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HEADY OVER HEALY There's a measure of reassurance in that little peep that sounds just as the call connects Johannesburg to London. Multinational fingertips. A cheery "Hello?" crosses the ocean; faint echoes back and forth. You can hear the wit in his voice even before he cracks his first joke. Jeremy Healy - international house DJ and all-round well-dressed, thirtysomething, newly famous pop person - has visited close on 50 countries in the past eight years. Working with the Positiva record label, he's found himself busier than a Swedish pop star's hairdresser during Eurovision week. Healy will be steering the wheel with his freestyle partner Amos in Cape Town and Johannesburg this weekend for Mother Productions. Then it's on to Ibiza and the annual babe-athon. It's always summer somewhere on the planet and once you hit the techno top 20 you get to cruise the DJ circuit all year round - and South Africa has proved a welcome stop-over. Great beaches; quiet safaris; cute natives. In the past five years we've seen them all, from Frankie Knuckles to Carl Cox; Blu Peter to Boy George. "What's the first thought that springs to mind," I ask Healy, "when someone says 'South Africa'?" "Sheesh," he replies, "Suppose I'd have to admit it's Nelson Mandela ... I mean, hell, he's your most famous export. Mandela walking from prison. Mandela hugging Naomi Campbell. Mandela surrounded by the Spice Girls ... Hm, maybe not so deep after all ... What I do know is that I wouldn't have visited during apartheid. And that South Africa is one of the great music nations." "Has anyone warned you that the dance floor will be all white?" I ask the dishy voice on the other end of the world. "Yeah, some DJs who've been over have said so. Still, a dance floor's a dance floor the world over and it's my job to entertain people ... I mean, like in Hong Kong, I suffered this wonderful misconception that I'd be playing to a crowd of Chinese kids. The place was packed with British kids on holiday ..." "Who do you like to dance to yourself?" I ask. "Michael Jackson," comes the reply. Jeremy Healy, you see, is not one of those techno-label purist, faceless DJ dudes. He'll roll up his sleeves and drop a Nirvana tune if he feels moved to. "Consistently enthralling and totally unrestrained by clubland trends," wrote the Face of Healy when he was emerging in the early 1990s. Since then he has established his edgy look and uplifting tunes in the pop star end of the international DJ pack. "Your publicists here describe you as 'flamboyant, glamorous, stylish' and as Kate Moss's rumoured 'romantic attachment'. It can't be easy," I suggest. "Oh, it is," replies Healy, a chuckle in his tone. "If you weren't a DJ, what would you be?" I ask him, and the chuckle ripples. "I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't a DJ, apart from working in a supermarket, the only other job I did was to work in an apple factory with Boy George." That and dressing up. Healy has risen from a very particular pack of fashion brats - and over the years forged the kind of distinctive identity the international club circuit relies on for their hosts, star attractions and VIPs. Steadily stomping on the rave bunnies, they are the nightlife embodiment of what happens when individual fashion statements fuse with a way of life and/or a creative force: a bit of a movement. Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, George O'Dowd, Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark ... Punk bitches, period dandies, pink sheep, sideshow freaks, exhibitionists, drags, fags and slags. Club celebs. Edging towards the millennium with one hand on a history book, the other pulling a fuck-you sign. Pick your scene; sharpen your image; Healy's been in the pack from the struggle years. Sure he knows Moss, since she was a kid; he's been dressed by Westwood since he was 13; gigged the Love Ball with Bowery's band Minty; designed the catwalk soundtracks for Galliano's shows for 14 years ... (As Boy George writes in Take it Like a Man, "Jeremy and I fell out over a bleedin' hairdo and didn't speak for five years ... He was the only boy in South London with peacock blue Doc Martens ... Came up from London wearing a Westwood bondage top as a dress with stockings and suspenders ...") That this brood are today accepted and are presenting an alternative pop activism may say more about society than about them. We like to be shocked; we love to ogle. But did they sell out, topping charts, stealing shows and going so very pop? "Fuck this underground, overground thing," says Healy with conviction. "There's good music and there's bad music and that's that." |