When the DJ, producer, artist and raconteur Andrew Weatherall died in February 2020, aged 56, a quite extraordinary burst of activity began. As Weatherall’s partner, Lizzie Walker, says, “within 24 hours there were tributes and murals popping up all over the country – all over the world, in fact” – but that was barely the start of it. Social events, online communities and archival programmes haven’t stopped since, and this month’s AW60 series of events across the UK, around what would have been his 60th birthday, continues the love-in.
The main pillars of the Weatherall community are the A Love From Outer Space (ALFOS) club he founded with DJ partner Sean Johnston; the Weatherdrive, a vast online repository of 1,300 hours of his DJ sets, radio appearances and other media, with its linked Flightpath Estate community of completists who annotate everything; and the Convenanza festival, in a castle in the mystically inclined medieval town of Carcassonne in southern France, founded by the equally mystical Weatherall with friend Bernie Fabre, which returned last year and continues in 2023.
All of these were pre-existing but transformed in Weatherall’s absence. An ALFOS night at Phonox in Brixton, for example, took place as scheduled just four days after his death. “Despite personal reservations,” says Johnston, “I had to do it, as the decision was taken out of my hands. I received hundreds of messages, all offering sympathy but demanding that I continue.” A recording of the whole six hours of the night is online, and the sense of celebration in Johnston’s solo set – taking in everything from Joe Jackson and Frankie Goes to Hollywood to fierce acid house, and peppered with Weatherall production classics – is palpable. Those who were there talk of tears and laughter on the dancefloor and an overwhelming sense of being part of a musical family.
That familial sense is part of what stops all this just being standard obsessional fandom. It’s notable that organisation of the AW60 events involves not only Weatherall’s friends and colleagues of 30 and more years’ standing – Bugged Out’s Johnno Burgess, DJs like David Holmes and Justin Robertson, and Caroline Hayes, the agent they all shared – but actual family, in the form of Lizzie Walker and Weatherall’s brother Ian (himself an accomplished electronic musician releasing as Sons of Slough). Flightpath Estate community founder Martin Brannigan, who considers himself essentially a fan, calls the community that arose around ALFOS, Convenanza and his Facebook page “the great leveller – the place where we felt we could express exactly how we were all feeling when Andrew passed, from people that knew him intimately to those who were only touched by his music”.
David Holmes emphasises that this community expresses Weatherall’s polymath interests and earthy unpretentiousness. “Music was just something Andrew did, albeit brilliantly, but ultimately he transcended that. So this community that he’s left is about obsession with not just music, but literature, art, culture in general … and not being a dick!” Justin Robertson concurs: “There isn’t a week goes by without me filling my notebook with new finds gleaned from the various online groups around ALFOS, Covenanza etc. Not only music but also I see a healthy swapping of book titles, mystical ideas, tips on facial hair care and dashing fashion choices.”
This extended family is rooted in place and personal history as much as music and ideas – hence the AW60 events taking in not just London’s Fabric, but smaller spaces in Belfast, Glasgow and the West Yorkshire town of Todmorden that had been frequent hosts to Weatherall and ALFOS over decades. The names Flightpath Estate and Sons of Slough are references to the Weatheralls’ upbringing in Berkshire, and the projects honour the way Weatherall respected cultural heritage and the past. “He got tattooed with Clash song titles,” says Flightpath Estate’s Adam Turner. “He wrote to Genesis P-Orridge when they were in prison. He dressed like early 80s A Certain Ratio. I think he’d ultimately have been chuffed that others did the same with him as their inspiration. But also, he would have surely taken the piss.”
This combination of reverence and pomposity-puncturing humour – the tension between Weatherall talking of dancing as gnostic ritutal, but also “just a fucking disco” – echoes through everyone’s discussions of the events commemorating him. “Convenanza last year was quite profound,” says David Holmes. “You could really feel his spirit in the castle. While I was DJing on the first night I felt like he was picking the tunes for me and, believe it or not, the two bars of mushroom chocolate I ate had nothing to do with it. His inspiration will probably never wane. There’s a fantastic print designed by a South African fan which reads ‘Weatherall is Watching’. It never fails.”