Born in New Jersey in 1970, James Murphy spent his formative years playing drums in a series of low-profile rock bands and working as a sound engineer. Success didn't come until his early 30s when he formed LCD Soundsystem and started exploring how the punk and krautrock influences of his youth would sound in a dance music context, creating classic tracks such as Losing My Edge and Yeah.
After releasing three albums on his own DFA label, Murphy disbanded LCD Soundsystem last year. In his spare time, he has composed a soundtrack for the Noah Baumbach film Greenberg and starred in a film called The Comedy. A new documentary, Shut Up and Play the Hits, follows Murphy as LCD Soundsystem play their last ever gig at Madison Square Garden in February 2011.
THE FIRST MUSIC I CAN REMEMBER
The Lion Sleeps Tonight, The Tokens (1961)
I have an image of hearing this in the hallway when I was three or four. The sound of it was really crazy – like it was from another planet. Those early years in New Jersey were amazing. We lived in a really small town with tons of kids my age. There were fields and woods and a creek – it was a pretty ideal place to be a little kid.
THE RECORD THAT REMINDS ME OF WANTING TO LEAVE HOME
Rock'n'Roll, The Velvet Underground (1970)
Later on, I grew to hate my home town with a burning, searing passion, and this Velvet Underground song captures that feeling. I wanted out really badly but I didn't leave until I was 19. I thought it was backward. In a way it was, but it took me years to realise that the people I grew up with were smarter and more interesting than most of the people I met in New York.
THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT
Fame, David Bowie (1975)
I was always just blown away by David Bowie and how mannered the guy was willing to be. It was so far from what I imagined someone with my confidence to be capable of. I always wished I had a more flamboyant streak, but it's just not what I'm made of. Once I stopped feeling bad about that and started feeling, OK, why don't I just be myself? – that's when I started to make much better music.
THE RECORD THAT MADE ME WANT TO BE A MISFIT
Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes (1983)
This was like a gateway drug to weird punk rock, and it immunised me against the more macho variety. I was 11 or 12 when I first heard it. My friend Arthur had a boombox and this was one of the tapes he played. For me punk rock was a bit like the B-52s – it was pretty gay and weird and broken and really misfitty. It wasn't like 300 guys with their heads shaved agreeing – that never felt punk to me, that felt like a football game. I wanted to be in a room with the weirdos, not the football thugs.
THE RECORD THAT REMINDS ME OF MOVING TO NEW YORK
Teen Age Riot, Sonic Youth (1988)
I moved to New York in 1989 and went to study at NYU. At the time I had a girlfriend who was going to college upstate and I have a very strong memory of lounging around in her house while she was in class and listening to a very good college radio station. This track came on and it made me really happy.
THE RECORD THAT MADE ME WANT TO MAKE MUSIC
Bow Down to the Exit Sign, David Holmes (2000)
I was working as an engineer on this album. David Holmes was much more confident than I was. He didn't seem to wonder if he should be doing things, he just did them, and I was in conflict with him a lot. The first comment he made was, "I want to make a record that's like Can" – and my reaction was, let me explain to you why you can't. I spent so much time being like that. And then I was just like, why don't I make some fucking music and stop complaining? And that changed my life.
THE FIRST RECORD I REALLY DANCED TO
Tomorrow Never Knows, The Beatles (1966)
I never used to dance. I would listen to Kraftwerk and R&B and a lot of other synthy stuff as rock music, not dance music. Then, quite late on, I got into going out dancing and doing a bunch of drugs and that changed my perspective on music. The first song I ever really danced to was a Beatles song, Tomorrow Never Knows, when David Holmes played it during one of his DJ sets. It made me ask: What do I want out of music? What do I hear in music? It changed everything.
THE RECORD THAT MADE MY FIRST DJ SET A GREAT SUCCESS
Mother Sky, Can (1969)
When I started DJing, I didn't go and buy dance records. Instead I went through my collection and picked my favourite music of the last 35 years – Liquid Liquid, ESG, Can… I remember playing this track at my first DJ set at the DFA office. We had a big room that we threw parties in, with 600 or 700 people in there. I was drunk and high and playing records I liked, and it was infectious – everyone was happy. That was a real lesson I never forgot.
THE RECORD THAT INFLUENCED THE LCD SOUND
Is It All Over My Face, Loose Joints (1980)
Starting DFA records, starting LCD Soundsystem, starting to DJ – it was one big cataclysmic event. After a lifetime of obsessing about sound, I just went crazy. I really loved the drums on this Loose Joints track – dead and small and a little bit distorted – and it fed into the DFA drum sound. The other track that was huge to me at the time was Atmosphrique, the first Metro Area 12-inch. I was just floored that there was somebody else trying to make drum sounds like that.
THE LAST GREAT RECORD I LISTENED TO
WIXIW, Liars (2012)
I really love the new Liars record. I heard a track in a car in LA and it was really not what I expected, and I realised I hadn't being paying much attention to them. It was really beautiful and haunting. I like pretty music by people who make ugly music. I don't like pretty music by people who make pretty music very much – it smells like a scented candle. The pretty moments by people who are willing to make cacophony have a lot more power for me.
Shut Up and Play the Hits is out on DVD and Blu-ray on 8 October. To hear a Spotify playlist go to tinyurl.com/MurphySoundtrack
