53-year old techno superstar Sven Vath is a German DJ and producer and three time DJ Awards winner whose career in electronic music spans well over 30 years, since 1982 to be exact.
Both of Sven Väth’s parents were from East Germany. They escaped separately and met each other by chance in the West when they were very young, in a town near Frankfurt.The two of them married and had three sons, including Sven, while his father was still a painter. Young at heart, his parents would go dancing often and his father wished to open an English pub, which they did. The pub had a small dance floor, where Sven was introduced to a wide range of music, from rock’n’roll to disco.
In the summer of 1980, Väth went for the first time to Ibiza after hearing about it from the local scene in the town of Hesse, where he was living at the time. Using his job seeker’s allowance money, Väth hitchhiked from Barcelona and ended up spending three months on the island, sleeping on beach chairs and distributing flyers for clubs in order to get by. It was that summer he decided that he wanted to become a DJ, after becoming enchanted with Ibiza and his time there.When he returned to Germany, Sven’s mother asked if he would DJ at his parents’ pub. Sven gladly acquiesced. He was 17 at the time.
His single, “Electrica Salsa” under the alias OFF launched his career in 1986. Lovingly referred to as “Papa Sven” by his fans, Sven Väth has made his mark in the music community by being one of Germany’s “pop stars” in the nineties, running two famous night clubs in Germany, and starting his own company Cocoon, which encompasses a booking agency, record label, and a branch for events.
Below you can find photos of Sven from the very beginning of his music career.
