There is one sport I have never been into. I’ve tried to take an interest in it, but it’s never gripped my attention. Baseball. I can watch a five-day cricket test or a 24-hour motor race, but when a game of baseball is on the TV I can’t wait to turn the channel over.
It feels like, in the 1970s at least, that was the situation everywhere. Teams would have promotions to get butts in the seats. There was one night, however, that one promotion went too far. A promotion where that almost killed off a genre and left a crater in the pitch. And all this was because a fired DJ wanted revenge. This week The Beat Marches On to 12th July 1979, the Disco Demolition Night.
Disco was dominant in the late 1970s. Its rise throughout the decade brought decadence and flamboyance to the music scene. The dominant genre before, Album Orientated Rock or AOR, was turn up in what you’re wearing and then go on stage. With Disco you would change into a new persona. Lots of hair products, half-open shirts with a medallion necklace around your neck.
Like most new scenes disco was an underground movement. Some reports state the movement started in the late 1960s but the term was first known to the public in 1973 in a Rolling Stone article. A new form of a nightclub called a Discotheque was popping up in cities and the patrons in the know shortened the name down to just disco.
As with most underground movements, the reputation of Disco kept growing and growing then like the 1950s Rock n Roll or 1960s British Invasion scenes previously it exploded in 1977. This time with the help of Hollywood.
In December 1977 a film on the new Disco scene was released. Featuring a then-unknown John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever took the world unexpectedly by storm. The soundtrack to the film became the biggest-selling album ever at the time and has only been surpassed by the Bodyguard soundtrack since. Suddenly the music charts were dominated by Disco tracks throughout the next 18 months. Even Established rock artists like Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones experimented with the genre.
Radio stations all over America which specialised in rock were now converting to disco. This is where our protagonist comes in. Steve Dahl a DJ based in Chicago was ousted at one of those stations. He decided to take out his hatred for disco to the airwaves. At his new station, one of his gimmicks was to drag a needle over a disco record while it was playing and play an explosion sound drop. Smashing the LP over his head was also a regular occurrence.
The antics of Dahl were soon brought to the attention of the local baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, who were susceptible to having some whacky promotions such as a hairdresser in the bleachers (the bench seating), as well as a shower, installed, to drive ticket sales as the team wasn’t doing so well. Depending on who you believe, the radio station or the team, one approached the other and said ‘Why don’t we blow up the records for real?’
The two agreed on the date and decided in the middle of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers, Dahl and his radio team would come and blow up a crate of disco records brought in by the fans. If the patrons brought in a disco record, then they would get tickets to both games for 98 cents-the same as the radio station’s frequency.
It was promoted on the radio station on the morning of the game, and no one expected many tock fans would come along to Comiskey Park, The White Sox home. The average attendance was around 15,000 and with the promotion expected another 5,000 to attend. Everyone underestimated the number of people who came along with disco records. 60,000 fans were rumoured to be there with another few thousand in the car park who couldn’t get in. There were so many fans with records that they filled up the crate used to blow them up, so they let them through with records in hand.
One vendor, Vince Lawrence who was working for the team to save for a synthesiser, noticed something about the records being handed in. It wasn’t just disco records; it was music by black artists that were being supplied. He asked his manager, but he didn’t care as long as it was a record. Lawrence had admitted in interviews that he kept a few decent ones by sneaking them into his locker.
During the first game which the White Sox lost, it felt like no one was there to watch the game. Chants of ‘Disco Sucks’ spawned throughout the game. Many fans snuck in their alcohol and one of the staff members smelt the distinct smell of cannabis in the air. The uncollected records were used as frisbees from the stands and reached the field.
The first game had finished, and it was time for the disco demolition. Dahl came onto the field in a military uniform on the back of a Jeep. Shocked by the sheer amount of people that responded to his call to arms he was a little nervous as he spoke to the rowdy crowd before the record crate exploded. He led the crowd into one last chant of disco sucks then went on to do the deed.
The crate exploded and the records went everywhere. The organisers admitted that the pyrotechnician was over excessive with the number of explosives used. A poor organisation meant that the crate exploded on the pitch rather than being put on a raised surface. The result meant that the field had a crater in it.
Thinking it was a great success, Dahl took a lap of honour on the back of the Jeep. The crowd was throwing their empty beer cans and cups along with anything else that was throwable in his direction. With all the debris being thrown at the vehicle the driver gave up on the victory lap halfway through. Then the real shock happened.
After Steve Dahl left the field, some fans broke out of the bleachers and stormed the pitch. Then some more. Then most of the bottom tier was on the pitch. Some fans even slid down the foul poles from the upper stands. In a matter of minutes, an estimated 7000 fans descended onto the pitch. They were literally stealing bases and adding fuel to the fire of the already burning records. They tore down the practice nets and damaged any part of the field to deem it unplayable. The pitch was so damaged that the White Sox had to forfeit the second game. After some time, the Chicago police came onto the field and dispersed the crowd. A total of 37 people were arrested.
That is only the beginning of the story though. After the incident, the record labels who were getting frustrated by the amount disco recordings were costing in the studio took it upon themselves to shun the genre and go in favour of a more rock-based direction. This was because a typical rock band/artist only has an average of 4-5 members working on a whole album, compared to the disco acts that had more than 10 different musicians working on a single song.
Within a matter of months, Disco was gone off the airwaves and the public turned up their noses at anyone who even mentioned the name. It felt like whoever liked the genre post the demolition night was a laughingstock. It was starting to get personal as the dominant champions of disco were black, Latinx and part of the LGBT+ community. To most of them, the demolition night felt like the record burning of the Beatles records in the bible belt of America. Some even compared it to the Nazi book burnings in the 1930s.
Some of the disco community didn’t mind the decrease in popularity. The purists, you know the type ‘I liked them before they were cool’ and hipsters liked that disco had gone down a peg or two. Bringing the genre back to its humble beginnings and getting rid of the parody like Disco Duck.
As the populous thought that disco had died, little did they know that the underground disco was still alive. It also was hitting the charts not classed as disco but now as dance music, and not nearly as dominant on the charts as it once was.
When you look at dance music in the current charts you can see disco’s influence everywhere. Hip hop, house, EDM, garage the list goes on. Disco had a mini-revival recently with Dua Lipa’s album ‘Future Revival’ released in 2020.
The first of those genres to reach the mainstay of the charts was house music. The genre started around 1984 and one of the first people who was credited with the first house single is the vendor who was at the stadium on the demolition night, Vince Lawrence. It became a huge genre throughout the late 1980s and 1990s.
The damage the disco demolition night did to the minorities of music fans took years to overcome. It was a black mark on the rock fans who didn’t like change. It wasn’t the first and will not be the last time that musical revolts happened due to not liking one genre for another and although you don’t have to like someone else’s taste in music just give it some respect.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for four years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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The websites used for research were:
July 12, 1979: ‘The Night Disco Died’ — Or Didn’t : NPR
Disco Demolition Night: why your taste doesn’t matter and never will (happymag.tv)
Disco Demolition Night, 1979: When Fed-Up Rock Fans Exploded (groovyhistory.com)
Disco Demolition: the night they tried to crush black music | Disco | The Guardian
The original news report on the event from ESPN is available on YouTube.
If you want to request a story for The Beat Marches On blog, then you can contact jwhiteheadjournalism@gmail.com. We cannot guarantee that the story will be published but will be considered