Consider the paradox of David Guetta, a DJ who has spent four decades helping people forget time exists while simultaneously mastering its passage.
As he launches another totemic Vegas DJ residency, he’s thinking about the same thing: how to make something timeless in an illustrious career that has defied time itself.
“It still feels like a miracle,” Guetta says of his career with a disarming humility. “Getting there is very hard. Staying there is harder. And being happy is even harder.”
We’re chatting over Zoom and his newborn son has just made a brief appearance, carried in by his girlfriend. The moment provides a striking contrast: here’s a man who has devoted his life to keeping people young—if only for a few hours at a time—face to face with both the future and the weight of his own legacy in the Entertainment Capital of the World.
The French icon began playing records before electronic music had a commercial future, went on to shape that future and now, at 57, refuses to stop reimagining it. He’s now beginning another “new cycle,” he says, though he’s careful not to define exactly what that means.
“Am I going to be able to come with a new sound again?” Guetta muses. “That, to me, is bigger than anything.”
c/o David Guetta
We’ll all see soon enough as Guetta prepares for his latest high-profile Vegas venture, a DJ residency at the lavish Fontainebleau. The brand-new resort’s LIV Nightclub and LIV Beach daytime experience, developed by Miami hospitality legend Dave Grutman, aim to change the fabric of Sin City nightlife.
It’s a big move for Guetta, who has found a new home on The Strip after 12 years of seminal work at Wynn Nightlife’s XS Nightclub and Encore Beach Club. His reverence for the pioneering Wynn brand is palpable, and the weight of the moment is not lost on him.
“I’m nervous,” Guetta admits. “But I’m coming with the weapons to make it fucking insane.”
“I think every challenge is always positive,” he adds. “Being uncomfortable is what makes you become better.”
This philosophy has guided him through multiple reinventions on the road from underground house DJ to EDM festival headliner. When he started his career, he wasn’t trying to be a “superstar DJ,” he says,” because it didn’t exist.”
The simplicity of those early days as a teenager back in Paris brings him comfort, as he recalls charging just a dollar for entry to basement parties he promoted at school with hand-made flyers. He soon started spinning house music in local clubs like Le Broad, for which he remains deeply grateful.
“I was so happy,” Guetta recalls. “It was already a blessing that they would even give me a fee to play music—to have fun. I feel very blessed because I don’t take anything for granted.”
Perhaps that’s his real secret, the ability to maintain wonder and to treat each night behind the decks as both a gift and a challenge.
Looking at him now—a father again at the height of his career—it’s clear that he has mastered that most elusive of arts: staying forever young while growing ever wiser. He also credits as inspiration fellow LIV residents John Summit and Dom Dolla, a pair of house music superstars over 20 years his junior.
But don’t mistake his clarity for complacency. In an industry that treats youth as currency, Guetta has managed to transform age into an asset.
“I don’t do this to stay relevant,” he insists. “I do this to keep a state of mind that is going to force me to stay relevant.”
c/o David Guetta
A career as storied as Guetta’s is measured not just in hits or headlining slots, but in the memories left behind. Since those humble days needling vinyl in Parisian cellars, the club has been his time machine to those memories, and dopamine its key.
Decades later at LIV Las Vegas, his vision for the club is entwined in those roots. Guetta wants to recreate something increasingly rare in our hyperconnected age: the pure, unfiltered dancefloor experiences of his early career, before smartphones turned every moment into content and partying meant moving your feet instead of your thumbs.
In today’s war between FOMO and flow state, excessive smartphone use has emerged as one of the electronic dance music community’s most contentious flashpoints. A grim study recently reported that 55% of respondents admitted they prioritize capturing footage of a music performance over being present in the moment, even though 13% said they rarely watch back the videos they record anyway.
While some argue that attendees should be free to use their devices as they please, others bemoan them for provoking a sense of trepidation in those who want to dance freely without being documented. Many DJs have also lamented smartphones for corroding the connection with their fans, whose experiences are diluted by the compulsion to capture the moment.
Guetta is a neutral party in this ongoing debate—all he cares about is making people dance so much that LIV’s proprietors question the club’s structural integrity. One of them, Fontainebleau Development CEO Jeffrey Soffer, said “you’re missing an unparalleled experience” by skipping out on the residency.
“I’m challenging myself… I hope people are going to remember this,” Guetta says. “Because this also matters a lot to me: to leave memories of happiness in people’s lives.”
Guetta will kick off his exclusive two-year residency with Fontainebleau on Saturday, March 22nd. It’s the first of 13 performances inside LIV Las Vegas in 2025, the last of which is scheduled for May 31st. Tickets are available now.