Arthur Baker’s memoir Looking For The Perfect Beat surveys 50 years of life in music and culture, “dipping in and out of all these different things that were happening”. It traces his Boston beginnings and his time as a DJ in the 1970s, to moving to New York in the 1980s where he helped to pioneer ‘cut and paste’ sampling, bringing Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans-Europe Express’ crashing into Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force’s seminal ‘Planet Rock’. In the 1990s he lived in London, witnessing acid house and Britpop and working with artists like New Order, before moving to Miami (“Miami has always been sort of a musical”), where he still resides.
His career has been a multi-faceted rollercoaster, and he has worked with everyone from Bob Dylan to Quincy Jones, Neneh Cherry to Mogwai. He is currently working with Nas on a Broadway musical adaptation of Beat Street, has “almost finished a novel”, and a black comedy film about the art world, “a Coen brothers, Tarantino type of vibe”, and hosts the Baker’s Revenge show on SiriusXM. Avowedly political, he is dismayed at America’s new government – “since the election I turned off the news, and I can proudly say I haven’t heard Trump’s voice once, I have not allowed him in my eardrums” – but seeks optimism amid the chaos, rating his work on the 1985 protest song ‘Sun City’ as one of “the top five most important things I have done.”
Baker’s choices are a true Baker’s Dozen, perhaps because they found him in a very formative period, from 1968 to 1973, and remain touchstones. His list reveals his love of a groove, a good lyric, and most importantly an interesting sensibility, forever “chasing an idea”.
Arthur Baker’s memoir, Looking For The Perfect Beat, is out now and published by Faber. To begin reading his Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Selection’ below
