Rock was about power guitars and real drummers
Disco was about electronics
Rock was about sweaty live events
Disco was about slick clubs with a bouncer in case you didn't look hot enough
Rock was long hair
Disco wasn't
Rock was about smoking dope and groovin
Disco was about cocaine and champagne
Rock was about dressing down
Disco was about dressing up
...the list goes on, but the point was a rock statement not a racial one...
It's unfortunate that perceptions of it being a homophobic or racist promotion. I certainly, in hindsight, see that. But at the time those negative feelings were completely off our radar.
The station pioneered a lot of elements that re-enforced the ROCK movement. And I'm sure everyone involved is saddened that it became perceived by some as a culture killer.
Lee Abrams
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I'm late to the party on this but since I was in the thick of it as a consultant, here's what happened.
First, history is a narrative laid upon carefully selected facts that tell different stories. With that as backdrop...
Steve Dahl was a brilliant promoter and disc jockey. He could think up stunts that electrified Chicago. Disco demolition was just one of them. It was more about the fact that disco was getting a lot more attention than rock at the time so the idea of blowing up disco records seems like a good idea. In all my time knowing Steve Dahl or any of the other people involved, there was never anything racist about it. After all, the biggest disco band in the world was the Bee Gees and they were white.
That's another part of the problem. The Bee Gees documentary.
In a carefully selected clip, it showed black records being thrown into a bin to be blown up. However it didn't show that the majority of the records were white. One of the radio guys I worked with for years was standing beside the bin when the records were thrown in and said there were far more by bands like Loverboy and other white rock acts than there were black. His comment was that people simply grabbed any record to throw it in the bin just to see it blowing up. Once again, history is written by the exclusion of facts rather than the inclusion of facts.
Now, let's turn to the question of disco demolition being anti-gay. I was interviewed some years ago by a guy writing a thesis on disco demolition being an anti-gay phenomenon and suggesting that disco backlash was against gays.
We discussed it at length and I was clear that I never saw any evidence of it in the research I was doing at the time. Rather people were reacting against the whole glam and glitz of the scene.
Studio 54 was an exclusionary club that left people out and it was highly connected to disco. It was in the news all the time with people being left on the street because they weren't cool enough or glam enough. People don't like to be left out.
So part of the backlash was against a club scene that made "ordinary" people feel like they could never be part of it - rather than anything to do with gays.
In spite of my observations and strong research to back it up, the writer went on to publish a thesis that distorted what I said, claiming that the anti-disco movement was anti-gay. An example of academic destruction. You can Google it.
Also, during this time a lot of disco radio stations were popping up all over the country. I could see the backlash coming against disco music in all the research I was doing and I spoke in front of the largest conference of disco radio owners in the country, warning them that they may end up with problems. This was within weeks of Steve Dahl's disco demolition. I remember how they laughed out loud. Within a year none of them were on the air.
So, in the interest of setting the record straight, musical trends come and go. If I wanted to push the case, I would say that there is a bias against white males in commercial radio because most of them are pop stations that don't play any rock. Of course, that would be ridiculous. Yet I'm sure someone will figure out a way to claim that it's true.
By the way, I think that the Bee Gees documentary on HBO has restirred the pot. Which is too bad because it's a fabulous piece of entertainment devoid of real politics.
John Parikhal
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Thanks for posting both of these. Amazing how people can twist something to fit their narrative.
I know–with 100% certainty–that Dave Logan and Lee Abrams would have had NOTTTTHHHHHING to do with some sort of racist or homophobic plot. Lee, like me, is just a nice, Jewish kid from Flossmoor, Illinois. And Dave is as count-on-able as they come. They, along with Dahl, were just some young, irreverent rock guys looking to have some fun.
Ultimately, it helped Logan fulfill a lifelong dream, to win one for the Tigers. LOL.
Best regards,
Scott Struber
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Those two contrasting letters regarding Disco Demolition Night are very instructive, and I didn't want to let the moment pass without commentary. I like to say that the difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives often don't believe white supremacy is even real, while liberals know full well it is but are in denial about their own role within it.
I have no doubt Steve Dahl was completely blind to the racial and heteronormative undercurrents of the anti-disco movement. Part of what makes whiteness and hetero maleness a form of privilege is that you don't ever have to examine your own motivations and biases. They're just the default of the culture.
But when black people tell you they feel the undercurrent of racism, when gay people tell you they feel the undercurrent of homophobia, it doesn't do to dismiss them as oversensitive. To be a marginalized minority is to be ever-aware of the way the dominant culture suppresses your voice and marginalizes your views and opinions. The fact that suppression is often unconscious doesn't mean it's not there. That the person doing the suppressing is a liberal with a self-image as a non-racist, non-homophobe does not mean their actions can't be racist or homophobic.
It's not an accident the target of the ire was disco, an extremely pluralistic genre that openly celebrated blackness and gayness in an era when both were conspicuously absent from most of the mainstream media.
This is not to condemn Dahl or the other anti-disco showmen of the era. The culture has moved on a lot since 1978 and more and more of us have begun to confront our own unconscious biases and the way we privilege our own viewpoint to the exclusion of others. But never mistake the white cis-het viewpoint for some kind of absolute truth. It's just one version of the truth, albeit the one with the biggest army and the deepest pockets.
Jonathan Steigman
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Whether Steve Dahl intended for Disco Demolition to be racist & homophobic is completely missing the point:
Dahl provided a venue for racists and homophobes to rally. It was a huge mistake.
Do racists know they're racist? Hardly. The culture of the past 100 years has produced racists & homophobes on both sides of the aisle.
Is Steve Dahl a racist/homophobe? Who cares?
Bill Seipel
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Sign me up for #teamVince. I'm relieved to see you would print a letter from someone who points out your dog whistle to your primarily white fan base. As a 13 year old in 1978, I thought disco demolition night was a last gasp from the ancestors of Confederates, before the country moved to the path Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. paved 10 years earlier.
White guys only appreciate black people making music at their nieces and daughters weddings.
Black people who read you know that if Darius Rucker fronted the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they would be called a hip hop group. RHCP can break through with a Stevie Wonder song, while Living Coulour, King's X and Fishbone never got the promotional support they deserved.
Please bring that podcast to fruition.
I will always tell smart people to read you,
Steve Smith
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Revisionist history? I'm sorry, Paul "friend of Steve Dahl's" Natkin, but one of America's biggest actors, Bob Odenkirk, did an episode of Drunk HIstory about this, and took the standard "Disco sucks" perspective. There's many videos of Dahl dogwhistling in interviews about how he shouldn't have to wear glitter to leave the house. Dahl has been pleading and bleating his case that he was just earnestly not into disco for so long, he's the epitome of the "empty vessels make the most noise" idiom. The only revisionist history that happens about the disco demolition is from Dahl and his defenders. Oh, and "He found himself unemployed because of progress so he took up a mantle against something inanimate and abstract instead of adapting" is the origin story for like half of all villains.
Trevor Risk
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Bob, a big segment of music fans dug the dance music trends in the 70s and 80s. The labels, operating true to form, milked the disco style dry, running it-and themselves-into the ground. But throughout the era, there were plenty of alternate listening options for those whose music discovery ability went beyond tuning in the local top-40 station.
To deem someone's creative output unworthy is ignorant. To stage a massive public event encouraging such ignorance is wrongful conduct.
It was a hateful, stupid, racist, homophobic, anti-music, anti-common sense reflection of America's worst. Pigs.
Yesteryear's "Disco Sucks" acolytes are today's Trump voters. Paul Lanning
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When disco happened, my contemporaries and I hated it for a number of reasons, including the dumbing down of the drum parts (I'm a drummer), the lack of guts or soul in the music itself, and disco's extolling the dancing/dancers to the exclusion of the musicians. I remember an article in People Magazine around 1979 that made that very point, i.e., that the dancers were the stars, and not the musicians, to the point where the live concert business was suffering.
Never once did my friends and I even consider a racist or homophobic reason for hating the disco genre. After all, blues, R&B and rock owe their existence directly to the Black community that essentially created it. Also, it might be noted that the Bee Gees, undeniably -- however reluctantly -- the poster child group of Disco, were White and straight.
Now, I cannot attest to what my African-American friends and associates thought of Disco Demolition or anti-disco sentiments at the time, but I never heard or saw any hint of this -- or a homophobic -- viewpoint at the time. In fact, the first time such a notion has been asserted, to my knowledge, was in the Bee Gees documentary.
As a historian by education, I have always been wary of revisionism, i.e., altering historical analysis or conclusions to fit a current trend or fad. Without disrespecting Vince Lawrence, it seems to me as if his recollection of that period is revisionism, pure and simple.
Douglas Weinstein
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Woah man did that dude piss me off.
The first disco record I heard was coming out of a stereo in my house. I had no idea who the artist was. If they were black, gay or from New Zealand. It was Fly Robin Fly and the sound of that record turned my stomach.
I worked retail in Bklyn, on Kings Highway, the disco capital of the US back then, during that era and found records like Push Push In The Bush, YMCA, Take The Time etc to be vapid, sometimes sexist and unlistenable.
You'll find at least a half a dozen Donna Summer tracks in my phone.
Larry Tepper
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Here's how history works. It doesn't matter how straight white guys saw it. It matters how Black and Gay people saw it.
Seek to understand.
Bryson Jones
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I'm with Vince. I also saw it as racist and homophobic and I happen to be white and straight.
Frank Malfitano
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I am born, raised and living in Puerto Rico.
Back in the 70's I was into Salsa, Rock and Jazz.
Could not stand Disco. Disco Demolition was not "racist" to me.
I would much rather listen to Freddie Hubbard or George Benson, both black.
Not to mention all the Salsa guys…or the Blues guys behind Rock.
Joey Sala
San Juan, PR
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Good Day Bob,
I really don't know how society moves forward
as one. We can't agree on facts, we can't agree on the past, and we definitely can't agree on how to proceed in the future.
I wasn't at disco demolition night as I was only 3 at the time, and have never lived in Chicago either. Amazing that the organizers of the event see it one way and some other guy who claims to have been there that night sees it completely differently. I don't make a habit of calling people liars without evidence so I tend to believe Paul Natkin's account. I feel Mr. Lawrence lost a great deal of credibility as soon as he made a not so subtle plea for public exposure at your expense.
At the end of the day I suppose my opinion isn't all that relevant on this matter, but what a depressing reality that one man's reaction to having lost his job because of a segment of his industry that he strongly disliked for musical taste reasons has been twisted into him being a racist and homophobe. I never knew the guy so I can't comment on his personal views, but isn't it possible that he just hated disco music? I hate rap music - no matter what color the rapper. My ears just hate the sound - nothing more, nothing less. I prefer guitars, real drums played by a drummer, melody sung by someone who can sing, and bass mixed in at the appropriate level. Doesn't make me a racist.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, bro.
Tim W
in Calgary
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Bob, Paul Natkin is one of the great rock photographers, based in Chicago. I'd love for you to do a post about rock photographers and seek out their perspectives on the music of the 60s, 70s and the 80s.
I would agree that Dahl did not promote the night at Comiskey as anything but a night to celebrate rock and roll by destroying disco records. However, there were many in the audience and in general who hated disco because of the audience it attracted: people of color and non-heterosexual.
Mark Guncheon
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Excellent note from Chicago's great photographer Paul Natkin.
He's absolutely right on every point. I was one of the crazed teenagers on the field, rock and roll Kid listening to The Loop FM 98.
We spent most of the time before the game getting lubricated and getting our smoke on for the night. I think we just enjoyed running around the field for kicks, but when a 12-inch record started flying past my head by inches, I scurried back to the lower-level stands to watch the rest. Plenty of footage on YouTube will show you what that action was like that night!
Dfactor Dave
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I remember when I first heard the 12" disco remix of Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and thinking, "uh-oh, we're fucked."
And lo and behold "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" came along.
Dave Curtis
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I was a 13 year old Cubs fan at the time and from my suburban Chicago seat, I was mostly glad to see Comiskey Park get trashed. I was definitely a Loop listener and Steve Dahl fan and had no racial animosity. Probably naive at the time.
Take care!
Sam Schauer
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Some of us hated disco because we thought that compared to funk, soul and jazz it sounded like insipid crap played by machines, and we were too insecure and self-conscious to let loose & party down with the folks who got off on it - regardless of their skin color or sexual orientation. But hey, I'm glad that many people found joy and comfort in Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive".
For me, it was never about the people. The music just left me cold.
Joe Paulino
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This is a great conversation. Until today I never considered the possibility that the disco demolition stunt was racist, but that may be my own ignorance. I guess I never considered disco to be race-specific.
Bird
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Agree with you and Paul. Nice to share the two perspectives.
Kyle J. Ferraro
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Far too often white people don't "see" things as racist. It's how we got to this moment.
Peter Buffett
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Once again, a clear picture of America today. Two diametrically opposed takes on the same event.
David Rubin
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As someone your age, I remember being disappointed that disco was becoming so popular at the expense of rock. I vaguely remember something about disco demolition. I never heard of Steve Dahl before but I understand his thinking. And DJs are always out there and promoting stuff. so if you have a gimmick like blowing up a record to get people's attention and it works, you keep doing it.
I was saddened that rock was being replaced. Why are all these people liking this music? Didn't matter if it was good, bad, whatever. It was taking over from the rock music that I loved.
And as a cover band musician, we sure as hell learned disco songs. ( I did like Richard Finch's bass lines on KC songs).
Same thing with Hip Hop today, replacing what came before it. And something new will replace hip hop some day.
Dale Janus
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merry hanukkah, xmas, and happy safe new year..
wow, u got thrown right in the eye of the hurricane.
no matter what you say, peoples perception of events,
thru the lens of years, will never line up.
our reality vs.vince's realty will never line up.
nothing you can say about innocence etc
will ever be acknowledged.
\the cancel button is in front of U.
i feel for you, and hope you stay BOB.
you r a solid caring human. thats all that matters.
stay safe, and warm..
with all my respect,
marc brickman
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Very interesting, contrasting views.
It may not have been a racist homophobic thing, but I liked Disco in the late 1970s, Donna Summer, and some others, and thought the whining of the rock people was annoying. Yes, Disco is very seasy to do badly, and that is partly why some disliked it, and its minimal lyrics, something I never liked about it, made it sound plastic at times, but rock is not much better. There is the term three-chord rock and all that screaming. It's sad you can't like both genres for the unique contributions to American culture that they are.
Best
David
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Hello, my name is Jim Marcus. As a member of the Box Boys and Die Warzau, I was part of the dance music scene here in Chicago, both house and industrial. I've continuously worked here as a remixer, engineer, producer, artist, etc. since the early 80's and when Disco Demolition happened I was a young session musician. As an LGBTQ person myself, it was clear exactly from what perspective this event happened and I very much saw the same thing Vince Lawrence did.
I remember sitting with friends that night in the studio and feeling unsafe in my own city. It seemed like the entire city had decided what it thought about the black and gay musicians that had just begun to gain acceptance on the air. Steve Dahl himself talked about how uncomfortable he was in clubs, as a heterosexual male, how he felt out of his element. His obvious discomfort at being around gay people was amplified in his followers, and that kind of othering of LGBTQ people was pervasive at the event.
It seems easy to us now to look back and call out what is Disco and what wasn't, the truth is that many of the records that were burned that night were just records from black artists. And much of the vitriol was aimed squarely at the fluid, gender playful, disco fans and artists who were finally finding a way to be themselves ion public.
If you are not gay, trans, bisexual, etc. you may have no idea what freedoms Disco offered people. Steve Dahl wrote about intimidation and disenfranchisement when walking into a dance club, but never considered for a moment that the people at home in that club were HONESTLY intimidated and disenfranchised by a community that saw policemen sit in their cars while gay and trans people were beaten in the streets.
If Dahl himself wants to deny that he was racist or homophobic, I would love to see him come to it honestly, by asking himself why he stood there in front of thousands of, nearly to the person, white straight males, screaming and circulating the message. He can maybe explain why he didn't hear what they screamed back. Because I guarantee you that those of us in the city who were different, gay, trans, black, latino, we got the message loud and clear.
Regards,
Jim Marcus
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I commend you for posting these two opposing views, but I believe anyone of good faith and any conscience whatsoever must admit that it's Vince Lawrence's perspective that is the correct one.
Racism and xenophobia is so intrinsic to the very genesis and fabric of this country that all of us white men, in particular, even those among us who try and wish to be allies can't help but suffer from living within the limited perspective of simply being white men.
Any white person who denies that simple and obvious phenomenon or that disco hatred was clearly just thinly veiled hatred for the "other", black and gay people is utterly deluding themselves, which is itself racist and xenophobic as hell! It's akin to Trump voters denying their obvious racism and screaming about economic anxiety as they adorn their $80k pickup trucks with a million MAGA flags and brandish their $2k AR-15s demanding haircuts. They're only fooling fools.
I enjoyed the Bee Gees documentary immensely and was actually tempted to respond vociferously about how wrong and obviously biased your recollection of the disco demolition was, but Vincent's response was so much more powerful, not just because he was there and in the film, but because he has the lifetime experience of systemic racism that us white guys NEVER will.
Thank you Vince for setting the record straight! Anyone who disagrees is telling on themselves.
I'd love to hear Vincent absolutely demolish Steve Dahl's dim white guy perspective, again, so I'm hoping Vincent's suggestion of a podcast can happen. More people need to be taught how deep is their hate before they can understand how deep their love could and should be.
And I think the Bee Gees would agree.
Martin Ferrini
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Steve Dahl was a fat bastard socially inept and couldn't get laid even if he had speed boat on Gilligan's Island.
I am not going to get into the "hemming and hawing" ...heres the bottom.line ...
The major label promotion people hated and I do mean hated disco ( the lifestyle and the music ) . They especially hated that all the hot chicks and the best drugs were ready available in a club where they just did not fit in . They hated that the PDs in their respective markets ( many of which were closet gay ) were finding songs on their respective labels that weren't "priorities " and adding them with nothing more than a " by the way we are adding song x I heard it at a disco over the weekend ". The label reps thought disco was a gay thing and anybody whom liked it was gay as well . I know this to be 100% true because I went thru it whn I moved from being the RFC / WB East Coast Dance Music Rep to joining Atlantic as the Boston Rep. . Shit ..I got fired for getting a song I liked added at 4 Boston stations. Stacy Lattisaw " Let Me Be Your Angle " ...was not a priority and was not on Atlantic radar. Vince Feracci called me that Tuesday afternoon " If you want to get records played at radio that you like you should get a job at radio .. YOURE FIRED !!" I took Vince advise ....
I became Sunny Joe Whites Asst MD then MD at Kiss 108 .
Back to Dahl . This too I know to be a fact ..... the record companies drop shipped 1000s of records ( cutouts ) to Chicago because 90% of the morons he reached didnt hve disco records in their collection to blow up.
Bottom Line : before disco clubs were 100% segregated ....white , black,gay ,straight ' hispanic .... the Disco brought us all together under one roof... I saw the desegregation happen..I was part of it ...
It was wonderful !!!
Joey Carvello
Billboard Disco Deejay Of The Year 1978 /Boston
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I was at the ballgame. at the time i was a 21 white kid from the suburbs of NYC, I was not really a fan of disco, but i did not go to protest music, hell I had been to disco's to meet girls, it was a right of passage in the late 70's.
I was visiting my sister in Chicago and was told about the event at a local bar. I attended because I am a huge baseball fan and a double header made sense. I paid full price for good box seats. Most of the people that stormed the field had general admission as the promotion was bring a disco record to plow up between games and you get in with GA seats for 98 cents ( station # was 98 point something FM )
The demonstration was a dud, The records were put into a large contained box in center field, the all you saw was smoke. Steve Dahl was kind of funny until the crowd started to boo. He was dressed up in a old army jacket and helmet, like he was protesting Viet Nam or something.
The crowd was acting up during the first game, those that could not get the GA tickets and still had their records were using them as frisbee's. I know the Detroit third baseman was wearing a batting helmet while fielding, he was quoted in the news defending disco music before the game.
I for one was not happy when the crowd ran ointo the field, tore up the infield, ripped the bases out and would not leave. I was really not happy when the second game was forfeited. The White Sox owner announced any valid ticket could be used for another game, like a rainout. I was leaving Chicago before the next home game, so i gave my ticket to my sister to give out.
In retrospect I was witness to history first hand, had a story to tell. At the time i thought it was a dumb idea that went wrong.
Tom Melle
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Two great letters providing a very different perspective on this unique event in my home town.
I did not attend the game. I was a Cubs fan living on the southside (Sox Country). I was 19 in 1978, a white kid from an immigrant family, first year dating my wife of 34 years, the most beautiful woman and only Cuban I had ever met. Chicago was and still is a highly segregated city, and as in 1978 remains racist. However, for some reason it never occured to me that others would have an issue with my choice of spouse. My wife was also an immigrant, and despite growing up much of her childhood and young adult life in Chicago she swears she never experienced racism. Hard to believe given the tough neighborhoods we lived in, schools we attended, but that is her perspective and I know she believes it.
I didn't march with Dr. King, I was only a child when he and 20,000 (whites, blacks, browns, nuns, priests, rabbis, business leaders, politicians, etc.) locked arm-in-arm proudly marched down California Ave to Marquette Park on the southside of Chicago. However, I did view the event from the safety of my best friend's front porch (later County District Attorney) and it was not a pretty sight. I haven't lived in Chicago for some 35 years, but spent half my time working there during the last 9 years. It certainly has improved over the years, but there's much more work to do.
I listened to Steve because I was into Classic Rock and he had a good shtick with his side-kick Gary...of course at the time it was just Rock, not yet Classic...but it never occured to me then or until you brought it up that it was some kind of racist or homophobic event. Couldn't walk a block in Chicago without running into a racist or homophobic, but I knew plenty of folks that went to the event and talked about it for years afterwards and none of us had that angle. The big news then and still now is that the Sox forfeited a game. And if I recall it was the effective end of Steve's career, such as it was.
Bill Veeck, Sox owner, was the master of promotion and he was the furthest thing from a racist...he was an upstanding guy...so I understand why no one would have associated Bill with promoting such an event.
Had I walked in different shoes back then, black or gay, I suspect I too would've had an entire different view and I appreciate the comments from Mr. Lawrence. Different people experiencing the same event, living at the same time, in the same place, and with different recollections. And all very real, no doubt.
Thanks for sharing their letters.
E Kelly
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Thank you for presenting e-mails of both perspectives (Vince Lawrence and Paul Natkin). My heart still races from the thought of the Disco Demolition. I was 10 years old and I remember the spray painted buildings with Disco Sucks and the light posts carved with WBLS - We Black Love Sh*t . WBLS was top R&B Station. Mr. Natkin may have not realized that the actions were racist or homophobic but it was. The ramifications of those actions were felt throughout black neighborhoods. It was a direct attack on the music we loved and it caused a divide.
Thanks for reading.
Jeff James
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it's likely bordering on the absurd levels of obvious to say no one care what I think about race. Certainly, as a middle-aged white dude, I have very little to offer except my own experience. It may be useful.
I was anti-disco. I had no idea at the time this position was infused with race. I never thought Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, or Al Green were disco. I loved those artists then as I do now. We can debate the Bee Gees, but history has changed my thinking about the demolition.
I live in the south and lack a lot of the self-loathing white guilt that I probably should feel. At the same time, I'm all about tearing down the statues of the traders of the confederacy and I don't care about the rebel flag one way or the other. Burn it. I'll hand you a match. Fly it behind your truck. I'll thank you silently for outing yourself as an asshole.
What I do care about is music. I saw this interview youtu.be/dTvNjPFjlNE?t=3301 with Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and it literally turned me 180 degrees on Saturday Night Fever and disco in general. The Bee Gees doc did a lot to affirm my newfound appreciation for what they accomplished in the mid 70's in Miami.
In the clear light of history and hindsight, yea, the Disco demolition was a racist act. I'm pretty sure the people that came up with the idea weren't racist. What all this has taught me in retrospect is that when it comes to prejudice, intent is irrelevant. Very few people mean to be racist or prejudice. We just are, unless we consciously review our thoughts and actions and screen for it. Even then, we often miss. We're human.
In July 1979, I wouldn't have thought twice about blowing up bad dance records (or bad rock records for that matter) and never considered race. Blowing shit up is awesome. Why I never thought in the '90s to suggest that a station blow up hair metal bands is beyond me. The argument that "it's been done" would have been preposterous on its face. We re-did every successful promotion over and over. Hair metal, as a genre, deserved every gram of explosive disco ever got. So there you have it. Guilty.
Manning of course is correct. Albhy Galuten is an undeniable genius. The Cocteau Twins, Blue Nile, and the Beastie Boys all have proven me wrong about the legitimacy of loops and drum machines.
Sure, I still hate Roland 808 high-hats, but I get Migos. Are Roland 808's cultural signaling? Hell if I know. Probably. So what? Yes, I realize now I was racist and homophobic about Disco. There is no one to forgive me but myself and there is no one to apologize to for my ignorance. This is the problem of race in our time. We can be nice. We can ally. We can protest, but we cannot fix what was done. All we can do face our miserable failings and work for better tomorrow.
Perhaps we can reconsider the music we missed, too. There's always that.
Tom Barnes
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I'm waiting for what, I'm sure, will be an interesting and polarized reaction to Disco Demolition and figured I'd add my account of that night to the forthcoming scrum.
Full disclosure: I've known Steve Dahl for almost 45 years and in fact, was his roommate in Detroit when we first met. So, yep, we've been friends for a long, long time.
Back in July 1979, I was scheduled to fly to Chicago to do a presentation at the MCA Records Distribution offices for one of the bands I was managing. I lived in LA at the time. So Steve offered to let me stay with him and Janet (Steve's wife) while I was in town. "But," Steve told me, "you may wanna come in a couple of days earlier, because we're doing this promotion that might be interesting." He laid out the plans, but really had no idea how it would go. The way he convinced me to come was the game(s): A doubleheader between the ChiSox and Tigers. I'm a dyed in the wool Tigers fan.
Now, it might be helpful to elaborate here about something that Paul Natkin referenced in an earlier email to you. That is, what was the partial genesis for Steve's "anti-disco" attitude. During his years in Detroit, Steve's popularity skyrocketed as the morning air personality at Rock Radio AORs WABX and subsequently WWWW (W4). At the time there was even a third AOR station in the market—WRIF. WRIF was a part of the ABC Radio Network's chain of Album Rock stations, which included several others like KLOS (LA). Steve was becoming quite a star in Detroit, so ABC decided to back the truck up to Steve's door, dump a bunch of money, and hire him. But to go to their Chicago AOR station, WDAI. Their strategy was twofold: (1) Bring Steve to Chicago to bolster their struggling station, WDAI, and (2) get him the hell outta Detroit where he was kicking WRIF's ass.
Shortly after arriving in Chicago (within months), WDAI flipped formats from Rock to DISCO and canned Dahl. For Steve, shock and anger ensued. And that's when WLUP (The Loop) swooped in and hired him.
As for that night at Comiskey Park, it was one of the most insane events I've ever experienced. When we pulled into Comiskey's parking lot, there were literally thousands of people milling around. The game was sold out (50,000) and they couldn't get in. Steve looked at me and said, "I think this thing is gonna be bigger than we thought." No kidding. WLUP had a private press box right next to both the White Sox and Tigers broadcast booths, so we all had a really good view of the insanity. After the first game, a huge pile of records were set up and Steve came out. The crowd went bananas—many having kept their 12" vinyl and throwing them around like frisbees. When the explosion blew up, the crowd erupted and flooded the ball field. Absolutely burying Steve. We honestly feared for the guy's life. Scary.
Of course, the doubleheader's second game was canceled. And for what it's worth, after that night Steve Dahl became a huge, iconic and enduring celebrity in Chicago.
I expect most of your readers will be addressing the question of racism and homophobia, and rightfully so. Was that the intent of WLUP, the Chicago White Sox or Steve Dahl? I honestly do not think so. However, it's obvious that the event has had ramifications over the years that have proven unsettling, upsetting and even emblematic of some of the deepest problems that our nation confronts. Lord knows the last four years' Administration here in the US have shown us that we have a very long ways to go.
PS. One anecdote (out of so many). Being a huge baseball fan, I poked my head into the teams' broadcast booths where there were guys like Al Kaline doing the game. The White Sox analyst at the time was Jimmy Piersall, a former outfielder who was infamous for his genuinely bizarre antics on the playing field, as well as the movie based on his life, "Fear Strikes Out." Well, after the explosion, he stormed into The Loop's press box and grabbed me (of all people) by the collar, screaming at me as he reared back to punch me in the face! Fortunately Comiskey Park Security quietly intervened.
Anyway, that's some of my Disco Demolition experience, Bob.
There's so much more, but I'm tired of typing!
Play ball!
And Happy Holidays.
Hugh Surratt
____________________________________
Boy- this one is out of control! I have known Steve Dahl
for +/- 40 years. Disco Demolition was never intended to
be political, racial, or for that matter- even serious.
It was for people who suddenly were forced to listen to nothing but Disco on the radio- whether they liked it or not.
Steve Dahl still lives in Chicago.
He has been on the radio his whole life.
He talks about what ever is going on- with no judgement.
I have never heard him radicalize about anything.
The only agenda I have ever heard from him on the air
is common sense.
Honest!
Joe Walsh
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