Moments That Changed Music I: Disco Demolition Night
by Sheldon Rocha Leal
Having researched and studied the development and evolution of popular culture, specifically music, I have noted that there have been specific junctures in our history that have irrevocably altered our societal trajectory. These moments are so profound that they become landmark turning points, from which we can plot the progress of our culture. The same is true in the music industry where various key moments have irrevocably changed the way we listen, consume and make music, as well as conduct business in the sector.
From my analysis there is always a key protagonist in these stories, a disruptor, who takes it upon themselves to change things “once and for all”, ultimately altering the course of history. In this story it’s a DJ called Steve Dahl. The question, becomes would things have changed anyway regardless of the intervention, but that is a difficult question to answer. In this article I want to focus on one of these portentous moments in popular music history: “Disco Demolition Night”. It was an integral moment in dance music history, which specifically affected Disco, but is also a byproduct of how vile our society can be at times.
In order to contextualise this seminal moment in Pop music history, I’m going to endeavour to delve into the origins of Disco and its cultural and economic influences. It all started with the invention of the jukebox, essentially a music vending machine, in 1889 by Louis Glass and William S. Arnold for the Pacific Phonograph Company. For less than paying a band, it allowed a venue owner to play music to patrons (music on tap and on demand). Between 1900 and 1920 many working class music consumers gathered at Jook Joints and Honky Tonks to listen to music on a jukebox, drink and dance.
The problem with jukeboxes was that it could only hold a certain number of records, which meant the same songs were often repeated. Furthermore, there were many interruptions in the flow of the music, as patrons waited for songs to be selected and played. Finally, the whole process was too static and one dimensional, which didn’t adequately facilitate an extended party. It would be almost 30 years before the foundation blocks for what would eventually become Disco were laid. The year was 1947, the country was France and the venue was Le Whisky à Gogo created by Paul Pacine, reputedly the world’s first discothèque.
The word discothèque means record library or a place where a record collection is housed. In 1953 nightclub promoter and impresaria Régine Zylberberg, affectionately known as the Queen of the Night, decided to lay a dance floor at Le Whisky à Gogo, suspended coloured lights over the floor and replaced the jukebox with two turntables. She operated the turntables herself, and the inclusion of the two turntables prevented breaks between songs, allowing the party to go on “all night long”. She articulated that she didn’t like hearing the sound of people making out between songs, therefore, the use of the double decks allowed music to be played continuously, precluding her from hearing the distracting noises.
The idea took off throughout Europe and in Aachen, Germany in 1959, at the Scotch Club, DJing was born. The venue replaced live bands with a turntable, and started playing records in public. A young reporter, Klaus Quirini, was sent to the venue to write an article about this new phenomenon (playing records in public). Whilst at the club he established that the crowd was bored, and so was he, so filled with the bravado only alcohol can provide a 19 year old, he decided to jump on stage, take over the decks and start introducing songs. DJing was born and things were never the same again. After conquering Europe, the Discothèque concept eventually reached the American shores after fans of the Whisky à Gogo decided to bring the night club idea to Chicago in 1958. By 1964 Discothèques began to appear in New York.
Although discothèques were popularised in Europe in the 1960s, the trend only took off in the USA in the 1970s. It took the invention of the Moog synthesiser in 1964 and innovations by people like the “Architect of Disco”, Giorgio Moroder, to make Disco a new musical innovation that would sweep the world in the decade to come. The Moog Synthesiser, created by Robert Moog, was a more affordable and transportable type of synthesiser, making the instrument accessible to a greater number of music creators. Giorgio Moroder (a former Scotch Club DJ) had already started experimenting with the idea of making music only utilising synthesisers (i.e. electronic music) in the 1960s. He had success with this concept in 1968 with his solo release “Looky Looky” on which he played all the instruments and sang. The song is more Beach Boys than Donna Summer, but was a precursor to the Disco sound.
Disco was inspired by 1960s Motown, Soul, Funk, Psychedelic Rock and R&B. Towards the end of the 1960s many musicians and audiences from the Black, Italian and Latino communities started adopting elements of the Psychedelic and Hippie subcultures. This included colourful costumes, trippy lighting, overwhelming sound, free-form dancing and hallucinogenic drugs. Some of the earlier Disco songs started charting at the beginning of the 1970s, tracks like “Theme From Shaft” by Isaac Hayes (1971) and “Superfly” by Custis Mayfield (1972). Disco was dominated by producers, DJ and remixers, who were considered the svengalis of the genre. Tom Moulton, credited with moulding the genre by extending mixes in order to extend the enjoyment of a song, was one of these pioneers.
David Mancuso, another Disco maverick, helped bring Disco to the masses. He was schooled in the art of the party in Harlem at “rent parties” (neighbourhood parties organised by different apartment blocks to raise funds to pay monthly rent). As many members of the LGBT community were constantly harassed by the police at mainstream bars and clubs, he decided to start hosting “by invite only” parties at his house, “The Loft”. This allowed members of the minority community to socialise and party without fear of harassment. Mancuso was an innovator of the private party and Disco is seen to have been birthed at his parties, where he insisted that soulful and rhythmic songs with socially conscious messages of pride, redemption and hope be played. As the gay community was noticeably present at these parties, the genre became closely associated with the subculture. Mancuso continued to host private parties into the 1990s.
Disco rose to prominence in the mid-1970s. By 1974 the first Disco radio show was broadcast on New York’s WPIX-FM. The genre was popularised in a perfect storm, which included the demise of the Hippie counterculture, end of the Vietnam war, economic suppression, high unemployment/inflation and soaring crime rates. Furthermore, there was political unrest in the USA spurred on by the Civil Rights Movement of the previous decade. The latter along with the assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King jnr, John F Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy as well as the Watergate Scandal, left many people disillusioned. The populous wanted to party, have fun and forget about the tumultuous decade that passed. This triggered one of the most hedonistic and jubilant musical eras since the “Roaring 20s”, 50 years earlier.
Between 1974-1977 Disco was pervasive. There were 25,000 mobile discos and 40,000 professional DJs that emerged to satisfy the public’s need to party. A whole music business infrastructure was built around Disco: producers, musicians, DJs, clubs, club promoters. New stars were born, acts like ABBA, Rose Royce, Gloria Gaynor, Sylvester, The Village People and Donna Summer. The genre was so popular that many established artists also wanted a piece of the action. Artists like Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, The Rolling Stones, Sir Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton, The Eagles, David Bowie, The Jackson 5, Michael Jackson and even Elvis Presley experimented with the sound. By 1977 the Disco shine was starting to tarnish and it took the release of a cult movie about New York Disco clubs to revive an interest in the genre.
“Saturday Night Fever” was released in December 1977 and was based on an article about the club scene in New York. The movie, produced by legendary impresario Robert Stigwood, was a massive hit and generated $237million off a $3.5million budget. The soundtrack which included songs predominately written by the Bee Gees, who up to that point had been standard Rock band, in an Disco style, became the biggest selling soundtrack of all time. It spent 24 consecutive weeks at No1 in the USA, and produced 4 No1 singles, shipping over 40million albums worldwide. The movie and associated album brought Disco to the mainstream and made it more popular than it had ever been. Up to that point Disco had been an underground, yet very successful, dance music movement.
The release of “Saturday Night Fever” was considered by some commentators as Disco’s “coming out”. John Travolta’s performance in the movie made it acceptable for heterosexual white males to delve into the music and culture. The genre’s gay roots were the worst kept secret in the industry. If one looks at the Village People or the gender bending star, Sylvester, or some of the album covers of famous Disco records, it’s pretty clear who the target audience was. Many of the founders of the genre were gay, people like Tom Moulton, David Mancuso, Patrick Cowley, Paul Jabara and so were some of the stars.
Between 1978–1979 Disco music was omnipresent. It infiltrated every level of our society. Not only did it have an impact on the type of music people consumed, it completely altered the trajectory of our society and interactions (fashion, language, social). Clearly this would eventually start rubbing some people up the wrong way. As with most things, the elements that initially attracted people to the genre were the things that resulted in its ultimate demise. By 1978 negative Disco sentiment started circulating, especially in the USA, with slogans such as “Disco Sucks” and “Death To Disco”.
People objected to the mindlessness of the music, it’s manufactured sound, hedonistic lifestyle, emphasis on personal appearance and style of dress. The media emphasised the genre’s link to the gay community, and in the overly conservative USA, this did not bode well for the future of Disco. A perception was also cultivated in the media that the music was going to take over, which was reinforced when many Rock radio stations, responding to the genre’s immense popularity, switched to Disco in 1978. Additionally, various television shows like “WKRP In Cincinnati” and movies like “Airplane” reiterated this seemingly negative narrative.
The “Disco Demolition Night” was the brain child of a Rock Music DJ. Steve Dahl, at the time 24 years old, was fired from WDAI in Chicago on Christmas Eve 1978 after the radio station decided to switch from Rock music to Disco. He was then hired by a competing Rock Music radio station, WLUP, where he started picking up on the eminent Disco backlash and decided to capitalise on the negative sentiment surrounding his firing. He mobilised an anti-Disco army of his loyal listeners which he nicknamed “Insane Coho Lips” and came up with the slogan “Disco DAI” (after the radio station, WDAI).
Steve felt he was anointed to eradicate Disco, launching a war on the genre, and with the support of his army started organising various anti-Disco events. The police were called to a number of these campaigns because the Coho were unruly and disruptive. When famous Disco star Van McCoy passed away on the 6th of July 1979 Steve marked the event by destroying one of his records, “The Hustle”, on air. As with any war, Steve needed to scale up his attack on his opponent. He started speaking about blowing up Disco records live on air. This came to the attention of Mike Veeck owner of The Chicago White Sox, who had a tradition of teaming baseball matches with events. He believed that whether the Sox won or lost, fans should walk away from a match having had fun.
Veeck wanted to run an anti-Disco promotion at one of his matches and approached Steve through Jeff Schwartz, the sales manager at the WLUP radio station, to host what would become known as “Disco Demolition Night”. It was advertised that anyone who brought a Disco record to the ball game at Comiskey Park on the 12th of July 1979 would be admitted for 98 cents, as Veeck was concerned the event would not draw a crowd. The baseball match that took place the day before “Disco Demolition Night” only drew about 15,000 people in a stadium with a capacity of just over 44,000.
The White Sox owner shouldn’t have concerned himself with attendance numbers. The response to the promoted event was overwhelming, with attendees looking forward to the “Big Bang” between the two scheduled matches. The stadium was filled to capacity (47,000), with an additional 20,000 people gathering outside the ballpark. People tried to get into the stadium without tickets and some even resorted to climbing the fences. Attendees were encouraged to deposit their records into a skip in the middle of the filed. Once the skip was filled the remaining attendees took their records to their seats. Later on they used these discs as projectiles. Outside the stadium the gathered crowds were burning records in bonfires.
The gathered masses were high on marijuana and drunk on alcohol, not a great combination. Steve saved his headliner for the period between the two matches, at which point he drove onto the field in a Jeep, wearing army fatigues. He proceeded to the middle of the stadium, where the skip, rigged with explosives, was positioned. Steve warmed up the crowd before setting off the explosives. The audience was already out of hand, but after the explosion, nearly 7,000 stormed the field destroying a lot of the infrastructure in the process. Because of the damage inflicted to the field, the second match was unable to take place. The police were called out to calm the situation.
I’ve seen footage of this incident and it reminds me of what is described in history books as the campaign by Nazi Germany, starting on the 6th of May 1939, to burn books by famous Jewish academics, clerics, commentators, activists and authors. The Nazi Book burnings were organised by the German Student’s Union and headed by Joseph Goebels (the Nazi minister of propaganda), almost exactly 40 years before the “Disco Demolition Night”. Over 20,000 seminal books in our society’s history were destroyed in that campaign and many established political commentators, academics and activists lost their jobs and lives.
This kind of fascist behaviour should have never been repeated and to think that it happened in music a mere 43 years ago is incomprehensible. It is never justifiable to destroy someone else’s intellectual property, even more so on a public platform. Whoever thought this was a good idea, should have been seriously questioned and sanctioned. Furthermore, no one’s rights of expression should be infringed or suppressed in the way Steve Dahl decided to do on the 12th of July 1979. This should have never been allowed to happen and Steve should have been heavily punished for his part in this injustice.
The fall-out of the “Disco Demolition Night” was immense. It triggered major anti-Disco sentiment and anger toward the genre, its makers and performers. The event was seen by some commentators as a type of “Musical Cleansing”, spurred on by bigotry, racism and homophobia. Almost overnight radio stations dropped Disco music from their playlists, recording labels shut down, artists were dropped from labels and some were even stranded on tour. Anyone associated to the genre were essentially “black listed” and Disco went underground, back into the proverbial “closet”. For 10 years after the event no one would touch Disco and those who had previously been associated to the genre needed to find something else to do. The death of Disco, however, ushered in other forms of Dance music, like House, Hi-NRG, Techno and eventually EDM.
The truth, however, is that by 1979 Disco was probably on its way out anyway, so why the need for the “Hate Speech”. The genre had naturally run its course within popular music, as it was a genre that was designed for a particular audience at a particular time (the 1970s). The 1980s were a time of greed and minimalism, that would have not tolerated the extravagance of Disco, which included over the top parties and high budget productions. It was a fast-paced, consumerist era where people were trying to attain maximum profitability with minimum outlay. That was most certainly not what Disco was about. It was a hedonistic culture and brand of music, with little consideration for profitability.
Moreover, with the development of new technologies there was no longer a need or desire for the lavishness of Disco. One person could produce and play all the instruments on their own, on more affordable sythensizees, samplers and drum machines, dispensing with the need for fancy recording studios, orchestras and musicians. The economy had changed, along with tastes and how consumers were interacting with musical creative output. Finally, the AIDS pandemic, which surfaced in the early 1980s annihilated many of the makers and performers of Disco music (Patric Cowley, Paul Jabara, Sylvester, Jacques Morali and Steve Rubell), placing a nail in the coffin of the genre.
Only in the last 20 years have artists and producers started revisiting Disco. Kylie Minogue has famously explored the genre on three of her albums “Disco” (2020), “Fever” (2001) and “Light Years” (2000). Madonna has dabbled in Disco her entire career, but most famously on her album “Confessions On The Dancefloor” (2005) and in tracks like “Deeper and Deeper” (1992) and “Vogue” (1990). Dua Lipa, Silk Sonic, Daft Punk, Róisín Murphy, Justin Timberlake, Mark Ronson, Doja Cat, Beyoncé Knowles and Carly Rae Jepson have also explored the genre in their releases. ABBA even made a victorious return, after 40 years, in 2021 with the release of their now Grammy nominated “Voyage” album.
It is ironic that the epicentre of the latest resurgence was at a time when the world was going through a moment in which they needed some escapism (the Covid-19 crisis), which is what sparked off Disco’s initial popularity. It just goes to prove that there was value and merit in what the fathers and mothers of Disco were trying to achieve in the late 1960s and 1970s. The crux of it all, is that I hope we never again reach a low point in our culture and society as witnessed at the Disco Demolition Night. A point in which minority and marginalised groups are made to feel less about themselves because of their being, creative output and means of expression. All creation and creatives should be respected for what they create and the work they have invested in creating something for other’s enjoyment. Not everyone needs to understand it, but it is essential that creation is respected and that everyone is given their moment in the Sun. That was clearly not the case in this “Moment That Changed Music”, and hopefully a moment that will never be repeated.
