New Zealand. A country with beautiful scenery, with its rugged mountain-ranges to its rolling, sun kissed beaches, fearsome national rugby teams - even a footy team that England should be able to beat…
It can also lay claim to one of the world’s best authorities on new music. Radio One presenter, MTV2 presenter, DJ and Breaks Co-Op band-member – Alexander Zane Reid Lowe. Or “Zipper” to his mates.
One fact of life is that first impressions count for a lot. On meeting Zane, its hard not to be either inspired by him, or be attacked by the green-eyed monster labelled as “jealousy”. To coin a phrase; He’s got it made:
“I’m a really happily married guy, I’m really happy with my home life and I wake up and do work that I feel to be really inspiring, and I feel that is doing some good towards music.
"I have great amounts of freedom in the work that I do and I work with some great people and that’s really all you can ask for. To live comfortably enough to be hanging out with your mates and doing something that you love.”
If green-eyes has got you now – take a deep breath before carrying on…
How does it feel to have a pressure on you in terms of showing the next bands and artists in music that people should be listening to? “Reflecting on the pressure you talk about, we don’t take our position lightly or seriously. At the same time, we don’t over-hype what we do. Were very aware that we have a vast audience to play great music to, and we’re grateful for that opportunity, but we listen to as much as we lead.
"I’m listening as much to the texts, to the message boards and the emails or people like yourselves who come up and give us a demo, a CD or just listening to other bands. It is a community, and there isn’t one leader in the community.”
I read in the Radio Times that you could be “the next John Peel”…
“It’s dangerous for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that there will not be a next one. There is only one and I’m definitely not applying for that job. I’m proud to be carrying on elements of his position and hopefully come from the same place as he did, and we did seem to agree on that before he passed away. The doors not closed just because John’s gone.
"He’s opened the door, so there’s no point closing it and saying, “there’s only a couple more who can do this” because were not on borrowed time. I’d like to hope anyway. I’m only in this game for a certain period of time, I’ve got to move on and do something else.
"So for now its nice to be held in that sort of company, but for now, I would never be so bold.”
Do you feel comfortable with the label?
[Shakes head and grimaces] “No, not at all. I feel comfortable in that I’m involved in a similar position that John was in, in terms of being able to play exciting new music to people, but I could never do what John did.
"He created the ultimate niche for himself. He got his feet under the table at a time where there wasn’t anyone else who wanted to sit at that table, and John’s greatest feat was – besides from the obvious that he did it on radio and with his family - was staying, and refusing to budge and refusing to change his ideals, which is [pauses] precious.”
Do you see Radio One being the same as now in 10 years time?
“I hope not, because I hope it evolves, changes and moves on. It’s feeling pretty good for me now - from where I’m sitting - in terms of DJ’s that I spend most of my time with.
"We’re all part of a community. We all respect each other, like each other and hang with each other at any given time - and its all you can ask for. Especially in an environment which does have ego involved, where people are actually able to put it aside and be able to actually like each other and that’s rare in any entertainment industry because its about what “I want” and what “I’m gunna get”.
"At Radio One, people do genuinely feed each other music to play, or bigs-up the other shows when they play a certain song. It’s really important that you do that, because it’s all strength in numbers.”
You mentioned in Q magazine that University can play a major part in a person’s music life and it can hold a very important part of development for people…
“I think for a lot of people, music is at its most exciting, its most potent and most visceral when you don’t have a car, a home, kids or a wife or a mortgage or any high purchases which come along with the stresses of becoming older, and you’re just socialising with your friends.
"It’s not like school, where that’s a sort of petri dish, University is a more of an open plan atmosphere in that sense, you have more freedom.
"Music is such an important business card. It’s how I met a lot of my friends, through similar social circumstances – discussing the music we’re into. So I think that this is a very precious time for music lovers.”
What were Zane’s main musical influences growing up?
“Anything from the hip-hop days, I was listening to nothing but rap music. Public Enemy, on a sonic, musical and energy level. I was also well into my hard rock, like Nirvana. My brother’s record collection was a huge influence; its how I learned about The Who, The Jam and Led Zeppelin.
"I’ve never been much of a book reader - music’s been my life - and my parents. [Pauses] Life is an influence, and everywhere you go you are under that influence, the whole time. Every time I interview a band which I think is really cool or poignant, it sticks with me and influences me and how I do things in my life.
"You compile your morals and your experiences on your journey as you go along and hopefully you will do until the day you leave this place. You are constantly evolving into something, trying to find who you are by becoming something that you are.
"You carve part of it to figure out and become who you are. It’s an every day, ever occurring influence in what you do.”
At this point, Zane has to sprint off to perform a DJ set as part of his “Home Taping” tour. Whilst he plays, one girl named Laura is trying to get him to play a track by Rival Schools – One of Zane’s favourite bands, who only ever produced one full album, United By Fate:
“This band means so much to me too, he has to play it!” she shrieks, whilst others shove mobile phones toward his eye-line with their own personal selections. The “ever-occurring influence” he mentioned was in devastating form, evolving before my very eyes…
You always have an abundance of energy when you’re presenting your TV and radio shows. Do you get this purely through the music, or are you generally like that?
“Yeah, I mean I love radio and I love music, it’s always been that way since I started on Xfm [He joined Radio One in 2003 from Xfm]. Well, that’s not true- the first overnights were difficult, [Pause] and then they put me on evenings and it was hard to figure out what my role was going to be.
"I was supposed to come on Thursday and be able to do it all on my own and it was just like “woah, here’s two hours of songs!” and it just felt really flat.
"So I spoke to the Programme Director and he said, “I’ll give you a producer, someone to bounce off with”, and…we pretty much got drunk for six months! [Laughs] Tim Lovejoy’s show was – and I wouldn’t recommend this – sponsored by Jack Daniels, so there were always bottles of JD around.
"Quite often we would have two or three nips before we started the show – a bit of Dutch courage – very unprofessional! But that’s why we would jump about and shout and scream over tunes because we were on the fight juice!
"So we would be going “oh my God this is incredible, this track’s awesome and unbelievable!” and we would be getting up and playing air guitar like were in someone’s bedroom – that’s where that sort of approach came from.
"The stuff I do on Radio One these days is much more tame, but I found a balance between being the informative DJ and to what people want – the enthusiastic DJ - and it works.
"But there were some days where there would be unruly behaviour in the studio, and I guess I’m lucky to have an opportunity to learn how to do that and learn to find my own rhythm. It’s really embarrassing to admit, and its something I would ever endorse, but – shit – it worked for me! I lost my self-consciousness, which was freaking me out.”
Do personal feelings ever get in the way of choosing certain songs when you’re on the radio?
“It’s the hardest thing, being able to play songs that in my heart I feel that should be well appreciated, and then being able to justify it on a structural and a clinical level. More on a structural level than a clinical one though because you have to be able to have a certain structure to radio.
"We do have free play, but I do have to sit there with each of my team and be able to justify every play.
"I’m lucky I’ve got a team around me, which will sit there and go – “we know you’re bullshit, and we know where you’re coming from, and we don’t – trust you!” [Laughs] They do trust me, but they will be the first people to go – “you’re overstepping the mark!”
"We try and be as clear and concise about what our motives are. You can’t get personally involved.”
As a nearby clock quietly displays the early hours of the morning, I quickly diverted back to Rival Schools, and asked him if he ever felt upset that they never became a mainstream act.
He replies with a simple, but powerfully philosophical, “no, because sometimes the most unrequited love is the most romantic.” After thinking about that one line, looking at comparisons with John Peel, love and life imitating art, it always comes back to one thing:
Zane Lowe really has got it made.
