Laurent Garnier. Creator of Clouds and Books

Actually, it was not me who decided. Three years ago I was having lunch with a friend of mine from the publishing house Flammarion. We ate well and drank a fair amount of wine. She was telling me how she had spent her holiday, about her trip to India. And I told her about how I had gone to Detroit, been to Australia, been to New York for the first time. We were exchanging these tourist anecdotes, and completely out of the blue she declared: "Laurent, you are such an interesting storyteller - you really ought to write a book!". Naturally, I started to protest: "That is not my thing, I have never written...". A week later it turned out that on the quiet she had pitched the idea for such a book to Flammarion, and the publishers were very taken with the idea. We held several meetings with them, and as soon as I was convinced that Flammarion would not interfere with the process of my work on the book, they got my agreement in principle.

Yes, he is a journalist and a great friend of mine. For a year and a half we met twice a week and recorded long interviews, and at weekends we went together to various French clubs. Then David prepared a draft version of the book. We read it together, saw what was missing and went off on a little tour - to talk with the historic figures in Detroit, London, Manchester, and we travelled to Germany to see Sven Vath.

Yes, exactly. From the start we did not want the book to be focused on my persona. I acted more in the role of a guide.

Germany, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia; we have just signed a contract for a Japanese translation, it will be out soon in Macedonia, and a Spanish edition is under discussion.

That I do not know, but in France more than 14,000 copies have sold - far more than we counted on.

No, of course not. Firstly, a great many people who listen to music are not marked by a manic love of literature. Secondly, the book was never aimed at a club audience in the first place. And I never set out to achieve any staggering print runs.

I do not claim to be a writer. I am a DJ who knows how to tell interesting stories. Enough of them piled up to fill a whole book.

On Amazon.com there is a ton of books about dance culture, about 70s New York, Matthew Collin's "Altered State". Dave Haslam wrote a wonderful book about Manchester and a second one about the history of DJing. There is the famous book "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life", there are tons of books devoted to Jamaica. Not to mention the number of rock books. Naturally, I have read all of it.

I really do not like the fact that a reputation as a techno guru has stuck to me. "French DJ" - that statement is true; "techno DJ" - that has not been the case for a long time now. These days you will hear drum-n-bass, soul-funk, reggae in my sets. Without giving it a second thought, I can put on The Cramps or The Cure - the important thing is to read the mood of the crowd. I love music without genre specifications, and DJs who play only one style I cannot stand.

The French have never been my favourite audience. My favourite crowd is the Japanese. I go to them regularly, twice a year.

This culture was never governed by any particular ideology. It is a mistake to think that rave was something akin to the hippie movement. In the late 80s this music, this way of getting pleasure, was something new, undiscovered. There was no movement as such, and you can only speak of the idea of universal unity in dance because at that time we were not at war with each other but were doing a common thing. Now lots of young DJs have appeared who think only about money and fame. But that is normal. In the 17-18 years since techno and house appeared, the situation has changed: that dazzling freshness of the 90s has, of course, gone. But I cannot stand people who sigh for those times and claim it was better back then. We were younger - that is true; now we are all around 40 or so, we have calmed down, our taste for life has changed, our views. I am completely certain: today's 18-year-olds discover dance culture with just the same delight as we did at their age.

Of course. And this point is described fairly plainly in my book. There I explain how the placement and contents of the DJ booths changed, how club architecture changed, how a subcultural phenomenon turned into big business. Without advertising and sponsors' money there would have been no way to put on the multi-million Love Parades in Berlin. And it is only natural that characters appeared in the club industry who make hellish thousands of dollars off it and who could not give a damn about the music.

No. First and foremost, the object of my club hatred is monotony. I hate it when people glue themselves to just one thing. I cannot stand it when someone comes up to me during a set and asks me to change the record. I do not like people who think narrowly. Those fucking assholes had better watch out for me. That is what irritates me most about the present day - specialization. Because in the 90s we played everything back to back - techno, some kind of pop-trash, vocal house.

For me the criterion of quality is the musical material itself, and I do not give a hoot whether it is commercial or not commercial. There is bad music and good music. To be frank, I do not believe in the underground.

His music is rubbish, but he remains my friend. He is a great guy, he does not like what I do, I do not like his hits, and yet we respect each other.

I no longer live in Paris, and so - no.

In the South of France.

It brings experience. I now choose the clubs where I will play with much greater care. I had a lot of unsuccessful tours, and I realized that such things affect your self-esteem very badly. So I play a lot in Scotland, Ireland, Japan, and tour France only very rarely. With age I have come to work less and better. I never did DJing for the money, and when I ask myself why the hell I am still performing, the answer is obvious - it still gives me pleasure.

Yes, I have had a lot of bad, but at the same time funny, stories. You know, even after so many years I still take my past fiascos painfully to heart. That is why I am no gift for the promoters who book me today - I find out every detail about the place where I am going to play. After all, over a 20-year career I have had to face all sorts of negative reactions from the crowd. I have picked chewing gum out of my hair that someone once threw at me from the crowd. I was nearly stabbed with a knife during a set in the late 80s in London, because some idiot did not like the music.

Yes, it is finished. Last year we agreed from the outset to do 18 joint performances, put out a compilation and part ways at that.

That is true. I worked in the kitchen at the French embassy and waited on the royal family at a reception at the ambassador's.

A waiter's job is to serve a person in such a way that they get pleasure. A DJ's goals are the same: for a person to enjoy themselves, to have a good time. We are not in the business of pedagogy - neither waiters nor DJs should teach people anything whatsoever.

It was either '89, or '90, or '91. It was a big rave, held in a huge stadium with a cycling track. While we played, motorcyclists were tearing around the tracks. I remember that rave was very expensive, and that upset me. Because we had come together with Joachim Garraud - he is the producer of all David Guetta's hits - and were not asking for a fee for our set. Back then free performances were considered normal. But it made me terribly angry that the rave was not free. Admission cost around 10 dollars, which, however, some 4,000-5,000 people paid. I remember we had problems with the mixer, because the Russian sound engineers back then were learning for the first time what DJs are and what equipment they work on. They brought us a 24-track studio mixer. They did not understand what a monitor was or how to set it up properly. For some reason they routed the second channel to the monitor, and sent the master to the headphones. In short, we spent the whole day sorting out the sound. And all night such fuck-ups were going on. Though it was great. I came back to France with the first Russian techno vinyl.

They gave me a T-shirt - that I remember. Now what were they called? "Novye" (New)...er...

That is it - "Novye Kompozitory" (New Composers). I still keep the T-shirt they gave me, and I even put it on from time to time - I love it. I played that record for 10 years, until it was completely worn out. Loads of people back then gave us their mixes recorded on cassettes.

Yes, and I remember that time perfectly, because it was my first visit to you. In Europe Russia is considered a mysterious country. People talk about it a lot, and to have been there is a great stroke of luck.

I have not had the chance to study the Russian nation deeply; your public still surprises me. But for me Russians are associated with directness and steadiness.

I get plastered every single time I come to you. But, to be honest, I do not only get plastered in Russia.