Todd Edwards worked in customer service after Daft Punk collaboration

Todd Edwards has revealed that, after working with Daft Punk on their 2001 hit Face To Face, he stepped away from music for two years to work in customer service.

• READ MORE: Todd Edwards unpacks the floppy disk containing all 70 samples for Daft Punk’s Face To Face

Speaking as part of Daft Punk’s new Memory Tapes series of mini-documentaries, the New Jersey-born producer and singer/songwriter, who also sang on the duo’s Fragments of Time in 2013, tells viewers about the impact Daft Punk had on his life.

“They’ve actually been there in the integral parts of my life, almost like the universe handing you a helping hand.” He says.

“After working on Face To Face, the industry changed in the early 2000s because music became something that people were able to get for free; record labels went out of business, you know.

“I was still getting work coming in here and there, but it wasn’t a lot. Tomas and Guy-Man actually did reach out to me to come see their first performance of the Live tour and Coachella but at the time, I mean, I was in such a bad place. It’s like I can’t go and fly out to be part of something like this when I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, you know what I mean?

“So, what happened was I took a two-year hiatus and did customer service, and I lost touch for a bit because of that, you know, working a customer service job and dying a little inside each day. It wore on me. So at the height of the American recession, I decided to quit the job and chose music, and started working again.”

Also in the clip, Edwards goes on to say that he “wasn’t shocked” at Daft Punk’s split in 2021, saying “they weren’t on the same page anymore anyway”. He goes on to add, “If anything, it should inspire people to be more creative and take chances and stop doing the same thing.”

The latter quote echoes what the producer said in March on Zane Lowe’s podcast: “The amount of people that yearn for Daft Punk to get back together to lead the way for music shows how much the world needs more Daft Punks out there to lead the world in music,” he said.

Watch the other Memory Tapes episodes via YouTube.