The White Island: The Extraordinary History of the Mediterranean's Capital of Hedonism
Stephen Armstrong
Language: English
Pages: 244
ISBN: B017PONVFY
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The White Island is, and always has been, a magnet for hedonists. Its history reads like a history of pleasure itself. It is also a story of invasions and migrations, of artists and conmen, of drop-outs and love-ins.
The Carthaginians established a cult to their goddess of sex there, and named the island after Bez, their god of dance. Roman centurions in need of a bit of down time between campaigns would go to Ibiza to get their kicks. And over the centuries, cultures around the Med have used the island either as a playground or a dump for the kind of people who didn't quite fit in back home, but who you'd probably quite like to meet at a party...
This is the history of Ibiza, the fantasy island, framed by one long, golden summer where anything can happen - and it usually does.
He just wanted to talk, he said; he didn’t want to give an interview. He was having a tough time, his spirits were very low, and he didn’t want this on the record at all. We spoke about lots of things: his love life, his depression, his regrets about the past and why he still stayed on the island; we talked about reggae, his favourite music, and his trips to play in smaller clubs around the world. ‘People book me all over the world.’ His voice was almost a whisper. ‘I still love to play, but
PUBLISHERS 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www.transworldbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers Copyright © Stephen Armstrong 2004 Map by Hardlines Stephen Armstrong has asserted his right under the Copyright Designs and Patents act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. The author
shoulders that he’d picked up from the same boat. By the time Pablo’s mother, Patricia Brown, sitting in her London office, spun a globe, stabbed her finger down at random and found herself pointing at Ibiza, the island had an airport. Patricia was working as a secretary, and she spent the next year saving like mad to stack up enough cash to get there. She flew out to the island, landed on a gravel runway, passed through immigration in a wooden terminal building and caught a bus that was so high
scandal, Seley vouched for him publicly to the local police and the international press men in exchange for a handsome payment from Irving. After using Irving’s money to pay his debts, he took the remainder and paid for a room at the Hotel Noray in Ibiza Town. He spent the weekend there with a bottle of absinthe, closed the shutters, stocked up on copies of Le Figaro and L’Equipe and pretended he was in Paris again. The saddest moment of Seley’s self-imposed exile – he used to say he would go
hunger. In 1984, he was diagnosed HIV positive; although he did his best to work right up until the end, it soon began to affect his performances. He took a part in a David Mamet play, A Life in the Theatre, but was hospitalized with bronchitis after just three months. He went on to develop a multitude of AIDS-related illnesses and returned to Ibiza, effectively to die. Susan would help him into a chair on their patio where he would sit and watch the sunset. Only Sandy and Leslie Phillips were