Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture by Alice Echols

Author:Alice Echols [Echols, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2010-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

5

Saturday Night Fever

THE LITTLE DISCO MOVIE

How come we never talk about what we’re feeling when we’re dancing together?

—Tony to Stephanie in Saturday Night Fever

Saturday Night Fever tells an American story, but from its inception the movie was a transatlantic undertaking. Its cast of characters included British writer Nik Cohn, Australian-born London-based music impresario Robert Stigwood, and his clients the Gibb brothers, who were born in Britain and raised in Australia. The making of Fever illuminates the transnational character of disco music and culture. Although disco seemed like an American export, the reality was more complicated. From the beginning disco music flowed along a global circuitry, with hits often moving from the so-called periphery of the music industry to its putative center. Moreover, one of the reasons that disco became such a global phenomenon is that the sixties’ discotheque never went away in much of Europe. Writing in 1976, British music journalist Dave Godin recalled “how surprised visiting Americans were five years ago when they discovered that Brits would actually spend their nights listening and dancing away to recorded music without a live act to entertain them.”

By 1976, when Saturday Night Fever was in development, disco music and culture was hardly confined to the cosmopolitan cities of North America and Western Europe. The enormity of the disco market should have made Hollywood jump at the opportunity to get a piece of the action. But even after Paramount signed onto Fever, the studio looked down its nose at “the little disco movie.” It took others, particularly non-Americans who were aware of the music’s global reach and potential, to interest Hollywood in making disco a cinematic event.

Most of all it took the unflagging enthusiasm of Robert Stigwood, the British music mogul. Stigwood, who in his prime looked rather like a modish Oscar Wilde, enjoyed only patchy success in the music business until January 1967, when the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein surprisingly made him a joint managing director of his company, NEMS Enterprises. Epstein’s decision was perplexing, especially given the terms of the deal, which gave Stigwood controlling interest in NEMS in exchange for half a million pounds. Friends and colleagues knew that Epstein was weary of the music business and was feeling emotionally fragile, but why, they wondered, would he partner up with Stigwood, of all people? Nat Weiss, an American lawyer who represented Epstein and the Beatles, thought Stigwood was “a real carnival promoter…a man who had two cents [to his name] but could run up a bill.” Others, however, noted the Australian’s “fabulous style” and his knack for spotting talent.

Epstein and Stigwood were soon at loggerheads over the latter’s signing of a wannabe-Beatles group called the Bee Gees, and his lavish American launch for them. As for the Beatles, when they eventually got wind of Epstein’s plan to effectively sell them to Stigwood, they mutinied. “We told Brian,” recalled Paul McCartney, “that if he sold us to Stigwood, we would only ever record out-of-tune versions of ‘God Save the Queen.’” Not

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