Disco is not a four-letter word . . .
Disco blossomed from funk, soul, electronics, and measured micro-beats. The smash 1977 film Saturday Night Fever crossed the eclectic nocturnal sound into a mainstream landscape where it could be easily satirized. Dahl seized the moment.
He was spot on.
Consider this: The Villlage People’s 1978 smash disco hit “Y.M.C.A.” remains a standard at many of baseball’s major and minor league stadiums, including Wrigley Field. The Village People were created by French producer and former hairdresser Jacques Morali. In the 2010 Alice Echols book Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture Village People “Leatherman” Glenn Hughes believed Morali, who was gay, was intrigued with gays taking on strong, positive, American stereotypes like the cowboy, Native American, cop, and sailor.
Disco’s global reach is rarely discussed, but it was powerful and has more artistic staying power than many of the novelty hits (like Village People, Lipps, Inc., Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting”) that cracked America’s Top 40 charts.
Between 1978 and 1985, the soundtracks for Pakistani films in Lollywood were shaped by the magnificent disco, electro pop, and seminal house music of Ann Data. “Disco Dildar (‘Party Time’)” resurfaced in 2015 as part of the Sounds of Wonder! series on Finders Keepers Records. Would Reggaeton have happened without rapid fire, salsa-disco beats?
On another level, The Original Mother’s, known colloquially as just “Mother’s,” is the longest running dance club in America. In 1999, Paul Rosenfeld, founder of CASEO, the Chicago Area Social & Entertainment Organization, told the Chicago Sun-Times, “It’s the longest running dance club in Chicago under single ownership that I’m aware of. As far as the rest of the country, I can’t say.”
Tom Gorsuch opened Mother’s in 1968 in a former 1940s-era cafeteria. Gorsuch bought the space for $25,000 when it was a dance music club called the Spirit of ‘76. He re-named the club The Original Mother’s after the cocktail lounge featured in the 1960s detective television series Peter Gunn. Scenes from the 1986 Rob Lowe and Demi Moore film About Last Night were shot in the 8,500 square foot club, framed by red wooden walls.
Dahl made a promotional appearance at Mother’s a few months before Disco Demolition. He arrived in a Jeep wearing his general’s uniform. Dahl wore a large, handmade cardboard razor blade as a nod to the popularity of cocaine. He also carried a soup ladle spray painted gold to represent a cocaine spoon. Mother’s held about 600 people for a concert, and the place was packed.
Gorsuch ran the club from 1968 until 1981. “In the late 1970s it became kind of a discotheque,” he said without a smile. “We shut down for three months in 1981 and remodeled. No question disco hurt us. Bands faded out. Chaka Khan was our house band [with Ask Rufus]. Wayne Cochran [and the C.C. Riders] played here on a Sunday night when we just got our lease. Styx played here. Hugh Hefner came here with [painter] LeRoy Neiman. But after we reopened we went to disco. We never had a DJ before that. We put in tables and chairs, we livened it up. We were packed.
TOP TEN SELLING DISCO RECORDS (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER) AT DUSTY GROOVE, FALL 2015
“The perceptions of disco are always evolving,” said store owner Rick Wojcik. “So the big hits of mainstream disco years have really been shaken off as folks dig so much deeper, [globally] as well. All compilations show there’s a very strong interest in disco from the late 1970s that goes way past clichés and hits. The scene was far deeper than any Disco Demolition crowd would have known.”
- “Bombay Disco” (Various artists) Disco Hits from Hindi Films 1979 to 1985 (Cultures of Soul)
- “Philadelphia Roots” Funk Soul & the Roots of Disco 1965 - 73 (Soul Jazz, UK)
- “British Hustle” (Various) “The Sound of British Funk & Disco 1974 to 1982 (Soul Jazz, UK)
- “Disco Dildar” DIY Disco From the Pakistani Pop Workshop (Finders Keepers, UK)
- “Disco Italia” Essential Italian Disco 1977 to 1985 (Strut, UK)
- “Overdose of the Holy Ghost” (Various), The Sound of Gospel Through the Disco & Boogie Eras (Z Records, UK)
- “Real Sound of Chicago & Beyond” (Various), Underground Disco and Boogie (BBE, UK)
- “Lagos Disco Inferno” 1975 to 1981, 12 Red Hot Slices From The Golden Era of Nigerian Disco (Academy)
- “Hustle - Reggae Disco: Kingston London New York” (Various), (Soul Jazz UK)
- “Disco Love” (Various) Rare Disco and Soul Uncovered (2 CDS), (BBE, UK).
“Everybody likes a good dancer.”
Detroit Tigers pitcher and organ player Denny McLain visited Mother’s at the dawn of disco. McLain was married to Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau’s daughter and the Boudreau family lived in the south suburb of Dolton. Future disco singer Rod Stewart visited Mother’s decked out in a yellow suit, according to Gorsuch.
Mother’s has always had a 4 a.m. liquor license. Mother’s always had disco-era pick up lines like: “Are those pants sprayed with Windex? Because I can see myself in them.”
Veteran Chicago club disc jockey and cultural historian Joe Bryl said, “During the Disco Demolition period I would go to Mother’s to see fledgling punk bands. I saw the B-52s there. Those were pre-Wax Trax! [the Lincoln park record store] shows. [In 1979 and ‘80] Wax Trax! would book the Buzzcocks and Magazine to play Mother’s. Maybe one hundred people came to see a Cramps show there. You would go there, and there were rock ‘n’ roll guys from 87th and Cicero that thought we were a bunch of faggots because we were listening to this peculiar music. Later it was interesting how bands like Talking Heads and P.I.L. incorporated disco sounds.”
Chris Ryan is Vice President of the Lodge Management Group, the umbrella company for Division Street area bars like Mother’s, the Lodge Tavern, Hangee Uppe, and She-Nannigan’s House of Beer. The Lodge Tavern opened in 1957, across the street from the future Mother’s.
Ryan was a bartender at the Lodge and at Mother’s. “Dyed-in-the-wool Cubs fans are always at the Lodge,” Ryan said. “Forever. Mother’s is opposite. It’s all White Sox. The irony is Mother’s is on the north side of the street and the Lodge is on the south side of the street. Mother’s is more blue collar. Sports announcer Harry Caray? He hit every bar on the strip: Butch’s, McGuire’s, the Lodge, and here.”
Harry Caray was all about excess. If he had looked a little deeper he would have enjoyed the excess in disco, such as Donna Summer’s 1975 orgasmic “Love to Love You Baby,” the first disco song to take up an entire side of an album. The song’s producer and co-writer Giorgio Moroder pioneered the kick drum on each beat of the song, which became known as “four on the floor.”
Longtime Chicago rock radio personality Mitch Michaels said, “Disco music didn’t bother me that much. I went to some [disco] clubs, but it was more to pick up chicks and get laid. There were a bunch of disco clubs on Mannheim Road. Disco came from soul music. It is kind of a natural progression in some ways. Look at the Motown bands of the 1960s, those guys were up there in matching silk suits with three or four gals singing in flashy dresses. It is all part of show business.”
The popular Rush Street disco Faces was a private club with a door guy that had up to 16,000 card-carrying members. Faces was Chicago’s best known discotheque from 1971 until it closed in 1989. People danced all night under clouds of cigarette smoke, bubbles, and mist from a fog machine.
“You had to be a member,” said Michaels. “But I could get in there periodically. In 1975, part of Led Zeppelin’s tour was based out of Chicago. The Zeppelin airplane was parked at O’Hare. I got off the air one night at 1:30 in the morning. A couple of buddies and I are having cocktails at Faces, and I turn to my right and Robert Plant is standing next to me having a drink, and we chatted for five or ten minutes. That’s my favorite recollection of Faces.”
Chicagoan Clinton Ghent hosted “Soul Train” from 1971 until 1979, replacing Don Cornelius, who relocated to Los Angeles. “There were only three black people in Chicago who had memberships to Faces,” Ghent told me for a 2009 Chicago Sun-Times interview. “Me, Dr. Nate Clark, and Don Cornelius. I’m not bragging on myself, but I did The Hustle so great that Jimmy Rittenberg tried to get me to teach The Hustle. Disco did bring up the pay scale for artists.”
Jim Rittenberg was general manager and emcee of Faces. The Chicago native helped design the club as an upscale joint to take a date after dinner, offering a more sophisticated scene than the Division Street bars just north of Faces. Rittenberg worked with the White Sox to host “Disco Nights” before Disco Demolition.
A 1979 White Sox program promoted an upcoming game with the Seattle Mariners: “The Seattle series opens Monday night, June 18, and it will feature a twenty-minute rugby game featuring Chicago’s finest women ruggers. June 19 will be Disco Night, with a dance contest preceding the game . . . ”
“We had twenty [raised] platforms that night,” Rittenberg recalled over lunch at Gibson’s on Rush Street, just a block north from the former Faces. “Each platform was about twelve-by-eight feet. They started to the right and left of home plate and went out into right and left field so everyone could see. We started with twenty couples. They were all dressed up disco style. People cheered and we had judges. We already had one contest to screen the dancers. Between our judges and applause we narrowed it down. I don’t remember who the hell won. It was pretty well received. They drew around 17,000, [maybe] 20,000.
“People forget Saturday Night Fever was inspired by Faces,” Rittenberg continued. “Studio 54 [in New York City] didn’t open until 1978 or ‘79 and they closed in ‘81. We opened up years before and stayed open years after. We got everybody they got, plus Sinatra, Bob Hope, Norman Mailer, and Gore Vidal. Bonnie Swearingen [wife of late Chicago Amoco oil executive John Swearingen] would bring them in. We’d open at nine o’clock and she’d go, ‘Could you do the fog for Mr. Mailer?’”
Jimmy Rittenberg and Tom Dreesen
Rittenberg, born and raised in West Garfield Park, was a White Sox season ticket holder. Mike Veeck called Rittenberg about the disco dance contest. He was all in. “To me, Mike Veeck, Steve Dahl, and Jimmy De Castro [the former WLUP general manager who didn’t arrive in Chicago until 1981] are the three best promo guys ever,” Rittenberg said. “Jeff Schwartz was sharp; he was a good promoter, too. But I didn’t care. I did disco, big bands, country western, rock ‘n’ roll. You may not order a steak, order the fish. Music was our menu, not our way of life. But Steve took it on as a movement. He destroyed disco. We started playing Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “The Love I Lost” in 1973 at Faces. We played it when the bands went on break and it filled the dance floor. In 1976 it filled the dance floor. In 1978 it became known from soul to disco and filled the dance floor. After disco died in 1981, we played the same song for several more years. We called it ‘dance music’. Then we started playing ‘My Sharona’ [The Knack’s 1979 hit] and Michael Jackson stuff. Steve destroyed the whole aura of disco. It happened to us, but it didn’t knock us out of business. It made us sharper.”
After hosting a disco dance contest just a month before what became known as Disco Demolition, Rittenberg was surprised by the turnout for the WLUP event.
“I was flabbergasted. I knew Steve Dahl had a huge following from the abuse we took. His fans walked by Faces and said ‘disco sucks.’ My nephew was a busboy at Faces and he couldn’t even tell his friends he worked there. I used to own a part of the Park West [the Lincoln Park nightclub]. Teenage Radiation opened for [comic] Gallagher one night and Gallagher was so pissed. Nobody was there to see him. He’s sort of a soft talker and the crowd is yelling, “Coho! Coho! [a reference to Dahl’s Insane Coho Lips]. I was afraid of Steve’s crowd.
“I did Jukebox Saturday Night and got involved with a Friday afternoon [1984 post-game] Chuck Berry concert. We did a hula hoop contest as they were setting up the stage. [Chicago Blackhawks President and CEO] John McDonough had just started there.” The Cubs were struggling with attendance and post-game concerts was a device to draw more fans and keep them in the ball park.
“But with Mike Veeck, how far does the apple fall from the tree? And I idolized Bill [Veeck], so I jumped at a disco dance contest. At that time, they drew as much as the Cubs.”
In 1979 the White Sox drew 1,280,702 fans, tenth out of fourteen American League teams. The Cubs drew 1,648,587 fans, sixth out of twelve National League teams.
Former Rush Street bartender Jay Emerich founded Faces in 1971. The name came from the posters slathered on the walls—slides of customers, animals, kids, and athletes. At first, Faces booked live pop and show bands seven days a week, like Iguana and New Era. Faces had a strict dress code: no jeans, no leather jacket, and a collared shirt. A suit was not mandatory.
In the late 1970s, a lifetime membership at Faces started at fifty dollars. Comps were given to Hugh Hefner, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and other big shooters who had lots of money. Customers could buy a one night membership on a slow Sunday or Monday. “We had a fifty dollar a year renewal,” explained Jim Rittenberg, the face of Faces. “We’d renew at about 48 percent. We had 16,000 people and maybe 4,000 were freebies. In those days, that was a really good cut. The dress code kept out the Lincoln Avenue people and brought in the car dealers and their guys. You got a suit on and you’re looking good, you’re acting good.”
“Faces was always about a dress code,” said Rittenberg. “Clothes do not the man make, but it does say how much money you can spend. If I wasn’t a minor owner at the beginning, I wouldn’t have been allowed in.”
Emerich contracted lupus and sold his interest to George Shlaes in 1977. After the sale, Rittenberg became general manager, known as the tuxedoed emcee with the endless smile.
“Jay was the visionary and operator,” Rittenberg said. “I was the marketer. He worked through me. Its all about marketing and promotion. Nothing starts until somebody brings in the sale. We had a lot of fun. When Star Wars came out we had Darth Vaders running around. What is that? Promotion and marketing. What were they doing at Sox park? The same thing. We had a lot of record parties. Donna Summer released a record there. Bands came in; the Average White Band. Chicago. John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. Brooke Shields underage, David Copperfield underage. We served Artis Gilmore [he played center for the Bulls], we didn’t kick him out like BBC [the Division Street dance club] did. O.J. [Simpson] was in during the sporting goods show every winter and he behaved himself. Lou Piniella. Mickey Mantle was in with Billy Martin a couple of times. Tommy Lasorda was a regular. Old timers who knew me and Jay from our bartending days like [Orioles third baseman] Brooks Robinson.”
The disco-era trifecta was Jay’s, Sweetwater, and Harry’s Cafe.
“Now they call it the Viagra Triangle,” Rittenberg said. “[Gibson’s Bar & Steakhouse on Rush) was Mister Kelly’s [from 1957 to ‘75] so a lot of the celebrities would come to Faces. We were post-Harvey Wallbanger. We were Tequila Sunrise. Watermelon shots were big. We did a lot of promotions, like M*A*S*H vodka when M*A*S*H came out [in 1972]. Former Faces coat room attendant Kathy O’Malley is now a managing partner of Gibson’s.
Pop-disco star Barry Manilow did his first TV special at Faces for Soundstage. Manilow had just come out with “Mandy,” his 1978 hit ballad. Faces barricaded Rush Street so Manilow could run outside and sing his 1975 hit “It’s a Miracle” with the hook line “dancing in the street.” Faces club members joined Manilow outside.
Rittenberg added, “[Soundstage producer] Kenny Ehrlich put me in touch with Murray Allen of Universal Recording Studios, who did our sound system.” Allen, who died of liver cancer in 2006, went on to collaborate with Ehrlich as sound designer for the Grammy Awards. In 1951, Universal Recording Studios, located not far from Faces, was the first studio in the country to have stereo sound. Allen recorded most of the Vee-Jay record catalog plus hits like Gene Chandler’s “The Duke of Earl,” Dee Clark’s “Hey Little Girl,” and John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.”
And then Rittenberg was interrupted.
Comic Tom Dreesen walked up to Rittenberg’s table at Gibson’s. Dreesen was in town to throw out the first pitch at a Cubs-Dodgers game. “Faces was the place to go,” said Dreesen, who was a longtime opening act for Frank Sinatra. “If you wanted to get laid, Jimmy had the hottest looking girls. And I never worked blue. When disco became hot, like anybody else you went where the girls were. I liked Sinatra and Johnny Mathis, but I’d get on the dance floor and pretend I knew what I was doing. Fortunately, the floor was so crowded nobody could tell if you could dance. Sinatra hated disco.”
Dreesen knew Rittenberg as far back as 1969, when Dreesen worked at Mister Kelly’s and would adjourn to Punchinello’s bar on Rush Street. Dreesen began opening for Frank Sinatra in 1982. “Jimmy Rittenberg was what Rush Street was all about,” Dreesen said. “A promoter. Smart. Good friends all around who were willing to support him.”
Working class hero Jim Petrerik (Ides of March, Survivor) also looks back at Faces with a rich smile.
“My main Faces memory was when Chase put out their Pure Music record,” said Peterik. The Chicago-based, jazz-rock fusion band released Pure Music in 1974 on Epic Records, a follow-up to their 1971 self-titled debut album that delivered the hard-driving hit single “Get It On.”
“I sang and wrote two songs [‘Run Back to Mama,’ with bandleader and trumpet player Bill Chase, and ‘Love Is On the Way’] on Pure Music,” Peterik recalled. “The record company sponsored a promotional tour. I played the Cellar Door in New York City, Los Angeles, and then Faces with Chase. The place was packed. It was sad because at the end Bill [Chase] said, ‘You’re going to see a lot more of me writing with Jim Peterik.’ About three weeks later his plane went down and almost all the band members were killed.”
Bill Chase died on August 9, 1974, when a chartered Piper Win Comanche crashed en route to a concert in Jackson, Minnestoa. Keyboardist Wally Yohn, drummer Walter Clark, and guitarist John Emma were also killed, along with the pilot Daniel Ludwig and co-pilot Linda Swisher. “I was supposed to be on that plane,” Peterik said. “I had a solo show and couldn’t make it. I had a little bit of survivor’s guilt, and it actually is one of the main reasons I named our new band Survivor.
Dennis DeYoung of Styx never went to Faces.
“Naw,” he declared. “We did go to the opening of the Limelight [in 1985]. There’s a picture of me, Andy Warhol, and Tony Bennett. Can you believe that? Never went to Faces. I wasn’t that guy. I dance with my wife in my house. Would you go to a disco if you had a wife?”
DeYoung and his wife Suzanne did go to a New York disco in 1987 when he produced a couple of tracks for Liza Minnelli. “She stayed at my house,” he said. “We recorded her at Pumpkin [Studios]. Gene Simmons called me up and said he was trying to get a record deal for Liza. He said, ‘I want you to coach her into being a pop singer.’ I met her in New York. The tracks were never released but she did great. I think the demos were used to get the Pet Shop Boys to produce an album for her. Liza is a good human being, right to the core. She took us to a disco and we hung out.
“The new wave bands came in and a lot of them had dance rhythm structure to their music. People kept dancing, they just didn’t call it disco anymore. Even now, everything rocks except rock. Think about it. So how do they rise above this? By wearing a meat dress, which is counter productive because Lady Gaga is really fucking good! But Lady Gaga knows what Dahl knew: I’m going to blow up records. What Springsteen knew: I’m going to tear my jeans in the right place. You gotta have a gimmick. That’s all it is.”
Like Rittenberg, Chicago sportscaster Les Grobstein’s roots are in gritty Garfield Park, but in 1979 he was living in a townhouse in unincorporated Des Plaines. “I went to disco clubs a couple times,” he admitted. “I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. I don’t do drugs. I’m proud to say I’m very square. I didn’t realize I’d be working for WLS later in 1979, but I remember listening to ‘My Sharona,’ which was number one. ‘We are Family’ by Sister Sledge became the theme song for the Pittsburgh Pirates. [The late Pirates slugger] Willie Stargell played it on his boom box after games.”
The Metro’s Joe Shanahan did not listen to commercial disco and dance during the hey-day of Faces. “It wasn’t a life I lived,” Shanahan said. “Saturday Night Fever was popular in the straight and gay discos. The Bee Gees. Yvonne Elliman. But even that record had some of those songs, like a disco cover of ‘The 1812 Overture?’ That’s just wrong on so many levels. You don’t want to dance to that. You want to dance to the gritty funk of the Ohio Players. There were labels in New York birthing a sound like 99 Records that had punk-disco bands like ESG and Liquid Liquid. That’s where our heads were at. That was the blueprint for hip-hop, just as Kraftwerk was a blueprint for Afrika Bambatta and Soulsonic Force. What was great about all that is that the line was blurred between black and white and gay and straight.
“I sensed there was a division with the freak flag of the Dahl demolition. I’m walking down Clark Street and someone leans out the door because I have a short punk rock haircut and they call me a faggot. I said, ‘What? Because I look like this?’ They were out looking to beat up people. I got it. I’m a South Sider. I come to the North Side because there’s a definite dividing line.”
South Side native Darlene Jackson (DJ Lady D) is a producer and owner of the D’lectable Music label. She has played house music at Chicago’s Lollapalloza music festival and performed sets of disco and techno in Asia and Europe.
In conversation at a Ukrainian Village coffee shop, she spoke of the ethnomusicological dividing line between house and disco.
“Disco had its own look. They had a fashion to disco. House had a fashion. The disco beat had a high ride click-click-click that was always present. In house it turned into a bit of a shuffle. You get the syncopation between the kick drums, bass drums, the snare, and the high hat. They’re both 4/4. The art of mixing continued off from disco into house, but it got a lot more complex. Many more tricks and effects to make the experience even more trippy than disco.
“My jump off point was house music, and a community of people started house. It was gay people. From where I was, you didn’t express homophobia, because you could look to the left or right of you and see someone gay. Or someone who appeared to be gay but wasn’t out. There wasn’t a lot of saying certain things or calling people names. I’m sure some of that went on, but if you were in the house you were in the house. You did not talk about who else was in the house. We knew it had its origins in disco. And a lot of early house parties were playing disco sets. It was more unacceptable to not accept all that. You’d go to a club, like LaRays or C.O.D., that was popular in the 1980s—there were drag queens there. We were all one community.”
“I remember [Disco Demolition] photographically in my mind,” said Shanahan in soft tones. “I had an apartment on Wells Street in Old Town. I was tending bar and waiting tables. I was doing my own little after hours parties in my loft and other locations. I was very close to Jim [Nash] and Dannie [Flesher] from Wax Trax! They were openly gay. We went to that club on Wells Street where Jeffrey Dahmer picked up guys. I’m trying to think of the club now. [It was Carol’s Speakeasy at 1355 North Wells]. A footnote: We would go there to hear Frankie Knuckles spin. He had a residency there on a Thursday night. Frankie would play the rhythmic pieces, the Talking Heads. So when Jim and Dannie opened Wax Trax! (on North Lincoln Avenue in 1978), they didn’t have a disco section so to speak, but they had music that was rhythmic. Duran Duran sounded like a Giorgio Moroder disco record. Human League. Spandau Ballet. Those bands had a rhythm to it. Some of it was bad, some of it was good. But that wasn’t music we actually wanted to listen to.”
Shanahan wasn’t a fan of the commercialization of disco, noting Memphis DJ Rick Dees’ 1976 number one novelty hit “Disco Duck.” Shanahan said, “I thought that was a bastardization of a great, true genre of music that actually was super liberating for so many people. It got people dancing. It was a communal activity of release. That was fantastic.”
Chicago chef and fifth generation Bridgeport resident Kevin Hickey attended Disco Demolition. He reflected, “I would almost attribute the instant backlash from Disco Demolition [as] helping seal disco’s fate in America. Bam. It was done. I was young but I remember that overnight after that event you were unbelievably uncool. Then with costumes, goofiness, and novelty songs like ‘Disco Duck’ it killed itself as well.” Hickey is no relation to White Sox pitcher Kevin Hickey (1956–2012). “I met him at a charity event a few years before he passed,” Hickey said. “Nicest guy in the world. The only time we had an issue was when I would call him. It would be like Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First.’ I’d be, ‘Kevin, this is Kevin Hickey.’ He’d go this is ‘Kevin Hickey,’ and I’d say ‘Kevin, this is me, Kevin.’ Then he’d stop listening to me.”
Dahl said, “I went once to Faces but it was after it was on the way out. It may have been because Dan Aykroyd was making Doctor Detroit there. Was the Smart Bar disco? Is that why Joe [Shanahan] hates me? I used to go there and get fucked up. I don’t remember it being a disco or anything. There were a lot of rock clubs that were switching to disco. I guess there was more money in that.
Darlene “DJ Lady D” Jackson
“I think there’s a novelty resurgence in disco now in theme parties, stuff like that. I’d say it came back in house or EDM of some form. All that seems more accessible now. Any of us could go to a club now and take molly,” Dahl laughs. “It’s not so out of reach for everybody. I guess it’s how culture progresses. I wouldn’t have known how to go to a club and wear a suit. I wouldn’t know what to do. There was a lot of intimidation and disenfranchisement, especially if you were a male.”
In July of 1979 Chuck Renslow of “Man’s Country” fame ran the gay club Center Stage, where Metro is now. STAGES followed Center Stage. Jim McNamara and Bob Rudnick opened STAGES after having some success at Tuts in the former Quiet Knight on West Belmont.
Shanahan used to guest deejay on punk nights at NEO.
“I’d play this hybrid of punk rock, Prince, and this dirtier Parliament stuff,” Shanahan said. “The owner told me I was ruining his club. He said, ‘Take this music off. We’re a new wave club.’ I said, ‘You can’t tell me what to play. Look at your dance floor. It’s full.’ He said the music was going to draw a ‘bad element’ and he didn’t want it to become a ‘black club.’ Now, [I thought] ‘Smart Bar has to open.’ It was 1979 or ‘80 and took me a little time to find the building to do it in, but that was the era. I basically got fired for playing black music in a white club.”
Disco is on the cusp of entering the age of ironic nostalgia. It may not be long before you see KC and the Sunshine Band appearing at Pitchfork Music Festival.
Former WLUP promotions director Dave Logan pointed out, “During Disco Demolition, all the media available was fifteen radio stations. That was the world. Today there’s fifteen disco stations online that we can find from the satellite on the phone in thirty seconds. When we launched XM Satellite radio, we had a disco channel and it was huge. A lot of people liked what it was. And for a lot of people, disco represented a good time on a Saturday night, dancing. Women particularly liked it. It was fun once you got past the Studio 54 image.”
Disco also took gigs away from live rock ‘n’ roll bands. It was cheaper for a club owner to bring in a turntable and DJ than hire a live band, a soundman, and sometimes a crew.
In the wake of disco, Joe Shanahan turned Metro into one of the premiere live music clubs in America. “A lot of musicians felt they weren’t getting enough work because clubs were doing more dance nights or whatever,” Shanahan said. “Those bands were bad. Off Broadway was working their asses off. We’d go see them all the time. The Hounds. Cheap Trick. That was tougher urban rock ‘n’ roll. It wasn’t Journey or the Eagles. I wasn’t into bad metal. I was more into power pop like Pez Band. Mother’s was doing shows then.”
In the late 1970s, Wax Trax! owners were independently booking acts like the Jam at Mother’s. In its nascent years, Mother’s booked acts like Eric Clapton with Cream and Lou Reed with the Velvet Underground. (The club still has a guitar autographed by Reed.)
Owner Gorsuch was a healthy seventy-eight years old in the spring of 2015. “Honestly I don’t remember the Velvet Underground,” said Gorsuch, whose first Chicago bartending gig was in 1964 at The Store, which was in the former folk club Gate of Horn on Rush and Oak Streets. He then asked, “Do you know how to stop sex after fifty? Take your clothes off.”
Jam Production co-founder Jerry Mickelson remembered, “We were booking Molly Hatchet, Journey, Van Halen, Yes, Genesis, Marshall Tucker, Lou Reed. The number of [live] disco bands never came close to rock bands. You had Donna Summer. The Bee Gees. They came into the headline arena level. We produced shows by Gloria Gaynor. The Village People. KC and the Sunshine Band. The Trammps. The Ohio Players. Gino Vannelli. Was Barry White disco?”
Veeck said, “Over the years people have given me hundreds of mementos. Scorched records. That’s their idea of real fun. I come to do a speaking engagement and they go, ‘Here’s something you haven’t seen!’ And I have to thank them. I will say the last one, [my wife] Libby and I went to the Atlantic League All-Star game and both teams signed a Donna Summer record, which was very funny.”