Robbie Leslie, Resident of the Saint, on Fire Island Disco and “Morning Music”

Robbie Leslie began his career behind the turntables in 1977, via a residency at renowned Fire Island nightspot the Sandpiper. When that venue closed its doors in 1979, Leslie moved to New York City to capitalize on the reputation he’d built at the noted gay resort. Most famously, he became resident DJ at the Saint when that opened in 1980, but he also performed regularly at Studio 54, Underground, Private Eyes, the Red Parrot, 12 West and the Ice Palace.

During the disco era, Leslie was one of the first DJs to travel to play elsewhere in the country, earning upwards of $1,500 a night – a phenomenal fee at the time. This resulted in guest appearances at some of the most celebrated gay clubs of the period, including San Francisco’s Trocadero Transfer and Dreamland, not to mention Circus and Studio One in Los Angeles.

Leslie continues to DJ today, over 40 years after securing his now-fabled first residency. In March 2005, he sat down with DJ History’s Bill Brewster to discuss the fabulous atmosphere at Fire Island, the best soundsystem he ever heard and the evolution of mixing.

Tell me about your background.

I was born in Maine in 1955 and I had an unusual childhood. y parents where what we term in the US “snowbirds,” which means we would spend the winters in Florida and summers in Maine. I had two completely different lifestyles, went to two completely different schools.

I would start the school year in Maine and in the Christmas break we’d go to Florida and then go back to Maine for the summer. Two sets of friends, but it was quite normal for me because I didn’t know anything else. I had two brothers, but one went to private school so didn’t move around, but the two younger ones did.

I had no formal musical education whatsoever. In fact, I lived in a very unmusical household. There was very rarely a radio on or records being played. It wasn’t until I got an automobile of my own as a teenager that I started listening to the radio and started exercising my tastes.

I remember my early tastes leaned towards Carole King, the Carpenters. Aretha Franklin was very high on my list; the Supremes, pretty much all the Motown sound. By the time I was buying the stuff, it was already old [Motown]. I came out in 1973 and started hearing music in nightclubs.

What was your first clubbing experience and where was it?

You could do worse, I must say. I went to a club in Boston called Cabaret After Dark. It was on 15 Lansdowne Street. It’s still a nightclub, but it’s changed names many times. This was in 1973. So the music of the time was very Philadelphia.

Do you remember the DJ?

I do not. But of course I was a little teenybopper, so I think I’d just turned 18 and I didn’t know what a DJ did. I had no clue the influence a DJ had. I was more loving the music and being on the dancefloor.

Did you go out quite a lot in Boston?

I did. Going out to gay clubs, what I’d do was hop in my car after school and drive down from Maine to Boston surreptitiously, and stay until the bars closed and then drive home. I had a few close calls because I was so tired. It came to be like a weekly thing.

Were you aware of guys like John Luongo at that time?

No. There really wasn’t that name recognition. That became more commonplace later.

Did you move down to New York City?

Well, once I got out of high school, I decided it would not be honest of me to go to college because I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to go out and earn a living.

I started waiting tables. Initially in Maine, but because I had friends in Florida I moved there in the wintertime. I was waiting on a table in Florida of an older couple. It turned out to be the Sandpiper’s owner’s parents. They were so impressed with my work that they told their son about me. Anyway, he came in and hired me that summer. I had no idea what Fire Island was at that time.

Did you know what it represented at all?

I knew it was a gay place, but I didn’t know exactly what it was like. I was thinking it was like Cape Cod, maybe sand dunes and desolate with single houses scattered around. Of course I was totally off the mark. I worked for them for five summers. I started as waiter in the restaurant, then as a cocktail waiter.

What year did you start working there?

It was 1975. The second year I started bartending, which was like a promotion. I was exposed to the club music every night. I’d hear the beginning from the first song right through to the close of the night. So I was really immersed in club music right from 1975.

That must have been great grounding to hear the music go from start to finish?

Absolutely. The nice thing was, it wasn’t just like being a club kid and getting there at peak time, I was hearing the entire package. I was hearing the latest releases.

How would it differ early in the evening compared to later on in the night?

Well, it adhered to that bell-curve, the standard for the night of dancing, where you’d start on the mellow side and then get more excited. However, I own a lot of tapes from the club that were given to me when it closed and they lost the lease: Tom Moulton, Tom Savarese, Richie Rivera, Larry Sanders.

One outstanding difference between then and now I find quite remarkable is they had no compunction about breaking tempo. Let’s say, at peak time they’d play “Fly, Robin, Fly” or Barrabas, something which by our standards would be a low beats per minute. They weren’t so locked into that high BPM curve. It was more about popularity, a popularity curve. It could be “Love To Love You Baby” or “Casanova Brown.” In the passage of time that became not so common, but in the mid-’70s to ’78 that was kind of the norm, and by 1978 or ’79 there was more of a transition to be locked into that high tempo when disco became a little more refined. And then it was kind of a law that you had to stay locked into that tempo.

Did you feel that even back then?

I believe so. I can’t say I was follower or a leader in that formula… I was pretty much still following because I was quite new. At that point I was working on the weeknights, Monday through Thursday, and I would bartend on Fridays and Sundays. I would listen to Howard Merritt and Richie Rivera back then, some of the New York City headliners who would play for us on the weekend, like Alan Dodd. That was definitely the trend.

Where was your first break?

Well, the Sandpiper was my first break in and of itself, because you really can’t underestimate the prestige and the popularity of that club. It’s pretty well known that records were tested on Fire Island.

All the promoters and record companies had summer homes that they would rent. So all the promoters, who were mostly either gay or gay-friendly, they would bring their latest product out to the island and test-market it there. I was getting courted by all these major labels: Atlantic, Warner, Prelude, all the big club labels. So the Sandpiper was my first big break.

I just did a cruise for RSVP a couple of weeks ago and on the cruise was Tony Martino, and he was one of the co-owners of 12 West. And I haven’t seen him in years and years. He was telling me about how I was hired, but apparently the buzz was very positive about me on Fire Island.

This was 1979, and the Sandpiper was closing after that summer. So everyone was apparently telling Tony, “Hey, you gotta hear this new kid Robbie Leslie,” and they were looking for a second DJ because Jimmy Stuard, who you may have heard of?

He died in the Everard Baths fire, didn’t he?

That’s correct. After he died, they didn’t want to lock in one DJ to the club, they wanted two DJs on rotation. As it happens that was when I was looking to move into New York City and so that was my gift from the gods, as it were. I was given an audition to play there, and right from the beginning they loved me. I started working as a co-resident at 12 West until the Saint opened, which was September 1980.

Of course, it’s pretty well known that after that opened the entire landscape of club music in New York City was completely transformed. This club just blew all the competing clubs out of the water and everyone wanted to work there.

In fact, didn’t it close down a bunch of clubs, too?

Exactly. Within a few months. Flamingo was the most notable casualty. That was like the A-list place in NYC, where the Fire Island crowd and the movers and shakers in the gay community were members. When the Saint opened, the entire membership of Flamingo migrated over to the Saint. Poor Flamingo. It was gone by February, I think.

Ostensibly the place was completely empty a few weeks later. It was that extreme. It was as if Prohibition had been re-enacted. I was lucky enough to work there just one night before they closed. 12 West closed very unceremoniously one night. People were coming in to go dancing and they got there and found the doors padlocked, the place had closed without people telling them about it.

Do you remember when that happened?

I don’t, but it was within the same time frame. 12 West was bought and re-opened as the River Club, but it never really caught on. If anyone had asked me what was the best place to work at, I could answer that instantaneously, it would be 12 West by far.

Why?

Disco was king, for one thing. The disco backlash hadn’t happened. The music was fantastic. The ambience of that club was great. It was a real family place and was very democratic, whereas Flamingo was elitist. It was all about your appearance and your bank account and your title at work during the week, whereas 12 West was more democratic, it was more mixed; mixed races. It was a wonderful melting pot of gay culture. People were there strictly for the music.

I think Flamingo was a little bit more about hooking up and who you were going to sleep with that weekend. 12 West was really about dancing all night and the focus was on the dancefloor, purely.

Can you describe to me what Sandpiper looked like?

It was a low one-story building as far as public spaces. And it was all open in the front, which was fantastic, because they could open all the windows, there were like five glass doors and they could open the entire front of the façade and let the wonderful summer breezes come in off the harbor.

Like I say, it was a restaurant early evening. It was kind of divided in half by a row of banquettes and the other side was the dining room area and that had removable tables and director’s chairs. Everything was a blue and white theme.

On the inland side, not the harbor side, that was the dancefloor, again it was one-story and it was not a high ceiling. If you were tall you could touch the beams.

It had a very rudimentary light show. They had those little small twinkly Christmas lights. They were stapled up to the cross beams where they would chase up and down and it actually created a remarkable effect, because all the walls on that side were mirrored and they had blue Plexiglas columns against the far wall which had those little twinkle lights inside them as well, and they would chase back and forth. With the mirrors it would look like an infinitely long trompe l’oeil effect. It was actually quite impressive.

Everything was wood out there, so the dancefloor was bare wood. It was very comfortable for all night dancing. And back then, strictly speaking, we weren’t an after-hours place, so we would close at 4 AM.

Did people dance inside and out?

No, they only danced inside. There was an inside deck, but that was mostly just to go out and have a cigarette and have a drink and cruise. The dancefloor and the speakers were just inside.

What was the capacity?

I’d say between 5-600 on the weekends and then it would be 300 on weeknights during the season. But having a few hundred people to play music to was a tall responsibility, especially with this crowd, which was unbelievably discriminating and well-educated.

That must have brought its own pressure for you.

It definitely did. I got a ton of encouragement and I started off-season, and this was the time when normally they would play reel-to-reel tapes, which they would record over the summer when other DJs would play. So after Labor Day they would just play these tapes, so they didn’t feel like they were gambling by having me play.

Because normally there wouldn’t have been anyone else.

Exactly. That immediate response on the dancefloor to what you’re doing was the most addictive aspect of getting me really committed to my career.

At the start, I definitely had some negative feedback, which was very hurtful, because I was certainly a novice. I learned really quick. I think most people were fairly empathetic. I’ve played for major gay and straight clubs over the years, because Studio 54 was predominantly straight on the nights I played, and Red Parrot I worked at every week in NYC back in the ’80s, so I kind of liked both markets, but definitely working for a straight crowd you didn’t get that sympathy.

Where were you getting your records from?

At the very beginning, when I was just dabbling, which was 1977, I would go to Downstairs Records, which is very well known, I think. That was the holy grail of dance music. Everyone went there. It was also a great gathering spot for DJs, to just exchange views, ideas and socialise. Donald [Junior Vasquez] was a clerk there.

Really?

Oh, yes! It was his introduction to the industry. Then, when I was hired at the Sandpiper as a DJ full-time, I was admitted to For The Record [NYC record pool].

What was the clientele on Fire Island in terms of class, race? And was it different at the Sandpiper to, say, the Boatel?

It was the same at Sandpiper and the Boatel, because people would migrate backwards and forwards. They would do tea dances at the Boatel and then they would come to us at night. The Boatel kept trying to get the night business, but we had it.

But the Boatel was definitely the place to go during the day for the tea dances. But it was A-list, a very prosperous group of gay men. I would say 95% men over women. There were women on Fire Island, but they were not going out dancing.

So I guess it was like the Flamingo on vacation, I suppose.

Yeah, that’s a very good way of putting it. It was 75% the same group. I’d say 75% of the Flamingo membership had shares on Fire Island.

Who else played on Fire Island and who stood out?

My major influences while I was working there were Tom Savarese, Alan Dodd – who was one of my biggest influences – Larry Sanders, who I actually heard from through the internet a few months ago and I literally hadn’t heard from him in like 20 years; Howard Merritt, Richie Rivera, who was also a good friend. I also felt that he was a totally different DJ to the others, his music was much more percussive, or to use today’s terminology, his music was tribal.

Similar to Walter Gibbons?

Yeah, a little more stripped-down. Those were definitely the headliners. Of course, you know the whole story of Tom Moulton and how his tapes got played there? My first year there was 1975, so the first music I was listening to were the Tom Moulton tapes. They were pretty amazing. I actually still have about a half dozen of them.

Wow, really? I’d love to hear them.

Unfortunately the quality is quite poor because they got played so much, but it’s still quite neat to hear them. There really was no problem at that point about repeating songs, but it became quite a taboo thing in the gay world later on. A lot of Tom’s tapes you’d hear “TSOP” two or three times during the tape.

Tell me about 12 West.

12 West, as I said before, definitely my favorite gig. It was four tiered banquettes around a central dancefloor, so it was like an amphitheater in shape. It had been a flower factory. It had a wonderful, egg-crate shaped ceiling, by that I mean a cross-hatched wooden ceiling. It was great for trapping sound.

It was a warehouse, so it had brick walls, and a wooden ceiling and wooden floor and the raised banquettes around the dancefloor with carpeted wood, so it had a magnificent tonal quality. The guy who installed the system was Peter Spar, who did the–

The guy from Graebar?

Yeah. It was an amazing soundsystem. I would say one of the best ever.

Really?

Undoubtedly. It was not taxing. By that I mean you could stay on the dancefloor all night long and you could leave and your hearing would not be fatigued. It was a great wide spectrum, it wasn’t bottom-heavy, it was beautifully balanced and it had what they called holding horns in the two corners of the room, above the risers.

The two corners, which were concrete up at the top of the risers, had sub-bass in a column aimed at the wall, so the whole club acted like a giant horn. So the sub-bass would roll down to the dancefloor; it wasn’t locatable but it filled the room so well. You were just immersed in it.

The DJ booth was up at the top of one of the corners that didn’t have sub-bass up there, so you had a commanding view of the entire club. A large booth and the lighting operator right next to you.

The walls were washed in color with theatrical lighting with foot lighting. They used to paint designs on the walls and it would create an optical illusion of movement depending on what color gels you used. It would interact with the colors of the walls so you’d get like a 3D effect, or it would pulsate or undulate. Other times they’d paint it strictly white. It was a very creative and flexible type of lighting format, mostly indirect lighting.

Who were the residents there? Did you go as a clubber there before you DJed?

Yes. One of the things about working at the Sandpiper in the summer was that everybody went to Cherry Grove on Saturday nights, they had a big club there called the Ice Palace. Roy Thode was the head DJ there.

The Sandpiper and the Pines was deserted on Saturday nights. So I had Saturday nights off. So I’d go into Manhattan and go out dancing. I’d go to 12 West most of the time. The DJs at that time were Jim Burgess, Alan Dodd…

So when was the Everard Baths fire?

I don’t know, but I’d guess at ’78. [It was May 25, 1977]

Did you get to see Jimmy Stuard play?

I did, but I didn’t have a lot of experience of his music.

I believe you went to the opening night at the Saint?

Yes, I did.

Before it opened was it an anticipated club?

There was a lot of buzz in the gay community about the Saint before it opened, but it was very much shrouded and there were very few getting a peek at it. However, I did see it because at that point I was a respected member of the first tier in the industry. I was afforded a preview and it was quite mind-blowing. At that point, it wasn’t totally finished. I can’t even remember if they had the dome scrimmed or installed.

The only place I can think of that was comparable at that time would have been Studio 54. That had been an opera house initially and the dancefloor was what would have been the orchestra pit and stage. It was the same massive scale. Even so, as large as it was, half the balcony had been closed down.

What was it like going there on the opening night?

Well, after the invitations were sent out, it was the talk of the town, of course. The anticipation was palpable. On opening night everyone was at home getting ready and picking out their outfits. If it had been a play, it would have been the opening night of the number one play of the season. We took a taxi – when I say we I mean Michael Fierman and I, who was my roommate.

He also DJed at the Saint, didn’t he?

Yeah, he was my protégé, I taught him how to play and hooked him up with his first jobs at Underground, Red Parrot and, later, the Saint. We were like dance partners and best friends, you know.

So we took a taxi, we had no idea of the scope of what would hit us when we got there, but we’re on Second Avenue and we got within eyeshot of the building and there’s a line of guys in front of the building, down to the corner, down that street, round the block again. Basically it was a square city block of queue.

Being in the industry, we were passed to the front of the line. When you come in from the street, you can hear that low frequency rumble of the soundsystem. The place, at that point, was already crowded and we were relatively early to arrive at around midnight. The first night, the dancefloor had been painted black. It was parquet, but the idea was you had no frame of reference whatsoever.

So you couldn’t tell floor from wall.

Exactly. Unfortunately that idea did not bear fruit because they stained it too late and they never had time to repaint it so it could dry. It wore off in the first two weeks and it never changed. I remember going up to the dancefloor, which was of course going up to the dome there.

The soundsystem was brilliant. It defies description. The amazing thing about it was it was all hidden behind the scrim work of the dome and it totally encircled the dancefloor. And these coffin speakers, which were the Graebar standard speakers, were truly excellent. They looked like a coffin: long, rectangular, maybe 12-14 feet long and two feet tall, and were circling the booth on the outside of the dome so they couldn’t be seen through the scrim to the dancefloor.

So it was a very unidirectional sound, there were no hot spots of sound on the dancefloor, beautifully distributed. Peter Spar was a personal friend, so he took me up and showed me the amp room, which had been placed inside the old organ loft – this had been the Commodore Theatre – and there were just rows and rows of amps. They operated so coolly. They were not even operating at 50% power. It was one of the tricks he used, nothing was ever straining; consequently the sound was never forced or distorted. It looked like one of the high-tech rooms from a James Bond movie.

Alan Dodd was the DJ that night and the music was wonderful, a really inspired program. Some brand new and some classics, but not cloyingly so. He also had some surprises and things he had that no one else did, sort of Alan Dodd signature songs.

Midnight Powers’ “Dance, It’s My Life,” everybody loved it but nobody knew what it was, nobody could ever get it. It was years before I ever found it. It’s an instrumental and stunning. It’s a real old-sounding disco record.

In an MFSB style?

Yeah, but upbeat. Another signature song was “Hot Wax” by Denis Lepage out of Canada. Another one you couldn’t find for over a year.

Anyway, back to the club description, there was the star machine. We didn’t even know there was a star machine. It was just unceremoniously in the middle of the dancefloor, being dark. Turned off, it just looked like a lighting array.

At that point the center lighting array used to go all the way down to the floor, which was a good trick because what it did was cut off about maybe a third of the dancefloor space, so early on the dancefloor felt crowded and then when it got more crowded this lighting tower would go up over your head, thereby freeing the space. All the lighting was almost exclusively indirect lighting, especially the first few years.

It was amazing because it was all so subtle. I remember Alan’s first exposure of the star machine was brilliant, I have to hand it to him. I’m a big fan of the theatrics. The guys liked to be swept up in the whole thing, and if you do a good job you can really take them places.

He played the crescendo piece from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, which is an abstract choral piece that grows and grows in volume. There’s a moment of crescendo of voices and orchestration and all through this rise all the lighting was risen. But at this crescendo, which was like a reverse crescendo, instead of a splash of light and strobes at the crescendo, what happened was everything was shut down except for these stars. So it went almost from morning light to pitch black and [you were] looking up and seeing a starscape like a planetarium.

The crowd roared their approval. It was amazing. I recall the first song after that was the beginning of “Could It Be Magic” by Donna Summer and it starts with intermediate drumming, but as soon as it kicked into the 4/4 time the star machine moved so the constellation started moving around your head. Again, the crowd went berserk!

Was there a lot of talk about it after the first week?

Oh, absolutely! It was the moment that determined that a new standard had been set in New York nightlife. As people left they knew that, if they weren’t members already, they had to get to the membership office that week to get their membership. That’s when the death knell sounded for the other clubs.

How did Studio 54 compare to this?

For me it was great, but it was a totally different frame of reference and mindset. There were gay nights on Thursdays and Sundays there. It was never compared. This was not in the same ballpark. I’m not saying it was better or worse, it was just different.

This was a place where it was as much a social thing, a fashion thing, than a place for serious all-night dancing and getting high and fucked up. It was more lightweight and fun and the music was played accordingly.

You’d have played more of the hits of the day?

Exactly. The music of the Saint and 12 West was more elitist, so any music played on the disco radio back in the day would never be played at the gay clubs. However, that’s a totally different story at Studio. You’d embrace commercial stuff like “In The Bush.”

Village People?

Definitely. That was fun, though. And I never had any compunction about altering my format accordingly.

How druggy was the Saint?

Oh, totally. Can we talk?! One thing you have to bear in mind is there was no alcohol till the later years. It was the type of thing where it was never discussed. It was just accepted. We all felt quite safe. I heard rumors that they had a nurse on staff, but I don’t think that’s true. Possibly they had doctors that were on the membership. You have to remember that the drugs were not as lethal as they are now.

Do you think it’s maybe to do with the age group taking them, they were perhaps a little more “responsible” in their drug taking?

I think responsible is a good word. I think they were slightly older. Granted, angel dust was, I wouldn’t say commonplace, but certainly wasn’t uncommon as the regime of the evening for a lot of people.

When I interviewed Ian Levine, he said everyone would go to St. Marks Baths when the Saint closed.

Not really true. There was definitely a group who did that, but you have to remember St. Marks Baths could never hold two to three thousand people. I think that’s a bit of a fallacy. There was a large segment of people who went there specifically to dance.

There are two ways of looking at the Saint. Some people think it’s this place where people would go and eventually end up on the balcony and there was a free-for-all. In my experience, it was definitely a minority that used the balcony for sex, and it wasn’t like wall-to-wall orgy, there were little pockets of sex. The only time it would be really crowded and people would be getting blowjobs or whatnot would be at a New Year’s Eve party or something.

I think it should be stated that’s not a universal truth, that whole bathhouse thing. Most of us, myself included, it was a matter of going out, having a good time and enjoying the music and going home. You wouldn’t really taint the evening by going to another club.

There was a place called Moonshadow that a small group would go to, but it was very small, only maybe 200 [capacity]. The routine for a Saturday night would be going to the Saint and dancing your little feet off and going home happy.

If the Saint killed the Flamingo, did it also take on parts of that clientele? It can’t have been as elitist as Flamingo because of its size, though.

It definitely was elitist. It was obviously bigger than the Flamingo, but they were very strict about who could go and they imposed strict rules on who could bring guests and how many you could bring. Basically, with only a few notable exceptions, only a few women were allowed, and when I say a few I mean [DJ] Sharon White and maybe a few others. And you played by the rules because you didn’t wanna lose your membership or be cast out.

Going back a bit, you saw Bobby Viteritti when you were quite young, didn’t you?

Well, we worked together. I was a waiter here in Fort Lauderdale one season when he was the DJ there, then later we started working together at the Marlin Beach Hotel, which was right on the ocean and famous because it was the first all-gay hotel.

In America?

Maybe, I’m not sure. It was on the main ocean drive, it was not secretive at all. And the dancefloor was within viewing sight of the sidewalk. It was really groundbreaking. It was probably opened in ’71 or ’72 and it just took off. At first it was just one section of the hotel was gay, and a straight club downstairs which was far bigger, but it was such a draw it became wholly gay.

Where did you first see Bobby play?

It was at this restaurant I worked at called Tangerine. He was one of the head DJs, alongside Jorge Sagarra. That would have been 1974 or ’75.

What struck you about seeing him?

He was definitely very full of himself, but he was very masterful. At that point DJs really didn’t regard themselves as any big deal, it was just a guy who played records, but Bobby had the self-opinion that he was an artist and he behaved accordingly.

This was the time in the industry when you could hire a DJ for $35-40 a night, but he was a pioneer and he raised the level of playing music to artistry; it really made one club better than another because the music was better.

Do you remember the kinds of records he played?

Some late Philadelphia stuff, Dee Dee Sharp’s “Happy About The Whole Thing,” Blue Magic, Trammps, Follow The Wind, “Rain” by Dorothy Morrison was one of his signature songs. One song he always used to play was “The Pelican Dance” by the Baronet, an old 7". It was an instrumental that Columbia picked up.

You also played in San Francisco at Trocadero Transfer, didn’t you?

Yes, I guess you could argue that I was the prototype of the circuit DJ.

At this stage you must have been one of the leading jocks on the circuit. What kind of fee would you command for playing in, say, the Troc?

It pales in comparison to what big names get now. But I would just get $1,000 – 1,500 plus all the extras, airfare...

Well, it’s not bad, you know, for the time!

No, that’s true. And it was unprecedented for DJs to get paid that kind of money, too.

What was it like going to play in San Francisco? Was it different, was there interaction between cities?

It seems like they had their own sound, there wasn’t much interaction from city to city because people had a regional pride about their own areas, their own clubs, their own sound, their own DJs. So it wasn’t like, “Oh, here’s a New York DJ coming to teach us the right way.”

San Francisco had a harder sound and was not nearly so soul-oriented. The morning music had a totally different feel to New York. In, say, New York, it was strongly R&B and soul-influenced. In San Francisco it was much more electronic.

Do you think that was the influence of Patrick Cowley?

Definitely. But it had to do with Bobby setting the tone ahead of me, and laying the foundation. You have to play off that foundation that had been established. You still had to accommodate the type of music that particular group or city favored and then make it your own.

What did the Trocadero Transfer look like?

Well, it was similar to 12 West. It had a Graebar soundsystem. It was a two-story, square affair, although it was more steel and concrete so the sound was not as rich and balanced. The DJ booth was on a pedestal, almost a tower, in the corner. There was a big long stage on one side, and a wraparound balcony on two sides, more like a lounge, but not separated from the main room. I played there about three or four times a year in its heyday.

Where did you work with Bobby?

At the Marlin Beach. Bobby was probably the number one influence on me as a DJ in my formative years. I would play a tea dance downstairs during the week, then I would do lights with him at night. I did double duty. I got to hear him every night and he would impart his knowledge and ethics of how he played music. I would do the lights and that was very good groundwork for DJing later, because it taught me about theatrics and presentation. He was my mentor.

When disco collapsed and dance departments closed, did that affect clubs like the Saint? The records must’ve stopped or slowed down.

There definitely was a change, but the clubs I worked at, because they were the premium in the nation, weren’t affected as much. But definitely there was a change, and the biggest change was acquiring good Hi-NRG dance music.

There was a dry spell before England and Europe picked up the slack. That was when we started hunting through our collections and looking for things that had been passed over the first time around. You had to do a bit of digging. I found a lot of stuff that way. But also, I was one of the first people to buy imports.

I can’t tell you the name of it, but there was a store out on Long Island. That was when I got the first copy of “If You Could Read My Mind” by Viola Wills and the first copy of the Canadian pressing of “Hot Leather” by the Passengers and the first copy of “Hills Of Katmandu” by Tantra. Then it started to become clear that there was a market and a demand, albeit limited, to a certain segment of the community.

And, of course, the radio was no longer on the disco bandwagon. So after that initial lull the import market exploded, particularly Canada and Western Europe.

Ian Levine came on the scene with Miquel Brown and Evelyn Thomas, and then eventually he saturated the market with stuff of lesser quality, but initially those records were monsters because there was nothing to compete with, and they were good, too!

He said he made them specifically for the Saint.

I remember he brought me an acetate or test pressing of Miquel Brown and I think I was the first guy to play it. I think I was also the first guy to play Hi-NRG for him. He was migrating almost monthly across the pond, as you would say!

What were the other Saint DJs like Shaun Buchanan like?

Well, Shaun Buchanan rose like lightning. He suddenly exploded on the scene. But he was only there for a short time. There was definitely a group of very competent DJs, like Terry Sherman, Howard Merritt, Wayne Scott, that were professional career DJs. Shaun was the first of what I’d call the bedroom DJs, had a little system at home, practiced at home and got on his feet that way and suddenly he was lionized by the crowd.

He died very early on, didn’t he?

Very early on. He was a sweetheart. We would get together outside the club environment. He was a sweet, sweet guy. I shouldn’t leave out Warren Gluck, he’s still in the business. He and I are the two remaining big names that have been around since day one.

Isn’t Howard Merritt still around?

He lives here in Fort Lauderdale. He works in the nightclub business but he’s a manager now. He had a day job at Casablanca and was DJ at Flamingo.

How did the sound at the Saint change over the years?

It was a barometer of the dance music of the day, I guess. When the English sound was popular – Blancmange, Depeche Mode, Limahl and the Associates, pre-Pet Shop Boys – it definitely followed the musical trends. We started underground and we stayed underground. There was a very heavy influence from Canada with Carol Jiani and the Passengers and then there was an Italian influence when we played those imports.

Can you remember any?

I can see the labels, but I can’t think of the names. The English Record Shack was another notable period, the Miquel Brown, Eric Roberts, Evelyn Thomas… then the independents were peppering the market – “Coming Out Of Hiding” [Pamala Stanley] on TSR and Jacques Morali had a couple of things; West End, too. If there was a dearth of current material I’d fill the void with some well chosen classics like Cerrone or Boris Midney.

How did AIDS affect the Saint? I know it was called Saint’s Disease early on, wasn’t it?

Well, because that A-list group were all sleeping together. As with any sexually transmitted disease, A sleeps with B, B sleeps with C and C sleeps with D and before you know it, it’s completely saturated the community. So, yes, it had definitely had a major impact. One of my best friends Susan Tompkins, who was Bruce Mail’s assistant, she was saying it was so disheartening when they would send out invitations to parties, the percentage of the letters that came back “Addressee Deceased.” She said it was heartbreaking. It was one of the major reasons the club started having straight nights, and eventually the reason the club probably closed.

Did it feel bewildering to be in the middle of that?

Well, because we all had friends who were sick or dying, it did not have as much of an impact then as it does now looking back. With hindsight you think, “Oh my God.” You had to dwell on the positive and you had a job to do, so being a professional I had to focus on the people living. So there was a little duality there. In nightlife, if somebody’s not around… it’s out of sight, out of mind, to a certain degree.

Tell me about morning music.

Well, it was based in New York, it would be the capital because of the hours the clubs kept. It was beautiful music, more downtempo, more soulful. A lot of DJs could be far more expressive playing this. You had these torch songs and heartbreaking songs, celebrational soulful songs. It ran the musical gamut. It was much more expressive than the formula disco in the middle of the night.

You could go back to Marvin Gaye or early Trammps or you could go in the other direction, like the Motels’ “Total Control,” which was almost new wave but downtempo; or Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without A Face.” You had more musical lassitude at the end of the night and it wasn’t all about speedy drugs. They might take a barbiturate or Quaalude or smoke a joint, so they were a lot more easygoing, so you could take them somewhere with morning music.

A lot more heart went into it than in the middle of the night. A lot of my contemporaries, at least the ones that are worth their salt, that was their time to shine and really stand out and make a statement that was different and their own sound. In the middle of the night you could almost blindfold someone because they were a lot closer in format.

Would that signal the end of the party when you went into this section?

Yes. It was a nice way of giving the dancefloor a soft landing, as I see it. There was a group of devotees who would stay right through to the bitter end, and I would always play classical music right at the end. You really had a lot of freedom to play anything. Some would arrive really late, say 6 AM, just to listen to the morning music.

This interview was conducted in March 2005. © DJhistory.com