How Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’ became Andrew Weatherall’s first masterpiece

Spurned on by this new-found success, Creation took a punt on an album in a similar vein, with Weatherall hired alongside Farley and The Orb to dismantle and rebuild the band’s new studio experiments. The resulting ‘Screamadelica’ was a critical and commercial success, reaching No.8 in the UK album chart and eventually going double platinum, with the next single ‘Come Together’ hitting the top 30, and Paul Cannell’s cover art becoming an icon of the era. Most importantly, Gillespie was finally able to sign off the dole.

Primal Scream would return to Stones-esque rock & soul for their next outing, 1994’s ‘Give Out But Don’t Give Up’, but they still hired Weatherall for remixes, and as the ‘90s progressed Gillespie didn’t forget his love of dub, enlisting On-U’s Adrian Sherwod for the remix project ‘Echo Dek’ in ‘97.

Meanwhile, Weatherall channeled ‘Loaded’’s success into a string of equally game-changing remixes for the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Galliano, and launched the Boy’s Own Productions label with Farley, further exploring the intersection between house, hip-hop, dub and pretty much any kind of strange shit they fancied throwing into the already heady mix. In the 30 years that followed ‘Loaded’’s release, Weatherall reached hero status, and all off the back of a £500 remix job.

As for O’Shaughnessy, he remembers the session fondly, even if he rarely gets mentioned, gratefully crediting Weatherall as the only person who ever gave him his dues when interviewed about the track. He never asked or expected anything beyond the session fee, and laughs as he recalls McGee calling him after ‘Loaded’s release: “brilliant job there, Brian,” he chuckles, adopting McGee’s broad Glaswegian accent, “we’ll put your points on the next one.”

Did they hire Bark for the next one?

The engineer takes a sip of his tea and smiles: “No!”