Spin on it

Paul Kaye is dead perfect as the hedonistic DJ who loses his hearing in the dance music spoof It's All Gone Pete Tong, says Brian Boyd

Last year the Oxford English Dictionary got around to including neologisms culled from the dance world - "largin' it" etc - oblivious to the fact that, since dance peaked sometime in the 1990s, such phrases are now used only in a retro-ironic fashion. No such problem with the new mockumentary, It's All Gone Pete Tong (to spare you the social embarrassment, that's dance world slang for it's all gone wrong), a snappily funny parody of the Golden Age of the Balearic Beat.

It was a time, just a few years back, when a small Mediterranean island - Ibiza - hosted summer-long dance marathons. Drugs 'n' beats and 24-hour party people abounded. The DJs flown in to provide the music became, for however briefly, superstars of the dance scene, their names on a flyer guaranteed to pull hundreds, sometimes thousands, to the venues they were playing.

Ibiza clubs such as Manumission and Amnesia made Studio 54 look like Whelan's on a sensitive singer-songwriter night. These clubs became so famous that compilation albums with their names on the cover would guarantee huge worldwide sales.

Very loosely, It's All Gone Pete Tong is a Spinal Tap for the dance music world. Paul Kaye (still best known for playing the geeky American cheeky interviewer, Dennis Pennis) is DJ Frankie Wilde, a Paul Oakenfold/Fatboy Slim type with an excess-all-areas pass. Nothing can possibly wreck Frankie's buzz as he snorts his way through the island, stopping only to play one of his famous sets, as his ego expands exponentially. In a tragi-comic twist, Wilde begins to lose his hearing until he becomes totally deaf.

What's a superstar DJ with an expensive coke habit to do? For Kaye, the part of the DJ was challenging, not least because he's not a particular fan of dance music.

"I'm a Pistols and Clash man myself," he says, sitting in a Dublin cinema after a preview screening of the film. "There are certain areas of dance I'd like, stuff like The Prodigy and Public Enemy - who weren't strictly dance, I know. When I was younger I was in a lot of shouty punk bands, so I naturally veer towards that sort of music.

"It didn't really matter, when approaching the role, not being a huge dance fan. The film is about being consumed by fame and drugs and this sort of Shakespearean plot device of how a disability can save your life, so I was drawing more on those general themes than pretending to be a proficient DJ.

"I think some dance music is creative. There is some great stuff there, but, you know, I still have to get over that thing of 'it's still just playing records, though, isn't it'. You know, you get these big-name DJs saying things like 'Oh, I dropped some Salt 'n' Pepa into my set'. Yeah, well, so what?"

Kaye didn't feel the need to avail of the services of the dance "consultants" who were brought in to teach him how to DJ. "I mean, how difficult can it be playing records? However, I did go to see a guy called Mr C from The Shamen a few times. He just happened to be in Ibiza at the time, so I stalked him a bit before we started shooting. But really, I drew more from my own experience being in bands than anything else."

Kaye freely admits to oodles of creative tension with director Michael Dowse, whose last film, Fubar, looked at the world of Beavis 'n' Butthead-type metal fans. "From the beginning, it was clear that he didn't like me and I didn't like him. I found him very macho in his approach. There was some brinkmanship going on there and it did get a bit extreme for a while. But it was OK in the end."

There are some lovely touches in the film. At the height of his coked-up fame, DJ Frankie plans to launch his own line of hummus. After his hearing goes, there's a meeting with a record company executive who patiently explains to Frankie that he is now without a recording deal because people don't want to buy music that has been "touched with the deaf stamp". There's also a nod to This Is Spinal Tap: when Frankie goes to get his hearing tested, the machine's dial goes up to 11.

Despite the torturous August heat in Ibiza, Kaye thoroughly enjoyed making the film. "Even though we were there a few years past its real peak, Ibiza is totally mental," he says. "We're talking about a place where the ancient Romans - who were no slouches at partying - used to go to really rip it up.There's still a bit of a weird Terry Thomas feel to it, and all these German hippies who came in the 1960s and never left.

"And the clubs are incredible - they all have these VIP rooms, then Gold VIP rooms and then Platinum VIP rooms. Apparently, there's some place just outside Ibiza town which is the richest square mile in Europe. To get some idea of hedonism, I brought along a copy of Keith Moon's biography, which certainly helped in the excess states."

Kaye isn't entirely happy with the "Spinal Tap for the dance world" sobriquet. "It really depends on how they market the film. For example, when it showed at the Aspen Film Festival earlier this year, it won the best film and best actor categories, and a lot of non-dance people really liked it. They were more into the tragic element of the story than the dance backdrop.

"I suspect over here, it will be marketed to the dance market. And the emphasis will be more on the comedy. I think it will attract a big dance crowd because they will know all the clubs we used - it was the same for me when the film Breaking Glass was released, which was about the punk scene. I went to see it because it was filmed in the Music Machine in Camden and that was a venue I knew really well."

When Kaye DJs in the film, it's in real Ibiza clubs to real dance audiences. But he has a guilty secret: "I shouldn't really be telling you this, but when you see me on the decks in the clubs what I'm actually listening to in my headphones is Holidays in the Sun by the Sex Pistols.

"I was determined that these people got to know a bit of my musical culture, and my proudest moment during filming is when I blew the decks at the Amnesia club one night - I was playing No Fun by The Stooges at the time."

It's All Gone Pete Tong opens on May 27th