday night cos no one went out on Tuesdays. Dave came up with the name Abba. He said they’re going to make a big comeback soon. The whole idea of it was that we could play ’70s and disco and early Wham! and all of that stuff that people were too scared to fackin’ play. It was at Double Bass in Earls Court Road. Then we moved it to Bar Industria in Hanover Square.
My friend Anna Goodman used to do the door there.
Oh, I know Anna, she lives round the corner from me! She looks exactly the same, with a black bob! Then George Michael used to come and DJ on a Tuesday night. I remember one night it was him and Linda Evangelista DJing. I don’t keep press cuttings and things from the past. I live for today. It’s part of my recovery. Today is my past and tomorrow is going to be even better. My boyfriend found all these press cuttings in an envelope and there were these front page covers from the Sun about me beating George Michael up at the Wag!
Did you?
Yeah, on New Year’s Eve. Me and Leigh Bowery did a party together at the Piccadilly Theatre on NYE and Curiosity Killed The Cat and Neneh Cherry played. Oh my God. I hadn’t seen that clip for 100 years.
There’s a famous photo of you in the Face…
Naked? That was with Sue Tilley.
But with a dog or something?
Oh, no, no, no! When I was 15 I did a drag act called Diana Dog. Princess Julia was in it, Sue Tilley June Lawrence, Leigh, there 16 people in it, we used to do it at Camden Palace and Heaven. It was massive! Lily Savage used to come and see us. We did this massive show and they asked me to be naked in the Face. So I said, I’m not doing it on my own, I want someone fatter than me to be in it, so I got Sue Tilley to be in it so I did it with a wig on.
What do you think is the most important British gay club of all time?
Shoom, because although it wasn’t gay, it had no gender. You had these Boys Own parties and stuff like that going on and everybody went there regardless of sexuality, and I think that was important, especially for that time. Jungle was really important because before that gay clubs were really like poppers and fans, and suddenly this new breed of gay club opened and it totally changed the world. Also important was Trade without a doubt. Winner hands down. Trade changed so many people’s lives. It was one of those first places you could go and be who you wanted to be regardless of anything. Primarily out of all of them, though, Heaven. Heaven back in the day. It was revolutionary – this fucking gay mecca in a place of hatred, and you could go under those arches and your world changed. It was the first place I ever went. Cha Cha’s on a Tuesday night behind Heaven. They all have a part in who we are today. Cha Cha’s was run by Scarlett and it’s where everyone used to go. It’s where I met Leigh. The beauty of it was it was so small and nobody went out on a Tuesday, but it was so amazing because it was pre-drug, so it was poppers. Dave Swindells has loads of good pictures. Heaven was the one that changed the world. On a Saturday you would see Nancy Nova, you could see Sylvester. I saw Divine there, I saw Earth Kitt there.
Nancy Nova was Bob Holness’s daughter right?
Yeah, her record ‘The Force’ is one of those records that set the pathway for today. I got to see Sylvester play live. I went out clubbing with Freddie Mercury. I hung out with Andy Warhol for a year in New York.
What was a night out with Freddie Mercury like?
Freddie was the first person ever to give me a line of cocaine! At the time I didn’t think anything of it, because I wasn’t a Queen fan, to me it was just a party sex thing. I met him the same night I met Marc Almond at Heaven. Then Freddie took me to my first leather club.
Where was that?
The Soundshaft. And we went to one in Earls Court as well, like downstairs in a basement of a hotel.
What’s the best club you’ve ever played in and why?
I’d like to say, size-wise and feeling, The Palladium [New York] because it was just insane. Where else would you have Studio 54 come down from the ceiling on to the dancefloor. So many clubs within a club. Trade Lite: loved it. Changed my life. I used to turn the music off and say, ‘No K, no play!’ People brought me drugs and I’d put the music back on. They used to joke that DJ stood for Disco Jesus because I could turn 12 records into a 12-hour set and get away with it. My records used to crackle because they were covered in cocaine. I stole the acetate of Alison Limerick’s ‘Where Love Lives’ from the studio where they did it. I was the first person to play it. I was besotted with that record, probably the only record I ever took care of, the rest I didn’t give a shit. Towards the end when I was resident at Fiction and The Cross, The Egg and all those places, that was the tail end of my addiction, so that was a means to getting more drugs. It got really dark. I didn’t look at a dancefloor for four years, I didn’t look at anyone in the face, because I couldn’t cope.
Were you still buying records when you were in that state?
People were sending me them. That was the only good thing – I was getting sent music. I never went out. Why would I spend money on records? Everything went on drugs. The last ten years… I pulled all my teeth out on crystal meth in the last year or my addiction. I was psychotic. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to die. Every day all I ever thought about was my own funeral. I’d sit in rooms rocking backwards and forwards digging out my gums because I had a thing called meth-mouth where my mouth would get infected and I thought they were running alive and insanity took over.
The very last night of me and clubbing was at the Cross at Fiction on a Friday night and my partner walked in. For months, years even, he’d been saying, ‘You’re going to find him dead on the dancefloor one day, you need to stop employing him.’ I’d say, ‘He’s mental he’s trying to get in the way.’ All he was trying to do was save my life.
He came into the back room and just said, ‘What happened to you?’ And I looked at him and couldn’t answer the question. That was the breaking point that changed my life. I weighed seven stone and I had one tooth and one pair of trainers. And the trainers weren’t even mine.
All I’d thought about for the past year was who would be at my funeral, who I didn’t want at my funeral. I was going to be brought in with ‘Teardrops’ by Womack & Womack, and was going to be burnt to ‘No More Drama’ by Mary J Blige. I used to listen to that Mary J Blige album word for word and cry my eyes out.
Today I think about life. I love life. Another song that changed my life was ‘Believe’ by Soldiers of Twilight. If you believe you’re halfway there. My hairs stand up when I hear that song. That’s the power of music. Listening to Ce Ce Rogers ‘Someday’ changed my life. That’s the beauty of doing what we do – and what music is. Six years later I was working with Mary J Blige! I told her that story and she said, that person was never you.

What helped you get through it, was it something you did on your own?
No. No I could never have done it on my own. I took drugs on my own. I got clean with other people. Because it’s about acceptance of help. When you ask someone for help that’s the biggest step. When you say I’m an addict and I need help; that’s the start.
You took my friend George to his first NA meeting.
George really needed it. He’s now 11 years clean. Kate is now 13 months clean. Naomi. I’ve got so many sponsees, seven young kids. I keep my serenity and freedom by helping other people. However busy my life is it’s never too busy to pick up the phone. There’s no greater gift than seeing someone get that glint back in their eye. People say, ‘Don’t you miss it?’ I’m like, ‘Are you fucking mental?!’ Today I have everything I’ve ever wanted. I can go and do and be and see everything I want. I’ve taken it back to what it always should have been and that’s music. I moan all the time about having to go to the airport, but how blessed am I that I can lay down at the airport and not have to sit by the bogs any more! I’m blessed and doing it sober.
Is it true that you’d fly Concorde to play at the Palladium?
Yeah, I went on Concorde five times. I was meant to go on it a sixth but I missed it! I had to come back on BA first class. I was gutted. First time I went to New York for my 18th birthday. It was a birthday present. I went there then I flew back with [Boy] George. DJing was one of those jobs where I thought I’d do it for a couple of months, and I’ve never worked a day since. They asked me to be in a documentary about Concorde and Bose headphones, because everyone use to steal them off the plane. I remember once I was asleep in the toilet on Concorde. Passed out. And they were waiting to take off. I took a McDonalds on to the plane with me and I was eating a burger and I woke up. They’d had to force open the door and I got up and walked down the plane and everyone was booing me. I remember sulking for the whole flight not taking in the fact that I was on Concorde. Again. I was more concerned that people had booed me. I’d been up for three days.
Tell me about your Instagram account.
I get more attention for that than anything else. I’m walking down Oxford Street and people stop me and ask if they can take a picture. It’s not even like I’ve got 500k followers it’s because of who I am. I’ve got everyone from Paris Hilton following me, David Beckham following me. I DJed at Meghan and Harry’s wedding, right. At the end, Harry came up and said, Your Instagram is the funniest ever.
What was it like playing at their wedding?
Boring. It was mad. Idris [Elba] was on before me. It was the private bit at the end. It was like playing at Annabel’s. It was fine. I had to sign an NDA. Wasn’t allowed to talk about it before or after. This is the insanity of what I do now. I did Mykonos in the summer, the opening of Nammos.
Is this the one you did with Kate Moss? Fat Moss?!
Yeah so we do Fat Moss for big budget things. We did one for Grace Jones. Me, Grace Jones and Kate.
What does Kate do?
She dances and DJs. She’s got great choice in music because she comes from that era. I do it with Naomi as well.
Fat Campbell?
No, we don’t have a name for that one. There are a few made up names for it but I won’t go into that! [Whispering] They book me and Naomi because they can’t afford Kate, cos it’s £150k.
Really?!
Well, thereabouts, yeah. For Nammos, they flew us in by helicopter and landed at our villa. I was just laughing the whole time. Some of these things you get asked to do and I’m like, ‘OK, fine by me. What? For an hour?’ I can buy a house in Manchester for that! Funny as fuck. But it’s amazing. I get to do what I want to do. I play what I want. I do XXXL once a month.
Is that in Vauxhall?
No. I don’t do Vauxhall. The clubs are awful.
Has Grindr killed the gay scene?
It did for a long while, yeah. A lot of places like to blame Grindr for their demise but it’s more because they’ve not moved forward. When it first arrived it took out the going out and meeting people part. But now people go out and have sex and then they go out. The clubs that haven’t moved with the times, they’re the ones feeling it most. Things grow and become big and beautiful and then they die. And then small things come, and right now we’re at the small thing stage. We’ve got major clubs like Sink The Pink, Kinky Gerlinky… That should be in that little list of gay clubs that changed the world. Michael and Gerlinda, they changed London. They were the first clubs doing it on a mass scale, you know, at the Empire in Leicester Square! Catwalk shows!
What’s the funniest thing to happen to you when you were DJing?
One time when I was at the Palladium, my friends met me at the airport with little bottles of MDMA and we were doing the five dots on the thumb. I got to the club and I was DJing and I bent down and I was like, ‘It’s not working, give me the bottle.’ I bent down and when I came back up I was like the Cookie Monster, with one eye hanging shut. So I was like, ‘We’ve gotta leave.’ I’d only played two records. So I left the record playing and just left. The next day they rang me, ‘Oh my God your set was amazing last night!’ To this day I don’t know what happened or who went on after me. But it wasn’t me. Things like that used to always happen. I’d always do those society parties. I played one and got Mick Jagger dancing, you’ve got Noel Gallagher dancing to ‘Vogue’ by Madonna. That’s funny, moments to cherish.
Do you take a different approach to a celeb party to playing Dalston Superstore?
Oh, totally, yeah. I’m still me, though. If I’m playing a driven, techy-house set at XXXL, or a society gig or celebby gig or fashion, my job is to read that crowd. A couple of weeks ago, I went to Paris for Maison Margiela, John Galliano. Before I went on it was all hip hop and I thought, how am I going to go on after this? But you know what, you have to be you. I went on, the place went mental. They’d enough of that other stuff. It’s about taking the risk and reading the crowd.
You’re very much back in the game, now.
I’m more relevant now than I’ve ever been. It’s mad. In that Tony De Vit documentary I was saying I hated Tony De Vit because everyone else loved him and there wasn’t room for two Tonys at Trade. And when Trade Lite came in, I came in and took it over from the Sharp Boys and I had this war with them for years. Stupid banter because I was so unhappy within myself that I hated everyone else. George and Stephen, they don’t DJ any more but they were fucking brilliant. They were amazing, Sharp Boys were incredible. But I spent most of my time hating them because I was jealous. Thanks god I’m in a place now where I’m not thinking everyone’s trying to steal my job. When I do my party Private Life, we put on so much new talent, cos they’re the future. So many kids who are incredible that don’t get a chance to play.

© Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton