We arrive at Privilege under and pay the taxi driver. The Sun is beating down harder than a dominatrix at a Max Mosley party. I can’t take it; my skin is blue, but I need to go white before I can go red. I’m designed for the whiskey slums of Glasgow; not the sleep infused Balearic afternoons of Ibiza. The terracotta of the foyer of the entrance of the club seems to be a great place for us to wait for that elusive ‘someone sent to meet us‘. Rapidly losing my will to stand up, I move to sit under a tree whilst the rest of the motley crew of journalists and photographers turn up.
Whilst we wait I decide to have a look around and check the Privilege shop. It’s shut. I stare through the misted glass at the products on offer to clubbers. They’ve got some very nice thongs available. Makes you wonder, who’d want to buy a thong at a nightclub? Well, with Privilege having a capacity of some ten thousand, I guess it’s pretty easy to lose your pants and need another pair.
We wait around with Matt HarderFaster and Dan from Ibiza spotlight. We’re not alone however. There is an olive skinned presenter, with television eyes and a demeanour like chocolate ice cream floating around with her dread-locked cameraman. She is wearing a green blouse and a white skirt, a skirt so short it merely looks like ice cream on top of the crispy wafer cornets of her legs. No one really communicates with her so she finds a chair by herself and sits down, directly opposite me. I can’t help but look. I can see straight up her skirt. She is wearing horizontally striped ones. Surely she has clocked me checking out her smalls? I raise my eyes towards hers and she looks at me and smiles. Either she is the most cunning of flirts or she simply doesn’t realise. I decide that further investigation is necessary and ask her if she trained as an actress to get her TV gig. She laughs and tells me she just lucked into it; a story that was to become common to me on this island.
We stand together and the topic of water comes up. Ice cold water in glasses with some more ice, and as we’re shooting for the moon here, perhaps the glasses could be made out of ice too? It’s almost torture as one of the club workers brings up a whole load of bottles and sticks them on a table whilst we all just stare. Eventually I get the balls up the second or third time she walks past to ask her for some. She smiles and says “Of course, we’ve bought them up here for you anyway.” Perhaps the pressure of the moment is getting to everyone, or then again, maybe it’s just me.
The question I’d like to start with is this; you’ve obviously done so much with your DJ career and you’re regularly voted the world’s top DJ. Where do you go from here, what is there really next for you?
I always find new goals. I’ve found myself playing a residency at Privilege which is a real challenge, Amnesia had grown too small for me. Playing the O2 arena is a really big challenge too. I think that music-wise is where the difference will be in the next coming years. I’m going to develop my style a little more in the studio, get my productions a little tighter and really try to improve everything.
It’s interesting you should say that because it brings me nicely into my next question. I like to ask DJs and producers I interview where they see the Dance scene going next. I’d like to phrase it differently with you, as your such a big name, and ask where would you like to take the Dance scene?
Oh yeah! I have a whole plan. I can’t tell you everything about it. You’ll have to wait and see but it’s definitely going to be a different direction. Obviously my DJ sets will pretty much stay the same; there’s always been the Trance side to Tiesto that’s always been there and always will. I’m going to be working with different singer/songwriters on new music.
You have to be prepared to take things a new direction, I guess…
With DJing you have to always be prepared to improvise. Some nights I’m with a crowd and I can tell they want to hear the old stuff. As a producer you can make the difference. You can create new tracks and bring them out in your DJ set.
So when you play a DJ set, do you plan what you’re going to play beforehand, or do you prefer to get a feel for the audience, see how they react and read the crowd?
Yeah absolutely. I’m always improvising. The great thing about Ibiza is you can improvise, the crowd don’t want to go anywhere and you can play what you want.
Almost like you have a captive audience?
And they’re from all over the world. You have Germans, Irish, English, Dutch and Americans, when they come here their minds are open for this stuff. They’re not only there to hear the mainstream hits; of course, I have to play those as well but in between I can experiment and do what I want.
OK. I just wanted to take the interview off on a funny angle and ask you one personal question. So what’s your favourite pair of shoes at the moment?
These ones (Tiesto points towards the shoes he’s wearing) My silver Gucci’s!
You’re wearing no socks, don’t you find that makes your shoes smell?
Tiesto laughs
OK. These days as a DJ you’ve got a wide variety of formats to play on, like CDs, Ableton and Vinyl. What’s your favourite to play on?
Of course I prefer vinyl, but nowadays with the new techniques I can’t play vinyl anymore because it can take up to two months to get tracks. CDs don’t skip, you can make a track yesterday and play it on CD today; that’s the trouble with vinyl, you’re always behind. You can buy and download tracks off the internet and play them straight away.
With MP3s you’ve got what’s called a lossy compression format; that is to say that in order to make the file size smaller the endcoding actually loses a lot of the sounds, preserving only the sounds pertinent to the human brain at the time. Do you think that this detracts from digital music as opposed to vinyl?
Yeah, for me vinyl sounds so much richer than CDs. I think however that the new generation just don’t care, they listen to music on their phones, or on their laptops with those little speakers. I need a full system to listen to music but a lot of people don’t seem to care.
Do you think that’s because for a lot of people music has become this kind of fashion statement rather than something they love in their hearts… Because people don’t believe in music so much has music become a fashion statement?
I think it’s a bit of both. Everyone has a passion for music in their hearts, not always Dance music, but just music. I think if you don’t love music there’s something wrong with you, there’s so much around.
OK then, we haven’t got much time left so I’d like to thank you for finding the time to see us today, and end by asking which non Dance music acts are really catching your attention at the minute?
There’s two acts really, one is called MA3 and they’re from Montreal. The other is Sigur Ros, a band that I really love, totally different to what I do, but still a terrific atmosphere. I always love to listen to different kinds of music because I find it inspires me more than ordinary Dance music.
And bang! Like that, it’s over. There’s something really surreal about meeting such a big star as Tiesto. The time goes so fast you don’t have a chance to really to take anything in; everything is so important and you’re there to simply do a job.
As we walk towards the bus stop, the high of knowing you’ve done it subsides as you realise that you’ve got no one there to really share the moment with. It’s a strange, melancholy feeling as you walk away knowing that you’ve done the best you could with time given. It’s not like you’re a footballer being cheered on by your team, or you’re the tennis darling of your nation receiving accolade like water poured on a fire. Success can be a lonely place sometimes
