Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend

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The roll call of Pikes hotel guests reads like a magazine gossip column at times: Mike Oldfield (who stole Tony’s girlfriend at the time), Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, Boy George, Kylie Minogue, Spandau Ballet, Brigitte Nielsen, Robert Plant, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Kenny Everett, the English football team, Bon Jovi and even Tony Curtis (who Tony Pike refused to lend his car to!). There were the iconic songstresses he famously romanced, Sade and Grace Jones, (this gentleman did indeed kiss and tell in his memoir) and the many superstar DJs of the world who passed through the island as Ibiza cemented its reputation as the clubbing capital of the world. In between romancing his glamorous guests over the years, Tony also committed to two more marriages, which in turn produced two more children. Right now, all over the world, there will be people doing their nine to five then going home and watching TV, seeing a more exciting world and thinking, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ Well, they can! They can! If I can do this,” he gestures to the hotel, to the dream he carved from the hillside, to the memories and the ghosts, “then anyone can do anything.” After two years, he had five rooms and a hand-painted sign saying Pikes Hotel. A few guests arrived, but it wasn’t easy. Tony couldn’t afford a phone. In the evenings he sat exhausted on the terrace, drinking beer and praying for a taxi to drive up the hill. He fought a terrible, rising fear. That maybe he’d made a mistake. That maybe he’d gambled everything and come up short. His medication was improving, the virus controlled (and eventually dormant). He met and married his fifth wife. He threw himself into Pikes, which battled the island’s new five-star hotels. He built a final room by hand and the effort left him struggling to get out of bed.

Tony was in his sixties, not that you’d know from his memories of the time. He’s on a boat with Kylie Minogue; fighting over a girl with Mike Oldfield; having lunch with Tony Curtis; sharing a shower with Brigitte Nielsen. “And working,” he says. “Always working. I built a bloody room for Tony Curtis.” In Chain Letter, a group of teens who committed a crime begin receiving letters from a mysterious person called the Caretaker who is determined to make them pay for what they did. Pike wrote that “I learned how to isolate people psychologically” in the book: “The gang is surrounded by their family and friends but no one outside their small circle can help them because they can’t reveal their secret. ... What made the book work is how the chain letter forced the characters to do things that embarrassed them. To be humiliated, as a teenager, can be the worst thing in the world.” The story, much like Tony’s life, hits the half way mark before he we even hear of Ibiza. It is at this point in which he decides that the white island is where he wants to settle down and set about building his very own private paradise, much of it with his own hands and sweat. All of it straight from his legendary double-aorta heart.The Independent: Tony binged a 24-7 lifestyle of sex, drugs, and excess. Now, this legend of the Ibiza party scene recounts the ups and downs of his years in paradise. Dale flew two days before Tony. When Tony arrived, police met him on the plane, explained his life was in danger, dressed him in an airport worker’s uniform, drove him to a hotel and told him that Dale was dead. He had been shot and found naked on a beach. Tony didn’t believe them. They took him to identify the body. It was Dale, but he wasn’t naked. On his wrist was a Pikes bracelet. We have created a facebook group Here you will find pictures not posted anywhere else, and funny stories from friends of Tony throughout the years. A book was recently released discussing the life and times of one of Ibiza's most prolific figures, a worthy tale not often told. I looked at that broken down old thing,” says Tony, “and I thought, ‘This could be the greatest place in the world.’”

Much-married, hedonistic hotel owner who partied hard with many a pop star and was known as the Hugh Hefner of Ibiza; John Donne may have written that no man is an island, but Tony Pike came close. Known as Mr Ibiza, he was the embodiment of Balearic hedonism, a brash, hard-drinking, drug-taking philanderer whose way with women would have made even the love poet blush.” That’s where Tony sits now, on a stool worn through the decades to fit him. He likes to sit here and lose himself in the past. Sometimes it’s tough. Dale. His childhood. The friends lost along the way. But mostly it’s the good times. George, Freddie, Grace and all the others. Lounging by the pool with the drinks flowing. Feiwel asked to see the book without the supernatural elements, and Pike had to do “a ton of fresh plotting. Yet I think it turned out well.” In the published book, a group of teenagers on a ski weekend discover that one of them might be responsible for a fire that, years earlier, had disfigured one of the girls and killed her sister. “ Slumber Party is short and simple but I think it works,” Pike said. “I wrote it in my parents’ house. In my old bedroom.” 5. One of the characters in Weekend was inspired by an old friend.Yes, the legendary Mr Ibiza has had a long life. But it STILL seems like he's lived 100 average lifetimes! A week later, Wham! arrived. If you watch the Club Tropicana video, Tony is the straw-hatted barman. The night before the shoot Tony and George Michael had a few drinks and then, as Tony recalls in his memoirs, George made “tender and passionate” love to him. “I was surprised,” says Tony, “because I’m not gay.” Tony remains touched by his time with her. “One night at Ku, Roman Polanski asked me if I could fix him up with Grace. I said I was her lover. He said, ‘But I’m famous!’ But she chose me. She was wonderful, she had an aura like a rainbow.”

In 1995, a girlfriend told Tony she had Aids. Tony was tested. He had it too. He was to join the friends he’d started losing, fallen comrades in a war of debauchery. Doctors gave him five years maximum, and he decided to sell up to pay for his care and provide for his children accumulated over four marriages. And by listening to this autobiography, you now have the chance to embark on this exciting journey. At night he lay and watched the stars through a hole in the ceiling. He thought about his previous lives. He thought about the brother who had abused him. Then he got up in the morning and worked even harder. And then, from the terrace one evening, he saw a man approaching through the fields. The man walked uphill. But, for Tony, he “descended from heaven”. He spent years trying to get the book adapted, including writing a script for a movie that led to a cease and desist letter from Pike’s publisher. Now, finally, his adaptation—a series co-created with Leah Fong, which will cover not just The Midnight Club but other Pike books—will debut on Netflix on October 7. 11. Something spooky happened when Pike finished Remember Me.TheRansomNote left a wonderful review which you can read here. It’s a great thing to see the story of Tony being spread far and wide. An incredible story about a small, skinny, lonely bullied child, who against the odds, grew up to live an existence the rest of us could only dream about. Tony eventually loved his rollercoaster life and life. Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend It was always more about the stories for Tony. He hadn’t taken drugs for a year, when a stray line of ketamine saw him take a tumble. His doctor was unimpressed. They’d talked about the ketamine. And the fact that he’s 84 years old. The basis was there for Pikes to become a playboy’s playground; all that was missing were the playboys themselves. In keeping with the ‘if you build it, they will come’ ethos he had been operating on, Tony called on his French connections and soon enough, the rich, famous and influential began to arrive on Pikes’ doorstep. They’d be greeted by Ibiza’s number one host with the most, in every sense of the word. Tony Pike’s big personality was perhaps the biggest part of the hotel’s charm. Drink, drugs, parties, girls, glamour; Tony would promise (and deliver) it all to those who wanted to partake. Of course, given that one of the aforementioned things happened to be illegal, he ended up in hot water with Ibiza’s police chief, earning a two-day stint in Ibiza’s prison as a warning. Word had certainly gotten out that Pikes was the place to be for a good time. Uncover the true story of Mr. Pikes, a hedonist at heart that went from a terrible upbringing to a dream life only a handful of people ever achieve.