Last dance: 'The War on Disco' revisits Demolition Night in Chicago during 1979

Oct. 28—Rushmore DeNooyer always wanted to work with the PBS series American Experience.

The producer was pulled into the mix when American Experience's Cameo George reached out and told him she was interested in expanding stories from the 1970s and '80s.

The production he got to work on is "The War on Disco."

The documentary airs at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 30, on New Mexico PBS, channel 5.1. It will also stream on the PBS video app.

"I love music and a long time ago, I used to be a musician," DeNooyer says. "As I was researching, I came across Disco Demolition Night in Chicago in 1979. I had no memory of that event. It was really interesting to me because the more we looked at it, the more we realized there are parallels to today."

"The War on Disco," is produced by Lisa Q. Wolfinger and DeNooyer.

It explores the culture war that erupted over the spectacular rise of disco music.

Originating in underground Black and gay clubs, disco had unseated rock as America's most popular music by the late 1970s, fueled in part by the 1977 film "Saturday Night Fever," starring John Travolta.

But many die-hard rock fans viewed disco as shallow and superficial.

DeNooyer says the story is about much more than music, as it explores how the powerful anti-disco backlash revealed a cultural divide that to some seemed to be driven by racism and homophobia.

The hostility came to a head on July 12, 1979, when a riot broke out at Disco Demolition Night during a baseball game in Chicago.

In the 1970s, disco began to dominate American popular music, taking over clubs, radio stations and record sales. Its roots lay in the urban subculture, and the artists who created it were predominantly African American and Latino. In the gay dance clubs where it first flourished, disco was much more than music — it was an expression of pride.

Chicago DJ Steve Dahl played the music of AC/DC, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones and other rock groups at WDAI Radio.

On Christmas Eve 1978, he was told that the station was changing formats to disco and he was out of a job.

Dahl was snapped up by a new radio station, WLUP, but feeling bitter and betrayed by WDAI, his anti-disco diatribes began and proved popular with audiences.

"Disco was about electronic music; disco fans liked the clubs where if you didn't look good enough, you couldn't get in," says Lee Abrams, inventor of the "Album Oriented Rock" (AOR) radio format. "Rockers loved big concerts, real drummers, real guitar players — rock was about jeans and a T-shirt ... Rockers were just angry at disco because they felt sort of threatened by it."

In 1979, Chicago's White Sox were the second-worst team in baseball.

Hoping to draw crowds to a doubleheader at Comiskey Park, White Sox promotion director Mike Veeck partnered with WLUP to host "Disco Demolition Night" on Thursday, July 12, 1979. The price of admission was 98 cents — WLUP's frequency — and one disco record to be blown up by DJ Dahl between games.

Event organizers expected to draw an extra 5,000 people.

Fifty thousand showed up, with another 20,000 waiting outside to get in.

After the large crate filled with records exploded and blew a large hole in the field, the crowd started running out of the stands, tearing up bases and destroying the batting cage; others threw albums from the stands, hitting and injuring people.

Police were called to clear the field, and ultimately, the White Sox had to forfeit the second game to the Detroit Tigers.

While everyone recognized that the promotion had gone terribly wrong, some saw something more frightening in the hordes of rampaging — almost entirely white — youth on the field: homophobia and racism.

"It felt racist," said Darlene Jackson. "I don't think you could have a stadium full of, you know, Black and brown kids that would be allowed just to run uncontained, loose, damaging property."

Some believed disco music was already on the wane and it declined sharply after the event. "The evening at Comiskey Park was the moment that set the fuse," says Felipe Rose of the iconic disco group The Village People. "Suddenly, radio stations stopped playing disco music — not slowly, overnight."

Learning about the event opened his eyes.

"This project was a labor of love," DeNooyer says. "I love American history and this is one event that is looked over. I lived through this time and I was aware of disco music on the radio. I didn't understand the roots of disco going back to gay and Black underground clubs."

DeNooyer hopes audiences will enjoy the piece and be exposed to a time in history that most people don't know about.

"I had a wonderful experience on this project and I learned a lot," DeNooyer says. "It was important for us to present this piece of work that will help spark conversations again."