After 31 years in business, he remains the most sampled artiste. His friends include Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj. And the man keeps changing gears smoothly with his F**k Me I’m Famous residency in Ibiza. No wonder Grammy-winning DJ-producer David Guetta still commands top fees.
So, have you booked a ticket to Sunburn Goa (December 27 to 30) for the man? The EDM powerhouse will be there. But first, he answers a few questions for t2 over email!
Your collaborator and friend Afrojack recently played in Calcutta. Would you like to play in Calcutta?
Of course. India is a fantastic country to play in. Get me a promoter and I’ll come pay Calcutta a visit.
[t2 says: Promoters, are you reading this?!]
Since you keep coming to India, you must have heard some Bolly songs?
I know Bollywood is huge but I’ve not got the time to really listen to that stuff. I’ve heard of Priyanka Chopra though!
In what ways has the attitude towards DJs changed since you started out in the 1980s?
When I started, all dance music was underground. If you were going to play house, you had to be underground because it wasn’t the type of music that was crossing over. My evolution also came with the evolution of the scene in general. It’s more commercial now and there’s a lot of global attention on the genre. DJing is a different job now. When we do a show, it’s a concert, and we’re selling ourselves as artistes and not DJs.
Your latest album, Listen, sounds more emotional than your previous works. Is it your most personal album?
Listen was more organic. It is one of my most personal and challenging albums till date. It’s completely different from anything I’ve done before. All I can say is that it’s completely song-based. There are featured artistes of course, but none that you’d expect with me. That’s why it has taken almost three years. It’s just different. I have always been drawn to harmonies and emotional music and this album is no exception, and it is even more song-based than my last one [Nothing But The Beat]. I just wanted to push myself to the max. I knew I can make beats that make people dance, so now the challenge is to create the best possible music and songs that are timeless.
You’re always on the move. So, how much of your composition and production work is done in the studio, and how much in hotel rooms?
A major chunk of the music I create is done when I’m on the road. My studio is a laptop. It’s a different way to make music, but for me, I love it, because it’s more connected to the world. I don’t do anything else than touring or making music. A lot of people might think this is very pathetic, but it makes me very happy. I don’t watch TV, I don’t read books. The books that I read are manuals for plug-ins and software. What I would do is wake up in my hotel room, and start to produce, and then when it’s the evening, I take a plane, where I keep on producing, and then I arrive in a hotel; I have dinner, I go perform, then I come back. So sometimes I produce again, or sometimes my ears are tired because of the show and then I want to get my head somewhere else. Then I go to blogs and YouTube and websites for nerdy people and I try to find out about new technology and new plug-ins from brands that I love. There’s always something new. I never go to sleep before 6am. Even If I want to, I can’t.
Do you pinch yourself when you think of your journey from playing nightclubs in Paris to becoming a household name around the world?
I’ve always wanted the house scene to grow bigger and believed that it would. I felt there was no justice that we were not getting as much love from the media as hip hop or rock. But I never expected it to happen to me. The first part of the journey was absolutely crazy because I couldn’t process it. When I started making my own music and started to see how crazy the reaction was every weekend, with kids and all these huge festivals, I started to compare, what’s happening when this rock band is playing and when this DJ is playing. I’m like: ‘Okay, we’re at least as good. So why don’t we get any credit?’ To me that was not making sense.
When I made records like Sexy B**ch, I Gotta Feeling and When Love Takes Over, all those records at that time I think they really helped dance music to cross over and then it became even bigger and then it became bigger than I could imagine — seeing all the biggest pop, not only pop but also urban and also rock, artistes wanting to be a part of it. Which to me is amazing because they also bring their own talent into it and their own credibility into it.
After more than 30 years in the business, who are some of the new artistes you want to work with? Or is there a new genre you would like to try?
I’ve started a record with Hozier, and I would really love to get back in the studio with him. His record [Hozier] was the most amazing one of last year. It was so full of emotion, and my thing is to combine emotion with the energy of dance music. That was always my winning ticket, if I could say, my trick — to have dark, emotional elements and also happy, energetic elements together. What’s becoming the new big thing commercially now is deep house, which was the most underground thing four years ago.
I see things shifting toward the instrumental and lyrical dance music. I think EDM is still going to be strong, but in a different way... electronic music will be more song-based!
What is your ultimate goal in dance music?
DJing is my life. I have been doing this since I was a teenager. I love the nightlife. I love making music. So, as long as people love me, I will still be there for them. If, one day, they don’t love me anymore, then I will stop being a DJ and just be a producer. And if they don’t like my music anymore, then I will just make music for myself.
Once on stage, you are full of life. How do you spend the hours before a gig?
I close my eyes and try to stay super calm and super bored before going on stage, so then when I get on stage, it’s like ‘boom’. I’m completely hyper.
Sunburn, Goa. What makes this festival special to you?
I’ve been to Sunburn Goa and I share a very spiritual connection with the brand. They’ve done wonders for the Indian diaspora when it comes to promoting dance music as a genre. I like just hanging with a bunch of friends and consuming the vastness of the universe by the seaside!
Mathures Paul
David Guetta remains on top of the charts because.... Tell t2@abp.in
