I didn't live in the world of disco or the world of the Eagles.
Around '75 when the recession hit, club owners started going to disco because it was cheaper for them to just buy a sound system than it was to hire a band.
During the time that my recording career seemed to be in a slump a music called disco came on the scene and literally took over radio stations as well as having radio stations created to play it which sort of negated my music as well as that of some of my peers.
Recently, I went to a disco with friends, and all the young people were saying, 'Dudamel, we want to go to your concert, but it's impossible because it's sold out.' It's really amazing.
At an incredibly divisive point in pop history, Donna Summer managed to create an undeniable across-the-board experience of mass pleasure - after 'Bad Girls,' nobody ever tried claiming disco sucked again. It set the template for what Michael Jackson would do a few months later with 'Off The Wall.'
Although I grew up as a fan of the culture from the disco D.J. era as a young kid and hearing the beginnings of hip-hop, I'm hearing it all from another borough in Brooklyn.
Gay culture is in a coming-out process of its own. From out of the closets in the '60s, the culture moved onto the disco floors of the '70s and through the hospital wards of the '80s and onwards to the streets.
Disco music in the '70s was just a call to go wild and party and dance with no thought or conscience or regard for tomorrow.
The first years of my life were spent in a roller disco in the early '80s called Flipper's. It was a real riotous, incredible time. I am slightly obsessed with the place.
House, rap, R&B, disco rock, they are all part of hip-hop culture. Why you ain't playing Kraftwerk along with Jay-Z? That's hip-hop.
I was stranded in Disco. I went to dozens of darkened places with enough flashing lights to drive the average person mad. I felt lost in the pulse of sheer panic.
Even when disco went out, I could still make hits. Once I had so much success, every idea became concentrated. I had so much confidence. I knew how the bass should sound, what rhythms would work. The tempos I knew: 110 to 120 BPM. I knew they would dance in the clubs in New York or anywhere.
Ironically, I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood. I grew up watching 'Disco Dancer;' I watched it some 20 times as a kid.
Electro is today's disco - making electronic music not for the sake of selling it but for sharing it and touring around the world D.J.-ing.
I never really did any disco dancing.
The only dancing I did was at the discotheques. I was a very good disco dancer. I say that I learned disco dancing at the wrong places.
I grew up in a largely black community during the '70s and '80s that scoffed at 'white' music. That music - folk, rock, some disco - was considered soulless, aberrant, just one more example of the Caucasian's desire to scream and yell and demand whatever their privilege and perpetual adolescence dictated they should demand.
I have four older siblings and one younger, and all three of my brothers are in the music industry. My dad was really involved in music, too, with the disco, and he also started Radio Caroline and was the one who invented pirate radio, if you like, off on a coast in England on a boat.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be in a disco band.
I have a karaoke lounge in my house, complete with a tiki bar and hula-girl lamps and disco balls.
I'm from the disco era where everybody thought they were John Travolta... What song is going to get me on the dance floor? Anything from 'Saturday Night Fever,' and you're up there like a demon.
I had ballooned out to close to 400 pounds at one point. And in the '80s, we were just beginning to get on video and disco. So therefore, I did not fit in, and my record company let me go because they said, 'Look, you're just not marketable enough with the weight problem.'
