Sin City, Las Vegas, known for its lavish and otherworldly hedonism was the epicenter of a two-hundred-thousand dollar controversy between Deadmau5, William Morris Endeavor, and High-Roller Don Johnson. Perhaps the most absurd part about this story, which unfolded at the wildly popular Wynn based XS nightclub, is the seemingly inconsequential subject; that is of course a single song request…
You read that right, a song request lead to a high-dollar showdown between an infamous Vegas ‘baller’ and one of the world’s biggest DJs. What’s more ridiculous is that the song in question is none other than Bon Jovi‘s ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’.
Don Johnson had reportedly arranged to pay $200,000 through Joel Zimmerman a WME representative, (who coincidentally shares Deadmau5‘s legal name) for Mau5 to play ‘Livin On A Prayer’ during his Feb. 11, 2011 performance at XS. Video evidence below shows that Deadmau5 followed through with this end of the bargain, (check out Don Johnson‘s sweet moves and awesome video effects, he probably should have set aside some money for the improvement of both).
Now you think that the reasonable ending to this whole scenario would be Don Johnson forking over two hundred grand and then going off to win back that money on the poker table, right? Wrong. Instead Don J had WME Joel Zimmerman and a managing partner of XS thrown out of the Casino where he happened to be… you guessed it, hard at “work”, playing poker. Although can you hardly blame the man? In Poker, you typically fold when you get dealt a bad hand, so is it that surprising that Johnson got cold feet when he realized he had just paid nearly a quarter of a million to hear a shit 80’s tune?
As most deals gone awry in the business world, this matter hit the courts like the fist of an angry god. Supposedly there’s a tentative settlement between XS and WME/Deadmau5, but either way, this is probably one of the most ridiculous stories to ever hit the EDM scene.
We tried to reach Joel Zimmerman and William Morris Endeavor for comment but have not yet received a reply!
Source: Hollywood Reporter