Demolishing the false narrative of Disco Demolition Night

July 12 marked the 40th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night, a promotion at a Chicago White Sox game where fans were encouraged to bring disco records that would then be destroyed on the field. The event went poorly, to say the least, and ended up being a riot that caused the Sox to forfeit the game to the Tigers.

 

In the 40 years since then, the night has taken on a different meaning among disco defenders and historians. What was once considered a stupid display of drunken idiocy is now often discussed an act of overt racism and homophobia. The belief among many music writers these days seems to be that the straight, white men who largely made up the crowd at Disco Demolition night weren’t rebelling against disco because “disco sucked” but they were lashing out against it because it was known as a predominately gay genre populated primarily with people of color. Some people have gone as far as to compare Disco Demolition night to a Trump rally.

As a gay man who loves himself some disco, fuck that.

I understand that in 2019, we like to read more into things, look for subtext and covert meanings, and try to dissect the “why” behind a cultural event, milestone, or trend. Social media has turned us all into armchair social anthropologists. Nothing can just be popular anymore only because it’s good. Nothing is allowed to be hated only because it’s bad. There has to be some sort of underlying trend, a feeling in the zeitgeist, affecting everything. But sometimes, something is popular because it’s really, really good. And just as often, something becomes hated because it really, really sucks. And in 1978, disco sucked. And not only did it suck, it sucked in a bleach white and dead straight way

Of course, this wasn’t always the case. It’s well-documented that disco came out of the underground gay club scenes of New York and LA, and that most of those clubs were populated by people of color. And many of the artists who first broke big in the disco scene were people of color. In 1974 the biggest disco song of the year was “Love’s Theme” by Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra. A stone cold classic. 1975 saw “Shining Star” by Earth, Wind & Fire strike gold (more soul than disco, but surely disco adjacent). But waiting in the wings, just outside the top 20 was “Jive Talkin'” by The Bee Gees.

The whites, they were coming.

In 1976 the biggest disco track (and the number three single of the year) was “Disco Lady” by Johnnie Taylor, but coming in just behind him was “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” by the Four Seasons; you don’t get much whiter than Frankie Valli. And by 1977, it had happened, the number one disco track of the year (and number two single overall) was “I Just Want To Be Your Everything” by Andy Gibb, edging out (better) songs by people of color such as “Best Of My Love,” and the eternal classic “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston.

 

But the most important thing that happened to disco in 1977 was the release of Saturday Night Fever, the film that catapulted disco to the mainstream thanks to its blockbuster soundtrack that featured The Bee Gees. Three of the top ten singles of 1978 were Bee Gees tracks taken from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. They were only kept off from the top spot because of fellow Gibb Andy, who reigned supreme that year with “Shadow Dancing.” Also cracking into the year’s top ten was another disco track, “Boogie Oogie Oogie” by A Taste Of Honey (a very bad song).

You can say a lot of things about the Bee Gees, both good and bad (personally, I’m not a fan) but they are as white bread as they come. They walk into a room and the walls just turn beige. They are musical mayo. And Saturday Night Fever was just as white, with pretty boy Travolta serving as the literal poster boy for millions of white teenage girls around the world.

And both the Bee Gees and Travolta (as well as his film’s character) were presented as aggressively straight. With their hairy chests and skintight pants, both Travolta and the brothers Gibb wanted you to know that, despite their penchant for the dance floor, they were still manly men of manliness, and totally DTF (with the ladies).

 

And really, really white. Did I mention they whiteness?

There were plenty of people of color who scored disco hits in 1978 and 1979 (including Michael Jackson) but the idea that the genre was exclusively for people of color was long gone. (Also, Abba anyone?)

Also long gone was the idea the genre was a bastion for people from the LGBT community. It’s common knowledge now that disco was invented in underground gay nightclubs, but was the really the case in 1978? Did Johnny Mullet in Iowa hate disco because gay people liked it? Or did he hate it because it took away his favorite radio station (rock stations around the country were switching formats) and gave all the girls in his high school the expectation that he had to wear a tight white suit and have puffy hair? Saturday Night Fever made disco bigger than it had ever been, but the image it created also spelled its downfall. It made disco even more superficial and image-based than it already was, and it image it assigned to the genre was one of white hyper masculine hetero-normativity.

Go back and watch footage or read interviews with Steve Dahl (the DJ behind Disco Demolition Night) or any other prominent outspoken disco critic from the era. Very few of them mention the fact that the music was popularized first by people of color, or that disco clubs were havens for homosexuals. They hated it because of it was superficial and disposable pap. They hated it because it was overplayed and everywhere. They hated it because, quite frankly, by 1978, most of it sounded like shit.

And let’s be real, this was 1978, if they hated it because it was the predominate music of minorities and the LGBT community, they could’ve just said so. Discrimination against those communities (especially the LGBT community) was commonplace and still relatively accepted at the time. It’s unfair to lump these people in with racists and homophobes just because they thought Andy Gibb’s music sucked.

It also just doesn’t make sense. No one organized Motown Destruction Nights in the 1960s when The Supremes and The Four Tops were dominating the charts. The majority of white America (including the overtly racist majority of that majority) had no violent reaction to Motown and its ilk. They enjoyed it, and the music became mainstream because of white America’s willingness to embrace it.

And going back to disco’s association with LGBT audiences, did that manifest itself in the acts that became popular at all? Sylvester is the only openly gay disco singer I can think of who had any modicum of success on the pop charts, and he was sadly just a one hit wonder (Sylvester rules by the way). Disco was the music of the gay community in the 1970s, no doubt, but most of middle America was probably oblivious to that fact. Remember, most people who listened to “YMCA” didn’t know it was about gay cruising…and that song was from an album called Crusin’.

Of course, there were disco haters who were also racist, sexist and/or homophobic. I’m sure their bigoted beliefs manifested themselves in an anti-disco backlash. But there are groups of bigots in any group (including staunch disco defenders). You can’t judge the motivations of an entire group because of a racist subset. You don’t have to be racist to hate “Disco Duck.” (A number one disco hit in 1976).

 

Disco Demolition Night retrospectives quickly the jump onto the idea that this one night somehow “killed” disco. As fun as it is to build such narratives, it never works out that way. The Beatles didn’t kill Bobby Vinton, Nirvana really didn’t kill hair metal (it was a lot of things) and a bunch of dumb-asses with firecrackers didn’t kill disco. Disco had already peaked by the time Disco Demolition Night came around, and when you read articles about disco, and even many pieces about Disco Demolition Night, they all agree, disco was on already on it’s way out. It was overexposed, overplayed and stretched too thin to sustain itself. The external forces that literally set the genre on fire were just adding kindling to a blaze that had been lit from within.

But then again, did disco ever really die, or did it just evolve with the times? The decline of disco syncs up almost perfectly with the rise of electronic music (birthed from disco) along with the emergence of rap and punk’s evolution to new wave/synthpop: all genres just as dance floor friendly as disco. And we’re not that far removed from house music at this time either. The scene itself that created disco was ready to move on.

 

“Disco,” now Billboard poison, took some time off and came back as “dance music” and no one was the wiser. “Billie Jean,” “Physical,” “Flashdance,” and “Fame” are all post-Demolition tracks that are just barely one step removed from disco. Free from the disco designation, the broader “dance” genre could grow and evolve in ways that “disco” would’ve never allowed. The dance music of 1984 wasn’t going to sound like the dance music of 1978, Disco Demolition or not.

Calling Disco Demolition the death of disco is unfair to disco. And calling the people who participated in it homophobes and racists isn’t only unfair to them, it’s unfair to people who have actually suffered because of real homophobic and racist actions. I’m gay. While I’m fortunate enough to have never been the victim of homophobic violence, I have experienced first hand the effects of discrimination and hatred. I’ve been called names. I’ve been threatened, and I’ve been forced into unfair and uncomfortable situations for reasons entirely beyond my control.

It is unfair to me, and to anyone who has faced any sort of discrimination even remotely similar, to lump those acts together with someone as stupid as Disco Demolition Night, a night that was born much more from a disdain for a vapid genre that had played itself out than anything else. Storming a baseball field with an Abba record and setting it on fire might make you an idiot, but it sure as hell doesn’t make you a bigot.

And fuck the Bee Gees.