One can easily envision the megastars of the international trance scene – people such as Paul Van Dyk, Armin Van Buuren or Tiësto – inhabiting a sort of dance-music Valhalla, surrounded by Valkyrie babes and lounging to an epic, Wagner-meets-WKTU soundtrack. Sadly, according to Tiësto (whose real name is Tijs Verwest), such is not the case. ‘I’ve never really said more than three words to Paul Van Dyk,’ he relates, ‘and since Armin’s blown up, he’s so busy that we’ve lost contact.’
But Tiësto is hardly sat around staring into space himself. After playing clubs, festivals and arenas around the world, the titan of trance is bringing his Kaleidoscope World Tour to the capital later this month – a slightly smaller-scale gig than his set at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, but a pretty big deal nonetheless.
When he talks to Time Out, it is the Olympics that immediately spring to mind when assessing his career highlights. ‘It has got to be up there,’ he modestly announces, his gigantic smile radiating over the crackling phone line. And, with practised precision, he manages to drop in the answer to our next question without even the slightest prompting. ‘Seventy thousand people in the stadium and 4.6 billion people worldwide. It was crazy.’
And what did he play? Well, as any self respecting brand leader would, he played a mix entirely composed of his own music. ‘It was great for me, I got so much exposure for all my tracks from it. I remixed quite a few ancient Greek songs and then released an album called Parade of the Athletes, which is still selling now. Did I get paid for it? No, but Tiësto didn’t do too badly from it,’ he chuckles.
However, opening the Olympics is merely the icing on Tiësto’s proverbial cake. He’s been voted No. 1 DJ in the world many times over by the likes of DJ and Mixmag magazines, is credited as the first DJ to ever do a solo stadium show (his largest ever involving 250,000 people at Ipanema Beach in Brazil), and has countless Ibiza residences, four studio albums, numerous remixes and compilations to his name. He’s even collaborated with Reebok on a line of trainers, and has his own Chinese restaurant. At Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam, you can mix Tiësto’s music next to a waxwork of the man, and you may even catch a glimpse of him playing himself in 2004 movie It’s All Gone Pete Tong.
Genial as he is, he revels in it all. ‘I never expected to be here, at the top,’ he says. ‘It’s all been so exciting for me. Fifteen years ago I played at a house party that got raided by the police for noise after just seven minutes. I had time for one mix! Ten years ago I’d never travelled to the Middle East or Asia to play. Now I’m playing everywhere. I have the best job in the world, I can’t complain about a single thing.’
You’d find it hard to argue with the man. Humble and stupidly talented, he has built up his name and brand the hard way. Starting out as they all do as a bedroom DJ in 1985, he then moved on to playing 12-hour Red Bull-fuelled sets, and now regularly completes the gruelling transatlantic flight to America, where he is treated almost as a deity by the clued-up clubbers.
Musically, he’s also blurring boundaries, the very same boundaries that were sacrosanct just a couple of years ago. House, as Marshall Jefferson said back in the early ’80s, was very much house music, breakbeat was just the bullish younger brother of drum and bass and trance was in a league of its own. Although often seen as musically inferior from the outside due to its rather generic and unchanging style, trance was a huge global seller that managed to captivate heart, heads and legs. ‘I don’t think trance will ever get back to its 1999 peak, but dance music generally is merging now,’ says Tiësto. ‘I play the best of house, techno and trance. It’s the best way – to pick the best of dance music and play it in the best possible mix.’
As for his Abu Dhabi set, you can expect the Dutchman to give it his all for the full six hours. ‘Melody, emotion and I guess what you would call warmth – that’s become my signature over the years. Even in a minimal kind of track, I can’t help putting some melody in there. That’s the problem I have with a lot of minimal – it doesn’t do anything! I don’t mind monotone stuff, but in the end I feel like music should lead you somewhere.’
But how does he plan his sets? ‘Well, there are certain songs that I know I’m going to play, and we do have a kind of script, where it’s like at 1am this singer goes on, and at 1.30am this or that will happen. But, to a large extent, I still let the crowd determine things.’
His shows are well known for being a spectacle – with fireworks and lasers – and we wonder how much of that we will get to experience this month. It certainly pulls in the crowds – a big money earner perhaps?
‘I don’t do this for the money,’ he says, quick to respond. ‘I do it for the challenge. There’s no other DJ in the world who’s done it like this, like a rock band, and I want to keep pushing myself in that direction.’
Tiësto plays at Adnec on Friday, October 1. Tickets available from www.timeouttickets.com.
