Girl gone wild: Madonna enjoys the video opulence of Private Eyes with former boyfriend and producer Jellybean Benitez, July 17, 1984
It’s 1984, and the hottest trend in American pop culture is the music video . MTV had debuted a channel of non-stop music videos in 1981, and just three years later, most new pop superstars were being defined by them– Michael Jackson, Prince, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Wham, Culture Club.
One of the more notable New York club opening in the summer of 1984 was Private Eyes, a trendy gay lounge at 12 W. 21st Street, poised to meet the video future with full-on glittery radness. With MTV revolutionizing pop music by the early 80s, nightclubs rushed to incorporate the new trend into their aesthetic. At Private Eyes, clubgoers needn’t have worried about a frenetic disco floor; they were literally invited to be mesmerized. “There is no defined dance area — it’s like a living room with the coffee table pushed aside.” the owner told Billboard magazine in November 1984.
The club was state-of-the-art for its day, with almost three dozen television sets, an immense library of 3/4th inch VHS cassettes and the technology to make “beat-for-beat transitions between videos, as well as wipes, fades and full mix effects for the club’s six tape decks.” New York Magazine listed it among their ‘environment clubs‘ of 1984, “like a department-store television section, except at Private Eyes you can have a beer and you can’t change the channel.”
In its opening months, Private Eyes scored a few appearances by music video’s biggest female star of the day — Madonna.
As a friend of owner Robert Shalom, Madge allegedly swore by the club, sometimes popping in after a day of recording her album Like A Virgin over at the Power Station studios on W. 53th Street*. “I don’t have MTV,” she remarked. “I do see videos, I go to Private Eyes.” Her record label hosted a party in celebration of her new album, released in November that year. Several months later, Madonna was photographed at the club with her rowdy companion Sean Penn on their first date.
Below: Madonna, inside Private Eyes with Grace Jones, sometime in 1984, perhaps both having difficulty watching music videos with sunglasses on
The strict notion of a ‘video club’ in New York faded when it became cheaper for smaller clubs to install multiple screens and access video material. And, of course, as more common clubs joined the video revolution, the swankier ones eschewed it. Dance clubs that did opt for visual entertainment embraced ambient sets of computer animation by the early 90s, often leaving standard music videos for MTV and other cable networks. (Eventually even MTV left music videos.)
Private Eyes morphed with the times, eventually becoming the Sound Factory Bar in the 1990s, a spin off of sorts to the renown but troubled all-hours club on W. 27th Street, in the shadow of the West Chelsea’s elevated tracks. It refreshed its image a few years later under the name Cheetah.
Madonna, who had starred in five music videos by the time she first stepped foot in Private Eyes in the summer of ’84, has gone on to make a total of sixty-nine of them, including one that was just released this week.
*The year before, Bruce Springsteen recorded portions of ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ in the same studios.
Top picture courtesy Life Google images. Second image courtesy Madonna Scrapbook
Here’s a sampling of female entertainers from the last one hundred years, focusing on one particular venue that figures into shaping that person’s professional career. Obviously, most of these women performed in dozens of places throughout the city. I’m just focusing on location pivotal to their beginnings.
Billie Holiday in a jam session, 1943 (Gjon Mili, courtesy Google Life)
Most of these places are long gone, but you can still visit a couple of them (namely the Bottom Line, The Apollo, and St. Mark’s.)
Sophie Tucker1918 Reisenweber’s Cafe
58th Street and 8th Avenue
One of New York’s true “red hot” ladies of nightlife, Tucker got her start in the Ziegfeld Follies and developed her sassy schtick in vaudeville. The bawdier contours of her act she picked up on the nightclub circuit, cemented in her appearances at Reisenweber’s Cafe. [Read more in my prior article on Reisenweber’s.]
Ethel Waters 1919 Edmonds Cellar
130th Street
Although she would later be associated with gospel music, Waters’ debut at this dank piano bar brought out the bawdy in this future star, learning to incorporate her natural bluesy with popular standards. The combination, mixed with a sass honed in front of drunken, rowdy clientele, would make Waters (at right) one of the biggest black stars of the Harlem Renaissance.
Josephine Baker 1923Â Plantation Club
126th St and Lenox Ave
That ambitious little showgirl from St. Louis came to New York as a chorus girl in a traveling show and stayed to wow the crowds of Broadway and Harlem, in particular at the Plantation Club, a sleek competitor of the mafia-run Cotton Club. French producers, catching Baker stealing one of her shows at the Plantation, invited her to Paris. And the rest is burlesque history.
Bessie Smith 1923
The Nest
169 West 133rd Street
Bessie (at left) was not the glamorous kind; her dark bluesy performances tended burrow into your soul. Her 1923 performances at the new Harlem club The Nest marked a turning point for her career; she got her Columbia recording contract that year and began a successful run of Broadway and vaudeville performances, until alcoholism and a tragic car accident cut short her career in the 1930s.
Billie Holiday 1933
Covan’s
West 132nd St
You would need a really large map to chart out all the places Billie sang. The moment Elinore Harris left the workhouse (thrown there after a prostitution conviction) and changed her name to Billie Holiday, she worked stages both in Harlem and in Greenwich Village. It was at Covan’s nightclub that a Columbia Records producer heard her. “The way she sang around a melody, her uncanny harmonic sense and her sense of lyric content were almost unbelievable in a girl of 17.†Within a year, Lady Day would make her first recording with Columbia.
Lena Horne 1933
The Cotton Club
142nd St and Lenox Ave
It was the most famous club in Harlem; she was a lovely young 16 year old girl with barely any experience. As the Cotton Club’s youngest chorus girl, Horne (at right) grew up fast, absorbing the presence of the marquee stars, befriending band leaders, and learning the hard knocks of a color segregated entertainment industry — experience she would take with her to Hollywood years later.
Ella Fitzgerald 1935
Savoy Ballroom
140th St. and Lenox Ave
In New York in the 1930s, the best place to hear swing was the Savoy Ballroom, and the best person to hear sing the swing was a young singer who had just been discovered at the Apollo Theater a few months before. The amateur singer was invited to join Chick Webb’s orchestra for a residency at the hoppin’ ballroom, and as dancers jived, a legend was born on stage.
The Andrews Sisters 1937
The Terrace Room @ Hotel New Yorker
481 Eighth Avenue
Years before a war would turn them harmonies into anthemic radio hits, the cornbread sister trio hoped their March 1937 breakout performance at the Terrace Room in the Hotel New Yorker would make them stars. Although the hotel management would find them bland, record executives didn’t. Within the month, they were making music for RCA Victor.
Betty Hutton 1938
Casa Manana 753 Seventh Avenue (at 50th Street)
A scrappy, gangly Midwestern girl who cut her teeth singing in speakeasies and at lake resorts, Hutton was discovered by bandleader Vincent Lopez and taken to New York, where she was given a rare opportunity — to perform in a nightclub owned by impresario Billy Rose. And did she run with it. New Yorkers loved her wacky, electric style, and within a year, she was a scene-stealing co-star in an Ethyl Merman musical.
Pearl Bailey 1944
The Blue Angel 152 East 52nd Street
The choir-trained Virginian songstress had made her rounds on the big band scene — and even toured with the USO during the war — when she took a two-week gig at the swank east-side nightclub the Blue Angel. Her warm, belting voice and stage presence electrified New Yorkers; her two-month stint turned into eight-months, and awaiting her on the other side were a recording contract with Columbia Records and roles on Broadway and in motion pictures.
Nina Simone 1960
The Village Gate 158 Bleecker Street
Simone was already an accomplished musician by the early 1960s, Julliard trained, performing in cabarets of Atlantic City and even scoring a recording contract. But her distinctive sound, the gravity and intensity of her beliefs, would only manifest themselves musically in New York lounges like the Village Gate, one of the few clubs she would enjoy returning to. One live recording from her appearances there became one of her greatest albums, released in 1962. Fun fact — her opening act that night was a new comedian Richard Pryor.
BELOW: “If He Changed My Name” from Nina’s Village Gate release
Barbra Streisand 1960
The Lion 62 West Ninth Street
She had barely left her parents home in Brooklyn when young Barbra Joan Streisand turned to singing as a way to become a star. Her New York debut was at a quiet, mafia-run gay club called The Lion, who had a weekly talent show. Barbra, needing the money, entered with the song ‘A Singing Bee’, and won the prize money. She stayed at the Lion for weeks afterwards, fostering her very first gay fanbase.
Ronnie Spector 1961
Peppermint Lounge 128 West 45th Street
Phil Spector might have transformed (and later married) Spanish Harlem resident Ronnie Bennett, but he did not make her a star. Two years before meeting him, Ronnie, her sister Estelle and cousin Nedra were hired as dancers at the crowded new rock club the Peppermint Lounge. One day they were mistaken for the main act, and so the trio just went with it, performing a Ray Charles cover and winning over the audience. [Read more about the Peppermint Lounge here.]Joni Mitchell 1967
Cafe Au Go Go 152 Bleecker Street
The coffeehouses of Greenwich Village launched their share of careers in the 1960s. Mitchell was a seasoned performer from the folk scenes in Toronto and Detroit when she arrived in New York and played regular performances at the Cafe Au Go Go, a cramped basement space best known as the place comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested on obscenity charges. Opening for Richie Havens one October, Mitchell met her future manager Eliot Roberts here. Within six months, she would release her first album, Songs To A Seagull.
Bette Midler 1970
Continental Baths, Ansonia Hotel 2109 Broadway
It seems impossible to imagine — a gay bathhouse as performance venue. But this was the late ’60s/early ’70s, and everything’s possible! Bette had arrived in New York five years previous and was just starring in her first Broadway show when she debuted an odd little cabaret act here at the Continental. With waterfall trickling in the background, Midler created her Divine Miss M persona here, wrapped in a towel. On occasion she even had a shy, betoweled Barry Manilow with her. (Bette wasn’t the only stars to stake out the Continental; Melba Moore, Patti Labelle, Nell Carter and the Pointer Sisters also tried out their acts here.
Patti Smith 1971
St. Marks-On-The-Bowery 131 East 10th Street
While Bette was in a bathhouse, Patti was at church. The career of New York’s pre-eminent 1970s rocker ignited at the rock venue CBGB’s. She and Robert Mapplethorpe would learn the ways of celebrity at Max’s Kansas City. But her first musical appearance was at a more unusual venue — the basement of St. Mark’s On The Bowery, counter-culture community center since the late 1960s. She was there as a poet, but with Lenny Kaye on guitar, she sheepishly sang a few numbers (even a cover of “Mack the Knife”) which kicked off her ascent into rock icon status.
Deborah Harry 1974
CBGBs 315 Bowery
She knew she was star material, but it just took her a couple tries to get it right. The former Max’s Kansas City waitress has already worked through one band, the Wind In The Willows, and tried out another one — the Stilletos, debuting at CBGB’s in May 1974. They folded, but a year later, she took lover and bandmate Chris Stein and formed Blondie. The band would build its reputation on the sturdy little CBGBs stage, easing it into the era of New Wave.
Madonna 1983
Danceteria 30 West 21st Street
She was going to be famous, no matter what. Her time to strike was one evening in 1982, when Danceteria’s flirty hat-check girl slipped her demo cassette “Everybody” to deejay Mark Kamins. A year later, now signed to Warner Bros., she would come back as a performer, and the Madonna identity — more than a mere vocalist — would strike its first pose. [Read more about Danceteria here]
BELOW: Madonna at Danceteria
Mary J Blige 1991
The Apollo Theater 253 W. 125th Street
No surprise that people get discovered at the Apollo; what impresses me is that people still use it as a springboard for fame, decades after it opened. Bronx resident Blige actually got signed to a label deal after being discovered at a White Plains shopping mall. But that deal went nowhere until she started showing up at the Apollo, singing backup to other performers. During those Apollo years, she survived bouts of alcoholism and depression which later fueled her confidence as R&B’s reigning diva. (Photo at left by Annie Leibowitz.)
Lady Gaga 2006
The Bitter End 147 Bleecker Street
Of all the performers to grace the legendary Bitter End stage during its almost 50-year history (Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Bruce Springsteen), odd that a woman who once went by the name of Stefani Germanotta would be among the lucky few to become superstars. The January 2006 performance might have been the pinnicle of the young singer-songwriter’s career “She was learning how to put on a show,†says Bitter End owner Kenny Gorka. “She learned to get people to listen.†[Daily News] But something about the downrock rock scene set her on a different path, one of complete re-invention. She went to Los Angeles, and came back Lady Gaga.
And you can dance: Madge performs Borderline at Danceteria Photograph by Charlene Martinez
FRIDAY NIGHT FEVERTo get you in the mood for the weekend, every other Friday we’ll be featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive warehouse clubs of the mid-1990s. Past entries can be found here.
Scrappy nineteen-year-old Michigan teen Madonna Louise Ciccone arrived in New York the same year as Studio 54 — 1977.
“It was the first time I’d ever taken a plane, the first time I’d ever gotten a taxi cab. I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I’d ever done,” she says (in a UK Mirror interview) with her usual reserve.
She dabbled in contemporary dance with Alvin Ailey, becames employed in a potentially lucrative career at Dunkin Donuts, filmed a provocative movie, and soon began dabbling in the nightclub circuit with the rock groups Breakfast Club and Emmy. She began making dance records of her own with help from her boyfriend Stephen Bray and by spring 1982 had herself a recording contract with Sire Records.
On her way to superstardom, she performed all over town during the early 1980s — the Roxy, the Pyramid, the Mudd Club — but perhaps no club in the city was more influential to her career than Danceteria. Although this staple of 80s New York nightlife moved all over town during its tenure, its most recognized location is the one which saw the birth of Madonna’s career — a four-story building at 30 West 21st Street (now a swank condo!).
“I met her at Danceteria when she was sitting on [a friend’s] lap. She was really, really foxy. She was really glamorous,” says Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.
She was also apparently such a fixture of the club that the resident DJ, Mark Kamins, even dated the singer. (That’s getting your foot in the door.) Says Kamins: “Madonna was a regular at Danceteria. She had great style and had to be the center of attraction. She always hung out in the booth, one day she gave me a demo to play.” That demo, for the song ‘Everybody’, eventually got her signed to a major label.
Below: Madonna debuts her future hit ‘Everybody’ on the stage at Danceteria
But Madonna was certainly not the only future music star to use the club to her advantage. Many started as routine employees. LL Cool J was the elevator operator, and members of the Beastie Boys were busboys. (Both LL and the Beasties are pictured below at the club, photo by Dorothy Low) Keith Haring worked at coat check, while both Karen Finley and Sade was briefly employed behind the bar.
Everybody — everybody hip— eventually showed up on the dance floor of Danceteria. The after-hours club originally opened in 1980 at West 39th Street, a project of club impressario Rudolf Pieper and promoter Jim Fouratt. “We put it together for $25,000. We rented everything,” Pieper said in a New York Magazine interview.
The club, dramatically put, was “a dreamworld of mysterious souls, sidelong glances, and the perfume of ruin.” (No, I didn’t write that, they did.) Its admission policy was reputedly tight and exclusionary, but not so elitist that a trendy and fashionable nobody couldn’t pass muster; only the most fabulous got to experience this stark, winding little club.
However problems with the law — the neighborhood, after all, the Tenderloin — forced the club to move. Several times it seems. In 1982, it eventually landed at the 21st Street location, adding John Argento as promoter. Believe it or not, Argento would later spin off Danceteria to another location — the Hamptons.
You never knew what you were getting on any random night. Russell Simmons hosted talent showcaseson some Wednesdays, while other days might feature more eclectic nights with Philip Glass or Diamandas Galas. Ann Magnuson might be hosting a barbeque, or you might stumble into a ‘rubber and leather’ party.
With new wave music as its soundtrack, Danceteria seemed to dip its toes in both the East Village art scene and the Studio 54-style celebrity, employing video installations (Kamins claims they were the first to employ videos) and go-go dancers to entertain the throngs of fashionistas, artists and wanna-bes.
Like so many buzzkills, Danceteria lost its lease at 21st Street and eventually closed in 1986. It appears that another Danceteria briefly opened in the 1990s, at 29 East 29th St. (between Madison and Park).
But while we have no more Danceterias — we hardly have any dancing at all — the club provided the world (and its most famous material ingenue) with a glamorous film moment: this scene from ‘Desperate Seeking Susan’
NOTE: I know I just touched on some of Danceteria’s greatest moments and its most fascinating characters. (I didn’t even mention Johnny Dynell, Anita Sarko, and Michael Alig!) Please add your memories below and if you have corrections to any information, I’d be grateful. With the type of press that Danceteria received in the early 80s, its difficult to seperate truth from the hyperbole!
Webster Hall, as beautifully worn and rough-hewn as it was during its heyday in the 1910s and 20s, disguises a very surprising past, a significant venue in the history of the labor movement, Greenwich Village bohemia, gay and lesbian life, and pop and rock music. Its ballroom has hosted the likes of Emma Goldman, Marcel Duchamp, Elvis Presley, Robert F Kennedy and Madonna. Listen in to find out how it got its reputation as ‘the devil’s playhouse’.
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Webster Hall in its first decade of the 20th century….
…and the first decade of the 21st century
Outside the club during a labor rally in the 1910s (pic courtesy Library of Congress
Dorothy Parker arrives at Webster Hall in 1938 with husband Alan Campbell
In its years as an RCA recording studio, Webster Hall saw most of the greats of pop, jazz, classical and Broadway making albums here.
As the Casa Galicia during the 1970s
Elvis, Madonna, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Jefferson Airplane, Run DMC, Prince, U2 — all the greats have performed at Webster Hall. And then there’s ….
To get you in the mood for the weekend, every Friday we’ll be celebrating ‘FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER’, featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive warehouse spaces of the mid-90s. Past entries can be found HERE.
Most New York nightclubs rarely see get past one dance craze before shuttering, their popularity passed to another disposable club. The Roxy, however, kept the mirrorball turning for over 25 years, bringing to light world famous deejays, breakdancing motion pictures, and its biggest claim to fame — roller-disco.
Roller-disco was disco dancing taken to the level of near-sport, tight pants and tube-tops whizzing by to the beat of Donna Summer. The Roxy was one of several roller-discos in late 70s New York, but Roxy was its finest — judging by its nickname ‘the Studio 54 of rollerdisco’ — and was destined to become the last one standing. Owner Steven Greenberg, who would later manage the storied Palladium, turned a 60-year-old warehouse into a hangar-sized fantasia for skaters. With very few other rooms to carry about in, all focus was on the massive floor, filled with people on wheels.
Roller-disco quickly waned, though most of the Roxy’s later history would feature at least one roller night, all the way up to the end. However during the 80s, the Roxy would be chiefly occupied by another dance craze — breakdancing.Â
One of the many deejays of this period was Afrika Bambaataa who brought the style and energy of his Zulu Nation into the club. Known for breaking hip hop into white venues and creating the electro-funk sound, Bambaataa remade the Roxy as a centerpiece to freeform early 80s hip hop culture. Go out and rent the pivotal breakdancing film ‘Beat Street’ to see a performance of Bambaataa’s in the Roxy.
The late 80s saw its bleakest phase with a name change and frequent violence from rowdy crowds. It was saved, like so many dance clubs in New York, by the gay community.
New owner Gene DiNino, having experimented unsuccessfully by renaming the Roxy as 1018 (the combination of its cross streets), brought in promoters Lee Chappell and David Leigh and deejay Larry Tee to debut a gay night on Saturdays, one which eventually lasted sixteen years and would help shape from its partygoers the ubiquitous ‘Chelsea boy’ type, an aesthetic of well groomed, tightly muscled bodies squeezed into simple, often nonexistent clothing.
According to ‘Dirty Sexy Money’ star Candis Cayne: “[In the early ’90s] I was a kitty girl selling cigarettes and candy. It was amazing! There were drag queens in flawless costumes they worked all week long, and everyone seemed happy. Roxy is one of those ‘firsts’ kind of clubs—people did things for the first time there.â€
The Roxy defined the modern dance music sound of big beats and wailing divas, woven into epic evenings of glittery debauchery. Party promoters such as John Blair and Marc Berkley would amp up the energy with lavish themed parties and deejays known the world over — Victor Calderone, Junior Vasquez, Peter Rauhofer. It was almost imperative for pop stars to sweep through for an ‘improptu’ performance — Beyonce, Cher, and Madonna singing (or syncing) just feet from hundred of frenzied, sweaty fans.
Lest anybody feel they still needed to strap on some roller-skates, never fear. The Roxy still hosted roller-disco one night a week. Skaters made their last pass under the disco ball the week of March 10, 2007. Like everything it seems these days, the Roxy will be turned into luxury condominiums, following the fates of the Tunnel, the Palladium and many other popular 80s and 90s dance spaces.
