When Rock Met Disco: The Story of How The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, KISS, Queen, Blondie and More Got Their Groove On in the Me Decade

By Steven Blush

Disco began as a gay, black, and brown underground New York City party music scene, which alone was enough to ward off most rockers. The difference between rock and disco was as sociological as it was aesthetic.

At its best, disco was galvanizing and affirmative. Its hypnotic power to uplift a broad spectrum of the populace made it the ubiquitous music of the late '70s. Disco was a primal and gaudy fanfare for the apocalypse, a rage for exhibitionism, free of moralizing. Disco was an exclamatory musical passageway into the future.

1978 was the apex of the record industry. Rock music, commercially and artistically, had never been more successful. At the same time, disco was responsible for roughly 40% of the records on Billboard's Hot 100, thanks to the largest-selling soundtrack of all time in Saturday Night Fever. The craze for this music by The Bee Gees revived The Hustle and dance studios across America.

For all its apparent excesses and ritual zealotry, disco was a conservative realm, with obsolete rules like formal dress code and dance floor etiquette. When most '70s artists "went disco," it was the relatively few daring rockers who had the most impact, bringing their intensity and personality to a faceless phenomenon.

Rock stars who "went disco" crossed a musical rubicon and forever smashed cultural conformity. The ongoing dance-rock phenomenon demonstrates the impact of this unique place and time.

The disco crossover forever changed rock.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781493063901

Book preview

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WHEN ROCK MET DISCO

WHEN ROCK MET DISCO

THE STORY OF HOW THE ROLLING STONES, ROD STEWART, KISS, QUEEN, BLONDIE, AND MORE GOT THEIR GROOVE ON IN THE ME DECADE

STEVEN BLUSH

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ESSEX, CONNECTICUT

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An imprint of Globe Pequot, the trade division of

The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200

Lanham, MD 20706

www.rowman.com

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright © 2023 by Steven Blush

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Blush, Steven, author.

Title: When rock met disco : the story of how the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Kiss, Queen, Blondie, and more got their groove on in the me decade / Steven Blush.

Description: Essex, Connecticut : Backbeat, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: Disco remains the most important and influential musical and cultural movement of the past half-century. Everything since has been an affirmation of, or a reaction to, those pulsating dance floor rhythms —Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022056344 (print) | LCCN 2022056345 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493063895 (paperback) | ISBN 9781493063901 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Disco music—History and criticism. | Popular music—1971-1980—History and criticism.

Classification: LCC ML3526 .B58 2023 (print) | LCC ML3526 (ebook) | DDC 781.6481554—dc23/eng/20221122

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056344

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056345

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CONTENTS

Cover

Half Title

Title

Copyright

CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1THE RISE OF DISCO

2DISCOTHEQUE EXPLOSION

3DISCO CULTURE

4GOING DISCO

5DISCO SUCKS

6DISCO’S DECLINE

APPENDICES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Start of Content

APPENDICES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is the strange but true story of a time in American history that changed the course of popular culture. Those who came of age in the 1970s witnessed the end of rock music’s spectacular decline, as the original sweaty R&B form that changed the world devolved into a sedentary malaise of headphones and bong hits taken while listening to Dark Side of the Moon. For them, it was evident that rock music was ripe for a takedown. Disco’s explosive popularity and unlikely mainstream acceptance was a case of perfect timing; it captured something that had been only implicit in the zeitgeist. But then, within five years, disco went from an unknown queer subculture to a global entertainment sensation to a black mark on all its creators and innovators.

I grew up around New York City during disco’s heyday and was familiar and comfortable with rock and disco during the war between the two genres. My dad ran a printing shop in the rugged industrial Lower East Side. So, some of my earliest memories are of my visits, listening to Latin soul and the first disco orchestras on the transistor radio of his two employees, primarily instrumental songs like Love’s Theme, Rock Your Baby, and Soul Makossa.

Back at home, I’d tune into the big New York FM rock stations like WNEW and WPLJ, and for a while, WPIX. I saw iconic rock shows by bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Bad Company at Madison Square Garden based on what I learned from these stations. WPIX later had a weekly show, Disco 102, that took over the station, playing disco hits and more from acts like the Ritchie Family, Crown Heights Affair, Disco Tex, Dr. Buzzard’s, Carol Douglas, and Maxine Nightingale. Then, amid the seismic shift after the release of Saturday Night Fever, disco’s new Euro-pop sound, led by groups like the Bee Gees and Abba, proved far more popular and lucrative than the original black soul disco of Harold Melvin, Thelma Houston, and others.

My personal journey led to a deep dive into punk and new wave. One thing I still dislike about that scene was the Disco Sucks mind-set. Punk was contrarian and hostile to enemies, real or imagined. So, disco’s sense of glitz and glamor left much to be desired. But the vitriol from both the old guard rockers and the new vanguard punks made little sense to me. So, when the biggest rock bands hit the disco floor, I did not join in as they got vilified by a large slice of their audience. Decades later, those controversial disco-rock moves still read as iconic pop hits by the Stones, Kiss, Queen, Grateful Dead, Rod Stewart, and Blondie. To deeply enjoy rock and disco at a young age at the height of the Disco Sucks era meant that I understood rock as a revolution of the mind and disco as a revolution of the body.

With the discotheque’s demise came the synthesis of rock, punk, and disco with the rock discos—clubs with all the trappings of a disco except the music, filled with disco-haters dancing to DJs playing a new disco sold as new wave. White polyester suits and flowing dresses with slits below the knee gave way to a hard-edged dancing scene into punky clothes; leather, chains, T-shirts, and leopard skin.

The disco craze took place decades ago, and generations have passed. So much of this story is no longer common knowledge. Epic moments in disco history for some may read as arcane, with no modern relevance. Nevertheless, I’ve attempted to explain and contextualize esoterica that’s been relegated to history’s dustbin. The most difficult obstacle in writing this book was separating myself from personal favorites and old mindsets—and delivering a broad story, not just a shout-out to the era’s stylistic and musicological mystique. It was also essential to be mindful that while most people know the rock mindset about disco, it was equally necessary to articulate the psychology of where the disco guy and the disco girl came from.

From researching the decadence of disco and the intensity of the blowback from rock circles, it is clear to me that neither rock nor disco would have passed modern cultural purity tests. However, it has also reaffirmed for me rock ’n’ roll’s historic role in challenging or shattering all known social constructs. All current conversation related to race, gender, diversity, and inclusion dates back to rock music’s focus on an inclusive sense of community and social justice.

The culture war between rock and disco resulted in a bloody battlefield strewn with career casualties on both sides. And both sides of the divide share blame. Rock fans became boring conservative gatekeepers. Disco elites felt that they owned the future with their money and influence. Sound familiar?

•

There are a few key people to thank.

To my agent Lee Sobel: maximum respect for always having my back. Much appreciation to the Backbeat team for bringing this book to life: John Cerullo, Carol Flannery, Chris Chappell, Barbara Claire, and Laurel Myers.

Thanks to George Petros for decades of editorial encouragement. Also, huge thanks to Tony Mann for all the dedication and connections.

Special thanks to Matt Pinfield, Jay Jay French, Anton Fig, Chip Z’Nuff, Allan Schwartzberg, Jay Messina, Drew Stone, and Carmine Appice, and a super special thanks to the Blush, Fisher, Radick, and Goldstein families.

The biggest dedication goes to my bad girls, Alyssa Fisher and Jackie Fisher Blush, for enduring over a calendar year of rock-disco mania.

INTRODUCTION

Our new state of mind These are the good times

—Chic, Good Times

ERIC ADAMS (mayor of New York): I loved disco. I had my best nights out with a group of friends who enjoyed dancing, having a good drink, and meeting very attractive ladies on the dance floor. It was just a great era. (2017)

Disco was one of the most important and influential cultural movements of the modern era. Every scene and style since then has been a reaction to, or an affirmation of, disco’s pulsating rhythms and hedonistic lifestyle. In the end, disco music and culture were far more significant than people could have ever imagined at the time.

Disco interchangeably referred to disco dancing, disco music, and discotheques. It broadly described a musical style, a club experience, and a series of accentuated dance steps. In the end, disco became a euphemism for anything you can dance to, but the overall trend reflected the ’70s precedents of fashion, music, and social intercourse. It embodied the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.

Disco was more than music and deeper than dancing; it was a physical manifestation of emotional freedom. Its liberation appealed to young and old and played out in clear view of as many people as possible. The discotheque supplied quadraphonic sound, flashing lights, special effects, unrelenting dancing, passionate expression, and the possibility of conquest.

Disco was the great sound of the ’70s; chic, punctual, predictable, straightforward, slick, and well-produced. It was a bizarre, outlandish, trashy, gaudy fanfare for the apocalypse, echoing the frivolities and fantasies of a unique era that valued style over substance, mood over meaning, and action over thought. Disco was a rage for exploration and exhibitionism that was, most significantly, free from purist moralization.

On balance, disco was an exclamatory passageway into the future. But it remained unpredictable, contradictory, and controversial.

TIMOTHY LEARY: Disco is political in that it creates self-awareness. The only people who can’t see this are the Marxists and Maoists who live on the Lower East Side who are into social guilt and sticking their noses into other people’s business. They hate disco because they hate fun and they hate sex. (1979)

Everything I like is nice That’s why I try to have it twice

—Sly & The Family Stone, Stoned Cowboy

Almost every Western and Non-Western musical form has involved elements of dance. But disco singlehandedly resurrected the art of dancing, and more importantly, the biggest dance craze since the 1930s’ big-band era served as the basis for future dance music styles that continue to blur and extend today.

The appeal of going to a discotheque was physical and emotional. Disco propelled frustrated people out of their ’60s stupor and back to partying on their feet. This potent new form made the sensuous bait of partner-to-partner dancing enticing again. No one disco-danced cheek-to-cheek. But couples swerved hip-to-hip and derriere-to-derriere, with a sensuous swivel to the right, wicked wiggle to the left, and acrobatics straight out of Soul Train. Disco was a chance to dance in a democratic union with the beautiful people, bourgeois or blue-collar.

Disco was never a wholesome phenomenon; the dance floors exploded with sweaty, writhing bodies that never quit. It gestated at underground clubs—not in the boardrooms of record labels—before it became more lucrative than any other pop trend before or since. It was made in a few studios and heard in a circuit of clubs concentrated in urban centers. So small-town talents had to travel to the big city—and shed their naïveté and innocence to start that process.

Disco was a sophisticated and manipulated sensation rooted in an urban subculture. The yuppie ’70s demanded structured dance steps, a pleasant deviation from the feigned, distanced expression of ecstasy of formless rock dancers. It connected with the speed, cynicism, vanity, and jaded irony associated with urban life. It stressed surface over substance, mood over meaning, and action over ideas. As a result, disco ran contrary to rock’s pretension and pain. The disco mindset was urbane; its musical and cultural distribution to the hinterlands was almost an afterthought.

GLORIA GAYNOR: Disco is more than just music. It’s a necessary means of releasing tensions and frustration during the struggle the entire world is going through. It’s what people want and need. (1979)

Disco was also a byproduct of the economic downturn. People didn’t go to discos worried about tomorrow. That night on the floor was their tomorrow; they lived for the here and now. Disco was a fantasy world providing momentary relief from life. Feeling helpless in the face of real-life issues like inflation and oil shortages, discogoers realized they just wanted to party.

The music was as packaged as everything else in the disco world—never directed at you but swirling around you, the same way the floor lights and ceiling strobes shone around you and the dancers moved around you. The subliminal absorption of the hypnotic rhythms tapped into ego, emotion, identity, personal connections, and unconscious desires.

Gotta make a move to a town that’s right for me Keep me movin’, keep me groovin’ with some energy

—Lipps, Inc., Funkytown

The early ’70s saw a relative lull in the music scene. There were no tectonic shifts during that soft period after Woodstock and before disco. When it arrived, disco presented a classy opportunity to escape reality and drop out of the ’70s. So the scene was the sum of post-hippie lifestyles and attitudes. The desire to disco came out of that mixture. The swirling lights and pulsating tempos created a fantasy world that pundits of the day claimed mirrored the hedonism of American culture in decline.

Disco affected what one heard on the radio, read in magazines, watched on TV and in the movies, and danced to in clubs. A multi-million-dollar industry grew around a culture orchestrated by a four on the floor beat. At its best, the culture was galvanizing and affirmative. Its hypnotically pulsating power made it the ubiquitous musical form of the ’70s, uplifting a broad populace with seductive sonic adventure.

The nation gyrated to an underlying disco beat; there seemed no end to the raging epidemic of discomania. Everyone came out to get seen, get down, and get off.

REGINE: People with no names come to see people with names. If people have no money, that is not important. People who have money have to share it with those who have not. (2011)

Wanna share my love with a warm-blooded lover Wanna bring a wild man back home

—Donna Summer, Hot Stuff

Rock ’n’ roll songs were about finding love with the girl of your dreams. Rock sexuality was an avowed renegade activity; it was not a byproduct of casual sex.

Disco culture was born out of a different underlying sexual attitude. It was not about finding love. In disco, one primped and preened and then looked to hook up with someone tonight and someone else the next night. It was the first music scene based on recreational sex, exemplifying the pre-AIDS era. It voiced an outright rejection of the lonely, shabby, bored, and ultimately unsexy late ’60s generation. Disco lyrics were sexually explicit and suggestive—sex at night, sex on the dance floor, sex on a street corner—and almost always written by men.

At the same time, in disco, women expressed their sensuality in ways rarely seen. They were encouraged to dance classily and smoothly, resist bumps and grinds, and go after what they wanted in terms of male partners. In this way, the disco floor provided women with safety and freedom. The feminism of the ’70s found a strong voice in disco in some ways, with female stars front and center. But some hard-core feminists voiced displeasure that women disco singers had set backward the equal rights movement with libidinous invitations to ring my bell.

GAY TALESE (author): Men like to hear a woman’s voice saying what men want the women to be saying. It’s exactly like the X-rated, hard-core porno films written by men, directed by men, and attended by men. Of course, the beat is sexual, and the rhythm is sexual. The whole fantasy is that sex is easy. Of course, in real life, it’s not easy. (1979)

She turns out to be a natural freak Popping pills