I'm just bumping this as I'm surprised (& disappointed!) more people haven't commented on this thread.
I was absolutely stopped in my tracks by the news that he'd died. He was a very important figure to me, he was also a very important figure to many many others, as the flow of tributes has attested to.
If you're not too familiar with him, he was someone who managed to stay "underground", in a business (particularly "dance music") where there would have been many many opportunities to go for the pay days over and above following your art.
He was someone who was there at the first dawn of rave music and played a part in that, but rather than resting on that achievement he continued to push and innovate. Making, producing & DJing music, all the while not considering himself any of those things. In several interviews he states that he considered DJing "a job", not in the sense to belittle it, latterly he talked a lot about how humans have always sought transcendence in various ways - clearly music/drugs being one of them.
If you search out his Back 2 Back mix with Ivan Smagghe for Boiler Room - you'll hear 2 grown men play oddball records to each other (& an audience?!) - with Weatherall dropping JC's "They were all on Drugs" in the mix. He was always the man who felt his Job was to confound and sometimes confuse as much as entertain! (Maybe that makes those of us who were his fans the sort of people who are entertained by being confused?!)
Stories followed AW from the early days onward about how a crowd had turned up expecting a particular type of set, but he'd in fact delivered a completely different one! So people filled with the born again zeal of techno, would be disappointed by a set of heavy dub!
All that stuff is offset by the fact that varied tastes in music are pretty much the norm now, but going back they weren't.
During the early 90s peak of dance music, Weatherall would namecheck bands like Throbbing Gristle, later he'd champion a lot of the New Beat / Italo / synth music from the late 70s/early 80s that he played at early raves.
I fell into DJing in the mi 90s, via the industrial weird side, and Weatherall was a great bloody minded example of doing it your own way. A great example of a punk ethos, as he wasn't a traditional producer or musician but was doing both. Why not?
Like John Peel before him, he was something of a cultural beacon, a spirit guide for those of us on the narrower path. His various radio shows and mixes are absolute goldmines of good stuff. His interviews are entertaining & informative, you don't often hear DJs discussing finer points of literature or history!
Lee Brackstone* from Faber has lamented that AW never wrote his memoirs, which would have been amazing no doubt, his anecdotes spread across 30 years of interviews will have to suffice.
*Lee Brackstone being the person who made AW artist in residence at Faber as well as working a lot with Cope
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