When Rock Met Disco, by Steven Blush

Expand

'When Rock Met Disco' by Steven Blush

Disco was everywhere in 1977 and ’78, but by 1980 it had slunk away from the charts like pop music’s disgraced sibling suspected of a foolish crime. For the final three years of that decade, everyone from Rod Stewart to Dizzy Gillespie and James Brown went—at least momentarily—disco. That thump-thump sound was everywhere until it was nowhere. But as Steven Blush points out, disco changed the direction of music and continued to mutate into house, acid house and EDM.

Disco was more than music during its brief reign, and Blush maps out the often-garish polyester style points as well as the debauchery. He gathers interesting quotes. Paul Stanley of Kiss: “Studio 54 was a den of iniquity; it was sordid to a level and degree I wasn’t completely comfortable with.”

Blush is a rock fan and a disco fan ready to navigate the history of hatred and incomprehension that separated hardcore audiences on both sides of the divide. Neither ‘70s rock or disco would pass inspection for content nowadays, but disco, he argues, “was a physical manifestation of emotional freedom.” Blush also sees that it “connected with the speed, cynicism, vanity, and jaded irony associated with urban life. It stressed surface over substance, mood over meaning.” Disco was the blowback to the serious ‘60s that continued through Nixon’s resignation.

Many recording artists kissed and ran, taking a paycheck for their disco releases and returning to form as the trend receded, while others genuinely tried to connect with the music’s roots in R&B.