Life is one big dance party for EDC founder Pasquale Rotella

What started out as underground electronic dance music parties thrown in the middle of the night, inside abandoned warehouses in the gritty parts of L.A., marked the beginning of Pasquale Rotella’s love for the rave scene. But it also marked the beginning of his career as the owner and operator of one of the most successful companies that produces dance music festivals in the country—and the world. Nearly a quarter of a century since he threw his first party under the Insomniac Events moniker—and celebrating the 21st year of the Electric Daisy Carnival this coming weekend—Rotella is living his dream.

“The rave scene in L.A. in the early ’90s was insane,” Rotella says. “It was a completely new world to me. In 1991, I walked into my first underground party and I was changed forever. It was a place where people accepted you for who you were, you could dance like crazy, dress like crazy. … It was a beautiful thing.”

Rotella went from being an attendee to throwing some of the biggest underground raves in L.A. In 1993, he threw his first party under the Insomniac name. “It was Halloween. I had 300 people show up—it was very underground and every weekend from then on, for a whole year, I was doing Insomniac parties on a Friday night,” he says. “… until I decided I needed a little bit of a break and I decided to focus on one-off festivals and larger events.”

Today, Rotella and company stage festivals in places like Japan, the United Kingdom, Brazil, New York, Florida and California, and have gone from drawing only hundreds of ravers to hundreds of thousands of people. “In the early days when I was building Insomniac, I only hoped that I would be this successful,” Rotella says. “I didn’t really think about the details. I just imagined being onstage, looking out into a sea of people and I couldn’t see where it ended, and I felt that pretty early on. I didn’t think about whether it was going to be a business success. I was just so happy being in this environment, at these events, a part of the culture, that just being there and doing this was success all on its own. Whether it was 300 people or 300,000 people, I felt successful. But in regards to it being this massive—how many people are showing up, how big the productions are—I only dreamt of that.”

But with producing larger festivals comes more stresses, more worries, right? Why keep doing it? “I keep producing events because I love it,” he says. “It makes me happy. … I believe that our events bring a lot of happiness to people. I also believe it connects a lot of people who otherwise may not have met. I believe that dancing is healthy; it’s something that people should do forever. There shouldn’t be an expiration date. And it’s for everyone.

“I believe it’s good for the mind, body and soul. There’s nothing more gratifying to me than to bring that to people. I’m a fan myself. So to be able to do this for a living is a dream come true.”