Frankie Wilde was to the turntables what Hendrix was to the electric guitar: a total iconoclast. His influence on the way that DJs handle their craft (and therefore the way that 90% of the civilized world parties) cannot be overstated.

We could pick apart his techie skills, the way he could beatmatch perfectly and work the EQ knobs like he had a sixth sense for it, but the essence of Frankie䴜s revolutionary DJing was his attitude. He carried the persona of a totally deranged rockstar in and out of the booth. While most DJs prior to Frankie were fishbelly pale, shaven-headed aesthetes obsessed with minimal techno, club life post-Frankie Wilde has seen a raft of imitators.

Frankie‰¥ús sets were wildly varied. He was the first club DJ to integrate rock elements into a chunk of house and techno. Frankie could easily segue from 4-on-the-floor style Chicago house, to an obscure Rolling Stones track, to the Sex Pistols, and then onto a ridiculously hard piece of Belgian techno. It was shambolic, but it was passionately felt, and the crowds went absolutely mental for it. Many critics and music pundits believe that it was Frankie‰¥ús devotion to eclectic mixes that gave rise to the current vogue for ‰¥þmash-ups,‰¥ÿ in which two songs from disparate genres are blended together to make something totally new. Every hip-hop DJ nowadays who self-consciously squeezes a Steely Dan song into a set of rap owes his fee to Frankie.

Equally wild was Frankie䴜s style: his patented huge entrances (everything from being lowered from the rafters on a cross to riding into a club and straight up to the decks nude on the back of a mule); his clothing, always walking the thin line between homeless guy on LSD and crazy person on LSD; and his emotional outbursts while in the midst of a set. Frankie was constantly moving as he DJed. He would dance in place, frantically smoke and guzzle drinks, even dive into the crowd from on high when the music became feverish enough. Every shirtless DJ you see nowadays in a Polish nightclub in Brooklyn is copping Frankie䴜s deal.

Perhaps Frankie䴜s hugest influence on the world of DJs and clubs, however, was the passion for Ibiza brought on by his single-minded devotion to the place. International club culture hinges on Ibiza 䴊 it is both the Mecca and the true North for people who are interested in raging as hard as they can (and who don䴜t care if the rest of the world sees them as shallow party pigs). Frankie made his home in Ibiza, DJed the top clubs there weekly, and is partially responsible for the influx of record shops, hip boutiques, and aspiring DJs to that small Spanish town.