Four years ago, he was just some
Swedish kid named Tim who liked
messing around on his laptop at home.
One iTunes-dominating dance hit
(“Levels”) later, he’s Avicii, world’s hottest
DJ, making $250,000 a night to keep
the Ecstasy-dosed, champagne-soaked
masses moving. Jessica Pressler spends
a wild week jetting around with Avicii
and his Oontz-a-Loompas, and nobody
stops partying until they’re rolled out in a
wheelchair
Tim Bergling is anxious. He is staring
straight ahead, so quiet that everyone with
him has gone silent, too, out of respect or
maybe a little fear. It was a crazy thing
to do, in retrospect, two shows in two
different cities, Anaheim and Las Vegas,
with only an hour and a half between
them. Even with the police escort and
the private plane. Now he is twenty-one
minutes late, and twenty-one minutes
matters when it’s the biggest party night
of the year, New Year’s Eve, in the biggest
party city in the world, Vegas, and you’re
the star of the show, scheduled to go on
at midnight, which was—Tim reaches into
the pocket of his jeans, barely held up
by a Gucci belt, and pulls out his phone
to check the time—twenty-two minutes
16
ago. “Avicii better get to XS soon!!” some
douchebag is saying on Twitter. “People
paid money for this!” The doors slide
open, and Tim steps forward, purposeful
as a heart surgeon headed to perform a
triple bypass. His girlfriend, his booking
agent, his tour manager, a club promoter,
a guy with a video camera, and a reporter
surge after him.
“Dog!” An assistant sweeps in to take the
Pomeranian from the girlfriend’s arms.
“Security!” the promoter shouts, and
hulking figures fall into step beside us.
“Okay, go!” and this unwieldy centipede
begins its shuffle through the Encore
resort, into a restaurant, where bejeweled
women and heavyset men look up
curiously from their Dover sole, out the
back door, past a pool, up some stairs,
and behind a velvet rope where Tim alone
steps onto a raised platform facing out
into the gaping maw of XS nightclub.
He pauses a minute, taking in the
expectant faces, flushed and a little drunk,
chanting, “A-vi-cii! A-vi-cii! A-vi-cii!”Then
the light falls on him, and he lifts a skinny
arm and flicks a switch, flooding the room
with a melody that washes over the crowd
like a balm before turning into a beat that
has them going, his words, “completely
apeshit,” and then, and only then, does
he relax.
“Happy New Year!” shouts Felix Alfonso,
his bodyman, popping open the first of
many bottles of Dom Pérignon. When Tim
twists around from the jiggy little dance
he’s doing behind the decks to accept a
glass, he is smiling like the happiest guy
in the world.
Which he should be, he knows. Most
people would be overjoyed to have Tim
Bergling’s life. To have, 250-plus nights
a year, audiences of thousands chanting
your name. To have the leggy blond
girlfriend, the limitless champagne and
the piles of money, and famous musicians
begging for the production magic he
br