'Ibiza is the greatest island on earth': an audience with Arthur Baker

Boston-born Arthur Baker is one of the music industry’s most prolific music producers, working with talents as diverse as Afrika Bambaataa, New Order, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen during a career spanning almost 50 years. He lives in Miami’s Design District with his wife, the fashion designer Annette Felder, and their daughter, Amarone. As Baker prepares to write his memoir, L’OFFICIEL Ibiza caught up with him to find out what stories he has to tell and why Ibiza still has his heart.

Your career spans almost half a century. Can you tell me a little bit about your early years and how you got into music? 

I grew up in Boston. I was a music fan like everyone else. I was into rock and roll. The first gigs I went to were Led Zeppelin and then the Rolling Stones in 1969. I was 14 years old and I worked in record shops. Eventually I took an engineering course and convinced a few people that I could produce records despite being only 20 and having no musical training whatsoever! I was such a chancer. I produced my first record in Boston. It was a disco record called Losing You by The New Hearts of Stone, who were actually a group of pimps. They made the money for the recording session by running young ladies in town. But this was back in seventies, it's what happened. Music was totally underground and pretty lawless. From there I'd always have to convince one or two people to invest money; there were a bunch of people along the way that trusted my instincts and my career had begun.

A lot of your early music has really stood the test of time. Why do you think that= is?

My first productions were pure disco, and disco never gets old. There was one record I made called I Don't Need No Music, which literally just got remixed last month by Luca Moplen. Some of the stuff I cut in ‘79 when I was like 23, 24 years old is still being sampled, which is cool. And it was all disco, the first wave of disco. And then I moved to New York in ‘80 and began to make the records that I'm probably most associated with, like Planet Rock and Walking on Sunshine and Breaker’s Revenge. I made all those within like a three-year period.

Were you always DJing at the same time or was producing your first love?

I was DJing when I was in Boston – that’s how I got my foot in the door of the music business. Being a DJ was simply a means to becoming a producer for me. I never loved DJing and I didn't think I was great at it, but through that I was able to produce my own records. By producing my own records, I was able to remix other people’s records. Back then, the only people who would get to do remixes were big name DJs like Larry Levan and Jellybean Benítez. The way I got to start remixing was ‘cuz I produced great dance records. The first remix that really got me on the map for major labels was Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. And through that I got to remix Bruce Springsteen and then I worked with Bob Dylan and mixed his Empire Burlesque album. And then I worked with Al Green - all this time not DJing at all. DJing was never the hook for me.

How did you end up in Ibiza and what made you get back in the booth? 

It’s funny you should ask, because I just got a tape digitalised from the mid-nineties of a set I played at [seminal Manchester club] The Hacienda. That was probably one of the first DJ gigs I had done in 15 years. After that I started making breakbeat records for Rennie Pilgrim, and then through that I started DJing again. I would play for Darren Emerson’s Underwater parties at The End. I played at Turnmills. I did a lot of the festivals. And then towards the end of the nineties, I started my own club night at London’s Great Eastern Hotel, called Return to New York. Those parties were insane – the best parties in town at the time. We had LCD Soundsystem, we had Blondie, we had New Order, the Pet Shop Boys. That’s how I ended up in Ibiza, because MTV hired us to throw a party at the old zoo near San Antonio. I brought the Stanton Warriors, 2ManyDJs, we brought the whole Return to New York vibe to Ibiza. That was '98/'99 and I’ve never looked back.

Boston, New York, London – you're a city boy. How was it landing on Ibiza for the first time? 

Listen, I'm a warm weather guy. I live in Miami. I've always loved Miami. And before I started going to Ibiza I was going to Ramatuelle in the south of France. Ramatuelle's great – it’s near Saint Tropez – but Saint Tropez’s not my scene. When I finally made it to Ibiza, I was like, wow, I love it here, ‘cuz it reminded me of Miami a bit. And I loved the music and the great food and the countryside. I’m crazy about Ibiza. I just love the vibe of it. Whenever I land, I feel like I'm at home.  One major regret in my life is not having bought a place in Ibiza years ago. My wife and I got married there in 2010 at El Chiringuito. It was probably the second year they were open, but I think it might have been their first wedding. And I proposed at Amante and we had our rehearsal dinner at Balàfia, which is still my favourite place on the island. I actually convinced the owner to let us hire the whole place on Sunday night – when they’re usually closed – and we had 75 guests and a flamenco guitarist. To this day I think it’s still the only time they ever opened on a Sunday.