Disco evolved in the late 1960s in inner-city New York City
nightclubs, where disc jockeys played imported
dance music. Although its roots were in
African-American and
Latin American music, and in
gay culture, it eventually became mainstream; even white artists better known for more sedate music had disco-influenced hits, such as
Barry Manilow's "
Copacabana".
[1] The release of the hit movie
Saturday Night Fever in 1977,
[2] whose star (
John Travolta) and musical performers (the
Bee Gees) presented a heterosexual image, helped popularize disco in the United States. As
Al Coury, president of
RSO Records (which had released the bestselling soundtrack album for the film) put it,
Saturday Night Fever "took disco
out of the closet".
[3]
Some felt disco was too mechanical;
Time magazine deemed it a "diabolical thump-and-shriek".
[2][4] Others hated it for the associated scene, with its emphasis on personal appearance and style of dress.
[2][4] The media emphasized its roots in gay culture. According to historian Gillian Frank, "by the time of the Disco Demolition in Comiskey Park, the media ... cultivated a widespread perception that disco was taking over".
[5] Performers who cultivated a gay image, such as the
Village People (described by
Rolling Stone as "the face of disco"), did nothing to efface these perceptions, and fears that rock music would die out increased after disco albums dominated the
21st Grammy Awards in February 1979.
[6]
In 1978 WKTU (now
WINS-FM) in New York, a low-rated rock station, switched to disco and became the most popular station in the country; this led other stations to try to emulate its success.
[3] In Chicago, 24-year-old
Steve Dahl was working as a disc jockey for
ABC-owned radio station WDAI (now
WLS-FM) when he was fired on Christmas Eve 1978 as part of the station's switch from rock to disco. He was hired by rival
album-rock station WLUP. Sensing an incipient anti-disco backlash
[4][7] and playing off the publicity surrounding his firing (he frequently mocked WDAI's "Disco DAI" slogan on the air as "Disco DIE"), Dahl created a mock organization, the "Insane Coho Lips", an anti-disco army consisting of his listeners.
[8] According to Andy Behrens of
ESPN, Dahl and his broadcast partner
Garry Meier "organized the Cohos around a simple and surprisingly powerful idea: Disco Sucks".
[4]
According to Dahl, in 1979, the Cohos were locked in a war "dedicated to the eradication of the dreaded musical disease known as DISCO".
[9] In the weeks leading up to Disco Demolition Night, Dahl promoted a number of anti-disco public events, several of which became unruly. When a
discotheque in
Lynwood, Illinois, switched from disco to rock in June, Dahl arrived, as did several thousand Cohos, and the police were called. Later that month, Dahl and several thousand Cohos occupied a teen disco in the Chicago suburbs. At the end of June, Dahl urged his listeners to throw marshmallows at a WDAI promotional van at a shopping mall where a teen disco had been built. The Cohos chased the van and driver and cornered them in a local park, though the situation ended without violence. On July 1, a near-riot occurred in
Hanover Park, Illinois, when hundreds of Cohos could not enter a sold-out promotional event, and fights broke out. Some 50 police officers were needed to control the situation. When disco star
Van McCoy died suddenly on July 6, Dahl marked the occasion by destroying one of his records, "
The Hustle", on the air.
[10]
Dahl and Meier regularly mocked disco records on the radio. Dahl also recorded his own song, "Do Ya Think I'm Disco?", a
parody of
Rod Stewart's disco-oriented hit "
Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?".
[8][12] The song characterized discotheques as populated by effeminate men and frigid women. The protagonist, named Tony after Travolta's character in
Saturday Night Fever, is unable to attract a woman until he abandons the disco scene, selling his white three-piece suit at a garage sale and melting down his gold chains for a
Led Zeppelin belt buckle.
[13]
A number of anti-disco incidents took place elsewhere in the first half of 1979, showing that "the Disco Demolition was not an isolated incident or an aberration." In
Seattle, hundreds of rock fans attacked a mobile dance floor, while in
Portland, Oregon, a disc jockey destroyed a stack of disco records with a chainsaw as thousands cheered. In New York, a rock DJ played
Donna Summer's disco hit "
Hot Stuff" and received protests from listeners.
[14]