Peter Shapiro traces the roots of disco to the second World War, when European kids would gather at “underground” clubs to listen to American jazz and swing records, away from the Nazi conquerors: “One such meeting place was La Discothèque, a tiny basement club on rue de la Huchette [in Paris]...which, according to Albert Goldman, opened during the Occupation....Even after the Occupation ended, though, the basement hovel remained so popular that it became the template for a uniquely European form of nightlife.” Continental clubs like Chez Regine introduced European club goers to new dances like the twist. “Swinging” London followed suit; and in 1965 Richard Burton’s ex Sybil opened Arthur, a glitzy New York disco where the rich and famous gathered, long before Studio 54.

To understand the disco scene of the 1970's, one must understand New York City as it was then, long before Rudy Giuliani turned Times Square into a Disney theme park. With crime, drugs, inflation and corruption rampant, there was nothing to do but boogie; and clubs straight and gay alike emerged to cater to a population in need of escape. Clubs like David Mancuso’s Loft - literally his loft - the Sanctuary, and the Ice Palace on Fire Island played the hits of Motown and Philly Soul as well as out of left field hits like “Soul Makossa,” by Cameroon’s Manu Dibango. Disk jockeys who could gauge the dancers’ mood and mix the records right became the new gods of Discoland. The old-style 7 inch single was replaced by the 12 inch record; a new invention that kept you on the dance floor that much longer.

It was no coincidence that disco and gay liberation emerged at the same time. “Disco was all about breaking the bonds of shame that have imprisoned gay men for centuries,” Shapiro writes. “It was a declaration that pleasure didn’t have to be inextricably meshed with guilt and self-loathing....Just as soul music came to voice the pride and assertiveness that accompanied the civil rights struggle, disco quickly became the sound of this new movement.” Soon there were more gay men in New York clubs than in the city’s gay pride parade. The Gay Activists Alliance discovered, to its chagrin, that more men showed up to its Saturday night “firehouse” dances than to its business meetings or political zaps. In short, “the rise of the discotheque made activism largely irrelevant.” It would take the AIDS epidemic to end the gay disco scene and send gay men out into the streets in protest.

Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco does not reveal any “secrets” about the 1970's disco phenomenon. Nor is it as scholarly as last year’s Love Saves the Day, by University of East London Professor Tim Lawrence. What Shapiro does right is bring together the difference strands - Black, gay, European, thrill-seeking celebrity - that made disco what it was. Nor is Turn the Beat Around a love letter to disco. Shapiro agrees with George Clinton of Parliament/Funkadelic, who saw disco as “a cocktease that offered no climax...a pale imitation of funk whose machine rhythms were a fake substitute for the pleasure principle.” This “mindless boogie” was most obvious in Eurodisco, which invaded our shores in the wake of Donna Summer’s orgasmic hit, “Love to Love You Baby.” Here Summer fans (like yours truly) will disagree with the author, who bluntly states that “Summer ain’t a good singer.” Shapiro prefers the music of Chic, whose “Good Times” was “disco’s crowning achievement.”

Like soul music before it, disco was at its best before the straight white masses got wind of it. By the time the “disco craze” hit America, the music had become a parody of itself, with bouncy remakes of old show tunes and old-time pop singers trying to make a buck by cutting dance albums. The film Saturday Night Fever, which “would have more popular culture impact than any movie since Gone With the Wind,” was based on a New York magazine story, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” that author Nik Cohn later admitted was a fraud. This was the age of “roller disco” and the Village People: “The Village People represented everything uncool about disco: the stale beats seemingly phoned in by studio hacks, the dunderhead English-as-a-foreign-language lyrics, the complete lack of subtlety, all delivered by guys wearing a Native American headdress and a loincloth, a construction worker’s clothes, a police uniform, and leather biker gear” - which of course does not take away from the group’s “goofy pleasure.”

In a sense, disco sowed the seeds of its own destruction. But did it deserve the attacks heaved upon it by straight white America? By the time a group of dirty white boys got together in Chicago’s Comiskey Park to burn disco records, 1970's dance music was on its way out. That the anti-disco backlash came at the same time as Ronald Reagan’s election is no surprise, for disco “was liberalism’s last hurrah, the final party before the neocon apocalypse.” Dance music in America went underground; largely the province of gay men and racial minorities. What remains of the disco era is the music and the survivors’ memories. Books like Turn the Beat Around help keep those memories alive.

Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and gay book lover who lives in South Florida with his life partner and many books. You may reach him at jessemonteagudo@aol.com.