“ It was a red-hot , turned on dark , kinda like today . ” I ’m on the patio of a Ukrainian Village coffee shop class on a humid summer afternoon , seated across from author Dave Hoekstra . His forthcoming Word of God , DiscoDemolition : The Night Disco Diedtakes a long - delinquent , comprehensive looking at at the one of the most notorious nights in Chicago sport and music lore , compiling interviews rate from Nile Rodgers of Chic to groundskeeper Roger Bossard , Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung to White Sox organist Nancy Faust , plus the orchestrator of the stunt themselves .
On July 12th , 1979 , a crowd of some 50,000 shagged - haired rock kids swot Old Comiskey for a twi - night double feature . Admission was 98 cent plus a disco phonograph record – all of which would be collected in a crate and blown to bits in the outfield between games .
In a bid to boost attendance , promotion manager Mike Veeck had settle to conform to the lead of his Father of the Church , team owner Bill Veeck , a man famed for promotion stunts like signing dwarf Eddie Gaedel and once putting in - secret plan managerial decisions up to a crowd vote . For his own gimmick , Mike turned to local gewgaw DJ Steve Dahl of 97.9 The Loop . Dahl , who had been fire from his previous radio gig the year prior and replaced by a disco data format , built an army of listener mocking what he saw as an insidious musical computer virus ( symptom include gasconade - out hair , cockeyed pant , and terminal narcissism ) .
Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died|Courtesy of Paul Natkin
" Stories of oral sex on the base paths and kegs in the stand appear to be apocryphal , but it ’s gentle to see why they arose . "
After the detonation , buff rushed the field , andmayhemerupted . Much of it was innocuous ( a cat slip down the foul magnetic pole , multitude lawlessly climbing into the stadium , lot of airborne toilet paper ) , some of it was violent ( fires in the stand , the batting batting cage being dragged out and shoot aside ) , and some of it was plain uproarious ( announcer Harry Caray referencing all the weed smoke , Jimmy Piersall and Bill Gleason blithely turning discussion toward the Tigers ’ take to the woods game ) . Stories of oral sex on the floor way and kegs in the stand appear to be apocryphal , but it ’s easy to see why they arose .
Oh , and game two was forfeited .
Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died|Courtesy of Paul Natkin
“ It was knuckleheads let their freak flag fly sheet . A mess of suburban kids beget drunk , ” say Hoekstra , who was in attendance . “ You have ta recall what the Loop hearer was like , a really operose Midwestern Rock ' n ' Roll audience : Molly Hatchet , perchance Judas Priest . I like the Faces , which they considered mainstream . That ’s who the crowd was . ”
Given that disco originate as medicine by the black and gay lower class , the night has since come to be regard with undertone of racism and homophobia . The opinion is in the minority of Hoekstra ’s consultation subject , but it certainly surfaces . “ I thought , ‘ Did n’t you all read [ Ray ] Bradbury ? Burning Scripture ? Burning phonograph record ? This has the feeling of a really sorry cloud , ” says Joe Shanahan , owner of Metro and Smart Bar , in the book . “ And why is it come out of Chicago ? And why is music of any kind , whether I wish it or not , being destroyed for some radio promotion or some baseball promotion ? It yield licence for people to not be in the mod world . ” Shanahan would go on to heavily kick upstairs the Chicago business firm - music scenery and its greatest talent , the late Frankie Knuckles ( Knuckles : “ House music is disco ’s revenge ” ) .
Class and regionalism throw up similarly complicated shadows overDisco destruction . Duck Inn chef Kevin Hickey , a Dahl fan who attended the promotion at the long time of 10 , recalls a instructor of his in Bridgeport directing frequent homophobic slurs at him simply because Hickey spend time living with his female parent in the Gold Coast . But he too was absorb Dahl ’s anti - elitism .
Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died|Courtesy of Paul Natkin
“ I was have into toughie , so I had a lot of Police and The Clash , ” Hickey tells Hoekstra . “ My ally and I hated disco . It may have started out Latin - American based , but by 1979 everybody was listen to it . You felt you were n’t pretty enough or skinny enough to gibe into it . I was a chubby kid . I remember Steve saying the reason he hat disco was because he could n’t buy a three - firearm white suit off the rack . That stuck with me because I could n’t either . ”
Over the preceding two X , mark of seer disco compilations and take - reading histories have admirably reclaimed the musical style ’s reputation – perhaps so effectively that , in a odd satire , modern-day , connoisseur - minded audience may not comprehend how saturated the mainstream was with codified dreck , eon off from , say , Larry Levan . Either way , the disco - vs.-rock fight contrast now feel as antediluvian as a clamdigger baseball uniform .
But the hostility question persists . Perhaps the most convincing rendition is the one offer inDisco Demolitionby family like Joe Bryl , longtime Chicago DJ . “ The gay scenery was underground at the prison term . Boystown is not what we ’re used to now . I do n’t know if it was a homophobic reaction , because festal culture was hidden from the mainstream , " says Bryl . " I just think it was a reaction to what they did n’t wish musically . In retrospect I think it was homophobic and racist . At the time I did n’t . ”
Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died|Courtesy of Paul Natkin
That form of anti - hot take – extend nuance to Dahl , bearing no apparent malice – is echo by house music pillar DJ Lady D. “ front back , the emotional arc of Disco Demolition is that you had this outbound second of hatred , highly concenter onto a specific thing : disco music music . After near testing , it revealed itself to have racist and homophobic expression . ”
Steve Dahl nevertheless cuts a clean likable figure in the book , suspicious of pretentiousness and a changed man since kicking alcoholism . He believes himself the victim of revisionist history . But it ’s a very contemporary impulse that may touch on him among those ambivalent about Disco Demolition – an empathic aversion for public shaming . gratuitous to say , it ’s the antonym of Dahl ’s own guiding instinct back in 1979 .
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