Released on 16 December 1977, Saturday Night Fever was the film that broke disco in both senses: it popularised and developed the form at the same time as it froze a vibrant and creative subculture. Saturday Night Fever made disco ubiquitous in 1978. It became a fad – with the inevitable backlash.
The statistics tell the story. The film took more than $3m in the first weekend, eventually going on to gross in the region of $237m; it became the fourth highest grossing movie of 1977. The soundtrack album included six US No 1s and it topped the charts for 24 weeks in the US, 18 weeks in the UK.
In fact, disco had been building for several years. In his ground-breaking September 1973 Rolling Stone story, Vince Aletti traced its origins in the underground return of the discotheque, "where the hardcore dance crowd – blacks, Latinos, gays – was. But in the last year they've returned, not only as a rapidly spreading social phenomenon ... (via juice bars, after-hours clubs, private lofts open on weekends to members only, floating groups of party givers who take over the ballrooms of old hotels from midnight to dawn), but as a strong influence on the music people listen to and buy."
Disco began in after-hours clubs such as the Loft and the Tenth Floor. In these clubs, DJs mixed an aural collage of sound effects, Latin, Motown, funk, European music and even English obscurities by the Glitter Band and Babe Ruth. By 1974, disco had already made a splash in the marketplace with two consecutive No 1s by the Hues Corporation (Rock the Boat) and George McCrae (Rock Your Baby).
During 1975 and 1976, disco grew into a major force in the US, with chart-toppers from Van McCoy, the Bee Gees, and KC and the Sunshine Band. But these were followed by genre-defining hits such as Johnnie Taylor's Disco Lady and novelties like Disco Duck by Rick Dees and His Cast Of Idiots. As the expression of a minority subculture, it also featured openly gay performers such as Sir Monti Rock III – the voice/MC of Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes – and Valentino, whose I Was Born This Way was the first record by a gay artist to be openly promoted as such.
During that period, disco began to feature a pronounced European influence, with the productions of Giorgio Moroder and Boris Midney. As Vince Aletti noted in his Record World column for 6 November 1976: "The disco market is not a throwaway, second-class market; it's probably one of the most serious and technically sophisticated groups of record buyers and players there is."
The following year, 1977, saw the full electronic impact of Donna Summer's I Feel Love and Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express. It also saw the emergence of the Village People, a band put together as a cartoon, almost, of contemporary gay lifestyles – an index of increasing gay confidence, if not actual militancy.
Within this context, Saturday Night Fever represents a re-heterosexualising of dance culture. Based on the 1975 story by Nik Cohn, Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night, the film follows the adventures of the definitely macho Tony (John Travolta). In one scene, where he sneers threateningly at two obviously gay men, the film's exclusive sexual politics is made clear: the antithesis of the original inclusivity of disco culture.
In the short term, of course, Saturday Night Fever did not kill disco. It contained some great records in the soundtrack, and also popularised the form across the globe. Indeed, 1978 saw some fantastic records by Chic (Le Freak), by Karen Young (Hot Shot), and by Sylvester (You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)). There was a crossover between disco and rock with the Rolling Stones' Miss You and eventually between disco and new wave with Blondie's genre-breaking Heart of Glass.
But disco had become so ubiquitous, such a catch-all marketing term – fostering bad records by the likes of Frank Sinatra – that it had become a media cliche and was ripe for a backlash. This was epitomised by the Disco Demolition Night that was held in July 1979 at Comiskey Park stadium in Chicago, where a DJ presided over the destruction of thousands of disco records.
Disco didn't die. It went underground in the early 80s, re-emerging as Chicago house and Detroit techno. It also went straight into the white avant garde in the same period. During the 21st century it has made a big comeback in the form of cosmic disco, nu disco et al, and has also acquired the respect that it should have had at the time.
Disco gave new life to the perennial human desire to dance, and turned it into an art form where the DJ was a new kind of high priest: as Aletti wrote, "there's no question that a real DJ can shape a night of music with his personality, style and spirit, magically turning a string of records into a spontaneous symphony".
