As I mentioned back on this post, I had this high school friend named Willie (not his actual name) who spent an inordinate amount of time immersed in New York City’s fabled early-`80s nightlife. You might think “big whoop!” to that, but it’s prudent to underscore that he was still in goddamn high school at the time. In a nutshell, while the rest of our class was at home at night, listening to Duran Duran, popping zits, playing with the ol’ Atari 2600 or wondering if so-and-so was going to ask whatshisface to the prom, Willie was out gaining velvet rope entry at any number of libidinous hot spots, while still on the tender side of his teens. He boasted about it at the time, and we all basically believed he was entirely full of absolute shit, but I had Willie’s status confirmed years later by bona fide club hoppers and venue owners. Willie was indeed the real deal, in that capacity.
Anyway, Willie’s de facto home base, I gather, was Studio 54 (or, as he preferred, simply Studio). To this day, he’s still prone to waxing rhapsodic about the heady hedonism that went on in that hallowed space. Years later, the very name of the club still carries a cache --- in much the same way the name CBGB continues to fire imaginations. For better or worse, its legacy is carved into the very granite of New York City history.
But, as I mentioned on this post, Studio 54 didn’t exactly stay golden. As the club’s latter years were numbered, the sheen had noticeably worn off and the club’s once considerable thunder had been stolen by myriad new locales. It was under these inauspicious circumstances when I first entered the place (as, again, described here). When I stepped into Studio 54 after my somewhat anticlimactic senior prom in the spring of 1985, the whiff of fabulousness was pretty faint and fading fast. I’m relatively certain it would’ve gotten Willie a bit choked up.
That all said, probably not quite as choked up as when -– evidently during the very same season, if not possibly the very same week as my senior prom (who remembers the date?) -– Studio 54 played incongruous host to the pointedly unfabulous and hirsute hordes of thrash-metal-fandom for a disarming triple bill of Exodus, Venom and Slayer. Now, given my fondness for Venom at the time, why I didn’t attend this particular show, I’ll never remember. Regardless, in that same revered and formerly-highly-exclusive room that had famously acted as the private playground for glitzy celebs like Andy Warhol, Woody Allen, Liza Minelli, Halston, Bianca Jagger and Michael Jackson, there now swarmed an unwieldy and invariably drunken army of bedenimed cretins, pimply punks and disagreeably leather-clad nogoodnicks. For posterity, this (arguably) landmark performance was even captured on video -- of indeterminate legitimacy -- and packaged as “The Ultimate Revenge.” The perfect stocking-stuffer for the old skool metalhead in your family.
Only a couple of years later, of course, the space in question would morph into The New Ritz and routinely play host to live music of all stripes. But, again, in 1985, the incongruity of Studio 54 stooping to the level of beery rock pigs still seemed like something significant. Once again, in that same storied street that had once been routinely flooded with keening, well-dressed, disco-infatuated hopefuls, eagerly aspiring to gain access from the snooty doorman – or even the late Steve Rubell – into Studio 54, now gathered a very different crowd (see below)…..
Actually, apart from that one dick doing the Nazi salute, it looks like a pretty fun scene. But, again, not for everyone.
These days, as far as I know, the Studio 54 space is just another Broadway theater.
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