August 17, 2023 • 45 mins
Under the musical influence of the one and only Larry Levan, Paradise Garage became a vibrant musical space for Queer, Black, and Latino people in New York, to dance, and reclaim a sound that they had created. With a DJ who knew how to energize a crowd and a killer sound system that pulled people out onto the dancefloor, Paradise Garage would go on to influence musicians around the world and leave a lasting imprint on Dance music that would last for decades to come.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Nightclubs are like homes and sanctuaries to people who love
them most. The backdrop to coming of age tales and
the first scene in Origin Stories and the club we're
stepping into today was all of those things. But it
did something more. It empowered people to become versions of
(00:21):
themselves they didn't even know existed. At least that's what
it did for my good friend Victor.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
My name is Victor Rosadom. I loved to make people dance.
I play music, music plays me.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Victor grew up in New York and was exposed to
all sorts of music, but when he was a kid,
there was always a Latin be playing in his house.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Spanish music, you know. Back then, Latin music salsa was
a take on Cuban music, except that with the New York.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Flair, and so Victor started going out to parties in
clubs all around New York.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I went to my first place at thirteen. I went
to so many places because New York was a mecca
of different types of clubs at different days. Every day
of the week, there was somewhere to go, something to do.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
The city was filled with different scenes for victed to
dive straight into and make new friends.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I was looking for acceptance, and I was looking for
a place where I could be myself. And it just
so happens that I wasn't the only one feeling like that.
So we discovered these clubs.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
He found clubs around the city where young queer Latino
kids like him could feel at home, that.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Could be myself, even if it was for a brief moment,
a couple of hours on the weekend, and I didn't
have to answer any questions.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I could just be And that's what he did. He
spent twenty years partying in New York. He knew all
the best clubs in the city. He even started DJing
and got to know people from different parts of the scene.
And when it was time to celebrate his thirty fourth
birthday in nineteen eighty seven, he was given the opportunity
(02:08):
to spend it at one of his favorite clubs in
the city, Paradise Garage. Victor had been playing music at
another club called The Loft for a while, and at
one of those parties he'd met the Larry Levan, the
resident DJ at the Paradise Garage. They didn't know it yet,
but Larry would go on to become one of the
(02:30):
most influential DJs of all time, and in less than
twenty years from that night, he would be inducted into
the Dance Music Hall of Fame. But back then, Larry
was just the spectacular DJ who led one of the
most vibrant nightclubs in New York. Victor was a little
bit starstruck, but he played it cool. You know, he's
(02:51):
not one to be all in your face. Paradise Garage
was a big deal. But he and Larry started talking.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yes, you know why I played music, because he knew
I wasn't getting paid and the lot that was doing
it out of the love for the music. I said, well,
you know, Larry, I loved playing music and I would
do it for nothing. I just want to play music.
It makes you happy.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Victor didn't think much of it. But then Larry Levin
personally extended an invitation to him, and he.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Says, next week is my birthday. I said, oh, really,
next suit to my birthday too, you know, three days
and twenty thirty, so twenty come we'll hang out. Come
bring the Rectlys, We'll hang out here at the garage
to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Victor was really excited, you know, I said, well.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Can I bring a friend, He says, you can bring
as many people as you want. Not a problem.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So on the night of his thirty fourth birthday, Victor
and his friends went to Soho and walked until they
reached the building at eighty four King Street. It was
a pretty unassuming building. The garage in Paradise Garage was
quite literal.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
There used to be a parking garage for sanitation.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Trucks, but inside it felt like paradise. The building was packed.
It felt like the club was drawing him in and
telling him that he could be more than the version
of himself he'd stepped in. As he and his friends
headed over to the DJ booth to check out Larry,
(04:18):
they'd been personally invited.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
After all, the play starts getting crowded. He's just playing music.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It felt like a scene in a movie. It was
vibrant and electric. Two or three thousand people were dancing
out on the floor, completely swept up in the music
that was playing all around them. And on that night,
it was as if Victor had rubbed a magic lamp
and transformed Larry into a genie.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
He asked, well, what's one of your greatest wishes? And
so well, Larry you know, I hate to sound like this,
would I said, One of my greatest wishes is to
play here.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Victor's dream was to play at the Paradise Garage, a
place where he could get thousands of people to dance,
but he didn't think it was actually gonna happen until
that night.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So he's playing a song and he says, listen, Victor,
I got to go to the office. I said, I'll
be back.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Victor was so confused. I mean, the song was in
full flow and the whole club was dancing.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I said, but Larry, the record is gonna finish. What
are you gonna do? There's nobody here. I'll be back.
Don't worry, I'll be back, I said, but Larry, you
know the record's going to finish. Who was going to play?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Victor was worried, but Larry already had a plan.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So he turns on and says, happy Birthday. Play and
that's how that happened.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Victor was nervous. Larry Levan was Paradise Garage and nobody
knew the crowd better than he did. But if Larry
believed he could do it, Victor had to believe in
himself too, So he walked up to the DJ booth.
My hands were shakeful, but Victor had been prepared for
(06:00):
this moment. He had spent years playing music and knew
exactly what song he wanted to play next.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I came in with Jimmy Bullhorn Spank. Yeah. So when
I went into the break, everybody screamed. I mean, could
(06:29):
you imagine two three thousand people screaming at the same time.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It was electrifying.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
I pushed away from the console because I felt like
I was going to have a heart attack from the editge.
Then I composed myself and I came back and I
was queuing up the next record, which is Xavier Gold
You used to hold me. And when I queued up
the song, I left the needle playing on the turntable,
so I I in the excitement of the moment, I
forgot which turntable was playing, so I took the arm
(06:56):
off the wrong record, which was Spank, which was playing,
and they scream.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Screaming because they wanted their music back. He'd broken the
one rule of DJing. He stopped the music and.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Then I put the needle back down out of the nervousness,
and it went back into the break. The spot where
the break started again and they screamed even louder.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
After surviving that, Victor played all night long. He looked
out at the sea of people dancing in Paradise Garage
and took it all in.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
People kept thinking it was Larry, and two three hours
later I noticed that he's sleeping on the lounge side
of the booth. I said, Larry, wait wait, he said, yeah,
I fell asleep. I felt comfortable with you playing, so
I just you know, I fell asleep for a little
while I was resting. You did really good. So it's
not often that somebody can come and follow the energy
that I set up, you know, when I'm playing music,
(07:50):
and you did that.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hearing that from Larry was a pivotal moment for Victor.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
We had fun. It was all about having fun. It
was all about having a French.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
He'd been going to the garage for years, but to
experience what it was like to play behind the booth
of one of the most legendary DJs of all time
was life changing.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
To give me a break, he didn't have to do that.
It would have been a million other people in line
to play at the garage, and anybody would have sold
their soul to the Devil to play at the club.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Victor felt like he'd stepped into the club on his
thirty fourth birthday as one person and left as a
completely new version of himself.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You got to remember having playing records already for years.
But yeah, he influenced me over the years. So the
music that he made, the records that he produced, I mean,
everything all added up together to that moment, and.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
For many people, that's what Paradise Garage felt like, the pinnacle,
the pinnacle of clubbing of New York and of the
dance floor. It opened up during a time when the
culture was shifting, and it went on tols new genres
like house music that were just coming up on the horizon.
No one really knew in that moment. But you could
(09:08):
say that New York nightlife can be split up into
two parts, the time before Paradise Garage and the time afterward.
It was that influential. From London Audio, iHeartRadio and executive
producer Paris Hilton, This is the History of the World's
Greatest Nightclubs a twelve part podcast about the iconic venues
(09:32):
and people that revolutionized how we party. Some of the
world's most legendary nightclubs were known for the unique community
they welcomed, others for the cultural movements they started, and
some for the musicians and DJs they introduced to the world.
The best nightclubs champion new music, transform lives, and provide
(09:55):
an escape from life's pressures. One more thing. This is
the his three of some of the world's greatest nightclubs.
Not a ranking of every club in the world. It's
an exploration of the spaces, people and club nights that
made a lasting impact on nightlife and music. Today. I'm
your host, Ultra Ntey. I'm a singer, songwriter and musician,
(10:20):
and I found my purpose in club culture. This is
episode seven Paradise Garage, New York City. The garage was
a safe space for clear, black and Latino people in
New York to dance and reclaim a sound that they
had created. They did that all under the musical influence
of the one and only Larry Levan, a DJ with
(10:43):
a killer sound system who would go on to influence
musicians and clubs all around the world, leaving a lasting
imprint on dance music and New York that would last
for decades to come. A lot of elements had to
(11:06):
come together to build a city that was open, accepting,
and vibrant enough to embrace a place like Paradise Garage,
because in the late sixties and early seventies, the lasting
impact of prohibition still ran through New York's night life culture.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And with that came a very strict conservative enforcement view
on how to manage nightlife and socializing so that all
of the fears that caused the prohibitionary era did not transpire.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And those fears were lewd.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Behavior, prostitution, homosexuality.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
That's aerial palettes. She spent time as the executive director
for New York City's Office of Nightlife at the Mayor's
Office of Media and Entertainment. Those three things lewd behavior, prostitution,
same sex relationships, or all things that were restricted, if
not criminalized, by law in the late sixties and early seventies.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
These were all very enforceable rules and regulations that really
restricted human behavior and human rights in many ways.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Before the nineteen sixties, clubs could have their license revoked
or shut down because queer people partied there. It was
discriminatory behavior aimed to basically shut down clubs that were
safe spaces for queer people. The intention was to discourage
people from gathering and as an extension, discouraged them from
being themselves.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
Sixty five to seventy was tragic for me because I
started being gay, you know, and just calming out, and
I would get beat off every day.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
That's Nicki Siano, who was the first DJ at the
legendary Studio fifty four and owned a club called The
Gallery in the seventies.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Yeah, I would get things thrown at me, always called
faggot in school. They would come after me when I
would be defending myself, like I'd say funny things to
get out of it, like this guy would yell in
the hallway, oh, faggot, and I would say, well, you
didn't mind in the bathroom on the fifth floor when
I was doing you did you? And everyone would laugh
(13:28):
and I'd get out of it. And I got suspended
for that. So it was a horrible world back then.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But at the start of the nineteen seventies things were
slowly beginning to get better. Remember what I said about
social movements and change, They're hard to track in the moment,
but looking back, it's much easier to draw a through line.
The Stonewall riots happened in nineteen sixty nine, triggering a
wave of protests and activism across the country. New York
(13:57):
held its first Pride Parade in nineteen six and in
nineteen seventy one, the Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act was
introduced with the hope of prohibiting discrimination on the basis
of sexual orientation in employment, housing, education, and civil rights.
Those changes could be seen in the city's night life too.
Speaker 7 (14:20):
And the uprising of the nightlife community and the LGBTQ
community to stand up for their rights and to prove
that it is not a legal offense and cause for
revocation of liquor licenses for the mere presence of homosexuality,
not even homosexual behavior.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It created an environment where people could create queer spaces
without the same constant fear of being shut down.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Change really began to transpire where it was less and
less common for that to happen, and not only that,
but it was seen finally as wrong to do so.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
By the early nineteen seventies, there were more reasons to
celebrate and more places to do so, with new clubs
opening up around the city.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
There were places you could go, like the West Village
Christopher Street where it wouldn't be as homophone as another neighborhood,
or you go to a club where you were surrounded
by just gay people, so you would be in a
safe spot.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
That freedom and that sort of revelation of music and
congregating and being together, and to be able to do
it without tremendous fear, I think helped to contribute to
that celebratory vibe of the seventies, right where it was
no longer just illegal to be you.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So with that celebration came a new kind of party.
In a sense, those elements of freedom, celebration and partying
without fear came together to create the first iteration of
what we now know as disco. And I know what
you're thinking, village people, YMCA, Studio fifty four, kind of
(16:10):
glam the late seventies, that kind of thing, But I'm
not talking about that. Disco had its roots in the
early seventies, and it looked a lot different than Disco
had been born from music that had originated in clubs,
venues and parties hosted by black Latino and Italian Americans
(16:33):
in New York and Philadelphia.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
There was a real spiritual element, especially back then.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
NICKI experienced disco before it became commercial and diluted in
the mainstream when people were getting together at underground house parties.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
The early seventies, songs all were out of the basis
of this Vietnam War and ending the war and this
whole soundtrack of the sixties and the big, biggest one,
What's going On by Marvin Gay that album, all those
words were Let's join together, Let's spread a love epidemic
(17:09):
all around the world. You know, let everything was about love.
Let's spread it, Let's join together. Early club scene was
nothing like you know, there was no fucking disco duck.
I'm sorry I had to use that word for that one.
There was just danceable R and B. It was about
sharing and love and spiritual energy everywhere you turn, and
(17:34):
those early years were just magnificent.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Disco was a celebration and direct response to what was
going on around the world.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
Then you had all these people on the dance floor
because they're going to the same clubs all the time,
singing the songs. So there's kind of an energy where
you're going in someone's face, going love one another, dance
with one another, and you point in your finger at
the person and you're singing the words and everyone's singing
it all around you, and the energy in the room.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Just starts to change.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
It becomes what you're saying, what you're feeling, and what
you're living.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
And in the early seventies, DJs as we know them
now didn't exist yet. Here's Miles Raymer, a music journalist
who wrote about that time.
Speaker 8 (18:24):
Up until that point, DJs in discotheq's were sort of
like radio DJs.
Speaker 9 (18:29):
They would play a song, you know, swap out the record.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
A lot of them only had one turntable, and then
a good play to the next song. But then some
DJs started to experiment with two turntable setups and cross
faders and learning that you can sort of beat match
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
But dance music just wasn't at its full expression yet.
New York was getting ready to reinvent dance culture, but
it needed a visionary one who would take all the
incredible elements of the scene and make something new.
Speaker 8 (19:03):
There was David Mancuso who was kind of a mystical visionary.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
David Mancuso was a twenty five year old New Yorker
with an intense love of music.
Speaker 8 (19:14):
Very much, you know, coming out of the hippie counterculture
of the sixties, very much like an Age of Aquarius,
kind of mystical person, and he was obsessed with music
and obsessed with sound.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
David was pioneering a new type of New York party.
Speaker 8 (19:34):
He moved into a loft in Soho and filled it
with a giant sound system and he would have parties.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
On Valentine's Day, nineteen seventy, David hosted his first house party,
a series of parties that would eventually be called The Loft.
The Loft was a haven for music lovers.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
He would play the music that was moving him, which
was the stuff that was not being played on the radio.
He was digging up weird stuff out of sort of
the back reaches of the like kind of the dark
and dusty corners of the record stores, and creating this
kind of tapestry of sound that was, you know, the
(20:19):
soundtrack to a party, but also a way of creating
a mood and creating a journey.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Niki ended up going to quite a few of those
Loft parties.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
It was on six forty seven Broadway. I'll never forget the.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
First time he went. NICKI wore a T shirt, bell
bottoms and sneakers. He knew he was going to be
on his feet all night dancing. He paid his two
dollar admission fee and kept going.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
And it was real dark, real dark, but the mirrored
ball was moving around, and there were people all around.
Speaker 9 (20:58):
Us, and this sound.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
I never heard anything like that. It was like the
best pair of Bow's headphones you ever knew about. And
all of a sudden, at the crescendo of the song,
white light came on, real bright, just for a second,
and then all the lights went out and I couldn't see,
(21:23):
and I'm trying to focus, and it was a little
lamp at the end of the room. Two people were
sitting by the lamp, so I was focusing on that,
and the sound changed and the light the lamp that
I was looking at went out and just total blackness,
and everyone screamed, And right then I knew that was it.
That's what I wanted to do, That's what I wanted
(21:45):
to be. I wanted to be a DJ or better yet,
I wanted to do what he was doing, which was
creating atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
It was totally an unreal experience, unlike anything Nikki, or
a lot of people for that matter, ever seen. Nikki
had to become a member He'd go on to spend
every Saturday night there, even the night he had four
teeth taken out to get braces on. Going to the
loft was an all night affair. Started at midnight and
(22:16):
ended at seven am. David would end each of his
sets with Nina Simone, Here comes the Sun. People were
coming out for the loft.
Speaker 8 (22:29):
People who made up the early disco scene were from
the outer boroughs. It was you know, a lot of
the early DJs who really defined this whole new approach
were Italian and Puerto Rican kids coming in from Brooklyn,
coming from uptown.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
David was thinking about music in a brand new way.
It was exclusive, it was underground. The whole scene, the
whole vibe was different, down to the decors.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
So there were lights everywhere. The place was always full
of bloalloons. There was food out all the time. There
was you know, big.
Speaker 9 (23:04):
Bowls of punch that was spiked with LSD.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
It was just like a bunch of kind of glittery,
you know, beautiful downtown hippie kids just tripping their asses
off and dancing all night.
Speaker 9 (23:17):
And Larry Levan was one of those kids.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
At the time, Larry Levan was just a kid helping
decorate venues around the city, but he would end up
taking these building blocks, disco DJ's and David's influence and
use them to build something of his own, something that
may have been hard to recognize in the moment, but
would in its own time be entirely recognizable as Larry's.
(23:48):
Larry spent his teens in early twenties going to and
working at parties in New York City. He would blow
up balloons and help decorate venues, but as he partied,
he was taking it all in and learning his craft.
He'd take notes on the music, the DJs, and the
atmosphere that made each party unique.
Speaker 8 (24:08):
Larry is also part of the drag ball scene that
was happening uptown in Harlem, and I believe the Bronx
as well. And that's where Larry met Frankie Knuckles.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Remember the Warehouse episode where we met the legendary DJ
who shaped house music in Chicago, that Frankie Knuckles. Before
Paradise Garage became the go to party and safe space
for LGBTQ people in New York, there was another place
the community gravitated towards, a place uptown called the Continental Baths,
(24:40):
where Frankie and Larry got their first big break.
Speaker 9 (24:46):
It was mostly a hookup spot.
Speaker 8 (24:48):
It was also known as the place where it had
a small sort of nightclub built in. Gay culture emerged
sort of out into the open for the first time,
kind of. No one paid attention to the DJs there.
The sound system was notoriously shaky, but it was a
good place for them to sort of cut their teeth
(25:09):
and start to build an audience.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
At the Continental Baths, Larry developed a crowd of followers
who travel uptown just to hear him play.
Speaker 8 (25:18):
And he was starting to become known as the best
DJ in a very competitive and fast growing DJ scene.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
This is how Larry Levin ended up playing in front
of a man named Michael Brody. It was the seventies
and Michael was about to open a new club in Tribeca.
He loved Larry's style, the way he commanded the DJ
booth and brought the crowd to life. He liked it
so much that he invited Larry to be the DJ
at his new club, the Paradise Garage.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
Paradise Garage was in an actual industrial garage downtown and
soho on.
Speaker 9 (26:01):
You know what was at the time a pretty blasted
out block.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
The main room was just a big black box, and
they kept it very raw.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
It wasn't beautiful to look at, but that parking garage
would end up becoming ground zero for a new type
of club.
Speaker 8 (26:19):
You walked in off the street, up a little ramp
that was kind of a trippy purple lighting effects, and
you would, you know, approach and hear the music coming
from inside.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
In order to get through security, you had to show
your membership card. It kind of looked like a school id.
It had the year and a photo of you, and
a mascot of sorts, a man with the words Paradise
Garage written in ink on his bicep. Having a membership
card was kind of a legal dodge. It meant they
didn't have to declare themselves as a nightclub.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
But it also let them be really selective about their
crowd because you can't just have a regular business open.
You know, if anyone comes to your door, you have
to let them in legally. You can't just turn people
away for being straight or being uncool. You know, there
are certain laws about how businesses are supposed to operate.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
But Paradise Garage wasn't a regular club some people referred
to the space more as a house party than a
night club. Anyway, it was a private club with a membership,
so they could basically do whatever they wanted. By the
late seventies, when Paradise Garage opened, disco had been whitewashed
and had gone mainstream. So the garage set out to
(27:35):
become a club that embraced diversity and honored disco's roots.
Speaker 8 (27:40):
And so they really curated the audience at the garage,
and they really emphasized it was a space for queer people.
Speaker 9 (27:51):
It was a space for people of color.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So on any given night, you'd arrive at the garage,
walk up the runway, and flash your membership cards.
Speaker 8 (28:00):
And then you're let loose in this complex. They had
hangout spaces. They had a movie theater where you could
take breaks from your night out from the dancing, go
chill out and drink some juice, hang out with friends.
There was a little rooftop space where they had art exhibits.
The garage didn't serve alcohol, which you'll let them skirt
(28:23):
some laws, and everyone was on acid anyhow.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
But really people weren't there for the juice or the
rooftop or the movies. They were there for Larry, who
commanded the dance.
Speaker 8 (28:34):
Floor, and there was a giant DJ booth where Larry
would hold court.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Larry's DJ booth ran across that side of the whole
room on the second floor upstairs, and you walked underneath
it to the lounge, which was half the size of
the dance floor. He had a small sound system, and
they're playing the same music as a dance floor, but
lower with punch bowls. Their cruise.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
That loungeria did room for a lot of friends up there. Eventually,
Larry kind of lived at the club for a lot.
Speaker 9 (29:08):
Of its existence.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
The garage was Larry's home and he could do whatever
he wanted, so he chose to install a sound system
that was well, ungodly loud.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
It was like seeing the biggest rock band in the
world in like a small, enclosed space.
Speaker 9 (29:25):
It was that loud.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Everything else was drowned out by the music. When people
danced at the garage, they could feel the music getting
into their bones, shaking the ground and drawing out their
deepest desires and allowing them to let loose on the
dance floor. It was crazy and it was intoxicating.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
Thousands of people would show up three four thousand people
on a weekend night.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Doors would open around eleven or twelve, but things got
really wild later at three or four am. While most
people started their nights partying at glitzy and fabulous clubs
like Studio fifty four, everyone ended their night at Paradise Garage.
They'd take off the glamorous clothes they'd worn to the
(30:11):
fancy clubs and get dressed to throw down.
Speaker 8 (30:15):
They'd bring a gym bag with you know, sneakers and
sweats to take to the garage after and they would
they would go out for a night of dancing, and
then they would go to the garage to really start dancing.
Speaker 9 (30:26):
Seriously.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
That's what Paradise Garage was about. Dancing, seriously, no wallflowers.
The garage was a physical experience. You were there to dance,
to move, to sweat, if you dare do your hair
and makeup. It likely wouldn't last anyway, but it didn't
matter because people weren't there to see or be seen,
(30:53):
and so.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
People really leaned into this kind of stripped down approach.
Larry wanted to create a for people to worship music,
and people responded to that. They really did, you know,
people threw themselves into the experience in a really deep way.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Because it felt like a paradise where people could enjoy
the music and spend time with their friends without having
to twist and contort themselves into what was socially acceptable
in the seventies.
Speaker 9 (31:23):
It was a temple.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
It was something really, really special, and it was important
that he was doing this for a cloud of predominantly gay,
queer people of color who were already being pushed out
of the disco scene by that point.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
People would dance their way through the night, and then
in the morning the crowds would spill out onto the
empty streets of Soho. In other parts of town, suits
would be commuting to their Wall Street jobs and people
would be getting on the subway to go to work.
But if you'd gone to Paradise Garage that weekend, the
party didn't end there. The music was so good that
(32:14):
people would leave the club in the morning hungry for more.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
People would go theird party all night and then go
to the record shop on their way home in the morning.
People show up at like ten in the morning, just
like exhausted, you know, probably still tripping and demand you
know whatever. Obscure twelve inch Larry had decided to debut
(32:39):
that night.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Paradise Garage wasn't the kind of club where people had
one incredible night and went home. Nights at the Garage
were transformative. Larry playing a record there could catapult a
musician's career, and the memories people made on the dance
floor there stayed with them for years. There's one night
Victor won't ever forget. It was the mid eighties Halloween.
(33:11):
There's this song called do You Want to Get Funky
with Me? That has the most incredible syncopation in the
dance break. It takes you on a crazy ride. It's
one of my favorite songs, and if you ever hear
it in a club fully immersed in sound, you will
be forever changed. And when Victor walked into Paradise Garage
(33:32):
that Halloween, he came across about two or three thousand
people grooving along to this song.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
The lights are red flashing and sweeping the room, and
everybody's dancing a slow motion. It's so I'm burning up.
And then when the record goes woo, he turns down
the gigantic fans and all this wind comes through the room,
sweeping and people are just throwing their arms up in
(33:58):
the air, getting the old air coming in from the
giantic fans. And then he hits the cannons, the confetti cannons,
Confetti starts falling. It looks like it's snowy.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Larry was all about the experience.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
He really mind screwed you.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Ask anyone from that time. Something Larry did reliably was
make you love the music, even if you didn't want to.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
Larry was famous as a DJ for how he was
able to manipulate a crowd. He really got inside people's heads.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
But Paradise Garage was Larry's place, so he made the rules.
Speaker 8 (34:37):
If he played a song and the crowd didn't respond
to it, he would play it again, and he would
play it again and again until they did.
Speaker 9 (34:46):
Sometimes, if he was in a bad mood, he.
Speaker 8 (34:47):
Would put on a song that he knew everyone hated,
just to clear the floor, just to have a little
temper tantrum.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It sounds a little chaotic, but Larry knew exactly what
he was doing. From his throne on top, he would
look down onto the dance floor, watching people respond playing God.
Speaker 8 (35:03):
And if he saw a group of people getting ready
to leave, he would turn to a friend in the
booth and be like, I know that those guys were
getting their coats over there.
Speaker 9 (35:13):
I know that they loved this song.
Speaker 8 (35:16):
And he would put that song on and they would
put their coats back down and come back out onto
the dance floor.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
What Larry was doing up there on his throne was
really laying a foundation for a generation of incredible DJs
and partygoers.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
And he had the perfect place. He had the greatest
sound system, he had, the experience, the effects, the atmosphere,
everything just came together to form something incredible. It was
just the right time, the right place. He took a
little bit of this, you know, pinch of this, a
pinch of that, picture of this, you know, a dash
(35:56):
of that while on you know, something magical. Parts of
what he got from people and absorbed from people and
made it work as one. That's what made him special.
That's what made him the greatest DJ ever.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
And while Larry was creating a space for his people
to dance and celebrate, rumors about Paradise Garage spread far
and wide, so people from all over the city would
head over to the garage to hear Larry play, even
famous people.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, I saw there a couple of
times with Jeffrey Osborne, Janet Jackson, reb Jackson, everybody, everybody
there was.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Anybody, even Madonna party there. She performed like a virgin
for the very first time at the garage. But it
wasn't the chance to rub shoulders with celebrities that made
the garage what it was. Other clubs in the city
were catering to wealthier, lighter, more famous audiences, like the glitzy,
glamorous Studio fifty four.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
The elite, the rich, the celebrities, the beautiful people, the fashion,
and it was more about being seen than being who you.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Are, right.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
It was a status. It was fun, it was fabulous.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Studio fifty four was a club that attracted many queer
famous people, but it wasn't always a safe space for a.
Speaker 8 (37:27):
Lot of the queer people, the queer and trans people
who were at Studio fifty four.
Speaker 9 (37:33):
It was kind of a little bit of a freak
show thing.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
You know.
Speaker 8 (37:37):
This was a place where wealthy, middle aged New Yorkers
could come and see real life gay people and real
life trans people, and there was a real social stratification
there that was super based in economics, where it was
you know, queer and trans people behind the bar or
(38:00):
you know, working there with the rich, straight white CIS
people who had come in to spend their money, and
they sort of had expectations about what kind of experience
they wanted.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
But the Garage was a carefully curated place for queer
and people of color to dance without scrutiny, to occupy
space without fear of judgment or objectification.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
It really was about the music, It really was about
the dancing, It was really about letting go.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
By the late eighties, things were starting to slow down
at the Garage.
Speaker 8 (38:37):
New York City nightlife has always been an up and
down kind of thing, and I think creative communities like
that often follow a similar kind of trajectory. A lot
of things came together at the same time to just
sort of put a stake in the heart of nightlife
(38:57):
at the time.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Remember dance Ateryria, the other New York club that we
talked about earlier on in the series. Dance Ateria was
thriving at the same time as the Garage, but the
gay community that spent their time at both of those
clubs were hit hard by the AIDS epidemic in a
really destabilizing way.
Speaker 8 (39:18):
There are people who wanted distraction and wanted to go
out and lose themselves, but there are also people who
were scared to There are people who just didn't want
to because the mood had changed.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Paradise Garage stepped up to try and help its community.
In nineteen eighty two, the recently formed Gay Men's Health
Crisis Organization held its first fundraiser at the garage. They
raised over fifty thousand dollars. But by the late eighties,
(39:50):
the culture had shifted. Disco, the musical style Paradise Garage
was best known for, had faded out of the city's
dance floors. Michael Brody, who owned the garage, was diagnosed
with AIDS. The party just wasn't the same anymore, so
Paradise Garage closed its doors in nineteen eighty seven. People
(40:13):
described the last night as a huge, bittersweet farewell party.
So many of the people who had loved the club
showed up for one final dance to celebrate the club's legacy,
and it was an incredible legacy. Behind the DJ booth,
Larry Levin had become a legend. His sets had moved
(40:34):
people both to dance and to feel a part of
a space where they were truly welcomed. Larry had inspired
Frankie Knuckles, the DJ of the Warehouse, who helped create
house music across the Pond. Larry's music style inspired the
UK rave scene, which would go on to help shape
the music that played in the acid house, steep dance
(40:55):
floors of the Hacienda in Manchester, and to this day,
American DJ's travel around the world playing music inspired by
the songs Larry brought to life at the garage.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
They created a genre, they created a movement that lives
on that influenced house music.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
But Larry didn't live to see all the ways his
nights behind the booth would shape the future of music.
Speaker 8 (41:25):
You know, it's really sad. He died in ninety two.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
He experienced heart failure and passed away when he was
only thirty eight.
Speaker 8 (41:34):
There were a million people trying to be Larry Levan
and he never got his flowers.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
But while he was here, he did what he set
out to do. He created a space for queer, Black
and Latino people to dance, to celebrate, to get swept
up in the music. But in the decades since Paradise
Garage closed, visitors old and new would continue to reunite
on dance floors around the world to celebrate the legacy
(42:04):
of Larry Levan. There was a reunion at the Lincoln
Center in twenty twenty two. It was raining, but that
didn't stop anyone from congregating under the massive disco ball.
Speaker 5 (42:19):
Most people would have been like, oh, it's raining, we're
out of here.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
It would have been canceled.
Speaker 10 (42:23):
But they were forced to open that party and to
dry that floor with squeegees. And everyone showed up and
waited and got onto that dance floor to celebrate that
party and refused to go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Miles went to one a few years earlier, in twenty fifteen.
It was right in front of the actual Paradise Garage
location in Soho, and I was there, and while it
was only two pm in the afternoon, everybody who showed
up had come together to dance with an intense kind
of energy.
Speaker 8 (43:00):
Vibes were immaculate. Everyone there really brought the spirit. I
got a taste of what it must have been like,
just the tiniest little taste of it, and ever since then,
I've just been obsessed.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
These folks were mostly in their fifties and sixties, dancing
in a way that, well, we don't dance nowadays. They
were serious about their craft, but they were having a
hell of a good time, and there were kids too.
It was for the generations, and everyone was dancing together.
Speaker 8 (43:31):
They were the coolest people in the world out on
the dance floor, just you know, working it.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
There was a palpable joy created by watching everyone dance
to exactly the same beat, watching the music build them
and spill out onto the sidewalks as they danced, and
the sunbeam down on all of us from heaven for
a moment, like we were still at the garage.
Speaker 8 (44:00):
I was just soaking up the energy. I was dancing
my ass off, and they made me want to go
harder and let myself go more.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
It was inspiring just being around them. It was the
one of the best.
Speaker 8 (44:14):
Parties I've ever been to in my life.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
In the next episode, we're going to fast forward to
the nineties and head over to a legendary New York
club that stood at the epicenter of the golden age
of nineties hip hop. We're going to the Tunnel. The
History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is produced by Neon
hum Media for London Audio and iHeartRadio for London Audio.
(44:42):
Our executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson and Bruce Kersh.
The executive producer for Neon Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our
producer is Rufio Faith Masarua. Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez
are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal Genesis.
Our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is our production
(45:06):
manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator. This episode
was written by Kate Michigan and Rufairo Faith Masarua and
fact checked by Katherine Newhan. Theme and original music by
Asha Ivanovich. Our sound design engineers are Sam Beer and
Josh Han. I'm your host, Altra Ntey, and we'll see
(45:28):
you next time. On the History of the world's Greatest Nightclubs.
Nightclubs are like homes and sanctuaries to people who love
them most. The backdrop to coming of age tales and
the first scene in Origin Stories and the club we're
stepping into today was all of those things. But it
did something more. It empowered people to become versions of
(00:21):
themselves they didn't even know existed. At least that's what
it did for my good friend Victor.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
My name is Victor Rosadom. I loved to make people dance.
I play music, music plays me.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Victor grew up in New York and was exposed to
all sorts of music, but when he was a kid,
there was always a Latin be playing in his house.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Spanish music, you know. Back then, Latin music salsa was
a take on Cuban music, except that with the New York.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Flair, and so Victor started going out to parties in
clubs all around New York.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I went to my first place at thirteen. I went
to so many places because New York was a mecca
of different types of clubs at different days. Every day
of the week, there was somewhere to go, something to do.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
The city was filled with different scenes for victed to
dive straight into and make new friends.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I was looking for acceptance, and I was looking for
a place where I could be myself. And it just
so happens that I wasn't the only one feeling like that.
So we discovered these clubs.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
He found clubs around the city where young queer Latino
kids like him could feel at home, that.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Could be myself, even if it was for a brief moment,
a couple of hours on the weekend, and I didn't
have to answer any questions.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I could just be And that's what he did. He
spent twenty years partying in New York. He knew all
the best clubs in the city. He even started DJing
and got to know people from different parts of the scene.
And when it was time to celebrate his thirty fourth
birthday in nineteen eighty seven, he was given the opportunity
(02:08):
to spend it at one of his favorite clubs in
the city, Paradise Garage. Victor had been playing music at
another club called The Loft for a while, and at
one of those parties he'd met the Larry Levan, the
resident DJ at the Paradise Garage. They didn't know it yet,
but Larry would go on to become one of the
(02:30):
most influential DJs of all time, and in less than
twenty years from that night, he would be inducted into
the Dance Music Hall of Fame. But back then, Larry
was just the spectacular DJ who led one of the
most vibrant nightclubs in New York. Victor was a little
bit starstruck, but he played it cool. You know, he's
(02:51):
not one to be all in your face. Paradise Garage
was a big deal. But he and Larry started talking.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yes, you know why I played music, because he knew
I wasn't getting paid and the lot that was doing
it out of the love for the music. I said, well,
you know, Larry, I loved playing music and I would
do it for nothing. I just want to play music.
It makes you happy.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Victor didn't think much of it. But then Larry Levin
personally extended an invitation to him, and he.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Says, next week is my birthday. I said, oh, really,
next suit to my birthday too, you know, three days
and twenty thirty, so twenty come we'll hang out. Come
bring the Rectlys, We'll hang out here at the garage
to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Victor was really excited, you know, I said, well.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Can I bring a friend, He says, you can bring
as many people as you want. Not a problem.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So on the night of his thirty fourth birthday, Victor
and his friends went to Soho and walked until they
reached the building at eighty four King Street. It was
a pretty unassuming building. The garage in Paradise Garage was
quite literal.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
There used to be a parking garage for sanitation.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Trucks, but inside it felt like paradise. The building was packed.
It felt like the club was drawing him in and
telling him that he could be more than the version
of himself he'd stepped in. As he and his friends
headed over to the DJ booth to check out Larry,
(04:18):
they'd been personally invited.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
After all, the play starts getting crowded. He's just playing music.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It felt like a scene in a movie. It was
vibrant and electric. Two or three thousand people were dancing
out on the floor, completely swept up in the music
that was playing all around them. And on that night,
it was as if Victor had rubbed a magic lamp
and transformed Larry into a genie.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
He asked, well, what's one of your greatest wishes? And
so well, Larry you know, I hate to sound like this,
would I said, One of my greatest wishes is to
play here.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Victor's dream was to play at the Paradise Garage, a
place where he could get thousands of people to dance,
but he didn't think it was actually gonna happen until
that night.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So he's playing a song and he says, listen, Victor,
I got to go to the office. I said, I'll
be back.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Victor was so confused. I mean, the song was in
full flow and the whole club was dancing.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I said, but Larry, the record is gonna finish. What
are you gonna do? There's nobody here. I'll be back.
Don't worry, I'll be back, I said, but Larry, you
know the record's going to finish. Who was going to play?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Victor was worried, but Larry already had a plan.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So he turns on and says, happy Birthday. Play and
that's how that happened.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Victor was nervous. Larry Levan was Paradise Garage and nobody
knew the crowd better than he did. But if Larry
believed he could do it, Victor had to believe in
himself too, So he walked up to the DJ booth.
My hands were shakeful, but Victor had been prepared for
(06:00):
this moment. He had spent years playing music and knew
exactly what song he wanted to play next.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I came in with Jimmy Bullhorn Spank. Yeah. So when
I went into the break, everybody screamed. I mean, could
(06:29):
you imagine two three thousand people screaming at the same time.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It was electrifying.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
I pushed away from the console because I felt like
I was going to have a heart attack from the editge.
Then I composed myself and I came back and I
was queuing up the next record, which is Xavier Gold
You used to hold me. And when I queued up
the song, I left the needle playing on the turntable,
so I I in the excitement of the moment, I
forgot which turntable was playing, so I took the arm
(06:56):
off the wrong record, which was Spank, which was playing,
and they scream.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Screaming because they wanted their music back. He'd broken the
one rule of DJing. He stopped the music and.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Then I put the needle back down out of the nervousness,
and it went back into the break. The spot where
the break started again and they screamed even louder.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
After surviving that, Victor played all night long. He looked
out at the sea of people dancing in Paradise Garage
and took it all in.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
People kept thinking it was Larry, and two three hours
later I noticed that he's sleeping on the lounge side
of the booth. I said, Larry, wait wait, he said, yeah,
I fell asleep. I felt comfortable with you playing, so
I just you know, I fell asleep for a little
while I was resting. You did really good. So it's
not often that somebody can come and follow the energy
that I set up, you know, when I'm playing music,
(07:50):
and you did that.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hearing that from Larry was a pivotal moment for Victor.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
We had fun. It was all about having fun. It
was all about having a French.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
He'd been going to the garage for years, but to
experience what it was like to play behind the booth
of one of the most legendary DJs of all time
was life changing.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
To give me a break, he didn't have to do that.
It would have been a million other people in line
to play at the garage, and anybody would have sold
their soul to the Devil to play at the club.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Victor felt like he'd stepped into the club on his
thirty fourth birthday as one person and left as a
completely new version of himself.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You got to remember having playing records already for years.
But yeah, he influenced me over the years. So the
music that he made, the records that he produced, I mean,
everything all added up together to that moment, and.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
For many people, that's what Paradise Garage felt like, the pinnacle,
the pinnacle of clubbing of New York and of the
dance floor. It opened up during a time when the
culture was shifting, and it went on tols new genres
like house music that were just coming up on the horizon.
No one really knew in that moment. But you could
(09:08):
say that New York nightlife can be split up into
two parts, the time before Paradise Garage and the time afterward.
It was that influential. From London Audio, iHeartRadio and executive
producer Paris Hilton, This is the History of the World's
Greatest Nightclubs a twelve part podcast about the iconic venues
(09:32):
and people that revolutionized how we party. Some of the
world's most legendary nightclubs were known for the unique community
they welcomed, others for the cultural movements they started, and
some for the musicians and DJs they introduced to the world.
The best nightclubs champion new music, transform lives, and provide
(09:55):
an escape from life's pressures. One more thing. This is
the his three of some of the world's greatest nightclubs.
Not a ranking of every club in the world. It's
an exploration of the spaces, people and club nights that
made a lasting impact on nightlife and music. Today. I'm
your host, Ultra Ntey. I'm a singer, songwriter and musician,
(10:20):
and I found my purpose in club culture. This is
episode seven Paradise Garage, New York City. The garage was
a safe space for clear, black and Latino people in
New York to dance and reclaim a sound that they
had created. They did that all under the musical influence
of the one and only Larry Levan, a DJ with
(10:43):
a killer sound system who would go on to influence
musicians and clubs all around the world, leaving a lasting
imprint on dance music and New York that would last
for decades to come. A lot of elements had to
(11:06):
come together to build a city that was open, accepting,
and vibrant enough to embrace a place like Paradise Garage,
because in the late sixties and early seventies, the lasting
impact of prohibition still ran through New York's night life culture.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And with that came a very strict conservative enforcement view
on how to manage nightlife and socializing so that all
of the fears that caused the prohibitionary era did not transpire.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And those fears were lewd.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Behavior, prostitution, homosexuality.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
That's aerial palettes. She spent time as the executive director
for New York City's Office of Nightlife at the Mayor's
Office of Media and Entertainment. Those three things lewd behavior, prostitution,
same sex relationships, or all things that were restricted, if
not criminalized, by law in the late sixties and early seventies.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
These were all very enforceable rules and regulations that really
restricted human behavior and human rights in many ways.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Before the nineteen sixties, clubs could have their license revoked
or shut down because queer people partied there. It was
discriminatory behavior aimed to basically shut down clubs that were
safe spaces for queer people. The intention was to discourage
people from gathering and as an extension, discouraged them from
being themselves.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
Sixty five to seventy was tragic for me because I
started being gay, you know, and just calming out, and
I would get beat off every day.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
That's Nicki Siano, who was the first DJ at the
legendary Studio fifty four and owned a club called The
Gallery in the seventies.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Yeah, I would get things thrown at me, always called
faggot in school. They would come after me when I
would be defending myself, like I'd say funny things to
get out of it, like this guy would yell in
the hallway, oh, faggot, and I would say, well, you
didn't mind in the bathroom on the fifth floor when
I was doing you did you? And everyone would laugh
(13:28):
and I'd get out of it. And I got suspended
for that. So it was a horrible world back then.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But at the start of the nineteen seventies things were
slowly beginning to get better. Remember what I said about
social movements and change, They're hard to track in the moment,
but looking back, it's much easier to draw a through line.
The Stonewall riots happened in nineteen sixty nine, triggering a
wave of protests and activism across the country. New York
(13:57):
held its first Pride Parade in nineteen six and in
nineteen seventy one, the Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act was
introduced with the hope of prohibiting discrimination on the basis
of sexual orientation in employment, housing, education, and civil rights.
Those changes could be seen in the city's night life too.
Speaker 7 (14:20):
And the uprising of the nightlife community and the LGBTQ
community to stand up for their rights and to prove
that it is not a legal offense and cause for
revocation of liquor licenses for the mere presence of homosexuality,
not even homosexual behavior.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It created an environment where people could create queer spaces
without the same constant fear of being shut down.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Change really began to transpire where it was less and
less common for that to happen, and not only that,
but it was seen finally as wrong to do so.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
By the early nineteen seventies, there were more reasons to
celebrate and more places to do so, with new clubs
opening up around the city.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
There were places you could go, like the West Village
Christopher Street where it wouldn't be as homophone as another neighborhood,
or you go to a club where you were surrounded
by just gay people, so you would be in a
safe spot.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
That freedom and that sort of revelation of music and
congregating and being together, and to be able to do
it without tremendous fear, I think helped to contribute to
that celebratory vibe of the seventies, right where it was
no longer just illegal to be you.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So with that celebration came a new kind of party.
In a sense, those elements of freedom, celebration and partying
without fear came together to create the first iteration of
what we now know as disco. And I know what
you're thinking, village people, YMCA, Studio fifty four, kind of
(16:10):
glam the late seventies, that kind of thing, But I'm
not talking about that. Disco had its roots in the
early seventies, and it looked a lot different than Disco
had been born from music that had originated in clubs,
venues and parties hosted by black Latino and Italian Americans
(16:33):
in New York and Philadelphia.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
There was a real spiritual element, especially back then.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
NICKI experienced disco before it became commercial and diluted in
the mainstream when people were getting together at underground house parties.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
The early seventies, songs all were out of the basis
of this Vietnam War and ending the war and this
whole soundtrack of the sixties and the big, biggest one,
What's going On by Marvin Gay that album, all those
words were Let's join together, Let's spread a love epidemic
(17:09):
all around the world. You know, let everything was about love.
Let's spread it, Let's join together. Early club scene was
nothing like you know, there was no fucking disco duck.
I'm sorry I had to use that word for that one.
There was just danceable R and B. It was about
sharing and love and spiritual energy everywhere you turn, and
(17:34):
those early years were just magnificent.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Disco was a celebration and direct response to what was
going on around the world.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
Then you had all these people on the dance floor
because they're going to the same clubs all the time,
singing the songs. So there's kind of an energy where
you're going in someone's face, going love one another, dance
with one another, and you point in your finger at
the person and you're singing the words and everyone's singing
it all around you, and the energy in the room.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Just starts to change.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
It becomes what you're saying, what you're feeling, and what
you're living.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
And in the early seventies, DJs as we know them
now didn't exist yet. Here's Miles Raymer, a music journalist
who wrote about that time.
Speaker 8 (18:24):
Up until that point, DJs in discotheq's were sort of
like radio DJs.
Speaker 9 (18:29):
They would play a song, you know, swap out the record.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
A lot of them only had one turntable, and then
a good play to the next song. But then some
DJs started to experiment with two turntable setups and cross
faders and learning that you can sort of beat match
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
But dance music just wasn't at its full expression yet.
New York was getting ready to reinvent dance culture, but
it needed a visionary one who would take all the
incredible elements of the scene and make something new.
Speaker 8 (19:03):
There was David Mancuso who was kind of a mystical visionary.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
David Mancuso was a twenty five year old New Yorker
with an intense love of music.
Speaker 8 (19:14):
Very much, you know, coming out of the hippie counterculture
of the sixties, very much like an Age of Aquarius,
kind of mystical person, and he was obsessed with music
and obsessed with sound.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
David was pioneering a new type of New York party.
Speaker 8 (19:34):
He moved into a loft in Soho and filled it
with a giant sound system and he would have parties.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
On Valentine's Day, nineteen seventy, David hosted his first house party,
a series of parties that would eventually be called The Loft.
The Loft was a haven for music lovers.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
He would play the music that was moving him, which
was the stuff that was not being played on the radio.
He was digging up weird stuff out of sort of
the back reaches of the like kind of the dark
and dusty corners of the record stores, and creating this
kind of tapestry of sound that was, you know, the
(20:19):
soundtrack to a party, but also a way of creating
a mood and creating a journey.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Niki ended up going to quite a few of those
Loft parties.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
It was on six forty seven Broadway. I'll never forget the.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
First time he went. NICKI wore a T shirt, bell
bottoms and sneakers. He knew he was going to be
on his feet all night dancing. He paid his two
dollar admission fee and kept going.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
And it was real dark, real dark, but the mirrored
ball was moving around, and there were people all around.
Speaker 9 (20:58):
Us, and this sound.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
I never heard anything like that. It was like the
best pair of Bow's headphones you ever knew about. And
all of a sudden, at the crescendo of the song,
white light came on, real bright, just for a second,
and then all the lights went out and I couldn't see,
(21:23):
and I'm trying to focus, and it was a little
lamp at the end of the room. Two people were
sitting by the lamp, so I was focusing on that,
and the sound changed and the light the lamp that
I was looking at went out and just total blackness,
and everyone screamed, And right then I knew that was it.
That's what I wanted to do, That's what I wanted
(21:45):
to be. I wanted to be a DJ or better yet,
I wanted to do what he was doing, which was
creating atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
It was totally an unreal experience, unlike anything Nikki, or
a lot of people for that matter, ever seen. Nikki
had to become a member He'd go on to spend
every Saturday night there, even the night he had four
teeth taken out to get braces on. Going to the
loft was an all night affair. Started at midnight and
(22:16):
ended at seven am. David would end each of his
sets with Nina Simone, Here comes the Sun. People were
coming out for the loft.
Speaker 8 (22:29):
People who made up the early disco scene were from
the outer boroughs. It was you know, a lot of
the early DJs who really defined this whole new approach
were Italian and Puerto Rican kids coming in from Brooklyn,
coming from uptown.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
David was thinking about music in a brand new way.
It was exclusive, it was underground. The whole scene, the
whole vibe was different, down to the decors.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
So there were lights everywhere. The place was always full
of bloalloons. There was food out all the time. There
was you know, big.
Speaker 9 (23:04):
Bowls of punch that was spiked with LSD.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
It was just like a bunch of kind of glittery,
you know, beautiful downtown hippie kids just tripping their asses
off and dancing all night.
Speaker 9 (23:17):
And Larry Levan was one of those kids.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
At the time, Larry Levan was just a kid helping
decorate venues around the city, but he would end up
taking these building blocks, disco DJ's and David's influence and
use them to build something of his own, something that
may have been hard to recognize in the moment, but
would in its own time be entirely recognizable as Larry's.
(23:48):
Larry spent his teens in early twenties going to and
working at parties in New York City. He would blow
up balloons and help decorate venues, but as he partied,
he was taking it all in and learning his craft.
He'd take notes on the music, the DJs, and the
atmosphere that made each party unique.
Speaker 8 (24:08):
Larry is also part of the drag ball scene that
was happening uptown in Harlem, and I believe the Bronx
as well. And that's where Larry met Frankie Knuckles.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Remember the Warehouse episode where we met the legendary DJ
who shaped house music in Chicago, that Frankie Knuckles. Before
Paradise Garage became the go to party and safe space
for LGBTQ people in New York, there was another place
the community gravitated towards, a place uptown called the Continental Baths,
(24:40):
where Frankie and Larry got their first big break.
Speaker 9 (24:46):
It was mostly a hookup spot.
Speaker 8 (24:48):
It was also known as the place where it had
a small sort of nightclub built in. Gay culture emerged
sort of out into the open for the first time,
kind of. No one paid attention to the DJs there.
The sound system was notoriously shaky, but it was a
good place for them to sort of cut their teeth
(25:09):
and start to build an audience.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
At the Continental Baths, Larry developed a crowd of followers
who travel uptown just to hear him play.
Speaker 8 (25:18):
And he was starting to become known as the best
DJ in a very competitive and fast growing DJ scene.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
This is how Larry Levin ended up playing in front
of a man named Michael Brody. It was the seventies
and Michael was about to open a new club in Tribeca.
He loved Larry's style, the way he commanded the DJ
booth and brought the crowd to life. He liked it
so much that he invited Larry to be the DJ
at his new club, the Paradise Garage.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
Paradise Garage was in an actual industrial garage downtown and
soho on.
Speaker 9 (26:01):
You know what was at the time a pretty blasted
out block.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
The main room was just a big black box, and
they kept it very raw.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
It wasn't beautiful to look at, but that parking garage
would end up becoming ground zero for a new type
of club.
Speaker 8 (26:19):
You walked in off the street, up a little ramp
that was kind of a trippy purple lighting effects, and
you would, you know, approach and hear the music coming
from inside.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
In order to get through security, you had to show
your membership card. It kind of looked like a school id.
It had the year and a photo of you, and
a mascot of sorts, a man with the words Paradise
Garage written in ink on his bicep. Having a membership
card was kind of a legal dodge. It meant they
didn't have to declare themselves as a nightclub.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
But it also let them be really selective about their
crowd because you can't just have a regular business open.
You know, if anyone comes to your door, you have
to let them in legally. You can't just turn people
away for being straight or being uncool. You know, there
are certain laws about how businesses are supposed to operate.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
But Paradise Garage wasn't a regular club some people referred
to the space more as a house party than a
night club. Anyway, it was a private club with a membership,
so they could basically do whatever they wanted. By the
late seventies, when Paradise Garage opened, disco had been whitewashed
and had gone mainstream. So the garage set out to
(27:35):
become a club that embraced diversity and honored disco's roots.
Speaker 8 (27:40):
And so they really curated the audience at the garage,
and they really emphasized it was a space for queer people.
Speaker 9 (27:51):
It was a space for people of color.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So on any given night, you'd arrive at the garage,
walk up the runway, and flash your membership cards.
Speaker 8 (28:00):
And then you're let loose in this complex. They had
hangout spaces. They had a movie theater where you could
take breaks from your night out from the dancing, go
chill out and drink some juice, hang out with friends.
There was a little rooftop space where they had art exhibits.
The garage didn't serve alcohol, which you'll let them skirt
(28:23):
some laws, and everyone was on acid anyhow.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
But really people weren't there for the juice or the
rooftop or the movies. They were there for Larry, who
commanded the dance.
Speaker 8 (28:34):
Floor, and there was a giant DJ booth where Larry
would hold court.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Larry's DJ booth ran across that side of the whole
room on the second floor upstairs, and you walked underneath
it to the lounge, which was half the size of
the dance floor. He had a small sound system, and
they're playing the same music as a dance floor, but
lower with punch bowls. Their cruise.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
That loungeria did room for a lot of friends up there. Eventually,
Larry kind of lived at the club for a lot.
Speaker 9 (29:08):
Of its existence.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
The garage was Larry's home and he could do whatever
he wanted, so he chose to install a sound system
that was well, ungodly loud.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
It was like seeing the biggest rock band in the
world in like a small, enclosed space.
Speaker 9 (29:25):
It was that loud.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Everything else was drowned out by the music. When people
danced at the garage, they could feel the music getting
into their bones, shaking the ground and drawing out their
deepest desires and allowing them to let loose on the
dance floor. It was crazy and it was intoxicating.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
Thousands of people would show up three four thousand people
on a weekend night.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Doors would open around eleven or twelve, but things got
really wild later at three or four am. While most
people started their nights partying at glitzy and fabulous clubs
like Studio fifty four, everyone ended their night at Paradise Garage.
They'd take off the glamorous clothes they'd worn to the
(30:11):
fancy clubs and get dressed to throw down.
Speaker 8 (30:15):
They'd bring a gym bag with you know, sneakers and
sweats to take to the garage after and they would
they would go out for a night of dancing, and
then they would go to the garage to really start dancing.
Speaker 9 (30:26):
Seriously.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
That's what Paradise Garage was about. Dancing, seriously, no wallflowers.
The garage was a physical experience. You were there to dance,
to move, to sweat, if you dare do your hair
and makeup. It likely wouldn't last anyway, but it didn't
matter because people weren't there to see or be seen,
(30:53):
and so.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
People really leaned into this kind of stripped down approach.
Larry wanted to create a for people to worship music,
and people responded to that. They really did, you know,
people threw themselves into the experience in a really deep way.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Because it felt like a paradise where people could enjoy
the music and spend time with their friends without having
to twist and contort themselves into what was socially acceptable
in the seventies.
Speaker 9 (31:23):
It was a temple.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
It was something really, really special, and it was important
that he was doing this for a cloud of predominantly gay,
queer people of color who were already being pushed out
of the disco scene by that point.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
People would dance their way through the night, and then
in the morning the crowds would spill out onto the
empty streets of Soho. In other parts of town, suits
would be commuting to their Wall Street jobs and people
would be getting on the subway to go to work.
But if you'd gone to Paradise Garage that weekend, the
party didn't end there. The music was so good that
(32:14):
people would leave the club in the morning hungry for more.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
People would go theird party all night and then go
to the record shop on their way home in the morning.
People show up at like ten in the morning, just
like exhausted, you know, probably still tripping and demand you
know whatever. Obscure twelve inch Larry had decided to debut
(32:39):
that night.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Paradise Garage wasn't the kind of club where people had
one incredible night and went home. Nights at the Garage
were transformative. Larry playing a record there could catapult a
musician's career, and the memories people made on the dance
floor there stayed with them for years. There's one night
Victor won't ever forget. It was the mid eighties Halloween.
(33:11):
There's this song called do You Want to Get Funky
with Me? That has the most incredible syncopation in the
dance break. It takes you on a crazy ride. It's
one of my favorite songs, and if you ever hear
it in a club fully immersed in sound, you will
be forever changed. And when Victor walked into Paradise Garage
(33:32):
that Halloween, he came across about two or three thousand
people grooving along to this song.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
The lights are red flashing and sweeping the room, and
everybody's dancing a slow motion. It's so I'm burning up.
And then when the record goes woo, he turns down
the gigantic fans and all this wind comes through the room,
sweeping and people are just throwing their arms up in
(33:58):
the air, getting the old air coming in from the
giantic fans. And then he hits the cannons, the confetti cannons,
Confetti starts falling. It looks like it's snowy.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Larry was all about the experience.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
He really mind screwed you.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Ask anyone from that time. Something Larry did reliably was
make you love the music, even if you didn't want to.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
Larry was famous as a DJ for how he was
able to manipulate a crowd. He really got inside people's heads.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
But Paradise Garage was Larry's place, so he made the rules.
Speaker 8 (34:37):
If he played a song and the crowd didn't respond
to it, he would play it again, and he would
play it again and again until they did.
Speaker 9 (34:46):
Sometimes, if he was in a bad mood, he.
Speaker 8 (34:47):
Would put on a song that he knew everyone hated,
just to clear the floor, just to have a little
temper tantrum.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It sounds a little chaotic, but Larry knew exactly what
he was doing. From his throne on top, he would
look down onto the dance floor, watching people respond playing God.
Speaker 8 (35:03):
And if he saw a group of people getting ready
to leave, he would turn to a friend in the
booth and be like, I know that those guys were
getting their coats over there.
Speaker 9 (35:13):
I know that they loved this song.
Speaker 8 (35:16):
And he would put that song on and they would
put their coats back down and come back out onto
the dance floor.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
What Larry was doing up there on his throne was
really laying a foundation for a generation of incredible DJs
and partygoers.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
And he had the perfect place. He had the greatest
sound system, he had, the experience, the effects, the atmosphere,
everything just came together to form something incredible. It was
just the right time, the right place. He took a
little bit of this, you know, pinch of this, a
pinch of that, picture of this, you know, a dash
(35:56):
of that while on you know, something magical. Parts of
what he got from people and absorbed from people and
made it work as one. That's what made him special.
That's what made him the greatest DJ ever.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
And while Larry was creating a space for his people
to dance and celebrate, rumors about Paradise Garage spread far
and wide, so people from all over the city would
head over to the garage to hear Larry play, even
famous people.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, I saw there a couple of
times with Jeffrey Osborne, Janet Jackson, reb Jackson, everybody, everybody
there was.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Anybody, even Madonna party there. She performed like a virgin
for the very first time at the garage. But it
wasn't the chance to rub shoulders with celebrities that made
the garage what it was. Other clubs in the city
were catering to wealthier, lighter, more famous audiences, like the glitzy,
glamorous Studio fifty four.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
The elite, the rich, the celebrities, the beautiful people, the fashion,
and it was more about being seen than being who you.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Are, right.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
It was a status. It was fun, it was fabulous.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Studio fifty four was a club that attracted many queer
famous people, but it wasn't always a safe space for a.
Speaker 8 (37:27):
Lot of the queer people, the queer and trans people
who were at Studio fifty four.
Speaker 9 (37:33):
It was kind of a little bit of a freak
show thing.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
You know.
Speaker 8 (37:37):
This was a place where wealthy, middle aged New Yorkers
could come and see real life gay people and real
life trans people, and there was a real social stratification
there that was super based in economics, where it was
you know, queer and trans people behind the bar or
(38:00):
you know, working there with the rich, straight white CIS
people who had come in to spend their money, and
they sort of had expectations about what kind of experience
they wanted.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
But the Garage was a carefully curated place for queer
and people of color to dance without scrutiny, to occupy
space without fear of judgment or objectification.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
It really was about the music, It really was about
the dancing, It was really about letting go.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
By the late eighties, things were starting to slow down
at the Garage.
Speaker 8 (38:37):
New York City nightlife has always been an up and
down kind of thing, and I think creative communities like
that often follow a similar kind of trajectory. A lot
of things came together at the same time to just
sort of put a stake in the heart of nightlife
(38:57):
at the time.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Remember dance Ateryria, the other New York club that we
talked about earlier on in the series. Dance Ateria was
thriving at the same time as the Garage, but the
gay community that spent their time at both of those
clubs were hit hard by the AIDS epidemic in a
really destabilizing way.
Speaker 8 (39:18):
There are people who wanted distraction and wanted to go
out and lose themselves, but there are also people who
were scared to There are people who just didn't want
to because the mood had changed.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Paradise Garage stepped up to try and help its community.
In nineteen eighty two, the recently formed Gay Men's Health
Crisis Organization held its first fundraiser at the garage. They
raised over fifty thousand dollars. But by the late eighties,
(39:50):
the culture had shifted. Disco, the musical style Paradise Garage
was best known for, had faded out of the city's
dance floors. Michael Brody, who owned the garage, was diagnosed
with AIDS. The party just wasn't the same anymore, so
Paradise Garage closed its doors in nineteen eighty seven. People
(40:13):
described the last night as a huge, bittersweet farewell party.
So many of the people who had loved the club
showed up for one final dance to celebrate the club's legacy,
and it was an incredible legacy. Behind the DJ booth,
Larry Levin had become a legend. His sets had moved
(40:34):
people both to dance and to feel a part of
a space where they were truly welcomed. Larry had inspired
Frankie Knuckles, the DJ of the Warehouse, who helped create
house music across the Pond. Larry's music style inspired the
UK rave scene, which would go on to help shape
the music that played in the acid house, steep dance
(40:55):
floors of the Hacienda in Manchester, and to this day,
American DJ's travel around the world playing music inspired by
the songs Larry brought to life at the garage.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
They created a genre, they created a movement that lives
on that influenced house music.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
But Larry didn't live to see all the ways his
nights behind the booth would shape the future of music.
Speaker 8 (41:25):
You know, it's really sad. He died in ninety two.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
He experienced heart failure and passed away when he was
only thirty eight.
Speaker 8 (41:34):
There were a million people trying to be Larry Levan
and he never got his flowers.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
But while he was here, he did what he set
out to do. He created a space for queer, Black
and Latino people to dance, to celebrate, to get swept
up in the music. But in the decades since Paradise
Garage closed, visitors old and new would continue to reunite
on dance floors around the world to celebrate the legacy
(42:04):
of Larry Levan. There was a reunion at the Lincoln
Center in twenty twenty two. It was raining, but that
didn't stop anyone from congregating under the massive disco ball.
Speaker 5 (42:19):
Most people would have been like, oh, it's raining, we're
out of here.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
It would have been canceled.
Speaker 10 (42:23):
But they were forced to open that party and to
dry that floor with squeegees. And everyone showed up and
waited and got onto that dance floor to celebrate that
party and refused to go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Miles went to one a few years earlier, in twenty fifteen.
It was right in front of the actual Paradise Garage
location in Soho, and I was there, and while it
was only two pm in the afternoon, everybody who showed
up had come together to dance with an intense kind
of energy.
Speaker 8 (43:00):
Vibes were immaculate. Everyone there really brought the spirit. I
got a taste of what it must have been like,
just the tiniest little taste of it, and ever since then,
I've just been obsessed.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
These folks were mostly in their fifties and sixties, dancing
in a way that, well, we don't dance nowadays. They
were serious about their craft, but they were having a
hell of a good time, and there were kids too.
It was for the generations, and everyone was dancing together.
Speaker 8 (43:31):
They were the coolest people in the world out on
the dance floor, just you know, working it.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
There was a palpable joy created by watching everyone dance
to exactly the same beat, watching the music build them
and spill out onto the sidewalks as they danced, and
the sunbeam down on all of us from heaven for
a moment, like we were still at the garage.
Speaker 8 (44:00):
I was just soaking up the energy. I was dancing
my ass off, and they made me want to go
harder and let myself go more.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
It was inspiring just being around them. It was the
one of the best.
Speaker 8 (44:14):
Parties I've ever been to in my life.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
In the next episode, we're going to fast forward to
the nineties and head over to a legendary New York
club that stood at the epicenter of the golden age
of nineties hip hop. We're going to the Tunnel. The
History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is produced by Neon
hum Media for London Audio and iHeartRadio for London Audio.
(44:42):
Our executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson and Bruce Kersh.
The executive producer for Neon Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our
producer is Rufio Faith Masarua. Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez
are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal Genesis.
Our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is our production
(45:06):
manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator. This episode
was written by Kate Michigan and Rufairo Faith Masarua and
fact checked by Katherine Newhan. Theme and original music by
Asha Ivanovich. Our sound design engineers are Sam Beer and
Josh Han. I'm your host, Altra Ntey, and we'll see
(45:28):
you next time. On the History of the world's Greatest Nightclubs.
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