With the club scene experiencing a spell of changeable weather, Tiesto is one of the few DJs whose name on a poster will draw a full house of punters eager to feel the warmth. The Dutch turntablist talks to Jim Carroll
T'S been a long time since anyone told Tijs Verwest to stick around to collect glasses and sweep the floor after the club had closed for the night. "That's how I started out," he says. "I played in a really small club in Amsterdam two nights a week for six hours at a time and then I'd clean the club up afterwards." For Tiesto, the number one DJ in the world for the last three years according to DJ magazine's annual poll, that past is a very distant country.
These days, Tiesto is one of the very few DJs doing the rounds whose name on a poster can usually guarantee that your club will be full to capacity. He's reached the stage where the exception has become the norm. After all, when you've become the very first DJ to perform at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games (as Tiesto did in Athens last summer), everything else is just gravy.
The Tiesto who started DJ-ing in Amsterdam in the late 1980s was an eager young man. There had been other Dutch names to reckon with before him - people like Dimitri, Marcello and Remy at The Roxy and The Eighth - but Tiesto was keen to go that little bit further right away.
"When I started DJ-ing, I quickly realised that I'd like to make the music that I was going to play," he says. "I also thought that I'd probably get more satisfaction from that too." Over time, the new beat and acid house that was the stuff of Tiesto's early DJ-ing sets disappeared and it become more and more trance-based. It's a sound that is particularly associated with the Dutch scene, thanks to the likes of Armin van Buuren and Ferry Corsten as well as Tiesto. Indeed three of the top five in that magazine poll are Dutch, a testimony to trance's current grip on the bigger dancefloors.
Tiesto attributes trance's popularity with Dutch DJs and producers to the fact that the Dutch like "melodies and drama" in their music. He knows that trance is what has put him and his fellow Dutchmen on the map. "When Ferry Corsten made the Out of the Blue track a few years ago, people started to take Dutch DJs and their music more seriously. That was the key moment." For him, though, playing a solid trance set is not what gets his blood pumping. "My DJ sets are diverse. Besides tribal and techno, I also like to play symphonic stuff and mix it all up. In 2005, I think clubs are a lot more open to that kind of diverse sound. Clubbers want to hear more than just the one style of music all night long."
He's also certain that any clubland slump has been over-estimated. After all, he's in clubs every week of the year and he still sees crowds. "I don't see attendances slacking. I hear club owners complaining, especially in England, but worldwide it's still growing. Every club I play is always sold out. I really like playing in America, for example, because they are so open-minded. They really listen to what I play and they're very enthusiastic. I can play anything. I can play progressive, techno, or whatever I want and not just the hit tunes, like in England."
Tiesto believes that more choice for clubbers does not necessarily translate into more punters. "There's just too much going on," he maintains. "Look at Ireland, for example. All the big players do shows in Ireland. You have Godskitchen and Gatecrasher putting on loads of parties every year. It's just too much. People get more selective. They want to go to a quality party and not just to every party there is." Which is where Tiesto comes in. Unlike other members of the disc-jockey gold circle, he still gets excited when he walks into a club to do his thing.
"When I see a crowd that's ready to party, that makes my heart beat a little faster. It might be 500 people or 10,000 people, it's the same thing." It's why he admires a veteran like Carl Cox so much. "After 20 years in the business, he still plays like it's his first night. That's impressive."
These days, it's big arenas and super-sized halls rather than small clubs that are Tiesto's domain. "In really big venues, you can still have a really intimate atmosphere," he maintains. "I played one gig on my last tour to 75,000 people, but it felt like a club gig. I always play pretty close to the people, my DJ booth is usually very near the floor so I can hear people react."
When you ask him why people prefer him to anyone else spinning records and CDs, he pauses for a few moments. "I think it's the atmosphere," he says finally. "It's not just about me mixing records, it's about the whole show, the feeling in the room. People also listen to my music when they're not in clubs and that's a great compliment. You don't have to be on a dancefloor to enjoy this music."
Tiesto plays the Global Gathering at Millstreet, Co Cork on July 31st
