The Day The (Disco) Music Died

Thirty years ago, disco died in Chicago.

But the death has strong ties to Detroit, for a variety of reasons.

Let me explain.

On July 12, 1979, the Detroit Tigers were playing the host Chicago White Sox in a doubleheader. The rivalry between the two midwest teams was well known, but neither club was exactly challenging to make the post-season that year. In order to generate some sort of interest in the home team, Sox marketing director Mike Veeck - son of Bill, baseball’s all-time master of publicity stunts - concocted an idea that ranks up - or down - among the strangest and most notable in baseball history.

Enter flamboyant radio shock jock Steve Dahl. The popular 24-year-old DJ was hired by WLUP-FM several months earlier after he quit another Chicago radio station that had gone to an all-disco format. Dahl, as you can imagine, was not a fan of the disco sound. He and his co-host, Garry Meier, almost immediately started a “disco sucks” campaign that quickly became the focal point of their daily show. Similar programs were live and kicking at album-oriented rock (AOR) stations across the nation; growing up in Detroit, my friends and I were strong supporters of WRIF-FM's DREAD (Detroit Rockers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco) listener army, clutching our gold plastic DREAD cards like they were badges of honor.


Dahl had gotten his start in radio at Detroit-s WABX-FM as one of the rebel rock station's "air aces." But at WLUP, he took the pro-rock/anti-disco mantra it a new level. Listeners would call in to request their most hated disco songs, to be played on the air briefly before one of the hosts swung the record needle (this is long before the era of CDs and MP3s) screeching across the record, followed by an explosion sound effect and a quote borrowed from a popular SCTV skit: “That blowed up real good.”

Dahl quickly developed a rabid following, anointing himself the "field general" in the "war against disco." He nicknamed his troops the "Insane Coho Lips" and had the station issue free ID cards to fans who wanted to enlist in Steve Dahl’s Disco Army “dedicated to the eradication and elimination of the dreaded musical disease known as disco.” Within a week, the station received over 10,000 requests. Dahl even penned his own theme song, “Do Ya Think I’m Disco?" - a parody of the Rod Stewart song "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"

Veeck saw what he thought was a very good thing in Dahl - a vibrant voice of the people who could convert his cause - the end of disco - into bringing fans to Comiskey Park, home of a bad baseball team and a huge scoreboard that "exploded" with lights and sound when the Sox achieved success. The perfect storm was visible, and the seeds for Disco Demolition Night were planted.

The idea: fans bringing a disco record to the stadium would be charged 98 cents admission (as in 98.3 FM, WLUP's radio frequency) for the doubleheader against the Tigers. The records would be collected in a large trash dumpster by the main gate, and the dumpster would be relocated to center field after the first game of the doubleheader, to be blown into smithereens by Dahl. After the opener, while both teams, umpires, and other baseball personnel went into the locker rooms to take a break before playing the second half of the twinbill, Dahl & Co. went into action.

Dahl welcomed fans to “officially the world’s largest anti-disco rally,” and turned the stage over to the pyrotechnic. With a roaring boom, thousands of disco records met their symbolic death, vinyl shrapnel flying 200 feet in the air. Fans - more than 20,000 - stormed the field and wouldn't leave. Other anti-disco warriors still in the stands began throwing more disco records around and onto the field like Frisbees. Those on the field tore up the turf, lit bonfires, destroyed equipment, and the Sox ended up forfeiting the second game.

According to the 1986 book Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll the event was the "emblematic moment" of the anti-disco "crusade" and noted that "the following year disco had peaked as a commercial blockbuster". Steve Dahl himself said in an interview with Keith Olbermann that disco "was a fad probably on its way out" but that the event "hastened its demise." Nile Rodgers, guitarist for the popular disco era group Chic said "It felt to us like Nazi book-burning, This is America, the home of jazz and rock and people were now afraid even to say the word 'disco'."

Thirty years later, Disco Demolition Night is still regarded as one of the most memorable - if not successful - promotions in sports history, one of the most infamous since Cleveland's "Ten Cent Beer Night" in 1974.

Thanks to Swindle Magazine for a detailed background on Disco Demolition Night from the Chicago viewpoint.