Original subtitles

The disco sound was just wonderful.

It was exciting.

Powerful. You know, spank you.

And you just had a good time.

Disco brought together Black Pride,

women's liberation and LGBT culture.

It was the coming together of that that made it so powerful.

Listening to the music and...

..and letting yourself go,

you become a different person.

# Supernature

# Supernature

# Supernature

# Supernature... #

It was this powder keg chain reaction that happened

that made it suddenly totally take over the airwaves.

# Supernature... #

It was, of course, Saturday Night Fever

that really tipped everything over, that tipped the scales.

It just set the world on fire.

Disco was on everybody's lips.

Clubs were packed every night.

Studio 54.

I created it as a playground -

sex, drugs, disco, whatever you need.

In the late '70s, the outsider became the insider.

The black disco diva was a breakthrough persona.

Someone like Donna Summer,

she was a disco queen.

Don't forget Gloria in all her glory-a.

# Supernature... #

I think that era of music allowed the disco diva to have this stage

to be adored and celebrated.

Disco freed me.

It saved me.

In all the decisions I have made in my public life,

I have always tried to do what was best for the nation.

Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate,

I felt it was my duty to persevere,

to make every possible effort to complete the term of office

to which you elected me.

In the mid 1970s, the United States was not a happy place.

There was the Watergate scandal,

and any faith that Americans had in government

was shaken to its core.

What percentage of the American people do you think

still have confidence in President Nixon?

Well, among young people, very few. I'd say less than 25%.

Therefore, I shall resign the presidency

effective at noon tomorrow.

Richard Nixon has announced he will resign

as president of the United States at noon tomorrow.

In my life and everybody I know, Nixon was detested,

but it was an intense period of time.

You knew you were living history.

You knew that this is monumental.

It was a hard time

because of the Vietnam War,

also a nuclear bomb threat.

And Russia, you know, that they might drop a bomb any day.

Oh, my God. What we gonna do?

The flip side of this dark moment is that...

..when life gets hard, you party harder.

I was living in New York in the 1970s.

All we wanted to do was dance to disco music.

# I never can say goodbye... #

It was a freedom.

It was like, express yourself was so welcomed and wanted.

And music was the common denominator.

I mean, it was just igniting people's dance souls.

# ..turn around, you fool... #

Why is everybody rushing and flooding the doors of discotheque?

Oh, I think it's because

with all of the hardships that are going on in the world today,

people need a place to go and relieve tension

and then release their anxieties,

and discotheques are a great place to do just that.

# Ooh-hoo, baby

# I never can say goodbye

# No, no, no, hey

# I never can say goodbye

# Oh, no, I... #

Gloria Gaynor is a rock and roll singer

whose records have really never made it

until she decided to specialise

in a brand-new rock and roll musical style called disco music.

# But there's that same unhappy feeling

# There's that anguish, there's the doubt... #

She made you raise your hands up and want to touch the ceiling

while you were dancing and screaming.

When Gloria was doing her thing,

I think she was the First Lady of Disco.

# ..is it so?

# I don't wanna let you go... #

She was one of the earliest people

to have a major presence, in the clubs,

was, you know, the Queen of Disco

before there was such a title.

# No, no, no... #

Gloria, did you ever think this would happen?

No, I really didn't.

Not like this anyway.

I always thought I would sing eventually, but I never thought

all this would happen.

# I never can say goodbye, no, no, no... #

I think disco means to most people...

..probably it means a lot of fun.

To me...

..it meant a change.

In the early '70s,

black women were caught between a rock and a hard place.

Statistically, they were at the bottom of the heap.

They earned less than most any other group, male or female.

They were victimised

by a notorious government-sponsored report

called the Moynihan Report.

It was a report that discussed

what were the particular problems

of blacks and Jews and Puerto Ricans.

Black women were literally blamed for the problems of black men.

Black women were heads of their families,

too matriarchal, too strong.

And unfortunately, when scholars produce a document

that is government approved,

people tend to believe it.

And so rather than fight against this,

which was virtually impossible for a group that oppressed to do,

they tried not to be like that.

You had to work hard to fit in,

and to fit in, you're going to be quiet.

You're not going to bring all your loud culture with you

or whatever it is and make demands,

you're going to try and fit in.

When I was growing up, the only time that people heard my voice,

I was singing.

My father had been a minister,

so we just had to kind of stick to what we were told to do.

I just wanted to sing.

The pastor called me up on the stage and I started singing.

And the church people started shouting

and screaming and standing up and waving.

"Sing, baby! Sing that song."

That was the beginning.

The gospel diva or the soul diva,

that's a really powerful, full-bodied sound

that moved into the mainstream in the '60s.

Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx,

Patricia Hoult -

known as Patti LaBelle And The Bluebells.

# Somewhere over the rainbow... #

In the '60s,

we were a traditional girl group and we dressed alike.

We did the kind of,

you know, lead singer with backing singers,

waving their arms and looking very nice.

Patti LaBelle And The Bluebells

were fulfilling a vision of black womanhood

that was on the tail end of the early '60s Motown era.

They embodied that nonthreatening persona

that America wanted to place black women in.

We were expected to carry ourselves a certain way in the public,

you know, well-dressed, well behaved.

That's how it was.

# ..really do come true... #

In the music industry, we were fighting,

trying to get out of that box that we were put in

in the '60s.

So disco was wonderful.

Disco did offer black women new opportunities.

Disco did give space for black women to kind of add soul

and funk and depth to a lot of different kinds of music

to kind of take centre stage,

like Patti LaBelle And The Bluebells.

My next guest stars are the hottest girl group in America.

Man, they are truly hot and they've got the hottest single, too -

Lady Marmalade.

And here they. Nona Hendryx, Sara Dash and Patti LaBelle.

Know throughout the music industry as Labelle.

# Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister

# Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister

# He met Marmalade down in old Moulin Rouge

# Struttin' her stuff on the street... #

When Patti LaBelle And The Bluebells changed their name,

they changed their look and they changed it dramatically.

# Gitchie, gitchie, ya-ya, here Uh-huh

# Mocha Chocolata, ya-ya... #

Patti LaBelle And The Bluebells were a girl group.

Right?

Labelle were a girl band.

# Voulez-vous danser avec moi, ce soir?

# Voulez-vous danser avec moi? #

Labelle looking like they just, like, beamed in from some

crazy, funky galaxy.

It was just so over the top and so amazing and so out there.

That, to me, meant a certain kind of freedom.

# Gitchie, gitchie, ya-ya, here... #

The architect of the look of Labelle was LeGaspi.

He also designed the look for KISS.

He also designed the look for Funkadelic.

Larry was already sort of making things that looked

like a futuristic look.

And then with us being open to even going further,

he began to design more.

# More, more, more! #

I was mesmerised and delighted to see my people in a way

that was unlike any way anyone had ever imagined them.

# More, more, more

# Gitchie, gitchie, ya-ya... #

And our organisation is, I think is probably one of the few

organisations which are run by women.

We have a woman manager, lawyer, and we're businesswomen now.

Now. Thanks to Vicki.

Vicki Wickham was the manager of Labelle

and was someone who really helped Labelle develop their vision

and really encouraged Labelle

to take on a more experimental spirit

in their costumes, as well as the songs

that they were performing.

We met Vicki on our third or fourth trip to England.

She was producing Ready, Steady, Go.

I think Vicki brought a new belief in us as young women.

I guess a sense of confidence as individuals.

We were deciding what kind of staging we wanted to have.

We were deciding what music we wanted to record.

We were making the decisions.

We were just singing songs that felt right to us or mattered to us,

and the audience were responding to it.

# ..feelin' silky smooth... #

Lady Marmalade is talking about basically sex tourism and sex work.

# ..cry

# More, more, more... #

Women don't often get centre stage or if there is a story that's

being told, it's also a story that's about titillation

or about fetishization.

It's like a playwright, you know, someone describing something

as opposed to judging it.

And in a way that's not celebratory,

but in a way that was not downtrodden and horrible

and that this is just yet another aspect of life.

I really think that music was really important

in terms of creating social change.

And in this moment, you know,

music was reflecting black women's lives

in a way that it hadn't ever been.

I was so glad disco came in.

You know, good music, good lyrics,

songs that had a meaning to them.

In the '60s, we were known as R&B singers.

# I'd rather be lonely than to lose you... #

My songs were like,

"I'm just a prison," and begging men not to leave me

and, "Oh, God, if you leave me, I'm just going to die," you know?

I mean, this was the kind of songs they would play on us women.

Women. Men could sing anything they wanted to sing.

So to make a long story short,

disco...freed me.

It saved me.

You know, I've been married a few times,

and I don't mind telling it

cos, you know, I was in one of those type of marriages,

but it was dangerous.

It was really a dangerous marriage.

So I was doing Las Vegas with Ray Charles.

I was opening for Ray Charles.

The last night, I decided I was going to just sit

in the audience and watch Ray do his show.

And my ex-husband, he was looking for me, and he couldn't find me.

And I was in the audience. And he kept walking up and down the aisle.

I saw him.

And that's the night when he went completely nuts.

My suite was way up on the 20th-something floor.

And he pushed me, you know,

he was pushing me all the way through the lobby to the elevator,

and then we get to the floor.

He said, "I'm going to kill you tonight.

"I tell you what I'm going to do.

"I'm going to throw you off the balcony."

20-something floors.

He picked me up.

And had me, holding me over the banister like this.

And I'm like, "This man is going to kill me tonight.

"How in the world?

"Well, how am I going to get out of this one?"

I said,

"You know, you are in this hotel and it's owned by mafia.

"This is Las Vegas. We're in Las Vegas now.

"See, you got to get out of here.

"You got to walk out of here.

"How are you going to feel with my body splattered at the bottom

"and my name is on the marquee?"

And I said, "You won't make it out of Vegas."

He thought, and he brought me back in.

And he said,

"I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm just going to shoot you."

So I laid... I just... You know, I was so tired.

I just lay down on the bed.

I said, "OK, shoot me."

I went to sleep.

He had a gun like this.

I said, "Just shoot me. I won't know it."

Just forget it.

That's how Young Hearts Run Free came about.

# What's the sense in sharing this one and only life

# Ending up just another lost and lonely wife

# You count up the years

# And they will be filled with tears... #

That song is for women.

It's about survival.

# ..to start over again

# You'll get the babies, but you won't have your man

# While he's busy loving every woman that he can... #

Music has a way of changing people.

When they won't listen to you,

talk to them.

Look at Mavis.

# Respect yourself. #

# R-E-S-P-E-C-T. # Aretha.

You can say it. Respect yourself.

It'll just go right over their head.

But sing it.

It gets into the spirit.

# ..like my man and me... #

Candi Staton is singing about pain,

and yet the power in her voice says that she's no victim.

# ..yourself be true... #

She is telling her story

and there's a triumph just in the telling of the story.

# Don't love you. #

Isn't that amazing?

You're singing a sad song and folks are dancing.

One girl... I got to tell you this.

One girl, she said,

"I could not believe I was dancing to such a sad song."

She said, "That song is tear jerking."

She said, "But I love it."

# ..time they say

# Self preservation is what's really going on today. #

We couldn't sing those type of songs back in the early '60s.

We started doing that in the '70s.

For the longest time, it was very hard for black acts

to become strong pop acts,

outside of something like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye.

The charts in the '70s were much more segregated.

During those days in music, it was the Billboard charts.

They had a pop side, they had an R&B column,

but they weren't together.

You made the R&B charts, which was all black.

Everything was black.

It was amazing if you could get on the pop side.

Disco made it possible for black acts to become pop acts

more than they ever had before.

It meant that there were suddenly a lot of black performers

on the charts that had not been there before,

had not been...

Not had the ability to cross over in that way.

I was on the Motown label for five years.

At that time we were interested in singles,

so I was in that studio recording. It was like a job.

I was in the studio all the time recording,

trying to get that single.

They would want you to do it

over and over and over and over and over again.

Trying to get that hit, right.

Trying to get that single.

Suzanne de Passe.

She was running the A&R department at Motown.

She found the song. She heard the song.

That song was originally recorded by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes.

She thought that the song was great with the guy singing that.

But she says, "But if a woman sings that, then that's really good."

# Don't leave me this way

# I can't survive

# I can't stay alive... #

It was specifically cut as a disco song.

You know, that psss, pss, psss?

# Don't leave me this way... #

That was Suzanne de Passe and Hal Davis.

They cut it to be disco.

They had a good beat, you know,

that would get you out to the dance floor

and it just kept building and building and building.

And that's the kind of song

that you like to dance to in the club.

# Baby, my heart is full of love

# And it's all for you... #

Female voices and female, you know, female registering voices

just work better with dance music for some reason.

And I feel like with disco

there opened up a stage for a lot of amazing women.

# It's only your good lovin' can set me free.. #

Somehow I got the test pressing,

so I said, "Ooh, I want to hear this."

So I got to work and I go to hear this real good.

So a friend of mine was also friends with a lady that owned the club

that we used to go to dance at called the Catch One.

It was mostly like a gay club.

The straight girls would call it Catch None.

And she allowed me to come in there on an afternoon

and play it, like, with their equipment.

That, "Owwww!" That was there.

And...

So the thing about a test pressing

is you can only play it so many times.

So I played it so many times it was like...

By the end it was like, "Drrrrrr!"

# Come on down and do what you've got to do... #

The DJs in the clubs,

they played my song all the time

cos people liked to dance to it.

I knew that it was going to be a good dance song.

I knew that.

But as far as a hit,

no, I had no idea.

I have here a scarf. Tell us about it, will you?

Well, this scarf... This scarf! ..tells that my record

is number one in the nation.

How about that?

Black women became stars with huge LGBTQ followings.

So the black disco diva was a breakthrough persona.

And this means everything to black women

because the minute you see yourself in a raised position, you know,

as a world-class artist

that people would pay a fortune to buy a ticket,

you could fill up Madison Square Garden, this kind of thing,

it opens possibilities.

To see Labelle on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine,

the first black female group to ever be on the cover,

this was a really heroic moment.

At that time in the '70s,

we broke the glass ceiling for women.

Women became very, very, very popular.

In the 1970s, there is an idea of a sexual revolution

that's afoot, you know, in the culture.

Whole groups of people were demanding personal freedom.

We also had the Vietnam War.

And the Vietnam War had been brutal.

And it didn't really end until 1975.

# Do a little dance, make a little love... #

The bulletin has just come in from Saigon.

The war is over.

South Vietnam's new president

has announced an unconditional surrender.

# Get down tonight... #

And so you had this huge thing by the mid '70s.

Everyone's back from the war now.

You're not going to be drafted any more.

And everybody looking for fun

and everybody looking for something that appealed to them at their age.

What appeal to the baby boomers? Sex, drugs and rock and roll.

# Do a little dance... #

People were celebrating life in the club.

The music talked about,

"We got to love each other. We got to spread this love."

# Get down tonight... #

The genre of disco during that time period

was so huge and so successful.

And also, disco music was fun.

You sort of felt the beat and the pulse

of what the public wanted.

And we made a commitment that we were going to be in the disco business.

# Get down tonight

# Hey Do a little dance

# Make a little love

# Get down tonight

# Get down tonight... #

Neil heard Donna's voice and he said, "Oh, I like this,"

and proceeded to put out Love To Love You.

# I love to love you, baby

# I love to love you, baby

# I love to love you, baby

# I love to love you, baby

# I... #

No-one had heard anything like that before.

It was really daring.

It was really outrageous in a lot of ways.

But it was so good.

It was so well done.

# I love to love you, baby... #

The song revolves around

Donna Summer having sex

or at least pretending to, very effectively.

# Do it to me again and again

# You put me through such an awful spin

# In a spin In a spin, uh... #

Love To Love You, Baby

was an expression of sexual equality.

That song was a way of giving women permission

to have the same sexual feelings as a man.

# I love to love you, baby... #

Donna Summer described herself as someone who kind of

fell into the role of sex diva.

She didn't really expect that Love To Love You, Baby

would be picked up and seen as like this game-changing song.

The interesting thing is

the record was not a success...

..until Neil made it 16-plus minutes.

It was the first LP like that.

Now it didn't exist before Neil did that.

# Love to love you, baby

# Oh, love to love you, baby... #

It was a trip. It was almost 17 minutes long.

And even though there weren't a lot of lyrics to the song,

it was emotional.

The production was so important in it,

and no-one had ever done anything like that before.

I mean, it was, you know, it was Donna.

She was special.

When I played, like in a really big club,

it was like watch... It was like ecstasy.

and it was really a sensual, sexual record.

And so people got into a different groove.

Listening to Donna Summer on acid at the Pavilion

was like being in heaven.

It was just like being in another world.

When that hit the discos, within two weeks

the record was gold.

But to get it on the radio stations at 16 minutes,

now that's a trick.

Neil bought a whole bunch of stations at midnight.

He bought time on the radio stations. Mm-hm.

Casablanca actually bought that time and

therefore could play whatever they wanted to

for 16-plus minutes.

Casablanca brings you a moment of love with the First Lady of Love.

People were calling in and they wanted to hear it again,

and that was... Then it just took off from there.

You know, what was it, 22 orgasms or whatever they called it,

in Time magazine and Newsweek. And she was in everything.

The song, you know, had been banned by the BBC

and banned by some US radio stations as well.

It had kind of a tough life.

I mean, I have been put down for it. You know, I have been scorned.

Hmm. Why?

Well, you know, there are certain people I mean, reverends and things

who have not taken it very lightly.

Oh, the uptight folks. The Puritans among us.

Well, you know, the funny part of it is,

I'm kind of a puritan myself

and that the song was just the song as such.

And, all of a sudden, it became kind of a revolution.

Did sexuality drive disco?

Um, you know, I mean, that's kind of always been there in music.

I mean, there's some dirty songs.

I mean, Love In C Minor. Cerrone.

He's basically having a four way in the, in the beginning.

He's getting down with three ladies

and there's also a really wonderful little moment of consent there

where one of the girls is like, "No, don't do that."

And he's like, "I'm sorry, are you OK?

"How about this?"

"Yes."

So, yeah, it was... It was great.

Record companies have always wanted to exploit sex.

It happened long before disco.

Between the early '70s and the late '70s,

the covers became more sexualised.

There were more women on the covers without much clothing on.

There were a lot of really, you know, kind of outrageous covers,

lots of nudity, lots of female nudity,

and little by little, some male nudity as well.

The jacket for Theo Vaness - Bad, Bad Boy

has a guy in the foreground and a guy in the background,

and he's clearly looking at him with sexual interest.

A straight person would not... You know, they would flip through it

and it wouldn't faze them.

A gay person would see it and go, "Whoa, this is about us!"

In the '70s, we were desperate to see signs of our own existence

in popular culture.

And so we would look at records like these as affirmations

of who we are, of our existence.

Gay is obviously a lot more visible now than it used to be

what with gay candidates, magazines, social and political organisations.

The rest of the world is having to notice

what it used to try to ignore,

is finding out that homosexuals no longer meekly melt away

under the blast of scorn, ridicule or hatred.

Disco will always be entwined with the Gay Pride movement.

This is what being gay is all about,

is being free, free from the chains that have bound us forever.

If there is one American city in which the gay rights issue,

if not embraced, is at least tolerated, it is San Francisco.

Gays reportedly make up 12% of the population

and possibly 30% of the voters who go to the polls.

Last January, the city elected

its first open homosexual to public office -

a fellow named Harvey Milk -

to the Board of Supervisors.

Harvey Milk was the first out politician

that came from the gay movement itself.

He represented gay people in a way that hadn't been done before.

Just like Harvey Milk mirrored an element of San Francisco,

so did Sylvester.

Sylvester first presented himself

as sort of really traditional blues and jazz,

glam rock and soul all at once.

And there was no place for it.

But when disco came around, there was an audience

for all these things

that could come together in no other genre.

Disco allowed Sylvester to be churchy and queer

at the same time.

The man you're about to hear is one of the most theatrical

and flamboyant performers on the disco scene.

Here is that bizarre star, the sensational Sylvester.

# You mean I've been dancin' on the floor, darlin'

# And I feel like I need some more and I... #

Sylvester was out and proud and put it in your face.

There was a lot of things that were gay and you didn't know.

Sylvester was almost drag.

He was like, "This is who I am.

"You like me, you don't like me, I don't care.

"You accept me or you don't accept me, I don't care."

He was unapologetic for being who he was,

which is wonderful.

# You make me feel mighty real... #

Sylvester is the definition of fearlessness.

I don't know if you've ever met someone that when you meet them,

they make you feel your most authentic.

And so I think that's what that...that feels like for me.

# You make me feel

# Mighty real... #

I remember when Mighty Real was released,

and it was major!

Major, major, major.

# ..feel mighty real... #

It's a song that never gets old. It's never going to get old.

It's one of the best songs ever recorded.

You could always put it on at any party.

You could be in a heavy room and, like, that song can come on

and...and just change everything.

# You make me feel

# Mighty real... #

It's that voice!

That kind of like androgyny with vocals is really fun.

And I think that Sylvester was one of the pioneers of that.

# Mighty real... #

He was extremely high.

He...he...he was in nosebleed land.

I said, "Child, I can't even think that high."

There was one moment that the label tried to change him.

They wanted him to conform,

to be a straight man or to do things,

wear a suit, you know, chew gum and play baseball.

And he marched up to those offices in a ball gown and wig

and, you know, full make-up

and walked down those steps, massive staircase.

And he walked down that staircase in full drag.

And he said, "No. Mm-mm. I'm just going to be myself."

He refused to change.

Do I smile when I talk about him?

You had a memorable event in San Francisco. Yes.

What happened?

We were the first disco act or popular music act

to ever perform in the San Francisco Opera House

with the San Francisco Symphony.

With the symphony?! Yes.

The first time... Right!

The Living Proof album by Sylvester,

it's a live recording at the San Francisco Opera House.

And from what I understand about this night, I feel like

this could have been the peak moment of disco.

They blew the roof off of the joint.

Come on in here, everybody.

The symphony players are really straight.

Straight? Oh. I see.

Well, I mean, you know...

You know how classical musicians are.

So what I did to make them loosen up a little bit

just before the curtain,

I said this just before the curtain went up.

And I ran around backstage

and I threw pounds of glitter all on their hair,

all on their instruments, all over everything.

They must've loved that. They did love it.

They played great. Really? Yeah.

Sylvester was not...

..you know, seeking to be political.

The more success he had,

the more he was able to express himself as to who he was.

And that might be seen as being political.

There's a really great photo

of Harvey Milk and Sylvester together.

It was for Harvey Milk's birthday party.

I was with Sylvester.

It was a grand party, too.

Harvey Milk knew how to party. And Sylvester sang.

It's fascinating that there were these two people

that happened at the same time

to really make a difference

and politicise the ordinary stuff.

Both Harvey Milk and Sylvester were doing that.

In the late '70s, the outsider became the insider.

The trans women would show up at the Manhattan discos.

They weren't just welcomed, they were encouraged.

You know, it was like it was their home.

People wanted to mix with that culture,

that marginalised, very marginalised culture,

especially at that time.

I was there with my camera.

I stumbled into this world.

# Oooh

# It's so good, it's so good, it's so good, it's so good

# It's so good

# Ohh... #

This is the scene outside a New York disco

called Studio 54.

This is the place that's in with the disco crowd.

One of the owners, Steve Rubell, works the door.

He is choosy about who gets in

and that adds to the mystique.

# I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feel love

# I feel... #

Steve Rubell became a really close friend of mine.

He wanted to open a club that was beyond any other club

that was open till that time.

And that was his inspiration.

We try and make this like a play.

And we want to get the right cast of characters

so that everybody has a good time,

so that not one group is dominant.

There's nothing more boring than a room full of celebrities

or a room full of anything.

They would look and they would say, "You."

Two out there, please,

And they would say, "Me?"

"Yeah. Come on in. Come on in."

They would pick who they wanted to come in.

It would be so crowded outside.

Two out there, please. On the left.

People went to Studio 54 to be seen,

and there were people who went to Studio 54 to party.

I went there to party.

I created it as a playground

so people would go.

Sex, drugs, disco, whatever you need.

A one-night stand is better than nothing.

But you know something to enjoy life and to make it more creative.

# I feel love... #

Glamour up your ass.

It just was so ostentatious.

Beyond... Ostentatious beyond belief.

# I feel love... #

There was never anything like it.

And there will never be anything again like it.

# Oooooh

# I'm in love, I'm in love... #

The waiters who were bare-chested, in little shorts.

Huge DJ area.

Not only control of the music, but all the effects.

# I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feel... #

And you feel like the music

is pumping inside your body. Boom, boom.

Disco music, for me, is the type of music that

no matter how tired you are, you have to dance.

You have to.

The energy that it has is so magnificent

that there is no other way.

And that brings everybody together

with that gay energy,

which is so important

because they are the ones that want to be out every night.

Andy Warhol was a...

..fixture.

He didn't want to miss out on anything.

He would go to the opening of an envelope

because he was scared of missing out.

# ..fallin' free, fallin' free, fallin' free, fallin' free... #

Grace Jones, when she did the first New Year's Eve,

that was legendary.

It was, like, beyond.

She came out of the staircase in the stage

and having three guys on leashes like dogs.

It was amazing.

# Oooh... #

You know, they only invested $300,000 to do the Studio

and the first year they were making $3 million.

OK? In those years.

Steve liked to talk a lot to the press every day.

He's saying, "We are making more money than the mafia."

People all over the country were opening up discos.

It was a phenomenon, clearly.

There was a real focus on opening bigger clubs,

looking for a larger audience that was clearly out there.

I got a job at New York, New York in the fall of 1977.

It was sort of an upscale midtown disco

that was catering to a very mainstream white crowd.

They were open seven nights a week.

They had private parties in the afternoon

and then the evening until four or five in the morning or whenever,

every night.

It never stopped.

There was this powder keg chain reaction that happened

that made it suddenly totally take over the airwaves

and mass media

and everything else all at once.

And then late in 1977

was when Saturday Night Fever literally exploded.

Just like crazy what happened with that record.

And with... I mean, it just set the world on fire.

# ..by the way I use my walk

# I'm a woman's man, no time to talk

# Music loud and women warm, I've been kicked around

# Since I was born

# And now it's all right, it's OK

# And you may look the other way

# We can try to understand

# The New York Times' effect on man... #

Saturday Night Fever was this amazing game-changing film.

I don't think the film producers even realised the kind of impact

that it was going to have.

And its soundtrack

is one of the best selling soundtracks of all time,

and I think it wouldn't have made the kind of impact

that it would have without the soundtrack itself.

# ..alive

# Oh when you walk... #

The Bee Gees weren't a disco band.

Along with their producers and some of their writers,

they found a formula, that was brilliant,

to do as a soundtrack for a movie

that was basically exploitation of disco.

The Bee Gees album made hundreds of millions of dollars.

# Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

# You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

# Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'... #

Saturday Night Fever made me feel like all our work was being noticed.

I loved it. I loved the music. I loved everything about it.

# Stayin' alive... #

Bee Gees were... They were one of my favourite groups.

# ..alive... #

Yeah. It changed a lot. It changed a lot.

It broadened the spectrum of music.

A lot of people that weren't into the disco-type thing

kind of embraced that.

Saying Night Fever gave disco a story

where the white straight guy is at the centre of it.

It put a face on it.

Tony is a very everyman kind of guy

that the average white guy could relate to.

You know, it was like Rocky, right?

It's the everyman who's kind of thuggish but debonair.

He's polished, he's graceful

and he's not completely masculine.

He embraces his femininity, too.

If he didn't, then, you know,

he'd be laughed off the dance floor.

All right!

I remember him being just like a real asshole

and just super macho and, you know, not very nice to women.

It was upsetting that Saturday Night Fever

didn't represent the disco that I knew and loved,

but it represented something very particular.

# You should be dancin'... #

It made dance culture and the involvement in dance

really understandable to a lot of people who probably didn't quite

understand why their kids were going out dancing all the time.

It's interesting after this, the ways that the lit up floor

and his dance moves,

his white suits that Tony was wearing

with a little mirrored ball,

the slicked back hair,

and then the lady on your arm who is kind of wearing

some kind of flouncy, fluttery skirt.

It's what became disco.

A lot of people had to take dance lessons.

Three, four, five.

They couldn't just get on the floor and master it like, you know,

John Travolta. You don't just show up on the floor and do that.

You've got to practise.

..two, three, four. Repeat, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four. Repeat, two, three, four.

Repeat, two, three, four.

When you look at the gross it took in the film theatres,

it was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

And that got the bandwagon really going.

Everyone said, "Wow, that's a gold mine there."

Saturday Night Fever just like metastasized

into this cultural thing.

Disco had become what felt to us like a global craze.

Disco was on everybody's lips.

Everybody wanted to know about disco,

and they wanted to be part of it.

Every other artist wanted to be a disco artist.

Anybody who wanted to revive their career

or to have a hit - disco.

Rock stars don't have to be wild about disco

to take advantage of its popularity.

Rod Stewart's biggest-selling record ever is the disco-flavoured

Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?

# ..need me

# Just reach out and touch me

# Come on, sugar, tell me so Tell me so... #

A lot of other artists, from Frank Sinatra to Dolly Parton

to the Rolling Stones,

have also swung into the disco beat.

They all dabbled.

But one song here and there didn't change who they really were.

It was like, "You have to make this now."

Record companies dictated what you really did.

I think with any social movements,

you're going to have two things coexisting.

There was not one or the other. There were both.

Music with integrity was still being played at the same time

as you had the commercial things that were being played on the radio.

# Sending love vibrations straight to you

# Sending love vibrations... #

Polydor announced that they were releasing

a new single called Substitute.

All the DJs, we all got a 12-inch saying Substitute

backed with, on the B-side, I Will Survive.

I don't even think that most DJs realised that that song

was on the B-side of Substitute.

Gloria knew that Substitute

was not going to be played in discos.

It was the B-side that was important.

So Gloria took the record herself to the hottest DJ in New York -

Studio 54's Richie Kaczor -

and made sure he played the B-side.

I heard Richie play this song and, you know,

at first I was afraid and I was petrified.

# At first I was afraid, I was petrified

# Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side... #

And every time that song would come on,

the whole crowd would just go nuts.

# I grew strong

# And I learned how to get along

# And so you're back from outer space

# I just walked in to find you here

# With that look upon your face

# I should have changed that stupid lock

# I should have made you leave your key

# If I'd have know for just one second

# You'd be back to bother me

# Oh, now go... #

Everyone fell in love,

because regardless if you were gay, heterosexual, whatever,

male, female,

that song provided some...some hope.

# Think I'd lay down and die? Oh, no, not I... #

Gay men, we're told that we don't belong in the church,

and black women, black divas,

they became our ministers.

They became our preachers.

# And I'll survive

# I will survive

# Hey, hey... #

It speaks to every living being, to their soul.

It gives them a feeling of strength in dark times.

How many different countries has the recording been

as big as it is here?

Well, at least 27.

You know something?

I Will Survive, with all the crises we've had in the past few years,

could be the theme song for this country.

If I had to say what really defines that era as a song,

I would say I Will Survive.

We sat there one day and I said,

"Gloria, I wish I had done I Will Survive."

She said, "I wish I had done Young Hearts Run Free."

I said, "No, you don't.

"You're glad to have I Will Survive."

She said, "I knew you were going to say that.

I said, "Yeah, that's a bad song, girl."

I love it. That's one of my favourites.

# I know I'm still alive

# I've got all my life to live

# I've got all my love to give

# And I'll survive

# I will survive

# I will survive... #

That happened at the exact point

when disco was starting to become overexposed

as a cultural phenomenon.

# I never can say goodbye, boy

# Oh, no, no... #

Since 1975, when Gloria Gaynor recorded

Never Can Say Goodbye,

the first record specifically mixed for discotheques,

millions of people have been dancing to the sound.

The movie Saturday Night Fever helped boost disco's popularity,

and now radio stations across the country

have started programming all-disco formats.

It was wonderful because it kept me busy.

Did a 30-minute show and got paid big money.

And I could do three in one night.

I would leave there, get in a limo, go to another club,

do another 30 minutes, get in a limo, go to another club,

do another 30 minutes,

then go home and go to bed and make myself $30,000.

So it was like a blessing.

I said, "Man, I love this."

Donna Summer, she made a fortune.

I think one year she made $26 million.

She made a lot of money from touring, from Vegas,

from publishing of what she wrote.

Everything started changing so quickly

because obviously people don't want to miss the chance

to make a buck on, you know,

riding on the coat-tails of a winning trend.

If we have what the discos take in

and what they generate with the records,

we are talking about an estimated four billion, that's with a B,

$4 billion a year.

When disco really exploded,

it becomes less about what the movement originally was,

which was people who loved music getting together

to dance to it and have a sort of ecstatic experience.

And then it became a little less about the music

and more about the money.

It was too much, and you knew that eventually

the bubble was going to burst on this.

# So let's dance, let's... #

Disco, in part, was a victim of its own success.

Disco got bloated. It also got rich.

# Let's dance... #

The racism, the homophobia had been brewing for some time.

That was personal, but you can't stop creativity.

# Let's dance for... #

Yeah, you got rid of the disco.

Now wait till you see what's coming next.

# ..romance tonight

# Oh, how I need you

# Right here beside me

# To guide me

# Hold me, scold me

# Cos when I'm bad I'm so, so bad

# So let's dance the last dance... #