A history of dance music culture from 1970 to 1979, detailing the first major dance clubs in New York through the memories of DJs from the time.
Opening with David Mancuso's seminal "Love Saves the Day" Valentine's party in February 1970, this title tells the definitive story of disco - from its murky subterranean roots in NoHo and Hell's Kitchen to its gaudy blossoming in midtown Manhattan to the out-of-town networks that emerged in the suburbs and alternative urban hotspots.
Disco is the music that America tried to forget. By the end of the 1970s Saturday Night Fever rocketed through the marketing stratosphere, Studio 54 was dominating the front pages, and the charts were controlled by the likes of the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, and the Village People. But then radio talk jock Steve Dahl publicly detonated a pile of 40,000 disco records during the interval of a Chicago White Sox double-header in July 1979, and by the end of the year some 20,000 discotheques had hastily closed. Opening with David Mancuso's seminal "Love Saves the Day" Valentine's party in February 1970, Tim Lawrence presses the rewind button and tells the definitive story of disco -- from its murky subterranean roots in NoHo and Hell's Kitchen to its gaudy blossoming in midtown Manhattan to the out-of-town networks that emerged in the suburbs and alternative urban hotspots such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New Jersey. Tales of nocturnal journeys, radical music making, and polymorphous sexuality flow through the arteries of Love Saves the Day like liquid vinyl.They are interspersed with a detailed analysis of the era's most powerful DJs, the venues in which they played, and the records they loved to spin.Love Saves the Day includes material from over three hundred original interviews with the scene's most influential players, including John "Jellybean" Benitez, Michael Cappello, Ken Cayre, Alec Costandinos, Steve D'Acquisto, Michael Fesco, Rochelle Fleming, Francis Grasso, Alan Harris, Loleatta Holloway, Francois Kevorkian, Frankie Knuckles, David Mancuso, Vince Montana, Giorgio Moroder, Tom Moulton, Steve Ostrow, Marvin Schlachter, Nicky Siano, Judy Weinstein, Robert Williams and Earl Young. It also contains a series of specially compiled discographies and a unique collection of more than seventy rare photos.
“"[T]o some, a respectful history of disco may seem as perverse as a paean to strip malls. Tim Lawrence's Love Saves the Day boldly overturns that story. . . . I, for one, won't be able to dismiss dance culture so quickly, and his book should become a fixture in the libraries of serious students of American pop."”
"Thanks to an impressive amount of research Tim Lawrence ...creates an evocative portrait of the Big Apple DJ demimonde of the 1970s." Peter Shapiro, The Wire "Will surely stand as the definitive history of dance music's early years." Joe Madden, Jockey Slut "Packed with detail ... without turning dull... riveting storytelling." Ethan Brown "A densely detailed and heartfelt account of the era." Time Out New York "Lawrence's astounding research and wide focus make this [disco's] definitive chronicle so far." Minneapolis City Pages "Lawrence has accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of cuing up every famed and arcane component of disco's ethos and executing a narrative possessed by a seamless grace that's comparable to the work of the legendary DJs who are duly chronicled... [A] most significant examination of this watershed period within our pop-cult heritage." Philadelphia CityPaper "Fabulous reading, and this book looks destined to become a classic, opening up a whole lost world of night-time dance culture to generations for whom previously it was merely a rather imprecise legend." Taipei Times " ... as good an introduction as you will find to an all-too-often overlooked period in musical history."--Q, June 2004 "Essential reading for anyone interested in discovering teh origins of DJing, clubbing and the music we dance to."--Easyjet Magazine, April 2004 "This brilliant study of the birth of disco and the spawning of a million different subgenres of same is crucial reading for anyone who thinks they know their club culture. Because until you've read this you might as well know nothing, nada, zilch... This illuminating work features early sightings of some of today's established movers and shakers, often while still ambitiously adolescent, with every page featuring a surprise discovery, every dark corner a new beat."--i-D Magazine, June 2004 "Love Saves the Day is a fully comprehensive, well-composed analysis of dance culture during it's most crucial and subliminal time during the seventies. Tim Lawrence has done his homework and his dynamic delivery also possesses a delightful, intimate style. This book can be enjoyed on numerous levels... Love Saves the Day is a revealing, captivating and enlightening read."--Straight No Chaser, Autumn 2004
Tim Lawrence leads the Music Culture: Theory and Production degree program at the University of East London. He has written liner notes for David Mancuso Presents the Loft and Masters at Work: The Tenth Anniversary Collection. The author’s website for the book is available at
"As authoritative as it is gossipy,Love Saves the Dayis the ultimate backstage view of disco, the underground phenomenon that ended up defining a decade. Tim Lawrence talked to virtually everyone who shaped '70s urban nightlife, but he keeps his prime focus on the djs who created its seductive soundtrack. With them as your witty, opinionated guides, you'll find yourself well past the velvet ropes, deep inside a scene that has never been so thoroughly or lovingly illuminated."-Vince Aletti,Village Voice
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