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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records.
I'd played in about four or five bands before we started up, only a couple of which did club dates.
When I went to high school, in the late 1970s, disco was in full swing and anyone who was into it dressed the part. I know I did.
In the early 1970s. 1971, '72. The rooms were closing down, record labels weren't signing acoustic acts any more. Although they had been pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that.
I was in one bar band from 1965 to '69, then I was in another one from 1970 to '79 - a 9-year bar band!
If you put this in the context of Detroit in '64 or '65, the economy was booming. Everybody had jobs and there was a whole nightclub culture where bands could work.
There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.
I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.
Disco is the first technology music. And what I mean is that 'disco' music is named after discs, because when technology grew to where they didn't need a band in the clubs, the DJ played it on a disc.
You have to remember the band played from 1960 to 1965, every night. You get into a rut playing nightclubs every night, and you didn't want to run it into the ground.