Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend

Product Information

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. The sequel would have taken place at the characters’ 10 year high school reunion. “It was going well. But the file was accidentally destroyed when I was out of the country,” Pike wrote. “Oh well, maybe one day we can revisit Michael and Jessica. But I can tell you this much—they were already married and divorced when the sequel started. But still very much in love… [It] could make for an interesting story.” 15. Many of the iconic covers were created by Brian Kotzky. When Grace Jones arrived, she and Tony started a year-long affair. Tony’s disappointed girlfriend chased Jones around the pool with a carving knife while Tony served breakfast to the guests. In Jones’s memoirs she wrote of Tony: “He did have an enormous penis and I was happy to take care of it.” 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.

Yes, the legendary Mr Ibiza has had a long life. But it STILL seems like he‘s lived 100 average lifetimes! He also drew the Apartment 3-G comic for a while—the strip was initially drawn by his father—and more than 100 covers of The Hardy Boys Casefiles. 16. You might notice the name Ann in a lot of Pike’s books. 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.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. Pike’s road to publishing his first book was convoluted. On Facebook, he recalled going to a writer’s conference where he met an agent named Ashley Grayson. “He was just starting out as an agent; he was willing to read The Starlight Crystal,” Pike wrote. “Ashley felt Starlight was a mess but he thought I had talent.” Eventually, Grayson called Pike with an interesting opportunity: Write two chapters for a “line of teen books that dealt with the supernatural.” The chapters were ultimately rejected; “the editor in charge of the series thought my book was too good for his series,” Pike wrote. Grayson then sold the chapters to Jean Feiwel at Avon, who soon left for Scholastic to head up the publisher’s preteen and YA divisions. Avon lost interest in the book, but Grayson, undeterred, took it to Feiwel at her new job. She commissioned a whole novel, which she named Slumber Party. A book was recently released discussing the life and times of one of Ibiza's most prolific figures, a worthy tale not often told.

Some of these mind-boggling stories will have you sitting on the edge of your chair, never wanting to leave. Not many have lived life to the fullest as the hedonistic playboy and iconic hotelier Tony Pike, the original owner of the legendary Pikes hotel. In his uncompromising memoir Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend, he discloses all the dirt and a whole lot more going on behind the scenes of his life and the legendary hotel. This leads us to the Pikes of 2018; a place where you were just as likely to find Tony partying on the dance floor late at night (“I’m the oldest one there but I have my moments,” he said in recent years) or quietly having a moment with one of his two beloved cats, Pikey and Blossom in the garden. A place where Tony continued to hold court with guests by the pool or over his favourite breakfast. “Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries,” he was cheekily quoted as saying on social media recently. He loved the staff of the hotel dearly, all of whom treated Tony like a family member and said he believed the hotel was in the perfect hands, knowing Dawn and Andy would respect his wish to preserve the heritage of Pikes. 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.THE TIMES: 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. For instance 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. 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.

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.” Buying the farmhouse left Tony skint but charged with a dedication he didn’t know he possessed. He worked seven days a week. Dawn to dusk. It was, he says, “Hard, filthy, dangerous work. Caked in shit, no water to wash with, living by oil lamps at night.”

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.” 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.” I looked at that broken down old thing,” says Tony, “and I thought, ‘This could be the greatest place in the world.’”