The dry mouth, wide awake eyes, quest for a deeper duvet that’ll eat you up and spit you out feeling like a fresh human. It’s the familiar seal of a decent night out in the 90s, filled with booze and topped with snow.
No-one knows the feeling better than Danny Gould. The Clockwork Orange founder and euphoria entrepreneur who kick-started the Ibiza club scene famously went sober, but his debauched diary lives on.
Danny, who mostly recently featured on SKY Narcos, gives a Loaded account of his drug-filled days, and nights, and days, and nights, that came to an abrupt end thanks to an 89-year-old naked woman he met on a beach. Sort of….
“We started Clockwork in ’93,” Danny says. He’s sat in a field busy setting up the stage for his latest UK-based festival. We’re chatting about the good old days. The good, the bad and the completely insane.
“In the 90s when club life was really at its peak, there were super clubs everywhere,” he says. “I started doing parties where I was 20. There were parties in warehouses, in lighting studios, in car parks. From May to October I didn't sleep. I probably got two or three hours of sleep a night until finally, my body would shut down. I would drink every night. I would take as much coke as I could every night. I’m talking ounces, not grams. I’d have a 30-40 grand drugs bill at the end of the summer, which I had to pay in cash. I’d drink in every single place every single night. I'd go to Amnesia on a Thursday, Clockwork on a Wednesday, Space on a Sunday. It was full-on lunacy.
“The hangovers were immense but I’d just drink through them. Then there was the paranoia and the psychosis. There were imaginary people living in my bedroom.”
Danny recalls an untold tale from 1998 when he almost stabbed a tree to death.
“We had a party on a Wednesday and I called my friend up to order the gear,” he says. “We always ordered an ounce after a party. We partied from Wednesday until Friday night when it eventually ran out, then we called for more. When it finally came at around 12 o'clock at night, I was just about to fall asleep and I heard this noise. I was laying near the bushes on the sun lounger, and I just went, “That's them.” I jumped up and we probably had two grams in one line, of pure uncut coke. We just took it out the bag and did it off of a spoon. And I went, “I’ll see you on the other side.” It was too much for my system. I started shaking and I said, “Let's go on the roof.” I can still feel it now. The coke was surging through me and I couldn't control it. I saw this light in the sky and we were both standing there and I thought it was an alien. I said to my mate, “Put your hands up, just let him get us.” I looked into the garden and I could see loads of people hiding in the bushes staring at us, and I went, “Here we fucking go.” Turns out he was seeing the same thing. So we went downstairs, I got this big knife and he had a metal bar. We went out the front and I was screaming, “I know you’re fucking out here if you want some.” As I got to the end of the path I could see people in the bushes and then someone jumped out at me so I stabbed the bush with the knife and smoke came out. Again, my mate saw the same imaginary things. It was so surreal. We imagined it all and I stabbed a bush to death. When I eventually had the guts to go to bed and woke up the next day I saw a bin bag in the tree. That’s what had been coming at me. It was mental. My addiction got so bad I used to sit and talk to the devil in the corner of a room in the dark on my own sniffing gear, just talking to the devil, having a conversation.”
All good nights come to an end. And whilst Clockwork is still thriving, there’s no booze in Danny’s drinks cabinet nowadays. Times have moved on, and so has he. Danny has famously gone sober, quitting booze and drugs in exchange for a life of plant eating and body bending.
“I think Nightlife's dying,” he says. “Just look at the festivals this year, they're dying too. We carried on and we’re still doing all right, but clubs, they started to die in the 90s. So many clubs went and got turned into different things. My generation is a dying generation. But the shift is a good shift. My life has changed drastically. Nowadays I look after myself. I can't eat bread or chocolate because I've done damage to my stomach through all the alcohol and drugs. I’m veggie because my daughter's a vegetarian and my ex-lady was vegetarian too. I quit meat 21-years ago as a result of that and I felt better. I've become the person I am today because of all the mistakes I made in the past. I had an amazing journey then. But the journey that I'm on now, this is the real me. I’ve found the real me.
“The club scene now is very corporate. It's very clinical. Back in the day it was just dusty car parks, fun drinking every night, and getting away with absolute anarchy. In the 90s, you tried to outdo everyone with madness because that's the way your parties got recognised. The madder you were, the more infamous your party became. But now, Clockwork's known for me for being sober. We sell alcohol and I don’t mind being around drunk people, but as a result of me being sober, there are people who have come to my parties and said, “I want to get sober too.”I helped one bloke lose five stone. He’s over a year sober now.
“I’m not saying having a drink or takeaway is a bad thing, but I was incapable of moderation. I couldn't just give up drinking, I had to give up bread and all this stuff because I found out it wasn’t right for me, so I went from one extreme to the other.
“An event is about the atmosphere, the location, the DJs and the performers. My events have got the music, the fairgrounds, the lovely food. And as a result of my sobriety, they’re run a lot better. You don't need to be out of your head to enjoy it.”
Now that he has a clear head, Danny enjoys prancing around in yoga pants, thanks to an unforgettable morning with a naked pensioner.
“I dabbled in yoga in Thailand and then I was sitting on the beach in Australia after a tour with my friend the DJ, Brandon Block. This old lady came onto the beach, she was 89 and she just took all her clothes off in front of us? She was a yoga instructor and she went, “I teach yoga, come to me on Thursday morning at seven o'clock and we’ll have a lesson.” So I turned up at seven o'clock on Thursday morning and had a lesson with a naked 89-year-old in her living room with an iguana. And that’s how I really got into yoga.”
Ibiza Narcos is available on Sky Documentaries now.