the next track that is going to keep people
going completely apeshit.
“I am reasonably happy, I am,” he’d said
in his Swedish accent a few days earlier.
He rifles a hand through his scragly
blond hair, sincerity in his icy blue eyes.
Because he is only 23, subsisting on a
diet of Red Bull, nicotine, and airport food,
and spending most of his time bathed in
the pixelated glow of a computer screen
has not diminished, just kind of softened,
the perpetually rumpled good looks that
prompted Ralph Lauren to cast him in an
ad campaign. There is a Tumblr devoted
to his nose.
“I love DJing, I do,” he stresses. “I love
everything that comes with it; it’s fun and
it’s kind of glamorous.” And yet. There’s
always that moment, right before he goes
onstage, when he wonders what the fuck
he is even doing up there, if he deserves
any of this, and if this is the time it all
comes crashing down. “It’s just like when
it’s right in the moment and you have
that stupid bright light on you,” he says,
searching for the words to say it. “It feels
so awkward.”
Four days before New Year’s, I arrive in
Playa del Carmen, Mexico, to find him
pacing around a tented greenroom at
Mamita’s Beach Club, smoking like a
chimney and knocking back Red Bulls.
The champagne is chilling. The waves
are lapping gently at the shore. But Tim’s
attention is entirely focused on the sounds
coming from the stage, where a warmup DJ is playing a song called “Epic” by
Dutch DJs Sandro Silva and Quintino. “I
can’t believe he’s playing this,” he
mutters.
“This is really frustrating,” he says,
grinding out his cigarette and lighting a
new one. “Is he gonna play ‘Don’t You
Worry Child’ next?”
Felix gives him a warning look and nods
in my direction. Vin Diesel bald, with
discernible muscle groups, Felix has all
the indicia of scariness until he opens his
mouth. (“I carry his drugs in my butt,” he
later jokes when asked to describe his
duties.)
he likes to play mostly his own songs, he
still includes tracks by others to keep up
the requisite energy level, and “Epic” is
one of them. In fact, it’s the third song the
opening DJ has played from Tim’s usual
rotation, and each time it
happens, Tim cracks open another Red
Bull and gets a little more jittery.
The Rolling Stones never had to suffer
this type of indignity. “We should make a
list of songs that we tell festival
organizers not to let other DJs play,”
Bergling’s tour manager, a no-nonsense
Irishwoman named Ciara Davey, says
decisively, as if writing a note to self. Tim
nods, though he doesn’t seem any less
tense. His British lighting guy, Simon
Barrington, comes in, carrying a box of
equipment and smiling, blithely unaware
of the budding crisis.
“I’m sorry, I sound grumpy,” Tim
says apologetically. “It’s just that it’s
embarrassing to do the same things.”It’s
a strange problem for a musician, which
is what Tim considers himself to be. While
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