What’s your history with Ibiza and how did you come here?
We started 20 years ago, when we came here when we were students and got into the party season. It was natural, we were just young and wanted to have fun. We wanted to go to the parties we wanted to go to. In Manchester, the parties that we threw, we threw in gay clubs to avoid the gangsters that were around Manchester at the time. We came to Ibiza on holiday because a couple of friends had come here and said that everything we’d been trying to achieve in Manchester, that freedom of expression, already existed in Ibiza, and if we brought what we were trying to do there over here then it could be a really amazing combination.
What was it that you wanted to achieve?
Music, mixtures of people from all walks of life, art installations, strange, theatrical things, something you’ve never seen before, except maybe in Studio 54! We felt things has become quite generic and we just wanted to create parties that we wanted to go to.
So tell me about Manumission and its beginnings…
It was just a hobby which turned into a job. It took us about ten years to realise it was a job! We’d work four months a year and then we’d have about eight months off. Anything we’d make in the summer, we’d spend in the winter and then move onto the next summer. We got a lot of amazing people, like Fischerspooner, Har Mar Superstar, a performer from New Orleans called Otter who had flames tattooed to her nether regions and who walked around naked. I think it was the amazingly random group of people that probably now would be considered freaks but back then, they were just individuals trying to express themselves.
How did you move on to Ibiza Rocks?
We just got bored. We got bored of the music at the time, and a lot of the DJs were getting older and there were new scenes coming through, none of which were inspiring. To ears that had grown up on that rhythmic electronic sound, suddenly a guitar, drums, and a live band was the thing. It’s almost come full circle with DJs getting big again. But at the the time the live rock thing really grabbed us. We did it first in the Hippodrome, which is an outdoor racecourse here. We had the Arctic Monkeys playing to around 500 people when they’d just had that first big album. We had the crème de la crème of everybody there, then the next day the police closed us down again! We couldn’t tell anybody where we were going because we were scared the gig would get shut down. I remember for the millennium we did a party in what’s now the Ibiza Rocks Hotel and it was amazing, actually. What we’ve done recently is pump live music into an indoor club space but what’s really special about being in Ibiza is being outdoors and under the stars. If you think about the UK you’re watching a band in a grungy space, and what can heighten the experience is to have it outdoors, in the open, under the stars, in the heat. and that’s how we established the Ibiza Rocks hotel.
Do you feel like Ibiza has changed?
It has. It’s really funny. The outside perception of Ibiza has changed massively and all the investments in Ibiza have changed massively. It’s grown. When we first started to do club nights, there was ONE party to go to. There used to be Mondays at what started out as Ku but is now Privilege, Tuesdays at Amnesia, Wednesdays at Pacha, but these days there are five amazing parties to go to every single day of the week. We’ve got all of the world’s talent here, it’s almost got to saturation point where there’s too much talent for the number of people that are here. There is also a lot of money here. When people realise there’s a good thing going on people with money normally want to move in. So in the last few years you’ve had this blingification of Ibiza with Nikki Beach and Blue Marlin etc. that VIP thing. But if you scrape it all away, the spirit of Ibiza and the people who have made a home here are still the same. It’s a free-spirited, bohemian place. You can plug into nightlife as much as you can plug into yoga. That ethos is still there. It’s just being threatened by this generic, worldwide, interest.
How would you best describe this bohemian spirit of Ibiza?
Well with things like Pikes [our hotel], it’s that it’s like you’re staying in someone’s house, where you meet a lot of really diverse groups of people who have a lot of differences but also a lot of similarities – that’s the real spirit of Ibiza! There’s this whole sort of generic, white, designer furniture sort of thing going on – you know it’s a worldwide sort of style of architecture – you could be in Cancun, Mexico, or Miami but it sort of doesn’t represent the island. I feel like we’ve got a real affinity with Ibiza with our experiences. We want people to have their own experience with Ibiza, which is much more personal and probably individual to each person. It was that spiritual birth of house music which again came from this mix of people that were just looking for something a little different.
So what’s next?
I think, our thing is to stay true to our beliefs, which are authenticity and atmosphere. Our passion for music became a business, but the only reason we’re still doing the business is because we still have that passion and still enjoy it, and if we didn’t we probably move on and do other things and people are growing up with us. People who were into Ibiza Rocks at 18 and 10 years later people are at a slightly different point in their life and for us, that’s what Pikes is for. I think it’s one of those islands that people might be slow at finding it, but once you find it, it’s very hard not to come back. So, to us it’s how can we keep people wanting to come back and keep engaged with what we’re doing and provide something at all levels.
Credits
Text Lynette Nylander