It was the second weekend of Coachella, and through all the music of house, not a creature was sober — not even deadmau5.
The Canadian EDM producer has issued an apology after getting visibly intoxicated (yes, he was without his trademark giant mouse head), performing under his Testpilot alter-ego during his first appearance at the festival since 2008 on Friday (April 18). The artist born Joel Zimmerman and ZHU were scheduled to play hours-long back-to-back DJ sets at the Quasar stage, which got cut unexpectedly short, as We Rave You reports, given deadmau5's blackout state.
"I don't remember a thing," deadmau5 admitted in the caption of a photo of a bottle of water he posted to Instagram. "But I don't think I had a cig? So... that's good I guess? Going back to bed. Wake me up around Thursday ish." In the comments section, he added, "Probably my last Coachella show."
In a follow-up post, the producer apologized for the performance, noting that even his (very cute) cat was disappointed in him. "TO BE FAIR, I felt the first 3/4 was great! Huge shout out to @zhu for introducing me to whisky and carrying my dumb ass till the bitter end," deadmau5 explained. "Lemme quit smoking, do some fucken [sic] personal resetting here at home, find my spirit animal, work on some new music, and come back better. ;)"
Fan-shot footage of the performance shows Zimmerman knocking back shots, falling down occasionally, taking a nap, and spraying ZHU with Silly String, among other things. Ironically, deadmau5 trolled Grimes's Coachella set — for which she also felt the need to apologize — last year; maybe nobody would've noticed the drunken stupor if there had been a giant mechanical spider?