SO there’s a new No.1 DJ in the world this year —
Hardwell, from Holland, born in 1988. And is he happy
about it?
“It feels incredible, you have no idea — what can I say?”
Hardwell tells DJ Mag down the phone from his home in
Breda in the southern part of the Netherlands. “As a little
kid when I started off as a DJ, I couldn’t even dream about
that. I think it’s the biggest achievement you can get in
the whole DJ scene.”
Hardwell shot into the Top 100 list in 2011 at No.24 before
rising to No.6 last year — and then leaping to No.1.
Spookily, this is exactly the same trajectory that Tiësto
took at the beginning of the noughties — in at 24, up to
6, then No.1. “Freaky, right?” Hardwell says. “Out of 100
numbers, it’s really weird, especially because he’s my
mentor and everything and I’m following in his footsteps.
“The funny thing is, the moment Tiësto became No.1 in
DJ Mag was the moment that I realised, ‘Hey mum and
dad, I want to become a DJ’,” he continues. “That inspired
me, especially as we were hailing from the same city in
Holland. He’s always been like a mentor and role model.”
Hardwell ?rst met Tiësto four years ago when Tijs emailed
him to say, ‘I really like your productions’. “I sent him
some new ones I was working on at that time, and maybe
one month later he invited me to his show at Privilege in
Ibiza to come and play with him,” Hardwell says. “That was
the ?rst time I met him, and from the beginning we had a
rea lly great connection.”
The two Dutch DJ/producers became good friends, and
went in the studio together to make trancey electro
screamer ‘Zero 76’. Tiësto then took Hardwell on tour
with him, playing some really big shows around North
America and suchlike. “Yeah, that was a lot of fun, we were
constantly on the road together — that’s actually how we
became really good friends.”
Hardwell says that it helped their friendship that they
hailed from the same city — Breda. “I always bought my
vinyl back in the day from his record shop,” he recalls.
“Tijs was never around though, cos he was playing
everywhere. At that time Fedde Le Grand was one of the
guys who worked there, and all the trance guys from
back in the day like Dazzle and DJ Montana — it was a lot
of fun to hang around there. I miss those times — now
everybody is just logging into Beatport instead of going
to a record shop.”
DJ Mag asks Hardwell why so many of the top DJs hail
from Holland, and he says that because there are so many
parties there it’s easy to gain experience. “I did six- or
seven-hundred gigs in Holland before I played outside of
Holland, there are so many parties every single week and
a lot of good clubs,” he says. “Holland is so small, so it’s
really easy to get in touch with all the DJs here. We all help
each other too, it’s like one big family of DJs who know
each other. If you have a question about a production
technique or a record, everybody just calls each other.”
Hardwell starts talking about the culture of dance music in
Holland, where it’s always been on the radio, and how he
had a eureka moment when he was 13 after watching an
MTV programme called The DJs that followed a few Dutch
jocks like Armin, Ferry Corsten and Tiësto. “I already liked
dance music, but I suddenly saw what a DJ actually did,”
he says.
He started playing in his local club in Breda at the age
of 14 after the owner heard one of his unof?cial remixes
that he’d put online, and he played there every week for
six months. During this time, he got a call from Radio
538 — the biggest radio station in Holland, which had
been playing his remixes on daytime radio. They offered
him a record deal to release the remixes, and off the back
of this he got offers to play lots of different clubs in the
Netherlands. “When I was 15, every week I had a lot of
gigs all over Holland — Amsterdam, Utrecht, The Hague,
all the big cities,” Hardwell explains.
DJ Mag starts wondering about his schoolwork — and the
reaction of his parents. “My mum and dad really supported
me in every single thing I did, I think they saw my passion
in music and the whole DJ thing,” Hardwell says. “They
always support me, but I had to ?nish my school ?rst
before I really started focusing on the music.”
Finishing school at 18 allowed him to focus full-time
on music, but between the age of 15 and 18 he wasn’t
of?cially allowed to enter clubs. “My mum and dad needed
to come with me to every single gig, so they were there
at every single gig until I was 18 — that’s how supportive
they were!” Hardwell says. “Without them, I wouldn’t have
got as far as I have now. When I told them I’d won [the Top
100 DJs poll], they both started crying!”
Indeed, it was Hardwell’s dad who came up with his DJ
name. “My original Dutch name is Robbert van de Corput,
and if you translate ‘Corput’ in English you get ‘Hardwell’!”
he says. “So my name in English is Robert Hardwell. My
dad came up with the name when I was 12-years-old and
I had to register the website where I wanted to put out my
music. That was DJHardwell.com — that’s how it started,
and I never changed the name.”
Who else has he been in?uenced by? “ Tiësto of course,
and when I started DJing in Holland I met DJ Chuckie,”
Hardwell says. “He was already at that time one of
Holland’s biggest DJs, and he’s still one of the most
amazing technical DJs I’ve seen play.
“We had a lot of gigs together,” he continues, “and he
mentored me from when I was 14 to, like, 16 or 17, cos I
didn’t have that much experience — I just played different
records — and he taught me how to take the crowd on a
journey, that it was really important not to play only the
hit records... all those things.”
Hardwell has played a variety of music when he DJs from
the get-go — from hip-hop to trance — but now describes
his style as “progressive with a dirty Dutch twist. Do I ever
call my style EDM now? I think I’m too European, I’m still
saying ‘dance music’ or ‘house music’ — although house is
now different. When I say house I’m always thinking about
guys like Dennis Ferrer. EDM to me is not like electronic
dance music — EDM is a culture. It’s dance music in
America, and they’ve made it a culture — almost like a way
of living. I dunno, I’m still using the words ‘dance music’.”
The new I Am Hardwell documentary has a great clip of
a young Hardwell aged 16, on a Dutch TV programme,
talking about wanting to be the No.1 DJ in the world. It
also features his philosophy — ‘If you can dream it, you
can do it’.
“Everything that’s possible, you can do it,” he believes.
“Somebody told me that quote and that’s exactly what
the documentary is all about — my career. That little boy
from Holland had a dream to become the new No.1 DJ in
the world, like Tiësto and Armin — and well, here we are.
It’s only a dream, what’s happening right now. It’s still
unbelievable.” CARL LOBEN
Have DJs’ fees got out of hand? “No. People always say ‘DJs are the new pop stars’, but when Rihanna, Jay-Z or Lady Gaga is selling out an arena and get a ridiculous amount of money, everyone is handling that ok. If a DJ like Tiësto or Calvin Harris does it, everybody is like, ‘Wow, can they take that amount of money?’ But
they are doing the same thing.” Has dance music become the new pop? “Dance music is still the same thing — the mainstream is just playing it more. Pop is just
the word for popular, and dance music is really popular n ow.” If you could be any animal what would you be? “A penguin, I love penguins. If you go to a zoo and
see a penguin, it acts super-funny.” Should DJs do ‘heart hands’? “Yeah, why not? Every DJ is doing it, otherwise how do you show your love for the crowd?” Do
DJs have a duty to speak out about drugs? “I don’t think it’s our job to do that, to be honest. Dance music shouldn’t be related with drugs, y’know?” What
would be on your fantasy rider? “A crowd that will never lose its energy.”
034 djmag.com