The Secret DJ on Ibiza: "Fuck all that heritage nonsense"

Mixmag’s regular columnist, The Secret DJ, has a book out. In it, while remaining carefully anonymous, he offers us windows onto his decades of globe-trotting decadence. A well-known DJ-producer, he rose to prominence via his involvement with a band and built a global career, particularly focusing on Ibiza. The Secret DJ is full of acerbic asides about the state of dance music, the state of society and, indeed, the state of humanity itself, but it also details its writer’s catastrophic fall and dark times. It’s quite a read. Mixmag caught up with him and dismally failed to trick him into revealing his identity.

You talk a lot about your use and abuse of various drugs in the book. Are you now ‘straight edge’?

Actually, if you look carefully I do a lot less than everyone else in it. One of the reasons I included some colourful characters was ’cause I’m a bit boring. I have a few peers who are born-again straight, and very hard on themselves and people around them. I get it. It’s about self-preservation. I’m fine about it, but I’d be lying if I said I was straight edge. I’m a moderate person now, not a maniac. As for anyone else, I don’t know. Do what you like. You can’t tell anyone else anything, they have to find out for themselves.

Other than you and your characterful speed freak tour manager, the other regularly appearing character in the book is hedonist promoter Quag Allurgie. Is he a composite character, or based entirely on someone real?

They’re all composites in the sense that I’ve had a few tour managers, so we rolled them all up into one. There are a few colourful promoters out there who we all know. Again, a couple are rolled into Quag. The events are all real things that happened. Sometimes I’ve had to squeeze the cast in terms of who was there. Obviously they have dominating features that will make you think “Oh, that’s definitely so-and-so”, but only up to a point. I think people will read this in very different ways, depending on their perspective. Industry people will see it as a guessing game. There’s no avoiding that. Some may actually be looking for advice, mad as that sounds. For 90 per cent of readers it will just be an adventure story.