The Rest Is History - 439. Disco: Sex and Race in Seventies America

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Music for sex, dancing, and watching the straight world go by… The explosion of Disco provides an extraordinary window into the tumultuous world of the 1970s, with its themes of sex, drugs, race and sexuality. By the start of the 1970s, America was a nation of dystopian gloom. The radical dream of the 1960’s had dissipated, with economic decline, Vietnam and Watergate polarising and disenchanting the public. Then, at a party in New York held by the DJ David Mancuso, something new was born: Disco. An intoxicating kaleidoscope of dancing and colour with an orgasmic new sound, it united disparate groups under the banner of music. An escape from the concerns of the day, it captivated the mainstream imagination with its idealism, open drug use, self-consciously flamboyant clothes, and acceptance of race and homosexuality at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was raging and gay rights still contentious. But, with its rising orthodoxy, Disco was also attracting a dedicated base of critics and detractors. They decried its hedonism, its debasement of traditional masculinity, and, with the Aids crisis swirling, its immorality. Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the rise and fall of Disco, culminating in the shocking night of Disco Demolition at a White Sox game on the 12th of July 1979. Could it survive this ultimate reckoning? *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London! Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Party! Party! You hear the chant at concerts, rising like a tribal rallying cry on a shrill wave of whistles and hard-beaten tambourines. It's at once a call to get down and party, a statement that there's a party going on

and an indication that discotheques where the chant originated are back in force. In the last year, they've returned not only as a rapidly spreading social phenomenon via juice bars, after-hours clubs, private lofts open on weekends to members only, floating groups of party givers who take over the ballrooms of old hotels from midnight to dawn, but as a strong influence on the music people listen to and buy. The best discotheque DJs are underground stars, discovering previously ignored albums, foreign imports, album cuts and obscure singles with the power to make the crowd scream

and playing them overlapped non-stop so you dance until you drop so that dominic was um vince alaci writing an article headlined discotheque rock in rolling stone that edition came out on the 13th of september 1973 and as you will know because I'm reading your notes this is the first mention of disco and it's the article that gave it its name. And never has it been read Tom

with such extraordinary gusto in such a simultaneously unsettling and yet rousing voice I think because there can be a few people who listen to that who aren't seized with the urge to go out and party. Yeah, party.

Yeah. I have no idea what Vince Salaci sounded like. No. But I like to think that he sounded like Iggy Pop. Yes, right. Basically, I was doing him as Iggy Pop. He's a big fan of the Roman Empire, of Edward Gibbon. Isn't he Iggy Pop?

Yes, he is. Yeah, so he thinks about the Roman Empire lots. He definitely does. Yeah. He definitely does. Yeah. He definitely does. So people will have picked up from that that today's theme is disco. It is disco. And in a way, it's a companion piece to our previous episode on the space race,

Man on the Moon, because this is what's going on in America down on the streets while the Apollo missions are going up. Well, the Apollo missions end in about 1972, don't they? So disco is brewing. It hasn't gone mainstream. Well, the Apollo missions end in about 1972, don't they? So disco is brewing. It hasn't gone mainstream. Yeah, but it's still underground. It's brewing. It's underground in Hell's Kitchen in Soho in Manhattan.

And it's poised, Tom, to explode onto the national scene in the United States. And then, of course, to go around the world, to go global. And of all the subjects we've done on The Rest is History, History's Top Monkeys, History's Greatest Eunuchs, global and of all the subjects we've done on the rest is history history's top monkeys history's greatest eunuchs historical love island disco may well have people who thought monkeys was perfectly reasonable raising their eyebrows and saying is this history but i think it is history i think it's a really interesting cultural moment i think it's a nice way actually to look at america in the 1970s so we did an episode about New York, didn't we?

The urban crisis in New York a year ago. And I think a lot of this is also in New York, but it's a very different way of exploring that story. Well, I mean, it is a story that's palpably set against crisis. Yeah. So the Bee Gees and so Saturday Night Fever is actually incredibly gritty. Yes. I mean, it's a kind of faintly dystopian quality. But the Saturday Night Fever is because that's where you lose it.

You go and lose yourself in the dancing. Yeah, it's escapism. And that's the whole point, isn't it? It is, absolutely. It's a kind of hedonistic escape. It is. There are themes, though, running through the sort of what you might call the wider conversation about escape that would be very familiar to people listening to this podcast right now. 21st century themes. So there's a tension between the heartland and the coasts in the United States. There are lots of people who despise disco. There's a racial dimension. There's also a kind of sexual dimension. So disco becomes identified very much with kind of gay rights, gay liberation and so on.

And then the backlash against disco is driven by people who are often overtly homophobic. So I think there's a lot going on, actually, in the disco story. Yeah, brilliant. I'm completely convinced. Okay, very good. And you are a top historian of America. Oh, Tom, that's kind. And I always profit from what you tell me.

This is so kind. Thank you. So looking forward to it. Good. So would you like me to tell you where Disco was born? I would. Brilliant. So Disco is born in a particular part of Manhattan in the Soho district, south of Houston Street,

which was then nicknamed Hell's Hundred Acres, people called it. So this is at the turn of the 1970s. So it's at a point when that particular part of Manhattan, for those of you who are familiar with it, is not yet kind of gentrified. You don't find Robert De Niro opening Italian restaurants or art galleries there. It is very kind of grimy and dingy and run down.

All the things that we talked about in our fear city episode last year and um discotheques generally so vince alessi in that article in rolling stone that you read out for 1973 he talks about discotheque rock i'm obviously we think of disco and rock as being kind of polar opposites now don't we but the idea of the discotheque is a european idea so obviously it shares a route with kind of bibliotheque. So it's French. It's French. Supposedly.

I mean, it's one of these things that you can't really verify. The first discotheque was in Paris in 1947. There's a club called the Whiskey A Go-Go that claims to be the first one. But I bet they're all wearing jackets. Yeah. And kind of swinging their arms in a suave, but it would be fair to say not energetic manner. I would imagine one hand definitely holding a cigarette. I mean, it's Paris in the 1940s.

The other gesticulating to Jean-Paul Sartre as you dance. So anyway, that claims to be the first discotheque to play recorded music, not to have a live band. Because of course, why would you have, you know, record players are expensive. Records are relatively expensive. It would be cheaper and easier to have live music. But in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, it becomes increasingly common to have somebody just playing records rather than having a live band.

But it's not popular in the United States at all, so it's very rare throughout the 60s. So it's kind of seen as cheating? I think it is cheating, yeah. I think it would be seen as cheating. It would just be seen as a bit rubbish. Why would you go to hear somebody play music, recorded music, when you can hear a band?

Yeah. But, so in these sort of quite sleazy streets of Hell's Kitchen and Soho, disco is born. And there are a whole load of clubs in the end of the 1960s. So all the radical excitement and the idealism of the 1960s is kind of curdled.

And the most famous of these clubs is a club called The Sanctuary. So this is in Hell's Kitchen. It's between 9th and 10th Avenue in Manhattan. Tom, it is in a disused Baptist church. Could the symbolism be more exciting? Yeah. Ecstasy.

Yeah. They play Motown. They play kind of psychedelic rock. They play sort of drumming and stuff. And this club is the Sanctuary. This clean cell is largely gay. You can see it, actually. Have you ever seen the film Clute?

No. From 1971. So it's a Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda film. It's an Alan Jay Peculia film. It's one of these very sort of paranoid, gritty thrillers that Hollywood was producing at the beginning of the 1970s. It's like the Parallax View or the French Connection or Serpico. You know, that sort of everything's covered in graffiti,

hard-bitten corrupt cops, all of that kind of thing. But flares. Lots of flares. And Jane Fonda goes to this club, and the club is The Sanctuary. And they had a disc jockey called Francis Grasso, who was from Brooklyn. He was born in the late 40s.

And he's basically, I think, the first DJ that people had heard of. People in the know, anyway. It's not a household name by any means, but people in the know would have heard of. So is he the godfather of disco? The thing is, disco actually has two fathers. So he's one of the fathers. Yeah, that's very 1970s, Stonewall.

Very 70s. So first of all, what he does is he is unusual among DJs. He ignores the charts and just plays his own thing so is that not a thing up until then because that for me is the definition of cool is that you're ignoring the charts oh no I think people generally just follow the charts so there isn't a kind of underground where it's all the kind of hippest people yeah the whole point is that you are listening to stuff that no one else listens to. Well, you are hearing bands.

I mean, that's the thing, right? I mean, let's imagine you're in Britain. So you're in London, 1967, and you want to go to a bar and there'll be music. It will probably be a live band. And you're taking complete potluck. It could be something quite pioneering, or it could be something that's just a knockoff Rolling Stones impersonators. Right. But to go back to Liverpool in the late 50s, the Beatles are picking up stuff from sailors who are bringing weird records that nobody else

has heard of. Of course they are. Yeah. So there's something of that in New York now, isn't there? That they're bringing in kind of African music and European music and they're kind of mixing it up. They are, absolutely. Rather in the way that rock and roll groups in Liverpool in the late 50s were doing it with American music. Yeah. I mean, the obscurity was a marker of cool. Absolutely.

And obscurity is always a marker of cool. But by and large, I mean, don't forget, there aren't many DJs. Of course. I mean, that's an amazing thing to think of. Yeah, of course. And what DJs there are generally follow the charts. And certainly a radio DJ is going to follow the charts because a radio DJ in a commercially funded radio station

is dependent on high listening figures. And they are going to prosper if they're playing, you know, in 1964, they're playing Manfred Mann and the Dave Clark Five. And in 1968, they're playing The Doors. Yeah, okay. Yeah, they're following the trends and so the obscurity of the spaces in which discos are being held yeah all these kind of club nights i mean it's not being called discos at this point yeah that is what enables people to mess around

with their african records and so on exactly this is a very niche thing it's in this place the sanctuary which most people have never heard of so francis grasso he plays obscure music and secondly he has the idea of having basically a set that is a unified coherent of as it were and does that involve kind of merging the tracks into one another so that there's never a moment of point of silence it It is indeed. So beat mixing, I believe, Tom, is the technical term. And he's also the first DJ supposedly to do slip queuing. I'm so glad you're here to explain all this. Well, you know, I'm very much into my DJ terminology.

Yeah. So slip queuing is basically... The chipping Norton sound. He has a record in place above the turntable, and he will make sure that it kicks in at exactly the right moment so the beat queuing is so that the kind of the beat will overlap so that synchronize the beat of the two different records so one will meld seamlessly into another and the slip queuing is that there is no moment of silence that it just goes from one anyway that's what it is yeah

brilliant it's like you talking about ships. Brilliant. Thank you. So anyway, if you go to the sanctuary in 1970, it's not like going to other clubs. It's a much more all enveloping, immersive experience. There's a ton of drugs. So drugs run right through this story. And the drug of choice is cocaine? Not at this point, I would say. Cocaine comes in a bit later. We were talking a lot about cocaine a bit later. So the sanctuaries, as I understand it, I mean, obviously I'm too young to have gone to the sanctuary, Tom. And to be frank with you, I don't want to disappoint you or the listeners. I don't feel it really would have been my scene. Okay. It is awash with poppers, amyl nitrate, and with quaaludes.

Quaaludes are a massive thing in America in the 70s. I don't know what they are. So they're basically relaxants, you know, sedatives. And relaxants for, so is there sex going on? There is undoubtedly sex going on. There is a lot of sex in this podcast. And it's gay sex, presumably. So the drugs and the sex are...

Part of the same. I mean, this is sex, drugs and rock and roll, except the rock and roll is not rock and roll as we would classically understand it fine okay so that's happening at the sanctuary and i said there were two fathers there's another place where this is happening and this is a place called the loft so there's a guy called david mancuso he's a civil rights activist he's an anti-vietnam war activist so we're in again we're in 1970 and this is the point when if you're in the civil rights movement or the anti-vietnam war movement the great utopian hopes that you had three years earlier have really turned sour. You know, Nixon is president.

There are still big demonstrations going on, but certainly the civil rights aspect, it's really become very fragmented and polarised, and the tone of life is so different. But Dominic, can I ask you, one of the things that happens in the 60s and then in the 70s is that gay rights, it kind of takes up the model of civil rights movement as it had been in the 50s and 60s. Yeah. Is that something that is starting to kick in at this point? So the Stonewall Riots are when? 1969.

Yeah. So yes, but the Stonewall Riots, we'll probably talk about this a little bit later when we talk a bit more about the gay subculture of New York and San Francisco. The Stonewall stuff, I think, looms larger in retrospect than it did at the time. Right. Okay. Because I think if you're in Wichita, Kansas, do you think of 1969 as the year of the Stonewall riots?

You absolutely don't. No. But if you're in manhattan you do if you're in manhattan and you're gay and you're part of that scene then yes absolutely you do if you're in manhattan and you're oblivious to all that i mean i don't think it looms terribly large in your consciousness compared with vietnam or compared with the nixon presidency or whatever anyway david mancuso he is gay and on valentine's day in 1970 he invites all of his friends and their friends and acquaintances and stuff he says he's going to throw a big party in this loft space at 647 broadway he actually thinks everything has kind of fallen apart and it's very gloomy now the radical dream of the 60s has dissipated and he wants to cheer people up.

And the party, the slogan is love saves the day. And it's an attempt, I suppose, to preserve the spirit of the 60s, to resuscitate it. So he has this party. There's black and white there. His sound engineer, the guy who did the sound for him, said it was about 60% black and 70% gay. There was a mix of sexual orientation a mix of races a mix of economic groups it was a real mix and the common

denominator was music and so mancuso does the music himself and rather like francis grasso at the sanctuary he says listen instead of having a song then a break then another song let's weave it all together into this kind of wall of sound. And he has very eclectic tastes. And people love it. And he says, well, let's make this a regular thing. So he has effectively what you use the phrase club nights. He has a kind of weekly party.

He says, let's make the loft a regular thing. So it basically becomes this members-only disco club that happens every week. And he chooses the music. and he has two turntables and he puts it all together. And sort of the word spreads that there's this guy and he's doing really, really eclectic stuff. If you love music, go to these parties. They're really cool parties, lots of drugs, lots of sex, all of this kind of business. And what about the music? Is it kind of evolving towards what we would recognize as disco by this point? Yes, it is.

It is. Absolutely, it is. So the song that people always point to as the foundation stone of disco is actually Cameroonian. It's by a Cameroonian saxophonist called Mano de Bango, called Sol Macosa. Lots of people who are interested in music will have heard of that and you can you know look it up on youtube or whatever i think this is the first time we've mentioned cameroon yeah since cannibal cannibal yeah peter the great cameroonian general yeah yeah it's great to get cameroon back on the podcast yeah it is great to have him back so um this was released

in 1972 and obviously nobody in amer America cared about it at all. And actually, what had happened is it was a B-side from a song called The Hymn of the Eighth African Cup of Nations. Wonderful. So it was celebrating the fact that Cameroon had got to the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations football tournament. And Cameroon was hosting the games as well. And this was the B-side done by this Cameroonian saxophonist he got a Cameroonian poet to write the lyrics in Douala a native Cameroonian language anyway Mancuso basically somehow got hold of this record and he played it and people loved it they thought it was brilliant and actually he played it so much

that local DJs in New York picked up on it and they started was brilliant and actually he played it so much that local djs in new york picked up on it and they started playing it and atlantic records then heard about it and they released it in the united states and it got to i think the top 30 or the top 20 or something like that the billboard chart so it's the first proto disco song to become a sort of commercial phenomenon now you may be thinking well what is the difference between a disco song? Because Vince Alessi, in his column in 1973, he talked about discotheque rock. Like he wasn't drawing a distinction between disco music and rock music. But certainly by 1973, people are conscious that there's a kind of music that is slightly different.

And although we are, of course, not, the rest is musicology. Tom, I think it would be fun to do some musicological analysis, don't you? Yeah, it would. We love musicological analysis. Brilliant. On The Rest is History. Do we not, Dominic? We do.

So obviously the influences on disco, Motown is an obvious one. Soul music is an obvious one too. What is the disco sound? So first of all, the rhythm is syncopated. And what that means is that the rhythm often feels like it's being kind of interrupted, like it's kind of offbeat. So it's got a kind of restlessness to it. It doesn't kind of lull you into sort of somnolence or passivity

because they're interrupting the rhythm. You don't really know where it's going okay there's a bass drum you know i know a lot of this is kind of musical jargon but everyone will know what i mean when i say the bass drum is giving you what people call a four on the floor beat and all that is is like that kind of beat which is absolutely there in almost all disco singles and is not there in you you know, a Beatles record or a Rolling Stones record or whatever it might be. That's probably the single thing that marks that disco from rock music. Yeah. The vocals, the vocals are often, lots of people always call them sort of soaring vocals.

They kind of reverberate. Or maybe even orgasmic. Orgasmic, right. So let's think about... Donna Summer. Donna Summer, a classic kind of discoberate. Or maybe even orgasmic. Orgasmic, right. So let's think about... Donna Summer. Donna Summer, a classic kind of disco sound I feel love. If you think of Donna Summer's voice in that, or Gloria Gaynor's voice in I Will Survive,

or any of these things, they're kind of soaring, anthemic vocals that often have this kind of echo to them. So they've obviously been very highly produced. And the sound generally, it's big and it feels kind of artificial. It's not five blokes in a cellar. No. It's strings and an orchestra and horns.

But Dominic, do you know what Donna Summer said about Love to Love You Baby? Come on, Tom, tell me. Oh, yeah, that one. Thank you. You just made this point purely so you could make that noise. Well, no, Donna Summer said it wasn't her singing, but Marilyn Monroe. Really? Mm.

A friend of the rest is history. Yeah, very much a friend of the rest is history. So she is play acting Marilyn when she sang that. Is that so? Yeah. So there's a sort of great wall of sound. Phil Spector, of course, was the producer who was famous for his kind of wall of sound style. And this is even bigger in a way

so it's very expensive to make a disco record it's much more expensive than to make a stripped down you know rock and roll record from the 60s or indeed a punk single from later 70s yeah so the punk would be the contrast wouldn't it because you need an orchestra if you need an orchestra you need a conductor you need loads of mixing engineers i mean a disco single could conceivably start with 60 different tracks to be mixed together so the role of the producer is really really important and the most famous producer lots of people have heard of him georgio maroda so you mentioned donna summer he's donna summer's producer i feel love love to love you baby and so on and he is such a weird and interesting man so tell me he is from the south tyrol in italy so previously contested

between italy and austria and he is aladdin i mean he's not aladdin like with his lamp he is a ladin yeah so the ladins are a kind of romance people who speak. Form of Latin. Yeah. So he's sort of this minority in the Tyrol. And he's the son of a hotel concierge. He teaches himself music. He moves to Munich.

And when he's in Munich at the end of the 60s, he meets this woman who's called Donna Gaines. And she's American. She's gone to Munich to be in Hair, the licentious musical, groovy musical, I think. Groovy, is that the approved term? Yeah. And she marries an Austrian called Helmut Sommer. I have no knowledge of what this man is like. So hence Donna Sommer.

Hence Donna Sommer. She anglicizes it to Sommer. Helmut Sommer, I mean, he's a man whose biography has not been written. I think he's an actor. Right. I imagine him dressing in Austrian national dress from time to time. Well, we had a lot of helpful Austrian responses to our story of the- The monkey.

Yeah. The orangutan. Yeah. So perhaps, again, if there are any austrian listeners they could help us with this yeah i don't want to introduce helmut sommer at all but i imagine that when he was in his cups and kind of austrian wine he might express off-color opinions i think that's a little bit harsh you reckon that's too harsh yeah i don't know it's just pure prejudice speaking there just ignore it pure prejudice so anyway they collaborate and they produce probably the most famous of all disco records I feel love. Do you think that's the most famous?

I don't know. I Will Survive, maybe. Yeah. Or the Bee Gees ones. The Bee Gees, but the Bee Gees are sort of... I know they're ersatz. Yeah. But they probably are the most famous. See, there's a bit of attention which listeners will pick up on. Because the staying alive is used for heartbeats, isn't it? It is. Bringing hearts back. Doing mouth to mouth on people. Mouth to mouth resuscitation. Bringing hearts back. Doing mouth-to-mouth on people.

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That's the phrase I was groping for. Yeah. So I would argue that that is possibly. To be fair, there's a hell of a lot of mouth-to-mouth in this podcast. And not just mouth-to-mouth. Right. So anyway, back to the disco phenomenon.

Disco by about 1974. That style of music has definitely seeped out from beyond those original clubs. So there are many imitators of them. That kind of loft scene has become very fashionable. There are claims that basically 100,000 New Yorkers will go out dancing to this very kind of bass heavy kind of music.'s a technical term by the way and people will dress up so this is a big part of the disco scene isn't it tom that you will dress in self-consciously kind of decadent clothes do you think that's fair you know that sort of yeah polyester yeah sort of peter francopan style shirt open to the waist. Incredibly tight.

Yeah. Peter's very, very disco. Incredibly tight trousers, massive flares made of horrendous synthetic fabrics, very lurid colors. But also kind of feather boas. Absolutely. So a faint hint of Elton John and glam rock, I guess, as well on the margins. Definitely. Definitely. Disco, I think, by the way, I think it is a much bigger phenomenon in was absolutely so a faint hint of elton john and glam rock i guess as well on the margins definitely definitely disco i think by the way i think it is a much bigger phenomenon in the u.s than it is in britain i mean there is disco in britain but it's jostling for attention with glam rock and all this

other stuff so actually i think disco in the u.s is taking off at the point in britain where a lot of it is kind of slayed and wizard it's like men from the West Midlands with sort of shiny hats. Yeah, who were not pioneers of gay rights. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to prejudge Slade's attitude towards sexual diversity. I mean, the thing about disco is that it is out and proud. Yeah. And about being gay.

Yes. In a way that presumably music hadn't been before. I think that's true. I think it is much more overtly gay what will come to this. Truman Capote on The Tonight Show in 1974, he has this club of choice, Le Jardin. And he says, he describes on the dance floor, this terrible churning, the whole place churning like a buttermilk machine. And Le Jardin, I mean, the sort of tagline was it was going to be quote a total gay experience so the fact that he's talking about that openly and the fact that they're billing themselves as that tells you how much things have have changed

well in preparation for this i read um bob stanley's short article on disco in his brilliant history of pop music yeah yeah yeah yeah men were forbidden from dancing together in new york until the 1960s at clubs on fire island flashlights were shone at dancers to make sure they weren't doing anything as subversive as even holding hands yes so to go from that in the 60s to disco a decade later i mean it's quite the sea change isn't it oh it is it's a total sea change but just before we get on to the um gay it, which is so important, I think there's definitely a case that disco, the reason for its success at that time is escapism. So we're in 1974. If you think about the context generally, the economy is nowhere near in the shape that it was 10 years earlier. You've had the Arab oil

shock, the OPEC oil shock. Nixon's tried to institute incomes policies at the beginning of the 1970s. The economy goes into a recession in 1974, 75. Vietnam, of course. I mean, they're out of Vietnam. And then Watergate. Watergate. It's a very, very gloomy mood. And it's in New York, which is in a city which is really on its uppers. The New York Daily News in 1975 interviewed the president, Bob Casey, president of the National Association of Discotheque Disc Jockeys. Who knew that there was such a body? And he said, people have always lost themselves in dancing when the economy has been bad.

Discos are now doing exactly the same thing that big dance halls with their crystal chandeliers did in the depression. Everyone is out to spend their unemployment check, their welfare, to lose themselves. So that's obviously a huge part of it. Yeah. Lost in music. Lost in music. The drugs is obviously a very big part of it. So drugs are much more available in the early 1970s than they were in the 60s or the 50s. And part of that is because by this point, quite a few states have already begun to relax their drugs laws. So I think something like 11 states have effectively decriminalized the use of marijuana. 17 more states have reduced the penalties. A task force tell Gerald Ford in, I think, 1975,

you know, there's nothing that can be done. There's no point in a war on drugs because you'll never stamp it out. So there's an acceptance of drugs about 1974, 75, that there just wasn't 10 years earlier. And is this where cocaine is kicking in? So cocaine is definitely kicking in. You know, rock stars, they will go on TV and they will joke about taking cocaine. Now, if you think 10 years earlier, would the Beatles have done that in 1964, 65, 66? No way. When they first talk about taking LSD, it's very controversial. By the mid-70s, it is kind of taken for granted that rock stars are doing lots of drugs. And cocaine has come in

as the New York Times in 1974 calls it the champagne of drugs. There is this sort of sense in the 70s that cocaine is cost-free. There's a belief that it's the champagne of drugs there is this sort of sense in the 70s that cocaine is cost free there's a belief that it's not addictive that nobody suffers by you taking it people not really interested in where it comes from people are making jokes about uh you know at hollywood dinner parties everybody has the kind of gold spoon and the salver that is handed around with the white powder and all that kind of stuff and it is kind of guilt-free in the way that it wasn't previously and actually wouldn't be again is it like ecstasy influencing dance music in the 90s that cocaine becomes popular because of disco or is it disco is influenced by cocaine it's a good question i think both disco and cocaine are obviously trying

to create a high aren't they they are ecstatic experiences yeah so i think they're probably feeding off one another is that the music is written and being produced to enhance the kind of the rush that cocaine gives and then people are taking cocaine because it fits with the style of the music i think it's fair to say they've got a relationship yeah okay now the other thing is, of course, the sexuality. So just to sort of widen the picture out a little bit, every state in the United States had anti-sodomy laws before the 1960s. The first state to repeal them was Illinois in 1962. Of course, there's no national law because that's not how America works. It's not like Britain, where Westminster legislates. That's not how it works in the United States, so it depends on your state. Illinois, first, 1962, and then there's a break until the 1970s. And then it's

the states that you would expect. It's Connecticut, Colorado, Oregon, more obviously liberal states that lead the way. And at at that point homosexuality is still seen well certainly in the 60s it was discussed as a disease so it's lost the kind of some of the moral charge the oppobrium from the victorian era let's say but people talk about it as a sort of terrible medical condition psychiatrist albert ell 1963, the exclusive homosexual is a psychopath. People are talking about therapy. Time magazine tells its readers in 1966, it's a misuse of the sexual faculty. Let's make no pretense that it's anything but a pernicious sickness, all of this sort of stuff. But obviously times are changing. You mentioned the Stonewall riots in 1969. I mean, I don't think they are quite as transformative as popular legend now believes.

Right. But maybe they become significant because people need a kind of dramatic starting point for something that is really starting to kick in by the mid-70s. Exactly. Exactly. So I think there is a definite sense that the plates are shifting in the early 1970s the first really big american reality show an american family where cameras tracked one particular family the son of the family who was called lance came out in the course of the show this is 1973 and now had he done that 10 years earlier, that would have been curtains for him. He'd have been finished. And actually, at the time, the New York Times reviewer laid into him, and an unbelievable, I mean, the New York Times, now so pious, Tom, attacked him for his flamboyant,

leech-like homosexuality, called him a Goya-esque emotional dwarf. But actually, the New York Times got loads of grief for that. People said, come on, that's very harsh. Because he becomes a much-loved reality show character, doesn't he? He does. What's his name? Lance. I can't remember what his surname was. Anyway, who cares? He's called Lance anyway. I'm sure he does. So apologies if he's listening in on this. Yeah, he does. And lots of people listen to this too, and they will Google it, which is great. It's lovely. Yeah, true. Because we like people to be active while they listen to the, which is great. It's lovely. Yeah, true. Because, yeah, we like people to be active while they listen to the rest of history.

So, Dominic, this is all happening, kind of, we've looked at New York so far. Yeah. But the city that is famously associated with gay rights, as well as New York, is San Francisco. Yeah. So San Francisco, it's interesting, actually. San Francisco is where you get a disco look,

but not the sound, I would say. So in San Francisco, there's a gay scene that develops there in the late 60s and 1970s that is arguably the most visible in the world, in particular in a part of San Francisco called the Castro. So that is where Armistead Maupin lives. Yeah. Who writes about Tales of the City. Yeah, absolutely.

So it's in the Castro. There's actually a really really brilliant essay about it by the journalist Francis Fitzgerald who won basically every prize going in non-fiction America for her Vietnam war reporting and she wrote a brilliant essay about going to the Castro and what it was like because she writes about almost anthropologically like it's it's extraordinary that there's this kind of visible gay neighborhood. And she draws attention to the look because she's kind of struck by it. She doesn't take it for granted as we would. Basically dressing with very tight blue jeans, lumberjack shirt, leather jacket.

Tom of Finland. Yeah. The kind of village people look. The moustache, the tight white t-shirt, all of that stuff. That look is being pioneered in san francisco and then it's beginning to spread well it's promoted by french producers isn't it village people yeah but it's a parody so it's a kind of commodification yeah it's a parody of it yeah so that style starts in san francisco and then it's copied in new york i would say so by the

time disco comes into the mainstream which is about about 1974, 75, there is a much more assertive, visible gay community in New York. And disco is seen as an absolute part of that scene. So I'll just read you a radical journalist called Andrew Kopkin's rate at the end of the 70s. He said, disco is the background music for the shops, the bars and the restaurants and the offices where gays go about their business it is music for sex for dancing and for watching the straight world go by it is reassuring and supportive in an important way it is the sensational glue that unites a community

but of course two things are happening by this point as with all subcultures and whether it be you know think about the teddy boys or mod in britain a few years after its emergence it starts to go mainstream and then people are complaining that it's lost its meaning so that's one thing and the second thing that happens particularly to disco is an extremely aggressive backlash and that's what we'll be coming to in the second half we'll see you in a few minutes. Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History and we're looking at disco and Dominic, you left us with disco going mainstream and perhaps nothing illustrates just how mainstream than the fact that the portable peach mobile disco outfit was invited from Atlanta to Washington for Jimmy Carter's inaugural celebrations. Jimmy Carter, very pious Methodist who wore knitwear. Yeah. Cardigan

wearing. I mean, he's the least disco man I can think of. That's right. Disco dancers. So Jimmy Carter, of course, was a former peanut farmer, Tom. Yeah. And they had disco dancers in peanut costumes dancing to the music of the Bicentennial Disco Mix. Yeah. It sounds absolutely chilling. Well, it's quite royal jubilee, isn't it? I mean, we're in no position to throw stones at that one.

It totally is. So this genre of music that, as we described in the first half, had begun in these kind of lofts and in these kind of grimy clubs in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, has gone mainstream by 1977 and has been stripped. Of everything that made it, yeah, subversive. Yeah, everything that made it vaguely cool. But against that, could we just look at probably the most famous cultural product

that emerges from disco, which is Saturday Night Fever? Yeah. Absolutely massive film, the making of John Travolta. Now, I was stunned to learn that it's based on a piece of journalism by a British journalist who'd completely made it up. And actually, what seems to be a film about Brooklyn is actually a film about Shepard's Bush in London. That's right.

I love this fact. So can you tease that out for the listeners? So in 1977, disco had really gone mainstream. There were lots of big hits. So I Feel Love, Donna Summer's hit. That's 1977 and that december saturday night fever comes out it's by far the biggest film in the holiday season in america the only rival to it is star wars and it's been inspired by an article in new york magazine a

year earlier by the british pop journalist nick cohen and he's gone over to America for the first time. He's been doing loads of stuff in British rock magazines and stuff. And disco has gone out beyond this very, very urban heartland. And it's gone into the suburbs. And now there are lots of disco clubs springing up in the kind of suburbs of New York. And the people who are frequenting it are very different from the original, you know, the peace activists and the gay rights are frequenting it are very different from the original,

you know, the peace activists and the gay rights activists and whatnot of the original kind of 1970, 1971 clubs. These are lower middle class, working class kids, white kids, often of Italian or Eastern European heritage. The people who live in these kind of Brooklyn suburbs. So hence John Travolta. Hence John Travolta. European heritage. The people who live in these kind of Brooklyn suburbs. So hence John Travolta. Hence John Travolta. His character is Tony Manero, I think his name is.

So Nick Cohen goes out to these Brooklyn places or whatever, and he just thinks, I'm totally out of my depth here. I don't know what's going on. So he writes the story, and he writes it about a guy, and he says there's a guy called Vincent. But he's basically made Vincent up, and he's based him on a mod that he knew in Shepherd's Bush, a one-time king of Goldhawk Road, as he later admitted. And basically nobody follows this up at all.

People just say, oh, this is an absolutely brilliant story. Love it. Let's make a film of it. So the whole thing is basically a story about mods in the 60s, but dressed up in sort of 70s paraphernalia. And actually, if you watch Saturday Night Fever now, the thing about it is it's so gritty. Yeah, it is. And it's a really kind of brutal film, really. Yeah.

There's a rape scene. There's lots of violence. Kind of suicide. Everybody's poor and alienated. And they're dancing to escape. Yeah. They're dancing to escape the kind of grittiness so that's obviously part of disco's enduring appeal so on the one hand you have the dancing

to escape you have disco as escapism and the other you have disco as excess and that's represented also in 1977 by studio 54 right so this is the one where mick jagger isn't allowed in yeah so the whole issue whether you're allowed in or not. Bianca Jagger famously is photographed going in on a white horse for her birthday. Yeah. When I dug into this, she published a very anguished article quite recently in The Guardian in which she said, listen, I did not ride that horse into the club because I'm an animal rights lover. The horse was already in the club and I allowed myself to be photographed astride it. So what was the horse doing in the club because I'm an animal rights lover. The horse was already in the club and I allowed myself to be photographed to stride it.

So what was the horse doing in the club? If there's ever a club that was going to have a horse in, it was Studio 54. It's all totally over the top. It's kind of groovy. Do you know who went on the opening night, Tom? Sylvester Stallone. Yeah, but not just Sylvester Stallone.

A then obscure property developer called Donald Trump. So Mick Jagger wasn't allowed in, but Donald Trump was. Yeah. Okay. So this kind of sums up how disco perhaps, you know, it's reaching its peak and threatening a kind of over ripeness that might spell collapse. So you've got that.

You've got kind of parody acts like the village people right so the produce people or bony m or bony m we think of them most people i guess say oh they haven't mentioned the village people of bony m that's because they're not kind of disco as cool what they are is disco as just a dressed up novelty record as a joke novelty record so you know rasputin or ymca they are parodies of disco really rather than the original the donna summer gloria gainer kind of disco at its peak of innovation as it were but that's obviously now what we think but of course to the original disco progenitors the village people or or rod stewart doing disco tom do you think i'm sexy and that's not a question i'm that's the name of the no i i understand we would only answer

that question on a bonus episode for our rest of history club members so chic le freak yeah le freak they were originally called alla and the knife wielding punks that's a good name yeah that's a much better name. But punk is starting to come at this point, isn't it? It is, yeah. As a kind of reaction mainly to prog rock, but also to disco. And the whole point of that is that it's pared back, simple. Exactly. So there've always been people who are very suspicious of disco. So indeed, people among the original kind of, what you might think of as this kind of demographic heartland at the beginning of the 70s, which is kind of people who are keen to preserve the spirit of the 60s.

And these people would say there's always this suspicion that disco is, and I quote, unreal, artificially exaggerated, stylish, sleek, smooth, contrived and controlled. Disco places surface over substance, mood over meaning, action over thought. And there's a guy called Albert Goldman. He wrote a biography of John Lennon, very controversial. Yes, scabrous biography. And he said in 1978, the real thrust of disco culture is not towards love of another person, but it's towards love of self. Outside the entrance to every discotheque should be erected a statue of the presiding deity, Narcissus.

Is this homophobic? Is this a way of dressing up criticism of gay culture as a criticism of disco? No, I don't think this is. I think this is actually a not wholly illegitimate criticism. So if you look at something like Studio 54, that feels like it really anticipates some of the excess, the commercialism, the worship of celebrity, the showiness, the sensationalism of the 80s i would say so hence the presence of donald trump has the presence of donald trump and white horses yeah and i think there is an element of there are people who remember the 60s who feel that what has actually happened in the 70s is that coolness counterculture all of that stuff, nightlife, bohemianism, that it has lost any

of its political edge that it had back in 1967, 68. And that actually we've lost all sense of idealism and it's just pure hedonism and that that's not right. But there are criticisms of disco from the right, yeah? Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. Yes. Which are essentially that, you know know it's a load of gay people taking over music and it shouldn't be allowed totally so here's the thing rock music there had always been a kind of sexually subversive element i guess to popular music and that goes right back way beyond the birth of recorded music i mean that goes back to musicals of

vaudeville or something but not to get too bogged down in kind of cultural studies jargon but a lot of kind of rock had been as it were coded in a very masculine heterosexual way hadn't i mean you think of the kind of the led zeppelin kind of bruce springsteen i guess big hair sweaty loads of groupies you know the phallic stuff with the guitar, all of that kind of thing. And there's obviously a lot of white kids who love that. They like the fact that it's very white, that it's very sweaty and aggressive, and that women are kind of commodified and cast aside in the lyrics and all that thing. And they're unsettled by disco's gayness, by the fact that there are black women

that are so prominent that it makes a virtue of effeminacy, of all that kind of thing. And if we just focus on one particular character, so there's a guy called Steve Dahl. So many of our American listeners may have heard his name. He is a shock jock, a prototypical shock jock. And on Christmas Eve in 1978, he was sacked from his job at a

Chicago station called WDAI because they wanted to switch from rock to disco. So he's booted out. Yeah. He's 24 years old and he moves to a rival station. But when he moves to the rival station, in revenge, he launches the Disco Sucks campaign. And he does things like, he does stunts, like he storms a disco for teenagers. On the day that a guy called Van McCoy, the guy, The Hustle, on the day that Van McCoy died of a heart attack, he ritually destroyed a copy of the hustle of his record oh that's a thoughtful way of it's poor form tom it's very bad very bad behavior and there are other people like him is he the guy who does the smashing up of disco demolition yeah at a baseball match we'll come on to this so by this point there is a vogue for smashing up disco

records so there's a san jose disc jockey. He purports to be called Dennis Erectus. And he has a show called Erectus Wrecks a Record where he will play the first few bars of a song and then he'll destroy the record and he'll have the sound of people vomiting over it and it'll be disco records. There's a guy called Insane Darren Wayne who buries disco albums in the sand.

In Michigan, there's the Detroit Rockers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco who are called Dread, and they go around smashing up disco records. I mean, this seems quite odd to be that violently opposed to a form of music. Of course. But why are people doing it? So Steve Dahl and his new radio station, WLUP, had taken advice from a firm of consultants. And these consultants, Burkhardt Abrams Associates, had done a survey of young people between the ages of 15 and 25. And they found that these people thought that disco was, and I quote, superficial, boring, repetitive, and quote, short on balls. They're intimidated by the lifestyle, partly on its emphasis on physical and sartorial perfection, partly because its atmosphere is so

charged with sex. They feel that it is, quote, music for gay people. It hasn't got balls. It's black and gay. So we're in late 70s America. It's the Carter years. The Vietnam War has been lost. The president wears a cardigan and is turning all the lights off to save electricity being attacked by rabbits and being attacked by a killer rabbit exactly so there is a sense that is it too strong tom to say that american masculinity is under attack is in crisis and that there are a generation of white kind of blue collar, maybe kids, boys who hate this kind of thing. And they see disco is somehow in some obscure way, wrapped up with all the humiliations

that they are facing in other spheres. I don't think that's too strong. And I think there's definitely an element of like anti-coastal elites, anti-rich liberals taking cocaine at Studio 54, anti-black, anti-gay. I think this is all wrapped up in it. Yeah. Well, so I'm quoting Bob Stanley again. He says,

Disco eventually fell harder and faster than any other major pop trend. Yeah. And it's extraordinary. And the moment that, you've mentioned it already, the moment that sums this up is the Disco Demolition Derby, or our American listeners would say, no doubt, Derby, on the 12th of July, 1979.

So what this is, the Chicago White Sox. So it's interesting that it's in Chicago, a kind of heartland city, not a coastal city. Chicago White Sox are rubbish. They're in terrible form, and they've got a double header game against the Detroit Tigers. And basically, to drum up custom, their promotions manager says, any fan who brings a disco record to be destroyed will get in for a cheap rate for 98 cents. And Steve Dahl is going to take charge of this, this Disco Sucks guy. So he promotes it on his show and he's going to be in charge of destroying the records. 50,000 people turned up, Tom,

with tickets, including thousands more without tickets. And many of them are absolutely hammered on drink or drugs. Yeah. So they sort of storm

the turnstiles. They get into the stadium. The Right Sox play their first game and they lose. They're humiliated by the Detroit Tigers. Then there's the interlude with the destruction of the disco records. The crowd's going to go berserk. 50,000 people banging and they're chanting,

Disco sucks. Steve Dahl comes on and he's dressed in military fatigues and a helmet. And he has a box with 10,000 which he detonates i've seen the video footage yeah and the chicago white socks clearly had not agreed to this or there's been some communications breakdown because it blows a hole in the field yeah that's not good is it and there's like remains of disco records everywhere and at that point half the crowd goes berserk and invades the pitch starting fires, demolishing bits of the stadium and stuff.

And eventually, riot police have to clear the stadium. Now, needless to say, they don't get to play that second game. They forfeit the second game. Not that they were going to win it anyway. No. Obviously, that's not why Disco fell from grace. But that moment... No, it's a symptom, not a cause.

Yeah, that becomes the symbolic moment when Disco falls from grace. Because actually, that's a symptom, not a cause. Yeah. That becomes the symbolic moment when disco falls to grace. Because actually, that's the middle of 1979. By the autumn of 1979, disco has totally vanished from the US singles chart. What's interesting about that, and a bit odd, is that it is from Chicago that house music will emerge. And house music will underpin the revival revival of dance culture and and clubbing in the 90s now this will amaze our listeners or some of them but you are the michael gove of

history aren't you thank you because michael gove the british cabinet minister is famous for his love of dancing and he will go to Aberdeen or something in his suit and go clubbing on his own. And you too are a great lover of house music, are you not? Well, I was. Not now. I remember about three weeks after Katie was born, my oldest daughter, and I went and I just had a brilliant time. Then I thought, this is so undignified. From this point on, I'm going to behave as I should according to my age. Oh, really? And that is a vow I have always stuck to.

Oh, my word. Yes. So there's an incentive for people. If you become an Athelstan of the rest of history, so our elite members, maybe you can persuade Tom to hold one of our Athelstan get togethers in a nightclub. Well, so there was a club in Brixton called The Fridge. The Fridge. And they had a session called Love Muscle.

Love Muscle. Yeah, it's quite disco, isn't it? Great days. That's fair. Yeah. So I think what's happened is that at the end of the 1970s, one of the reasons that disco falls from grace is simply generational turnover.

So if you're 20 in 1970, you're Tom Holland. You're 30 in 1980, and you want to do something a bit more dignified. You're too old for it. You know, you've got kids, all of that kind of thing. But also, of course, if you're 20 in 1980 and you want to do something a bit more dignified you're too old for it you know you've got kids all of that kind of thing but also of course if you're 20 in 1980 you don't want to listen to granddad's disco no you want something new don't you so that's an element of it yeah madonna i also think there is a deeper thing which is that at the end of the 1970s there is generally a backlash against gay rights and against what's seen as the perm of the 1970s, there is generally a backlash against gay rights

and against what's seen as the permissive liberalism. And there are lots of examples of that. But also, Dominic, I mean, that is tied in with, of course, the great calamity that hits gay community in the United States and then around the world. AIDS. Yeah. Yes, of course. And I think there's a sense in which, so just on the backlash, there have been people, politicians. So the most famous one is a woman in Florida called Anita Bryant, who was a singer who had promoted orange juice. And she launched a campaign called Save Our Children and gets loads of attention for it in 1977. And there was indeed, there was a referendum called the Briggs Initiative in California a year later. Again, all this stuff about saving children.

So there's a lot of that. And then there's a lot of stuff about what's seen as the unhealthiness. This is including from within the gay community itself. People talking about the unhealthiness of these clubs in New York and stuff, clubs with slightly disconcerting names, the Ramrod mine shaft the cock ring but these presumably are more kind of the sex is foregrounded in those clubs rather than the music the mine shaft yeah one critic called it um one part erotic paradise one part open wound and somebody else called it the mount rushmore of filth which um you can use your own imagination.

So AIDS comes, the first reports of AIDS, one reason that they're perhaps not taken as seriously as they should have been, is because they come in the context of a wider discussion about sexually transmitted diseases, about massive surge in hepatitis, gonorrheainal infections and so on among gay men and actually the public health clinics in san francisco and new york are already at the center of big controversies at the end of the 70s because they are sort of saying calm down slow down there's too much of this and then other people are saying oh that's very homophobic of you you're trying to police our lifestyle and all of that kind of thing so actually the first reports of people with pneumonia it takes time for them to realize that it's something something new yeah so the very first report it's in a gay paper the new york native in 1981 reporting rumors that an exotic new disease

has hit the gay community in new y. The headline is disease rumors largely unfounded because there is a sort of an understandable impulse to say, you know, this is just yet another slur. This is yet another kind of attempt to put us back in our box and to identify us with unhealthiness, which we don't deserve. Anyway, so against that background, I think the sort of what you might call the more innocent hedonism of early 70s disco, the kind of love saves the day, let's all have a wonderful time,

that's kind of lost its luster, I would say, by the end of the 70s and by the early 1980s. And of course, I mean, you mentioned house music, but obviously hip hop. Hip hop is also beginning to emerge from places like the Bronx and it's hip hop that's cool and disco is beginning to seem partly because of the boney m stuff and the village people yeah of course it's just a bit of a joke yeah it's silly

in a way that it hadn't been silly in 1972 or 73 but that kind of euphoric feeling of hedonism does come back totally yeah so you know it goes in cycles doesn doesn't it? It's a constant, isn't it, in musical history? The desire for escapism, for hedonism, for release. The interesting thing is whether that tension between being a very individual narcissistic experience, you dressing up and dancing just for yourself, or are you doing it to commune with other people? Tom, when you were going to the house clubs, were you a narcissist or were you communing? No, I was communing with other people, because it's the difference between cocaine and ecstasy, isn't it?

Right. Okay. I mean, I'm not a massive enthusiast for either. But cocaine is more about narcissism and ecstasy famously is about the communal experience. And so those drugs shape the dance cultures that they generate. They definitely do. And on that bombshell- What a bombshell.

Thank you, Dominic. They definitely do. And on that bombshell. What a bombshell. Thank you, Dominic. DJ Dominic. Yeah. This is one of my deleted scenes from my book, Mad as Hell. Yeah, and you've left out quite a lot, haven't you? I have.

There was a load more stuff about the mineshaft. Yeah. You plumb the depths. Yes, which people are probably happy to have been spared. You dig deep, but not on this podcast. But thank you very much.

Wonderful to see another chunk of your vanished masterpiece brought to light. All right. Bye-bye, everybody. See you next time. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment

it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works

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