Tiesto Heads to L.A. For Record Crowds at Home Depot Center Saturday: We Ask Him Why

Stephanie Pistellr

Tiesto is a love-him-or-hate-him DJ, but if you look at his draw in the L.A. market and beyond, you have to think people really do like him. It would be hard to call the Dutch trance spinner polarizing. It's just that the trance sound is so Jersey Shore.

The man knows that. In fact he left most of trance behind years ago, yet he continues to attract record crowds with a polished evolution of vocal-infused house and pop-trance.

In an age when "house" DJs -- Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, Dirty South, Afrojack, David Guetta, Kaskade, Deadmau5 -- have ascended to the top tier of DJ stardom and put a new spire on the business, Tiesto continues to set the bar for "big."

(And like a lot of the world's top jocks he lives in L.A. part-time.)

He was the main draw at Electric Daisy Carnival's two-day, 200,000-plus ticket-holder festival in Las Vegas last summer. At Coachella in 2010 a wave of young Tiesto fans descended on the Empire Polo Fields, producing the event's largest population to that point. And the Wall Street Journal estimates this professional record spinner's annual income to be a cool $20 million.

Still hate him?

Tiesto's coming to L.A. Saturday to cap his Clublife College Invasion Tour, a series of concerts intended to expose new, early evening audiences to his club-land vibe. His people say the party at Home Depot Center in Carson (tix) will be the largest single-DJ event in U.S. history, although he has invited some diverse talent, including Diplo, along for the fun.

The capacity for the show is only 26,000 (we say only because that's like a house party for Tiesto in Europe).

Why did you chose L.A. for this record attempt?

Tiesto: I like L.A. and I haven't been there in ages. I played Coachella last year, but I haven't played in a while and I wanted to come back.

Twenty-six-thousand people is not a big deal for you in Europe.

It is a big deal. This is so big and so new for America. In Europe I play bigger venues, but to finally achieve this after all these years in America. Finally dance music is blowing up.

It's blowing up on radio (David Guetta, et. al.), but that's not your style, is it?

I always try to stay away from radio. Sometimes you flirt with it. But I'm just not that kind of person. I feel I'm more connected to the indie world than the pop world.

That's a good way to describe a David Guetta compared to me: I'm more inclined to work with Sigur Ros.

What do you think of the controversy over raves in L.A. (they've pretty much been shut out of the L.A. Coliseum and Sports Arena after a 15-year-old died from an ecstasy overdose).