UP ALL NIGHT TO GET LUCKY
Gay men have always loved to dance. They were dancing in 1969 on the night of the Stonewall riots in New York City, which kicked off the modern gay rights movement. They were dancing their tight-jeaned butts off throughout the 1970s as the gay subculture blossomed. They danced for their lives in the 1980s as AIDS decimated their population and turned them into overnight activists. They danced into the 1990s as the circuit scene exploded and kept dancing into the Noughties as DJ culture turned into big business. And, yes, despite the rise of mobile hook-up apps, gay men still feel like dancing in gay-friendly venues where we can take off our tight shirts, shake our booties, get lost in music or caught in a trance.
THE ’70s – DISCO!
Discotheque: the word is of French origin and describes a nightclub at which live musicians have been replaced by a disc-jockey spinning discs, or records. The origins of the American Disco sound came from nightclubs that were popular with gays, black people, Latinos and women – where patrons wanted to dance, not just sit around swilling beers. Soul, Mambo, Salsa and Top 40 pop f rom Motown artists, along with Isaac Hayes and Barry White were early precursors to Disco. The Hues Corporation’s Rock The Boat in 1973 blended an insistent Latino rhythm with a commercial melody and smooth gospel-like harmonies. Disco was born. Then, in 1974, George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby spent two weeks at the top of the US Billboard charts and went to number one around the world. Disco had arrived.
With gay men now asserting their identities and demanding safe places to meet like-minded men, gay discos mushroomed, following the rally cries of liberation. The “clone” look of tight white T-shirts, tight blue jeans and a nifty porn-star moustache became the uniform of choice for gay men heading out to meet the man, or men, of their dreams.
The irrepressible sound of disco was adored on the Continent, where it soon morphed into Eurodisco, epitomised by Italian producer Giorgio Moroder and in tracks like Patrick Hernandez’ Born To Be Alive and Baccara’s Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie. This was most notable in their use of futuristic sounds and beats, made possible by the new musical wonders of drum machines and synthesizers. >>
>> Yes, disco was as catchy as an STI and its relentless percussive sound, rousing choruses and stomping rhythms quickly caught on and became the defining sound of the era. Charts were crammed with songs being played in big club venues, like New York’s iconic Studio 54, that started popping up around the world. The 7-inch vinyl single gave birth to its big brother, the 12-inch single, which housed extended versions of songs played in the clubs to keep people dancing longer. Donna Summer’s four-sided Greatest Hits On The Radio album mixed each track together into a continuous long-play format.
Disco hits came thick and fast transforming the Top 40 into a gayer space than it had ever been before. Then, in 1978 came John Travolta’s Oscar-nominated role in Saturday Night Fever. The soundtrack from the Bee Gees turned this tale of “white trash wears white suit on weekends” into one of the biggest selling albums of all time. Suddenly, everyone was doing The Hustle, The Bus Stop and The Carwash as they threw slick, chic moves across dance floors that flashed in neon. Even Swedish melancholy makers ABBA switched to disco in 1979 with their shimmery VoulezVous album. Thankfully, they only just managed to sneak in ahead of the Disco Sucks movement, which began in Chicago that year and spread like wildfire. The love affair was over. Piles of records were burned at Disco Demolition Nights as a straight, white male reaction against the gayness and blackness of Disco. Rock, Punk and “urban country” became hip. The mere mention of Disco was terribly uncool and the genre died with the decade. Disco retreated underground back to the gay and black clubs from which it had come. Mercifully, it wasn’t kept down for long. It would take a few years and a name change, but Disco would be back.
THE ’80s – HI-NRG!
The 1980s were the best of times and the worst of times for gay men. At the decade’s beginning they fought hard at gaining acceptance. They crusaded against movies they believed showed them in a bad light (like Cruising) and took to the streets to demand their rights. Gay Pride parades turned from protest marches into celebratory processions. That was the good news. The bad news was distilled into an acronym – AIDS. Yet even the spectre of a grisly early death was not enough to keep many gay men from going out and having a good time, most notably picking up at a gay bar or disco.
With Disco considered passé, the sound of the gay clubs became more electronic and synthesized. Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s groundbreaking I Feel Love back in the ’70s set the blueprint for synth-only tracks such as New Order’s Blue Monday, which became a club staple and crossed over into the pop charts.
One petite female singer arrived courtesy of the gay clubs of New York and promptly changed everything – Madonna. By the mid 1980s she was the biggest star on the planet, rivaling Michael Jackson, who himself had turned from the disco of his Off The Wall album to the rockier, whiter sound of Thriller. While Madonna sourced gay clubs for inspiration, one particular sound remained almost exclusively gay – Hi-NRG. It offered a faster, more hypnotic beat, usually with female vocals wailing about searching for love or needing a man. The UK led the world in Hi-NRG and soon enough there were even gay pop stars whose music dipped into the sound, like Bronski Beat and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Even I Feel Love received a stonking 15-minute Hi-NRG remix from Patrick Cowley. It’s still considered one of the finest remixes of all time.
Every single release would have a 12-inch re-mix, more often than not with a Hi-NRG beat to keep the clubs and gays happy. Even with masses of gay men perishing from AIDS, Hi-NRG Disco (let’s call it what it really was) kept the dance floors packed. British producers/ songwriters Stock Aitken Waterman saw the chance to use the Hi-NRG sound and adapted it for mass consumption. Their first success came via heavyweight drag movie star Divine with You Think You’re A Man in 1984. (It’s highest chart placing was at #8 in Australia.) It wasn’t until the Stock Aitken Waterman team collaborated with gender-bender Pete Burns and Dead Or Alive on You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) in 1985 that their Pop/Hi-NRG sound topped the charts around the world. They perfected their formula and the “Motown of the ’80s” was born. Bananarama, Mel And Kim, Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue became integral parts of the SAW hit machine. For five years, theirs was the defining sound heard at any gay club at any given time. Then, as shoulder pads, half-shirts and acidwash jeans gave way to baggier pants and smiley face T-shirts, the end of the decade also heralded the arrival of the next great genre of gay dance music. Hi-NRG’s time was up, replaced by a dance sound that blended Soul and Gospel into the mix. After 1989’s Summer Of Love it was House music all night long. >>
THE ’9Os – HOUSE!
With its banging pianos, booming beats and soulful electronic heart, House music was Disco tarted up in new clothes for a new era once again. What was an underground sound quickly burbled over the top in 1989 with hits like Blackbox’s pounding Ride On Time (Italo-House), Deee-Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart, Technotronic’s Pump Up The Jam and Malcolm’s McLaren’s hybrid of House and Lounge, Deep In Vogue.
The men who spun House music became stars and their remixes turned them into household names. Frankie “Godfather Of House” Knuckles, David Morales and Junior Vasquez transformed the once-anonymous club DJ into the Superstar DJ as gay club culture was, once again, “discovered” by a new generation of straight kids looking for fun.
Brands such as Ministry Of Sound, Twilo, Limelight, Heaven, Tunnel and Pacha packaged the club sound for the masses, which still included plenty of gays and their admirers. Gay clubs themselves often became much more mixed venues as everyone suddenly discovered the joys of Ecstasy. What, in the 1970s, had been speed or LSD was now all about popping a pill and dancing sweaty and shirtless, giving group hugs and telling your friends, or new friends, how much you loved them. Welcome to the loved-up ’90s.
By the middle of the decade, with grunge taking over the pop charts, Dance music, as it came to be known, took a lower profile in the mainstream. It was always there, though, especially at the big gay venues that could now squeeze in thousands of gay men at the one place at the one time. The mid 1990s also saw gaydom suddenly get a whole new lease of life, quite literally, as life-saving HIV medication meant AIDS was no longer a death sentence. At the same time, gay clubs began fragmenting into specialist nights and fetish events for leather lovers, particularly, burgeoned. The music here was harder, sleazier and thumpier with less vocals than in the big rooms, where crowd-pleasing anthems were thrashed. Techno, Electro, Deep House and Trance, among other genres within a genre, sped in and out of favour as musical tastes waxed and waned. It signalled a maturing of the gay dance scene, able to support a smorgasbord of beats, styles and dress codes. Conversely it also meant there would never be just one gay scene anymore, as the term gay itself fractured into LGBT.
’80S GOLDEN GAY TIME
Apart from the anguish of the AIDS crisis, gay culture was under attack in the ’80s from conservative forces that wanted to close down gay venues, cancel Pride parades and make the discussion of homosexuality illegal. Rather than ducking for cover it was, mostly, the stars of Hi-NRG dance culture who stood up to be counted: Divine, Dead Or Alive, Bronski Beat, Sylvester, Erasure and Pet Shop Boys. The pop charts had never been so openly gay.
THE NOUGHTIES AND NOW – ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC
There is one person, a Frenchman, who epitomised Noughties club culture. DJ/producer David Guetta progressed from being an underground dance remixer to a producer to a chart-topper. His big global moment came when he produced a track for American Pop/R&B quartet Black Eyed Peas. 2009’s I Gotta Feeling spent 16 weeks at #1 in the US charts, even managing to get Oprah Winfrey up and dancing to it on her show.
This one song broke down American radio’s resistance to dance music, spearheading electronic dance music, or EDM as it was later sold, to Middle America. And they loved it. Suddenly, it was okay for rappers to be involved with dance music as it wasn’t “gay, but cool”. Even Paris Hilton tried to cash in with a fluffy pop/dance album, followed by a single from Kim Kardashian, that was, ahem, even less successful.
Guetta wasn’t the only Frenchman in the mix. The most important dance act of the era, and still today, is a duo who prefer never to be photographed without their cosmic helmets – Daft Punk.
Back in the gay bars, the leather and rubber crowds clung on to the fringes but in their place the sportswear and “twisted gear” fetishes grew more prominent. Wrestling uniforms, swimwear, footie shorts and jockstraps became as common as leather harnesses and rubber suits, if not more so.
Much like pop stars who burn brightly then fade, so too did the Superstar DJs. While the ’90s were kind to names like Victor Calderone, Junior Vasquez and Thunderpuss, by the Noughties they were deemed dated. In their place came Freemasons, Dave Audé, Benny Benassi, Avicii and Swedish House Mafia, to name but a few.
Ever on trend, mid-decade Madonna tapped into the Mash-up trend and made a spectacular return to form with producer Stuart Price on Confessions On A Dance Floor. They plundered the dance catalogue to sample ABBA’s 1979 hit Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) on the album’s lead single, Hung Up. It became an instant floorfiller, yet, by the end of the decade, the Queen Of Pop had real diva competition in the form of Lady Gaga and Rihanna, who both became major forces in the charts.
While Disco diva worship remains a preoccupation for some, many gays and lesbians have a more evolved appreciation of the dance genre, delving into Hard House, Progressive House or Deep House.
Not that you’re likely to hear much House if you head out to a club tonight. Today the dance floor moves to the sound of Electronica: mashed-up vocal samples, looped riffs and odd sound effects as on Duck Sauce’s Barbra Streisand. But you’ll still detect House’s warm, soulful tones in, for example, John Newman’s Love Me Again or Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness. Or hear the influence of Hi-NRG on Calvin Harris productions. Or, dare we say it, hear ’70s Disco in the music of The Empire Of The Sun, Daft Punk’s Up All Night To Get Lucky, and Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, which bares an astonishing resemblance to Marvin Gaye’s dance classic Got To Give It Up from 1977.
With harder music came harder drugs like GHB and crystal meth and the gay dance scene became associated with overdoses and even fatalities. The freewheeling hedonism of the Disco days have gone, replaced with CCTV, strip searches and police drug dogs wandering across dance floors. It doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon, either. What’s in no doubt is that gay men and dance music will continue to be one of the greatest love affairs of all time.