Disco Demolition

Just like a disco dance floor, the promotional event was the result of many loose, moving parts . . .

Tom Graye was the star disco DJ on WDAI. Ever the provocateur, Dahl would encourage listeners to throw marshmallows at Graye whenever he made a public appearance.

“Then I recorded ‘Do Ya Think I’m Disco,’” Dahl said of his spoof of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya’ Think I’m Sexy.” He continued, “I went to a bar in Hanover Park with Teenage Radiation where it was packed. There was a mini-riot in the parking lot. We had a gig [on June 2, 1979] at the Pointe East in [the south suburb of] Lynwood, which was this big rock club with a disco upstairs. That got shut down by the police, who showed up in riot gear. It wasn’t really that well covered. That was bizarre. I was happy just playing clubs and making a few hundred bucks. I didn’t have any sense it was growing. I was just trying to make money on the side.”

Roman J. Sawczak grew up in the Roseland area and moved to the south suburb of Lansing in 1972. He was guitarist in a band called Cartune that played Boston and Foreigner covers. Cartune met Dahl at the Pointe East on June 2, the day of the show. “It is the lost event,” he said. “Everyone knows about Disco Demolition but this was the whole set up.” Formerly the Poison Apple, Pointe East was a disco that had begun to feature live rock ‘n’ roll one night a month. “Rock was a big deal for them,” Sawczak said. “[Cartune] happened to play there right before the disco takeover. I don’t think any of us were listeners at the time. We knew of Steve. We informed him we had learned the song [“Do Ya’ Think I’m Disco”] in case he wanted to try it live and he went for it.”

When Cartune left the early afternoon sound check with Dahl, they found more than one hundred people lined up in the parking lot. “When the club was packed, it could hold over 1,000 people, but over 2,000 people showed up. It wasn’t good when they ran out of beer before we even took the stage. Steve had a couple disco dancers come out and dance on stage. It was the biggest mistake. People started heaving beer cups at them. We had to get the dancers off the stage. It was so quick when the cops shut the place down. It was before ten o’clock. They lined both sides of the exits with cops with riot helmets and batons making a path for people.”

WLUP promotion director Dave Logan was at the June 2 Pointe East concert, when Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” was the number one hit in America. “Someone stupidly threw a bottle at the cops,” Logan said. “A skirmish. As I was getting ready to go to bed there was the late night news on WGN-TV with Marty McNeely. There was a red flag with a black fist holding a rifle and the word ‘RIOT’ was on the graphic. They opened up with, ‘Radio station promotion gets a little out of hand.’ Monday morning I come in to the station and say, ‘We were on the news last night, but nothing was as bad as it sounded.’ Of course we started to realize Steve at the clubs could be very successful for us. The Monday after we have our regular meeting in promotion, sales, and programming. Jeff Schwartz walks in and says, ‘The White Sox need a promotion, in order to get this [advertising] buy.’ That’s how every meeting opened up with Jeff. We did it with Budweiser, Chevy dealers. Every major advertiser is coming in looking for a promotion.

“We made millions at The Loop with cruises, Johnny [Brandmeier’s] concerts, Danny [Bonaduce’s] boxing matches. It hadn’t really happened with Steve and Garry. I said, ‘We’re getting real traction with this disco thing, Steve and Garry’s appearances. What would you think about doing one of these with the White Sox?’”

Dahl said, “Jeff Schwartz and Mike Veeck must have been talking about it. I didn’t really have a relationship with Mike. I maybe met him once or twice that night and one time after that? I don’t know who was on the front line of the idea. I do know Bill Veeck broke bad on me after, and so I broke bad on them. It’s between Jeff, Dave Logan, and Mike—how it all happened, based on other stuff I was doing. They asked me to do it and I said, ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The Sox game was originally Teen Night, but they weren’t drawing. I didn’t really want to do it. What was the attendance? Five thousand? Even if I tripled that it would only be half full. I reluctantly did it thinking the whole time it was going to be a failure. Even if I drew 5,000 people, that would be a lot of people to draw for a radio person. But it would still look empty and stupid. I have to stand up there and blow up records in front of 5,000 people.”

Schwartz said, “Dahl drove me crazy for two and a half months before the event, because in his mind, success would still look like failure. If we draw 10,000 people, the park still looks empty. Up until the day of, he was, ‘Goddamnit, I hate doing this. This is going to be nothing.’ So I’m going crazy because he’s driving me crazy.”

Dahl also recruited his new friends Cartune to record his rendition of “Do Ya’ Think I’m Sexy.” They rehearsed in Bolingbrook and recorded the first sessions at Tanglewood Studios in Brook-field. Sawczak recalled, “Jim Peterik was involved with Tanglewood. We recorded ‘Skylab,’ ‘Hump Day Fever’ and ‘Do Ya’ Think I’m Disco.’ Then we re-recorded ‘Do Ya’ Think I’m Disco’ in Evanston for Ovation Records.”

Steve Dahl

Mitch Michaels recalled the WLUP staff meeting about Disco Demolition a few days before the event, and just six weeks after the Pointe East appearance. He said the meeting included Schwartz, station manager Les Elias, program director Jesse Bullett, and Mike Veeck. Schwartz did not recall the staff meeting, but he said that doesn’t mean that it did happen. “I’m not big on staff meetings,” he said. “And don’t forget—everybody was at Disco Demolition,” said Mitch Michaels. “Today everyone who said they were there claims we had 200,000 people.”

Michaels said, “We all wrote an attendance number on a blackboard. The point was to put fans in the seats because the Sox sucked. Even when they win they don’t draw anybody. I think the highest number on the board was 28,000. To Mike’s defense, I think he looked at that number and said, ‘Okay, this is the kind of security I need.’ He didn’t have an Andy Frain down every aisle. And kids wound up going down the aisles and climbing over the seats.”

Veeck knew the ins and outs of security. In 1975, he booked the Bay City Rollers to perform in between games of a double-header at Comiskey Park. The boy band was riding high on the fumes of its hit “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night.” WLS-AM personalities Bob Sirott and John “Records” Landecker hosted the mini-concert.

“You never heard this story,” Veeck said. “I’m in the center field bleachers. I say to the manager of the Bay City Rollers, ‘Here is the deal. We have 4,000 fourteen-year-old girls. The only people security can’t handle are fourteen-year-old girls. You don’t know where to grab them. We had to watch people spread all over the warning track. They would crush these girls. Back in those days, we only had a few women on the security team; it’s not what you have today, where you can move a whole melee.”

Logan pointed out, “In addition to tons of people showing up just because they hated disco, you had families. Mom or Dad could bring their five kids to a double-header for seven bucks [ninety-eight cents each]. It was the greatest bargain in the history of sports, not to mention, for a lot of people, the biggest release they ever had. As the radio station was launching and growing we needed big promotions to blow wind in our sails.

“And it was a strong wind that took us to number one.”

Michaels reflected, “I can’t imagine Steve (Dahl) was that repulsed by disco. This was a shtick. He got fired for the fucking format change (at WDAI). That would piss me off and make me anti-disco. And the shtick was perfect and he certainly played it well.”