From Disco Revolution to Disco Demolition: Triumph to Tragedy in the Disco Era
Eve Lazarski Junior Division Historical Paper Word Count: 2,500
INTRODUCTION
On July 12, 1979, Steve Dahl, a popular Chicago rock station radio host, blew up hundreds of Disco records in the middle of the baseball field at Comiskey Park in Chicago during an afternoon double header baseball game. Promoted as the “Disco Demolition” the event was seen as a way to increase attendance by tapping into youthful resentment and anger about the Disco music and lifestyle. Ninety eight cents and one Disco record got you into the game. After Dahl blew up the records, the field flooded with people rioting and chanting,”Disco sucks! Disco sucks!”1 The second game of the two game double header was forfeited due damage to the field.2
Although Disco music started out in underground gay and african american clubs and house parties in New York City, by the late 1970's Disco had taken over popular culture. The
1977 movie Saturday Night Fever and it’s best selling soundtrack solidified its place in popular culture and extended the reach of Disco to every corner of the United States.3 Disco was so popular many radio stations began to ditch rock music and adopt all Disco formats. It pushed rock music, their fans and their identity to the margins. For hard core lovers of rock and roll, like
Steve Dahl, who was fired from the all-rock Chicago radio station WDAI when it adopted an all
Disco format, this was not acceptable.4 They wanted Disco to die.
While some scholars argue that the Disco Demolition was a tragedy. They see it as an event attended by people who not only hated Disco music, but the black and gay performers and fans. Other researchers say the Disco Demolition was a harmless promotion that tapped into pre-existing attitudes and ideas about an already unpopular musical genre and the event
1 “On This Day In History, Disco Died In Chicago.” CBS Chicago, CBS Chicago, 12 July 2018, chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/07/12/disco-demolition-steve-dahl/. 2 Dahl, Steve, et al. Disco Demolition: the Night Disco Died. Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2016. 3“Gold & Platinum.” RIAA, www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=default-award&ar=BEE+GEES&ti=SATURDAY+NIGHT+FEVE R+(SOUNDTRACK). 4 Dahl, Steve, et al. Disco Demolition: the Night Disco Died. Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2016. was just harmless teenage fun5. However, the Disco Demolition is actually a combination of these two ideas. Although the organizers did not intend the event to be racist or homophobic, it was based off of hate for the Disco genre and led to thousands of people rioting.
Ultimately, the Disco music genre was a triumph for the African American and Gay people who were at the forefront of music for the first time on an equal playing field. The 1970’s disco era enabled and allowed minority populations to assert and establish their own unique identities. At the same time, the event of the Disco Demolition was a tragic and unfortunate end to the Disco era.
Disco Music
Disco music is characterized by a consistent and throbbing 4/4 beat, at least 140 beats per minute, often includes “Disco breaks”, extended instrumental segments, and lush orchestral or digital instrumentation. Disco features more artificial sounds than natural sounds, and is very hard to reproduce live. In Disco clubs, disc jockeys would mix the beginning of one song into another so it was impossible to tell where one song began and the other ended.
The first songs that could be described as typical “Disco music” descended from a combination of Soul Music, Gospel Music, music from Detroit’s Motown label, and Philadelphia or “Philly Soul” music originating from the Sigma Sound Studio. From Gospel, Disco adopted the “gospel break”, which gradually removes instruments and then builds the song back up by adding one instrument at a time. This production technique was used so much it became known as the “Disco Break”. Disco also adopted the 4/4 or “four-on-the-floor” beat from Motown and orchestral instruments from Philadelphia Soul.
The group MFSB (Mother, Father, Sister, Brother) - a group of over 30 musicians who were the house band at Philadelphia Sigma Sound Studio - are the ones who truly took
5 Ibid,pg 12. Philadelphia Soul and turned it into Disco.6 Known for their lush productions that featured strings and horns, musical scholars point to numerous songs they provided orchestration for as being the origin of the disco sound.7 According to Peter Shapiro, a music critic and author of
“Turn the Beat Around, The Secret History of Disco”, the drumming and singing in the 1973 song “The Love I Lost” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes established the Disco sound.
“While drummer Earl Young basically created the next two decades of dance music with his snare pattern and hi-hat work on ‘The Love I Lost’, it was perhaps Pendergrass taking gospel sermonizing to new levels of excess that really marked Disco as a separate entity from soul.”8 In other words, Shapiro these musical elements created by members of MFSB were the musical foundation of Disco. In Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture by Alice Echols, MFSB drummer Earl Young explained that he played 4/4 on the bass drum in order to make different patterns on the cymbals which was a clever inverting Motown’s rhythm.9 These music patterns became the signature Disco rhythm.
The next step in the musical development of Disco was lead by DJ’s in New York City dance clubs. DJ’s and studio producers learned to mix instrumentals and stretch songs to create longer, more danceable versions of songs. In New York City, Tom Moulton was the first producer to mix Disco records. Moulton would take a record and separate the tracks, then put the instrumentation at the forefront so that the vocals weren’t the main element. His real accomplishment was mixing different songs together so that you never had to leave the dance floor. According to Moulton getting people to stay dancing was the point. ”It's funny, watching all the kids dancing, this is in Fire Island,10 it was so exciting to see, and you could feel the energy
6 “MFSB: The History.” MFSB, www.thenewmfsb.com/html/history.htm. 7 Echols, Alice. Hot stuff: Disco and the remaking of American culture. WW Norton & Company, 2010. 8 Shapiro, Peter. Turn the beat around: The secret history of disco. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. p.145 9 Echols, Alice, pg 17. 10 Fire Island is located near Long Island. It was a well known resort town for gay men. and the excitement, but it was only three minutes worth.” Said Tom Moulton. ”And you could sense when this new song was being mixed in, it was sort of limbo. And I said, my God, you could almost feel the excitement that they were trying to get and I said, God if I could only stretch it out and make it longer to keep this feeling and maybe it could bring them up to another level.”11 He did this by repeating the end sections of each song and stretching them out so that they would blend together and you would keep dancing into the next song, not knowing the song had ended.
As DJ’s continued to mix and experiment with this new type of dance music, their musical style became popular in underground gay night clubs in New York. According to Echols
“Gay men were among the first and most legendary Deejay’s, its earliest audience, and at the height of the glitterball mania practically ran the industry.”12 Going to a gay club was merely a place to congregate and meet other people. In an era when gay people could be arrested for holding hands, dancing to upbeat joyful music was a liberating experience.
Embracing gay identity and empowerment through Disco music was partly possible because of the 1969 Stonewall uprising was a turning point in the power and perception of gay people. The Stonewall Inn was one of the most popular underground gay bars in the Greenwich
Village neighborhood of New York City.13 At the Stonewall Inn, you could dance with whoever you wanted whenever you wanted. In order to maintain this freedom, the Stonewall Inn made regular payoffs to the police. But on June 27th, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn without any warning. However, the patrons fought back and the police were under siege. The Stonewall
Inn riots marked a turning point in the gay power movement and a shifting in consciousness.
11 “Rock and Roll; Make it Funky; Interview with Tom Moulton [Part 1 of 2].” WGBH Media Library & Archives. Web. February 17, 2019.
Not only were gay’s some of the biggest listeners of Disco, but many Disco artists were gay, though most were not out at the time.14 While Disco did not erase homophobia, it helped take major steps in the gay rights movement, one of the triumphs of Disco. It also allowed black and white singers and producers to be seen on the same footing-no longer ‘black’ and ‘white’ music as in the 60’s, but just music.
Disco’s Rise in Popularity
While in the beginning of Disco mostly gay and racial minorities listened to and created
Disco, it soon became a very popular and mainstream form of music and culture. At first, there were small Disco-like clubs New York City, but once Disco developed its distinctive sound the popularity of this music exploded.
By 1979, the charts consisted of 43% Disco, according to the Billboard Top 100 year end list15. Disco was a 4 billion dollar industry and small Discos were popping up everywhere, according to the New York Times.16 Even a city like Milwaukee, Wisconsin did not escape the
Disco trend. Milwaukee bars and clubs joined the trend. In 1977, Oscars Disco Cabaret invested $80,000 in pulsating dance floor with 600 lights and a 20 speaker sound system. The
Milwaukee Brewers joined the trend by hosting Disco dancing contests before games during the
1978 and 1979 season.17 Dozens of Discos dotted Milwaukee.
14 “Top Gay Disco Artists.” Last.fm, www.last.fm/tag/gay disco/artists. 15 “1979 Archive.” Billboard, Billboard, www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1979/hot-100. 16 Weinraub, Bernard. “ARTS IN AMERICA; Here's to Disco, It Never Could Say Goodbye.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2002, www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/arts/arts-in-america-here-s-to-disco-it-never-could-say-goodbye.html. 17Prigge, Matthew J., and Matthew J. Prigge. “Disco Inferno! A Brief History of Milwaukee's Discos.” Shepherd Express, Shepherd Express, 1 Feb. 2016, shepherdexpress.com/news/what-made-milwaukee-famous/disco-inferno-brief-history-milwaukee-s-discos/#/question s/. The turning point in Disco becoming a national trend came from the 1977 movie,
Saturday Night Fever. This movie stars John Travolta, playing Tony Manero, a paint store clerk who lives for the weekend nights at the disco. The movie portrays a idealistic and false version of discos at the time. While this movie made Disco popular, it also erased it’s gay and black roots. According to music critic and historian Jim Derogatis “It was the music of outsiders but by the time you get to Saturday Night Fever, it's the music of posers and wannabes and charlatans.”18 Most discos in 1977 to 1980 were straight and white. In fact, some clubs would often make membership for black or gay people difficult. In the first year after opening,the exclusive members only, Park Avenue, Milwaukee's “most posh and exclusive disco to date” there were 5 racial discrimination complaints filed in 1978 alleging the membership policies were different for black and white patrons.19
Disco Demolition
On July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago a large wooden box filled with Disco records were blown up in between breaks in a double header baseball game between the
Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers. Damage and rioting caused the second game to be cancelled.
The Disco Demolition was one of many promotional activities the club used to increase slumping attendance. Earlier in the season they hosted a “Disco Night” and a “Belly Dancer
Night”. People could attend the game for 98 cents and one disco record. The owners and security expected a maximum of 30,000 people at the event instead 70,000 attended. Over 30 dumpsters of Disco records were collected.
18 Jim and Greg, director. Disco and Seymour Stein. Show 534, soundopinions.org/show/668/. 19 Prigge, Matthew J., and Matthew J. Prigge. “Disco Inferno! A Brief History of Milwaukee's Discos.” Shepherd Express, Shepherd Express, 1 Feb. 2016, shepherdexpress.com/news/what-made-milwaukee-famous/disco-inferno-brief-history-milwaukee-s-discos/. The organizer of the event was Steve Dahl, a 24 year old rock DJ from Chicago’s FM 98
WLUP “The Loop”. He scratched Disco records live on the air, broke Disco records on his head and started a fan group called the “Insane Coho Lips Army” which was “dedicated to the eradication and elimination of the dreaded musical disease known as DISCO.”20
Between games, Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, Steve’s radio co-host, went to center field to blow up the disco records stored in a large wooden box. They were accompanied by Lorelei
Shark, the spokesmodel for the Loop FM-98 station. Dahl led the crowd, chanting “Disco
Sucks!” before blowing up the records. When they blew up, they scattered all over the field and left a big gash in the playing field. Dahl did a victory lap in his jeep and then left the field. During this time, the security team was focused on the entrances and exits and stopping people from entering the stadium and not on the action on the field. Hundreds of fans stormed and destroyed the field. They lit bonfires and played mini baseball games.21
The intent and meaning of the Disco Demolition is mixed. Some people say the Disco
Demolition was a homophobic, misogynistic and racist event in disguise of an event to kill a music genre. Headlines like “Even in 1979, Disco Demolition was racist and homophobic”22 and
“Homophobia was behind all the anti-Disco hate of the 70’s”23 make it seem like racism and homophobia was behind the Disco Demolition. According to Rolling Stone music critic Dave Marsh who was writing a 1979 year end review, “White males, eighteen to thirty-four, are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks and Latins, and therefore they’re most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost
20 Dahl, Steve; Hoekstra, Dave (August 2016). Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died. Foreword by Bob Odenkirk and photographs provided by Paul Natkin. Chicago, Illinois: Curbside Splendor Publishing.pg 41 21 Ibid, pg 54 22 Chicago Tribune. “Even in 1979, Disco Demolition Was Racist and Homophobic.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 29 June 2017, www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/ct-even-in-1979-disco-demolition-was-racist-and-homopho bic-20170629-story.html. 23 “Homophobia Was behind All the Anti-Disco Hate of the 70s.” The DataLounge, www.datalounge.com/thread/12190356-homophobia-was-behind-all-the-anti-disco-hate-of-the-70s. without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist.”24 Even today some music writers believe the source of the backlash against Disco to be found in racism and homophobia. “Not everybody loved it, people who were excluded were straight white men and it was straight white men who came up with the Disco Sucks campaign because they were threatened by it. That phrase itself - Disco Sucks - is homophobia personified. They weren’t protesting a drum machine, they were protesting a deeper sociological problem they had with this movement.
They were protesting a culture.”25
However, other people say the event was more about a backlash against a musical genre whose exclusive high class tastes had overstayed and oversaturated its welcome. Going to a Disco was very expensive. Not only did you have to pay for a suit and fancy clothes, but just getting into the disco was overpriced. According to Steve Dahl, the problem he and members of his Coho Army had with Disco was an economic one rather than problems with sexual or racial identity. ”Mainstream Disco’s glamorous New York image didn’t resonate with fans hobbled by a bad economy, high inflation, and the loss of many Rust Belt industrial jobs.”26
At heart, the Disco Demolition was just hate towards a genre of music-but certainly for some of the rioters, it was not about the music, but what it stood for. Disco was about having fun and dancing, but it was created largely by gays, blacks, and women, not the straight white males. However, the hate towards the genre was more about the culture rather than sexuality or race. In 1979, Disco was no longer closely with the gay counterculture. It had become diluted and popularized by big-name labels, and so was generally hated by the people who didn’t fit in and by the rockers, who’s 60’s popularity had been shoved aside.
24 Marsh, Dave, and Dave Marsh. “The Flip Sides of 1979.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2018, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-flip-sides-of-1979-113608/. 25 im and Greg, director. Disco and Seymour Stein. Show 534, soundopinions.org/show/668/. 26 Dahl, Steve; Hoekstra, Dave (August 2016). Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died. Foreword by Bob Odenkirk and photographs provided by Paul Natkin. Chicago, Illinois: Curbside Splendor Publishing.pg 41 CONCLUSION
For African Americans, Latinos, Gays, and other marginalized groups, Disco music was a triumph for establishing their identity in American culture and empowering them to assert their identities. The creativity and innovation of African American musicians was embraced and celebrated. Members of the gay community gained confidence on the dance floor and were empowered and emboldened to assert themselves and their culture into the mainstream. At the same time, the backlash against Disco music and Disco culture at the Disco Demolition represents a tragedy and tragic end to an era. Although the Disco Demolition may not have been motivated by homophobic or racist ideas intentionally, it still was based off hate for a genre that could have gone much further had it not been cut short by both the mainstream and Disco
Demolition.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary sources
“Rock and Roll; Make it Funky; Interview with Tom Moulton [Part 1 of 2].” WGBH Media Library & Archives. Web. February 17, 2019.
I used this interview mainly for background knowledge and a quote. It was helpful in broadening my knowledge of music industry at the time. It also helped me understand mixing records. He was one of the first people to mix disco records.
“On This Day In History, Disco Died In Chicago.” CBS Chicago, CBS Chicago, 12 July 2018, chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/07/12/disco-demolition-steve-dahl/.
I used this news report so that I could actually see what was going on in the Disco Demolition, instead of relying on accounts. It provided great footage.
Secondary Sources
Echols, Alice. Hot stuff: Disco and the remaking of American culture. WW Norton & Company, 2010.
This book provided tons of background information and many quotes. Alice Echols was a DJ in the 1970's at the Rubaiyat of Ann Arbor, Michigan. As such, she has a unique insight into the disco years. Hot Stuff also provided chapters on the culture of disco with it's gay and african american roots.
Dahl, Steve, et al. Disco Demolition: the Night Disco Died. Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2016.
This book was written by the man who organized and made Disco Demolition. It contains many great interviews and I used many quotes from it. It shows many different perspectives which is important as there are many conflicting opinions about Disco Demolition.
“1979 Archive.” Billboard, Billboard, www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1979/hot-100. This was helpful in providing me with the most popular songs of 1979. I counted the disco songs out of the 100 and came up with 43 disco songs, giving me the percentage.
Shapiro, Peter. Turn the beat around: The secret history of disco. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. P.145
I used this book mainly for background information, though I did use a few quotes. It was helpful in understanding the music itself, not just the culture.
Jim and Greg, director. Disco and Seymour Stein. Show 534, soundopinions.org/show/668/.
I listened to this podcast on a car trip last summer. It inspired me to look into this topic for
National History Day. This podcast gave me a better understanding of the disco sound and era.
I also used some quotes from it.
Weinraub, Bernard. “ARTS IN AMERICA; Here's to Disco, It Never Could Say Goodbye.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2002, www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/arts/arts-in-america-here-s-to-disco-it-never-could-say-goo dbye.html.
“Top Gay Disco Artists.” Last.fm, www.last.fm/tag/gay disco/artists.
“The 20 Best-Selling Movie Soundtracks of All Time.” Mental Floss, Mental Floss, 13 Dec. 2018, mentalfloss.com/article/567464/best-selling-movie-soundtracks-of-all-time.
“Gold & Platinum.” RIAA, www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=default-award&ar=BEE+GEES&ti=SATURDAY+ NIGHT+FEVER+(SOUNDTRACK).
“MFSB: The History.” MFSB, www.thenewmfsb.com/html/history.htm.