It was roughly 1977-1978 when I stopped using my nightstand clock/radio – who needs Apple? – to exclusively listen to Royals games at night and started listening to rock and roll music. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, I’d gone from not listening to music at all, unless my brother had extorted my mom into turning on one of the two rock stations in town while we were going somewhere in the Oldsmobile, to constantly listening to music in my room. By that point I had a lot of catching up to do in terms of rock n roll. But during that particular time in music, disco was king. I didn’t know much about music, but I understood early on that if you wanted to be considered “cool” you didn’t listen to disco.

Disco, as defined by Wikipedia is “a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States’ urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars.” As a junior high school aged kid, all you needed to know was that disco was dance music and dancing was well, “for chicks.” At least it was if you were a white, teenage boy in the Midwest suburbs who couldn’t dance. Of course, I’ve never been able to dance. It was my destiny to be a wallflower. It’s hard to describe how pervasive disco really was. The radio was full of Donna Summer, KC and the Sunshine Band and of course, the Bee Gees. If you were a teenage “dude” trying to establish an identity, you didn’t want to be caught dead owning or listening to any of these bands’ music. I certainly wasn’t humming along to “Boogie Shoes.” We liked loud guitar to express our existential angst at becoming young men. Something more aggressive like say, AC/DC… which I guess you could actually dance to… if you’d wanted to?

While disco had been around since the early 70s, the apex of disco was probably when the movie Saturday Night Fever came out in 1977. The soundtrack featuring the aforementioned Bee Gees exploded. John Travolta in a white suit, dancing around like he was being electrocuted was iconic. Of course anything that gets as big as disco is going to cause backlash. Wasn’t Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “To every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.” Well, that was certainly true of disco. It created the whole “Death Before Disco” movement… trust me, it was a movement, there were t-shirts. There was a DJ on our local station, Max Floyd, who went by the moniker General Max Floyd of the Rock N Roll Army whose shtick included playing the first few bars of a disco tune while playing exploding noises as if he were “blowing up” the song. Of course there was the famous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago in the middle of a White Sox double-header where a DJ had an anti-disco rally where he actually did blow up a bunch of disco records… the destruction to the field during the ensuing riot caused so much damage to the field the Sox had to forfeit the second game of the night to the Tigers. Seems a tad extreme all these years later… but I bet there’s guys sitting at the Burwood Tap still bragging about being there.

While I didn’t own the t-shirt for “Death Before Disco,” I would have probably worn one had I the chance. I certainly tuned into General Max Floyd every day after school. When you’re a teenager going through puberty, you have no idea who you are so you just try to blend in. And none of us were confident enough to dance or even talk to a girl so forget about disco. But despite all of that macho posturing, in retrospect I’ve come to realize that all of our favorite rock bands were sneaking disco tunes past our defenses and worming their way into our ears. The Rock Stars we all worshiped were all hanging around in Studio 54 or some other famous disco, partying and yes, dancing with super models. That disco stuff had to seep it’s way into our Rock Star’s consciousness and eventually into their music. Unbeknownst to we “Death Before Disco” types, the biggest bands in the world were doing disco tunes: The Stones, Zeppelin, Rod, hell, even the Grateful Dead jumped on the bandwagon. Admittedly, in some cases this was just a crass financial move, calculated to climb the charts: Kiss, ELO, and Eddie Money. But in many of these cases, the bands liked the music and put their spin on it and were wildly successful doing so.

Here is a list of some of my favorite bands and their associated disco tunes. While these were the dread disco you can likely find each of these songs on the artist’s latest “greatest hits” compilation. Why? Because we didn’t, at the time, realize it was disco and loved it. Even a hardline wallflower like me will admit love for most of these tunes. Some of these songs may not be straight up disco, but you can’t deny the disco influence…

• The Rolling Stones, “Miss You” – Leave it to Mick and the boys to do a disco tune but also bring in blues harp legend Sugar Blue on harmonica to make it feel bluesy. This tune, “Beast Of Burden,” and “Shattered” led me to my first ever LP purchase, Some Girls. Of course for the Stones, they lingered on the disco fascination on their next LP with “Dance (Pt. 1),” and “Emotional Rescue.” Hey, if it worked, can you blame them?
• David Bowie, “Young Americans” – Bowie was early on the disco train, before it was huge. “1984” on Diamond Dogs was pure disco. I’ve always liked this one though. Of course Bowie would return to disco on “Let’s Dance” in 1983 when he wanted a “hit.”
• Rod Stewart, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” – I would list this song under my guilty pleasures. But a song about a young man meeting a young woman in a club and going home to have a shallow 1-night stand was irresistible to a teenage boy dreaming of such things…
• Grateful Dead, “Shakedown Street” – The most shocking artist on the list. The venerable Dead of the jam band and cult like fans had a strange fascination with disco… “Nothin’ shakin’ on shakedown street, used to be the heart of town.” I was more fond of their country rock stuff from the early 70s but I’ll admit hitting the volume knob when this track came on.
• Led Zeppelin, “Dancing Days” – I can’t believe Houses of the Holy and this funky tune are 50 years old this year. “Sippin’ booze is precedent.” I love this song.
• The Eagles, “One Of These Nights” – This is more disco influenced than disco. But if you listen closely, I defy you to disagree that Henley and Frey were influenced by dance music. “Lookin’ for the daughter of the Devil himself, looking for an angel in white…” I suspect you could find both at your local disco.
• Pink Floyd, “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2” – Another shocking entry. One doesn’t think of disco when you think of Pink Floyd. But this track does bear the influence of disco. I’m still grooving on the stuff released for the 50th anniversary of Dark Side Of The Moon.
• The Kinks, “(Wish I Could Fly) Like Superman” – This is more rock n roll but you can’t deny the disco undertones. I feel like the Kinks don’t get the attention they should.
• Elton John, “The Bitch Is Back” – A favorite of mine despite the disco trappings. I considered “Island Girl” as well, it could easily slide in on this list.
• Queen, “Another One Bites The Dust” – A great, great Queen song. I had a chance to see them on this tour and I turned it down…
• The Clash, “The Magnificent Seven” – Even these punk rockers, the World’s Most Important Band, the Clash, weren’t immune to the allure of disco. Of course Elvis Costello said of the Clash, they were only punk on the first two records and after that they just sort of played whatever was in Joe Strummer’s music collection.
• Thin Lizzy, “Dancing In The Moonlight (It’s Caught Me In The Spotlight)” – At least Thin Lizzy were honest about their intentions, using “dancing” in the title. Great song though.
• Robert Palmer, “Every Kind Of People” – Palmer before his big 80s, video superstardom, doing a song written by Andy Fraser, former bass player of the great band Free. For some reason I always thought this was a Sly and the Family Stone cover. Wrong!
• Blondie, “Heart of Glass” – I feel like Blondie was a band who could do anything musically… and get away with it. This song is no exception.
• Paul McCartney, “Goodnight Tonight” – Other than ELO, this may be the cheesiest tune on here. Macca just turns up the cheese-o-meter to 11. A dance song where the singer pleads to his partner not to get too tired for “love” later… Oh, Paul.
• Kiss, “I Was Made For Loving You” – Kiss had a song for every fan of almost every music style… I’m surprised they didn’t go country. Good tune though.
• Eddie Money, “Maybe I’m A Fool” – From Eddie’s uneven third album. He was clearly trying for a hit here. Catchy but betrayed what he did best.
• Electric Light Orchestra, “Shine A Little Love” – While I’ve always found ELO to be derivative of the Beatles, they do have some great songs. This, is not one of them, but it was a big hit.
• Jackson Browne, “Disco Apocalypse” – From his misguided Hold Out album. Was this a complaint, a protest against disco or just a disco-ish song? There’s a piece where he lets the back up singer take over lead vocals which was unfortunate. I was very confused by this one…
• Frank Zappa, “Dancin’ Fool” – In typical Zappa fashion, he recorded this song as a parody of disco to ridicule it and it ended up being the second biggest hit of his career. Dancing all the way to the bank so to speak.

These are the best examples of our heroes, our favorite rock bands going disco. I’m sure many of you have other examples that I might have left out. If so, leave them in the comments section. I’m not sure but there may be a playlist lurking in here somewhere…

Cheers! Dance like no one is watching… yeah, not. No way. Never.