seventies disco

In the seventies, there was such an abundance of good clubs in London, that club crawling after a late dinner used to take hours. During the early 1980s, one of London’s most popular clubs was the Hat in High Street Kensington, known to its loyal patrons as ‘Yours Or Mine’. It was supposed to be a gay club, but it was frequented by hip heterosexuals and all the stars. Bianca Jagger with her fashionable gay entourage was a constant visitor. The club was tiny. The tables were covered with red paper tablecloths, the lit dance floor was tiny, but the subterranean immersion had a magical atmosphere. The characters in “Frantic,” my novel about nostalgics of the early ’70s, almost lived in a club called The Igloo, which was a pseudonym for The Sombrero. ‘At The Igloo, the desperate couple bypassed the forbidding bouncer at the gate promising to pay the entrance fee next time. Half running, half jumping, they descended into the murky bowels of the club.

Tramp on Jermyn Street was still an institution, and the Speakeasy, Music Business club on Maddox Street was still going. But, when disco became fashionable in the late 1970s, a large number of clubs opened up. Down the street from Tramp, which was still playing hardcore by The Rolling Stones, a club called Maunkberry’s was populated by a younger crowd. The late Marc Bolan and David Bowie used to hang out there, as did Arnold Schwarzenegger during his bodybuilding days. Wedgies on Kings Road was a bit off the beaten path, but all the toffs used to go there to dine and dance, due to the club’s titled managers, Lord Burgesh and Sir Dai Llewellyn. Regine, the international queen of nightclubs, added her London club to her international chain. It was on the top floor of the former Derry & Tom’s (later Biba) on High Street Kensington, but in the end it turned out to be a little out of the way for committed clubbers. When the club was conceived, Andy Warhol and his entourage hung out on the rooftop garden, and European royalty like Caroline of Monaco hosted parties there, but the club soon died.

Without a doubt, The Embassy Club in Old Bond Street was the best club in town. It was the UK clone of Studio 54 and had a good-sized dance floor, perfect for disco dancing to hits like Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Survived’. The opening party was packed with British aristocrats and members of the show business. Michael Fish, who invented the herringbone tie, asked a select group of “lunching ladies” to organize the guest lists, forbidding them from inviting their gay friends, which was ironic since the club’s male clientele later became mostly bisexual.

As well as the big clubs that were conducive to amyl nitrate fueled dancing, there were more intimate membership clubs like Mortons in Berkely Square, famous for its long ground floor bar and, of course, the futuristically designed Zanzibar in Covent. Garden. On any given night, you’d find ‘everyone who was somebody’ at their long bar. The owners went on to form the successful Soho club called Groucho’s in the 1980s. But, for late-’70s clubbers who loved to boogie until the wee hours of the morning, clubbing went downhill from there.

Copyright: 2006