Like a proverbial fine wine, David Gabriel Thorpe only gets better with age and it’s been an absolute pleasure to watch and listen to his genre-bending career over the years.
I met David back in 2014 when I was just a young buck trying to get on a line-up at Long Street’s Manila Bar. I am not embarrassed to say I was quite star struck and it took me forever to not be an absolute loser around the chap and the rest of the Beach Party/Dollfins/Gateway Drugs crew. Something I’m not sure I ever achieved.
I remember The Dollfins coming through my hometown, Hermanus, for the 2013 Puma Holiday Tour with Desmond & the Tutus. It was in a wonderfully blurry moment during their set that I decided I wanted to do this, I wanted all of this. I ended up starting Retro Dizzy a week later.
Fast forward to 2021 and he has released, in my opinion, one of his finest pieces of work, Purrring. Incredibly well-produced album but still keeping his signature left of the dial style. I finally got him alone and tried to get him to tell me all his secrets.
One thing that’s always annoyed me about David, is how he could write so many good songs with so many different bands and covering so many different genres. I struggle to write one good song and I technically only have one project. When I asked him for the secret to his multiple genre hit-machine-brain, he replied humbly that even though that was very sweet, there were a few questionable tunes amongst his discography.
He also placed an emphasis on the fact that he always surrounded himself with great artists laughing, “The key to this is to form bands with people who are great collaborators and also great songwriters themselves, and then trick them into thinking that it was you who wrote the songs all along!” Modest, but I’ve done my research, the man is a hit-maker in his own right and his solo work shows this.
Anyone who’s followed David’s career will know that his ability to juggle multiple acts simultaneously is unparalleled but he blames this on his ADHD, explained that he would create a project and then create the sound afterwards. He calls this process “chaotic’” and I tend to agree, however the results don’t lie.
From sun-soaked surf punks, Beach Party, to synth wizardry with Gateway Drugs, the songs remain both strong and incredibly sincere and honest. No easy feat.
David moved to Berlin in 2015, breaking the hearts of many as it would mean the end of an era. He did however return a few times and I remember, well that’s a lie, a wild Beach Party reunion show at Mercury Live (RIP). I was curious to know if he still kept tabs on his old haunt and was aware of the newer bands that were slithering through the scene and also the tragic loss of many live venues. He was aware and heartbroken but also excited to see the amount of new sounds coming through the scene and also that the older bands were still going and churning out the hits. He then proceeded to list almost the entire SA music industry, which I won’t do now, but trust me he mentioned your band.
When discussing the Berlin music scene I remarked that it has always been something of an enigma to those looking in from the outside. A mythical promised land, you could say. I had to know if the grass was really greener on the other side. He agreed but reminded me that the garden was also a lot bigger. Way more competition and of the highest order. “Not that there aren’t ultra talented people in SA ”, he adds reassuringly, it’s more that the talent pool is bigger on that side and that so many people come from their own respective hometowns to ‘hit the big time’ in Berlin, making competition tough.
He adds a meaningful point by saying, “From what I can see though (is) if you are successful, there is way more room for growth and therefore totally worth it.” Which is a huge issue we have here in SA, bands hit a glass ceiling quite quickly and without the infrastructure and support a lot of them don’t make it past their second album and normally quit and become copywriters.
On a lighter note I quickly wanted to know how and if he kept sane during the world-ending pandemic. Lighthearted stuff to keep the conversation going you know? He replied quickly and concisely by saying, “games”, and that he definitely didn’t keep sane. Fair enough. Moving on.
Time kind of froze since all this pandemic strangeness started and that led me to think how David’s writing process had changed over the years. From my experience I am lightyears away from the start of my writing career in terms of my writing process, whether that means the songs are any better is still to be seen. So I was interested in knowing if his process had mutated, evolved or had adapted for the changing time. Were any other notable changes in the way he would get the music from his head to the masses?
He feels like his writing process hasn’t changed but more the way he releases music nowadays. He explained that back in the day with Beach Party they would, “Do one photo shoot and one album cover, throw a link online and boom you’re ready to go.” Nowadays there is way more importance on your social media presence and being playlisted on streaming sites. The latter he remarks as, “being up to the benevolent streaming service gods (editors) whether to bless you with an editorial playlist spot which could make or break you.” A strange but necessary evil in this digital age.
Finally to go full circle I was curious to know how it felt to work with his former Beach Party and Dollfins partner in crime, Danielle Hitchcock. He reassured me that they hadn’t stopped working together since they first met and added, “We’ll probably be in the same old-age home together pissing off the other residents while drinking whisky sodas and playing guitars and synths at full volume.” This warms my heart as it is very evident that there is something beautiful between them musically and I can’t wait for their lo-fi space jazz EP they record in that old age home.
At the end, I thought I’d go for the jugular and ask him what I’d really been dying to know, how do you write a hit? To which he replied, ”Damn dude I’ve been trying to do that for about 31 years… I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
Fine then, keep your secrets Mr. Thorpe.
