FEATURE:
Don’t Leave Me This Way
PHOTO CREDIT: John P. Kelly
Why It is Time for Another Motion Picture About the Iconic Studio 54
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THIS is tied to any…
IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé on a fake horse during her Renaissance World Tour/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Parkwood
event or anniversary, but I have been thinking about the resurgence and rise of Disco-inspired music. Whether you call it Post-Disco or Neo-Disco, there has been a lot of artists putting their stamp on it. From Jessie Ware to Kylie Minogue or Beyoncé, it is a great way of revitalising sounds of the 1970s and updating them. Maybe using Disc as a basis, there is a blend of the modern and classic. Hardly surprising that this concoction should result in such phenomenal albums. People wasn’t to be uplifted and transported somewhere! I suspect that we will see a lot more albums like this in the coming years. It has made me think about a vital club that has sadly now closed, but it played a key role in Disco’s story. Studio 54’s building is there still, but it operates a Broadway theatre. It is located on 254 West 54th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of New York City. I get the feeling that, whether they are an American act or British, there are artists evoking the spirit of Studio 54. I definitely put on their albums and feel like I am there. The Guardian recently reviewed Beyoncé when she played in Cardiff as part of her latest tour. There was a mention of Studio 54:
“One section encapsulates the emancipatory next-levelness: a pugnacious workout in which a trio of Renaissance club tracks are delivered in even sweatier forms. The Queens remix of Break My Soul interpolates sections of Madonna’s Vogue, acknowledging a previous time a major US pop star paid tribute to the innovations of dance music’s queer crucibles. Enveloped within are further nods to fellow musicians: Lizzo, Tierra Whack and Santigold are just three contempories named. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Bessie Smith and “Helen Folasade Adu”, AKA Sade, are pioneers recognised.
In among all this bass and bling, Beyoncé’s voice remains commanding. But her more conventional soul melismas are rationed tonight, with staccato raps, ecstatic noises and edicts to the fore. If Lemonade, Beyoncé’s previous record, was a nuanced statement of Black pride, Renaissance revels in unbridled physical liberation for “everybody”. There are women in the band. There are plus-sized dancers, although there could be more. A giant silver duvet envelops Beyoncé at the end of Cozy, a song about being comfortable in your own skin. Whether overtly intended or not, a woman on horseback doesn’t just tilt at Studio 54, it suggests the notion of a warrior queen, of a Boudicca – an image that contrasts with the more prevalent colonial narratives: statues of chaps on horseback”.
It is just over forty years since Studio 54 closed its doors. On 4th February, 1980, a few years after it opened as a Disco club, the party named ‘The End of Modern-day Gomorrah’ ended this wonderful era. Even if it was a brief regency, you do wonder if anything like Studio 54 exists today. Not only in terms of its setting and vibe, but the sort of people who go there. Before coming to the point of this feature, I want to quote from GQ. They chatted with Ian Schrager about the release of the book, Studio 54. The opening paragraphs are vivid and scene-setting:
“There are two useful political bookends to the continued significance of the legend of Studio 54 from the opening and closure of the most famous nightclub in the world. When the doors of Studio flung open during the infamous early summer of 1977, the socialite Nikki Haskell was among the first to approach the velvet rope. She was double-dating that night. On her arm was a man whose name is now forgotten to history. Accompanying them was the future president of the USA, Donald Trump, with his then-bride, Ivana.
In Studio’s dying days, after its short lifespan – the space ignited then burned out with the speed, efficiency and sparkle of a Catherine wheel – scandal had begun to accrue around the former midtown opera house, and not just concerning the freewheeling accountancy practices of its owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Margaret Trudeau, deep into the dreamy haze of a Quaalude hit, slumped back on a banquette in Studio’s secret room downstairs, under the stage. She was an early victim of what is now euphemistically known as ‘the upshot’. The Canadian prime minister’s wife was papped knickerless. The shot became the hottest news item shared across Canadian news media the following day. Pierre Trudeau lost his seat shortly thereafter. Three decades later, his son Justin occupies it.
PHOTO CREDIT: Robin Platzer
That the twin leaders, the giants of North American politics, should have intimate connections to Studio 54 should come as little surprise. ‘Everybody who came to New York went there,’ says Ian Schrager now, sitting in his Lower Manhattan office suite, the central hub of operations from which he conjures ever-more delightful environments in which the mundane business of life can be lent his tasteful fairy dust. ‘I mean, it was a phenomenon.’ Schrager has just opened the latest of his hotels, Public, on the Lower East Side. Patti Smith played at the ribbon-snipping party. A rooftop terrace bar looking wide out onto the East River, Brooklyn and beyond carries with it some of the vista of his past and present. To many, Schrager is the unofficial king of New York.
Over his left shoulder sits the Studio 54 logo, the letters picked out in lacquered gold. By ‘everyone’ coming to Studio, he means ‘everyone good’, a claim that bears close scrutiny. The discotheque rode a new celebrity wave hard and fast, its politics a secondary afterthought to the amoral bacchanalia housed within. Parties were thrown for Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. Thelma Houston once ‘ummed’ and ‘aahed’ her way through the delicious introduction to “Don’t Leave Me This Way” in crimped silver lamé from the balcony. Michael Jackson still sported his Afro there. For the Warhol coterie, Studio was an elite variant of the working men’s club. In its final hours, Diana Ross bid farewell to Rubell and Schrager from the Studio DJ booth before the NYPD intervened to cut short the Dionysian excess by dishing them out a couple of jail sentences for tax evasion.
In the intervening four decades since, Studio 54 has become the subject of every art director’s glamour mood board. When boys who read nu-disco blogs hear the opening strains of “Love Hangover”, “Relight My Fire” or “Was That All It Was”, it is their imaginary Studio 54 valve that those propulsive basslines first tickle. When a stylist slips into a kaftan, it is to the back stairwell of Studio their sartorial choice transports them. I once heard the NYC Downlow, Glastonbury’s triumphant disco space, described as ‘Studio 54 in a cow field’. When you want to designate a particular brand of louche elegance on a night-time scene, Studio 54 is the natural first port of comparative call.
PHOTO CREDIT: Robin Platzer
In it Rubell and Schrager, a pair of old friends with a Brooklyn complex, had temporarily restructured Manhattan in the spirit of interwar Berlin, setting the theatre of the twilight to a disco beat. ‘The best thing that happened to me,’ says Schrager, ‘was being raised in Brooklyn. Everybody was hungry, everybody was upwardly mobile. Your parents wanted you to live better lives than they had lived. In Brooklyn, everybody had an ambition and everybody had something to prove. You know, I wasn’t declawed, as I would’ve been if I’d grown up in a suburb.’
On its 40th birthday, Ian Schrager has begun for the first time to look back in detail at the legacy of Studio 54. As he glided past 70 last year, he has reached a satisfying point in his story. He has a wife, Tania, and a seven-year-old son, as well as two daughters from a previous marriage, and two step-daughters with Tania. Schrager is living something of his domestic life in reverse. Now a hugely successful hotelier, he has a string of successful global concerns that have bucked the populist hospitality trend. His hotels, like his nightclub, have been much imitated, never bettered. ‘I’ve been in one of my hotels and heard someone say, “This is the hotel from hell,”’ he says, without a care. ‘Well, whatever. The strength of the hotel is that it’s not generic and it’s not for everyone”.
It is a shame that the Disco era died, and that a club as legendary and iconic had to close. Now that this is this fresh wave of Disco-inspired music, one would think there is lease and life in such an iconic club like Studio 54. I understand there are a lot of Disco clubs around the world, but none that have the lure and fame of Studio 54. Given its history and allure, there has not been a huge amount in the way of films about it. Studio 54: The Documentary came out in 2018. The way it is described (“#Studio54 was the epicenter of 70s hedonism - a place that not only redefined the nightclub, but also came to symbolize an entire era. Its co-owners, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, seemed to come out of nowhere to suddenly preside over a new kind of New York society. Now, 39 years after the velvet rope was first slung across the club’s hallowed threshold, a feature documentary tells the real story behind the greatest club of all time”) is thrilling! It is a must-see for anyone with even a passing interest in the club. There have been films that have included Studio 54 and used it in their plots. Only one big film to my mind has got a theatrical release. Studio 54 was released in 1998. It starred Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell, and Mike Myers as Steve Rubell, the club's co-founder. Whilst the idea and intention of the film was noble and needed, reviewers stated it was a missed opportunities. Not featuring many of the real characters and faces that passed through, the lack of realism means it is not an essential representation of Studio 54. Without ingraining and exploring its L.G.B.T.Q.+ themes, a lot of Studio 54’s meaning and legacy was lost.
There is definitely scope and demand for a film that revisits Studio 54. Not to cast already, but you could see Beyoncé taking in one of the parts! Maybe working to the close in 1980, you could focus on a group of friends who frequent Studio 54, but it would very much be about the real-life people who ran it and helped put it on the map. Perhaps there will be some creative license regarding some of the characters, but you want to keep it grounded. It could show some of the excess and hedonism that was present inside the walls of the Midtown Manhattan space. Backed and propelled by a terrific soundtrack, it could be a really popular film. I don’t think there has been anything beside documentaries when it comes to Studio 54. Putting something on the big screen twenty-five years after the film, Studio 54, was released, there does need to be something more real and rooted in the club’s history and players. I think it would resonate with audiences of all ages. Although the Studio 54 story would include corruption, excess, controversy and some dark elements, there is also the frivolity, the fun and sheer cool of the club! Rather than make a film that waters down the sex and drugs, or one that focuses too much on it, there could be this balance where you see inside Studio 54 and its famed guests, but you get to do so through some lead characters experiencing it for the first time. As so many of the songs and artists played at Studio 54 have doubtless influenced artists today repurposing oldskool Disco, there is relatability creating a film that takes us inside this legendary place. I definitely think that it is…
TIME to go back there.