This course, part 2 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. This course covers the music of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Carole King, Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, Donna Summer, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Metallica, Run-DMC, and Nirvana, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Emerging out of the experimental and ambitious years of late-60s psychedelia, rock splintered into a variety of styles in the 1970s as the music business continued to expand. By the end of the decade, punk and disco had challenged the excesses of the hippie aesthetic, as rock became more commercially streamlined and radio friendly. The emergence and rise of MTV transformed pop music and propelled the careers of Michael jackson and Madonna, while heavy metal and hip hop dominated the late 1980s. Nirvana leads alt-rock's return to simplicity in the early 1990s.
Disco
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From the course by University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part Two
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From the lesson
Black Pop, Reggae, and the Rise of Disco (1970-79)
Moving along a parallel but mostly separate path, black pop develops with the help of James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone. Motown continues, the rise of funk and Blaxploitation films. Bob Marley and reggae. The emergence of disco the reaction of rock fans. [Read Chapter 9 and work through listening guides for that chapter, viewing dedicated video.]
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Disco. Just the word is instill enough to anger
rock and rollers who came up during the 1970's.
Why should that be? How can you get so upset about a style of
popular music? Like you'd like to stamp it out Like you
wished it had never existed in the first place, well it's kind of an interesting
story what happens with disco at the end of the 19070s.
It's a kind of dance craze to be sure. It maybe rejected some important elements
of the hippie aesthetic and the rock and roll hippies of the 1970s didn't like it,
not one bit. I think also, the reaction may have
something to do with a misunderstanding of black pop.
As we've been talking through these lectures this week, I've come back again
and again to the idea that most white rock listeners didn't know much black pop
music. The black pop music they knew was maybe
they'd heard the Ohio Players Funky Worm. They'd seen Curtis Mayfield on TV,
talking about Freddy's Dead or the Pusher Man, or something like that.
They'd heard Isaac Hayes talking about Shaft.
Can you dig it? they, they, t hey knew some Stevie
Wonder. But they didn't really, they would listen
to some average white band. but they didn't really know the music,
and so in many ways disco was misunderstood by the rock audience.
So let's get into the story of disco. Disco's early days Fed an idea for a
dance craze. I mean, the, the idea of disco not unlike
what was happening at American bandstand, and when you went to a disco, people
played records. and you danced.
There might not be a guitar or a drum set or a base guitar anywhere to be found.
Now this situation is very very familiar to people now how haven't necessarily had
dance clubs that people go to for years. But back in 70's it wasn't so much that
way, when you went to a club you went to see the band.
You went to see the people performing. In fact, one of the, one of the reasons
why disco evolved the way it did was because within the gay community, if you
would go to a gay club, the people that ran that gay club would, would want there
to be music for dancing. But a lot of bands wouldn't play those
gigs. They wouldn't play gigs in a gay club so
they were in many ways sort of forced To use to use records for dancing because
the bands wouldn't do those gigs. Now there were other reasons, but that
was, that was an important one. And so this culture developed in, in
urban areas, New York being an important one, of having clubs where records were
played. Well now once those records were played,
it was possible to find particular recordings that were better for dancing
than others. And then labels began to discover that
well, they could create extended versions, if people were going to be on
the dance floor, they could create special disco versions that would be
Would longer than that. And that was sort of the beginning of it
in the underground kind of sign. But, these, these records started to pop
up onto the pop charts, almost as novelty records at first.
So, Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, had a number one hit with
Love's Theme in 1973. And people said, well that's a disco
record, but they didn't think of disco as a style that really threatened anybody.
It was kind of a novelty record, it was kind of, kind of cute the way it kind of
did this disco beat kind of thing and all that.
But it didn't really sort of get anybody too upset.
Even when Van McCoy in 1975 came along with The Hustle, which was number one
both on the pop charts and the R&B charts.
That didn't really get anybody too riled up.
I mean it was just another one of these sort of AM hits.
who cares? They say the style is disco, people like
to dance to it, whatever. KC and the Sunshine Band come along with
a song That's the Way huh, huh, I Like It in 1975.
A number one hit on the pop charts, number one on the R and B charts.
Still. That still seems like a harmless stuff.
But then in 1977, there's a film. The film is Saturday Night Fever and it
features a young John Travolta. Who knew John Travolta could dance?
At the time, in 1977, he'd been a character on a television comedy show
called Welcome Back Kotter. But here he is, in Saturday Night Fever
And boy can he dance. And boy is he looking good.
And what's interesting about Saturday Night Fever from the perspective that we
were talking about before is that so many commentators say that their reaction
against disco had to do with the fact that it arose from the gay community.
But the fact is most people didn't become aware of disco until Saturday Night Fever
came along in 1977. And that's a markedly heterosexual film.
So a lot of people were really sort of unaware Of the, of the roots of Disco in
the gay culture. Nevertheless, that film really launched
Disco as a major deal in the United States.
I mean, then all of a sudden, De-, Disco was THE craze.
the soundtrack album With featuring music mostly by the Bee Gee's, though there
were other artists. It went to number one in this country.
It number one, went to number one in the UK.
Featuring big hits from the Bee Gee's, Stayin' Alive, How Deep is Your Love,
Night Fever. All tracks that are, are very, very
well-known to us now still as, you know, important disco hits.
Also a hit By Yvonne Elliman called If I Can't Have You.
Yvonne Elliman is kind of interesting in another kind of way because she had been
part of the original cast of Jesus Christ Superstar and had also appeared on the
Eric Clapton album, 461 Ocean Boulevard which had I Shot The Sheriff on it.
So she has a hit on the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack as well.
And when the disco craze Breaks, all of a sudden a lot of artists are running for
their own disco hit. Rod Stewart, The Rolling Stones, yes,
even KISS had a disco single during these years.
It was like disco was taking over the world, at least that's the way a lot of
rock fans saw it. One thing about disco, it really was a
return Of the producers. In other words, in many cases I've, I've
talked about acts that you know, the Bee Gees importantly Rod Stewart, Rolling
Stones, we talk about that, as, as artists.
But a lot of the Disco records that came out Were by artists you didn't really
know who they were, you never saw a picture of them.
It wasn't important. The important thing was the record itself
and the producers controlled that. So in many ways, we're sort of back to
the kind of sort of faceless quality of a lot of the girl groups who really knows
who's in these groups, it doesn't really matter anyway.
And that's the way it was. A couple of important producers Jacques
Morali, a French Composer in Giorgio Moroder both of them took a kind of a
Euro disco approach in a lot of ways that was maybe less funk based, and more kind
of rhythmically precise. The kind of music, where, you might want
to have a drum machine that could do the beats exactly metronomically, rather than
the kind of drummer that might have been in part funkadelic.
Or in, in James Brown group who could not only do the beat, but give a little bit
of feel, where it wouldn't be action metronomic but it would be hipper because
these guys were about the actual sort of metronomic rhythm precise kind of
approach. So here are the artists that they worked
with, Donna Summer Donna Summer, a very, very important artist in disco at the end
of the 1970s. She sort of gets her start with a track
called Love to Love You Baby in 1976. Number two on the pop charts, two on the
R&B charts, two on the UK charts. produced by Pete Bellotte and Giogio
Maroder, this is a patently Sexual peace. Love to Love You Baby features Donna
Summer enjoying the sexual, you could sort of hear her enjoying this sort of
sexual act. It is a kind of it's meant to be heard as
something that draws you in. It's almost.
Pornographic in a certain kind of sense. There is a 17 minute extended mix that
what does, that was done especially for disco dance floors, but when that record
hit and you heard all that sort of moaning and groaning a lot of people turn
the radio on What the heck is that on the radio, this kind of thing it was a big
shocking in its day. in 1979 she comes along with Bad Girls at
number 1 album for her both on the pop charts and r&b charts.
Bad Girls is a disco. Concept album.
What could seem more incongruous than a disco concept album.
But in fact that's exactly what the record is.
It's about ladies of the night and the various sort of situations and things
that they find themselves in. That record not only being a number one
album had three number one hits on it, Hot Stuff Bad girls and dim all the
lights again produced by [UNKNOWN] and Giorgio Maro so Donna Summer a very
important act in the disco movement at the end of the 70's.
Also the village people. This is one of the most interesting
stories that I get to tell when I talk about the history of rock music because
its its just its ironic how the whole thing works out.
It was assembled and produced by Jacques Morali who some reports say didn't speak
much English. So a lot of people had to sort of
translate things for him, but anyway he was responsible for this group And it was
brought together as a kind of gay Monkees.
I mean, in the sense that it was based the characters in the Village People were
all based on fantasy, gay stereotypes drawn from Greenwich Village in New York
City. And the idea was that it should be
obvious to anybody. Who knew the gay community in the
village, that this was a kind of a, I wouldn't say a send-up, but you, they
weren't taking it entirely seriously, and, and where all of these images came
from. but, most people didn't know what was
going on there. I mean, there was an Indian.
There was a cop. There was a construction worker.
There was a cowboy. And they were all basically sort of
professional dancers, and so It's so obvious once you know what that is.
But most people didn't know. They were like oh, that's interesting, I
like those costumes. They had no sense that the village people
had anything to do with gay couple. It was a very sort of playful approach to
the gay underground that mostly went over the heads of most White, middle-class
listeners who listen to those records. It, it was so it was so not understood
that the song YMCA, which was a number two hit from 1978, which is essentially
about gay guys. Hooking up at the YMCA was not understood
that way at all. It still isn't.
In this country if you go to a minor league baseball game during the seventh
inning, something called the seventh inning stretch they will play YMCA over
the stadium speakers and everybody, mom, dad, grandma, the kids, will all stand up
and sing YMCA without the slightest idea it has anything to do...
With gay culture. And they, people still don't really sort
of, they still haven't sort of gotten the joke yet.
Another big hit hit for them, Macho Man. In the Navy, from 1979, even more
interesting because the United States Navy licensed the tune for recruiting and
again, these guys couldn't believe this was happening, you know, they thought it
was a fantastic. They licensed the tune for recruiting and
they said, well okay, you can license it, but we want to be able to do a music
video on one of your Navy boats, a Destroyer or whatever, so sure fine that
would be fantastic and they finally get there and they see what's going on and
they were, hey, they pulled the plug on it so it didn't actually work out then,
but it's interesting that it ever got to that point.
and bringing us to the discussion of the backlash against disco.
What happens with the backlash against disco is the rock stations with all of
this disco excitement, start to change format from rock to disco, and this is
happening all around the country, and now the rock fans are thinking, hey what's
going on they're taking our stations away and it's all going to this disco stuff.
Steve Dahl Who had a sort of a Howard Stern type of, sort of shock jock, had
just moved from Detroit to Chicago in 1978, and it was a, you know a big
high-profile sort of a gig for him. he, he went for months there, in Chicago,
and he around Christmas time of 1978. He was fired because the station he was
at changed formats from rock to disco. So he went to another area Chicago
station. And that summer a baseball game between
the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park they, in 19, so the
July of 1979 They organized the anti disco rally.
Here's the idea they would take up in center field between the two games of a
double header. When they play two games on the same day
and so there's a time in between where the players have to back and rest and
there's you know they try to provide entertainment.
They put all this out in center field, they put a big box Full of disco records
there's some dynamite underneath the disco records.
And on a countdown they blow all those records up I mean [NOISE] the disco
records. And this was supposed to just destroy
disco forever. Well what happened is, there were a lot
of drunken fools and crazy people and stuff like that at this thing.
And when, after they blew the records up, people started streaming onto the field
and they were, there was all kinds, sort of stepped on, and there were fights.
And the cops had to come in with their paddy wagon and they pulled people away,
and people were injured. The second, the second game of the double
header had to be cancelled, because the field was in such disarray, and it was a
riot situation that they had to cancel the game.
Ultimately the game was officially forfeited by the Commissioner of Major
League Baseball, giving the game to the Tigers, who were the visiting team.
Nevertheless, this made all of the newsreels, and this sort of spurred this
whole notion of disco sucks, disco sucks. This is what you heard everywhere across
the country, this kind of rallying cry against disco music.
So what upset these white rockers so much about disco?
There are a couple of things Couple of reasons that have been forwarded.
Maybe it was a reaction against the promiscuity of disco.
After all in a lot of disco clubs, when we'd go to a disco club it was really
just about finding somebody in many cases for a one night stand.
In the disco dancing was really just a prelude to something a little bit more
intimate. But look...
When have rock fans been against promiscuity, really?
So, that's probably not a very good that's probably not a very good
explanation. Maybe it was homophobia.
They understood that this music came from the gay community, and so when they saw
peop-, that acts like The Village People, they were outraged.
Well, that would be frightening if anybody realized that the Village People
or groups like that had anything to do [LAUGH] with the gay community.
But as we've already said, they really had no idea that's what was going on.
So, that's not really a very good explanation either.
Was it racism? Well, that one I think is a little bit
worth thinking about. Not sure if it was racist, but it was
certainly racial in the sense that I think that a lot of white rockers thought
that disco was black music because they didn't know much black music and it
seemed to share a lot of the change features.
Most black musicians at the time Parliament Funkadelic those [UNKNOWN]
didn't want to be thought of as being, having anything to do with disco because
it was about a mechanical beat and not about the very thing that was so what the
heart of what their music was, which was a very kind of human kind of feel in the
music, right? Now the mechanical beat of a drum machine
or a metronome or something like that. But never the less, I think the idea that
we came to this point In 1978, 1979 where some rock listeners could be rejecting
music because they saw it as music of black America.
There's probably not a real proud moment in the history of rock music.
When we go back to 1955, it was all about bringing black and white audiences
together, and that's what the fight was about.
By the time we got to 1979, people not liking a style because it's associated
with black Public, that's probably not a great theory.
But I think what really fueled this reaction was that disco was a music that
was fun rather than about serious issues. It was music that was about the producers
and not about the artist. It wasn't about artistic anything.
In, in, in the way that the, the rockers thought of it and so it was an assault on
the hippie aesthetic. Almost all elements of the hippie
esthetic which held this music together starting at about 1966 and going up to
Pink Floyd's The Wall from 79, 1980, were under assault with disco and it seemed to
be gaining ground, with radio stations changing format and this kind of thing
and this I think Whether they understood it in this way or not they understood
that there was something about this disco music that was very threatening to the
aesthetic they held for rock music and I think that blended with the racial
misunderstanding really accounts for the kind of deeply held sort of reaction that
the disco sucks movement was about. What's interesting About the disco sucks
movement is at about the same time that was happening in 1977, punk was arising
in England in 1977 and then into 1978 in this country, and punk was also a
rejection of the hippie aesthetics. You have disco on one front rejecting the
hippie aesthetic and punk on the other front rejecting the hippie aesthetic.
In the end of this, at the end of the 1970s.
Rock and roll was really struggling to maintain the ground that it had.
So next wekk we're going to talk about what was happening in rock and roll in
the second half of the 1970's.
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