The Night They Drove Old Disco Down

by Jack R. Johnson 06.2023

Time magazine once described the music as a "diabolical thump-and-shriek," but in the late 1970s disco dominated the American music scene. After the success of Saturday Night Fever featuring the music of the Bee Gees, U.S. radio stations began to adjust their formats from all rock to disco. In the process, a Chicago DJ named Steve Dahl was fired on Christmas eve, 1978. He did not handle this event well.

According to Andy Behrens of ESPN, Dahl was hired by rival album-rock station WLUP. Dahl and his broadcast partner Garry Meier organized their listeners around a simple and surprisingly powerful idea: ‘Disco Sucks’".

The spurned Chicago DJ was not the only one promoting the anti-disco fervor. In Seattle, hundreds of rock fans attacked a mobile dance floor, while in Portland, Oregon, a disc jockey destroyed a stack of disco records with a chainsaw as thousands cheered. 

Dahl had something similar in mind for Chicago. He intended to blow up a crate of disco records while live on the air from a shopping mall. When Mike Veeck, the White Sox promotional director and son of the owner, Bill Veeck, heard of this, he liked the idea. They asked Dahl if he would be interested in blowing up records at Comiskey Park on July 12 in between games at a double header against the Tigers.  Dahl eagerly agreed. 

To promote the event, they announced that anyone who brought a disco record to the ballpark would be admitted for just 98 cents. 

The anti-disco sentiment (and probably price) turned out to be a real crowd pleaser. Over 50,000 people crowded into Comiskey stadium (it has an estimated sitting capacity of about 45,000) As the first game began, Mike Veeck received word that thousands of people were trying to get into the park without tickets and sent his security personnel to the stadium gates to stop them. Fans began throwing the uncollected disco LPs and singles from the stands. Records sliced through the air, landed sticking out of the playing field. Coaches urged players to wear batting helmets when playing their positions. Said one player, "It wasn't just one, it was many [records]. Oh, God almighty, I've never seen anything so dangerous in my life." 

Attendees also threw firecrackers, empty liquor bottles, and lighters onto the field. The game was stopped several times because of the rain of projectiles. After the first game ended, Dahl, dressed in army fatigues and a helmet, circled the field in a jeep, then proceeded to center field where the box containing the records awaited, rigged with explosives. Dahl and Meier warmed up the crowd, leading attendees in a chant of "disco sucks." On the mound, White Sox pitcher Ken Kravec, scheduled to start the second game, began to warm up. Other White Sox players stayed in the dugout and wore batting helmets for protection.

At around 9 pm, Dahl set off the explosives, destroying the records and tearing a large hole in the outfield grass. Soon, some 7,000 attendees rushed onto the field. Kravec fled the pitcher’s mound and joined his teammates in a barricaded clubhouse. The Chicago Tribune reported that rioters climbed the foul poles, while 

Others set records on fire or ripped up the grass. The batting cage was destroyed, and the bases were pulled up and stolen. White Sox owner Bill Veeck showed up and stood with a microphone near where home plate had been, begging people to return to the stands while a bonfire raged in center field.

The scoreboard flashed "PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR SEATS," to no avail. Attendees danced in circles around the burning vinyl shards like some weird festivity from “Lord of the Flies”. Only after the Chicago police arrived in riot gear, did the crowd calm down.  Thirty-nine people were arrested for disorderly conduct; estimates of injuries to those at the event range from none to over thirty.

Tigers manager Sparky Anderson refused to allow his players to take the field for the second game due to safety concerns. He also demanded that the game be forfeited to the Tigers. He argued that under baseball's rules, a game can only be postponed due to an act of God, and that the Disco Demolition riot was “no act of God” The commissioner agreed that the White Sox had failed to provide acceptable playing conditions—and the game was forfeited.

The “Disco Riot” was a turning point of sorts. Disco music began to fade from popularity shortly thereafter. Radio stations that had switched to disco switched back to rock. The Grammy awards canceled their best-disco-recording category after only one year.  In the second half of 1979, only one disco single – Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” – made U.S. No 1, for a solitary week.

In retrospect, however, there may have been a bit more to the riot than simple hatred of a musical genre. According to the Guardian, in 2019, when the White Sox commemorated Disco Demolition’s anniversary, it attracted widespread criticism, suggesting  “that there was something distinctly ugly about the vast crowd of white men publicly destroying music predominantly made by black artists, dominated by female stars and with a core audience that was, at least initially, largely gay.”

But Steve Dahl remained defiant. In his book, “Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died”, Dahl wrote,  “I’m worn out from defending myself as a racist homophobe. The event was not anti-racist, not anti-gay … we were just kids pissing on a musical genre.” 

Yet, as Alice Echols, author of “Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture”, noted in The Guardian, “There’s a weird correlation between the way Dahl has defended Disco Demolition – standing up for the ‘rock’n’roll lifestyle’ of straight white men in the face of disco’s dominance – and the language of the alt-right, where Milo Yiannopoulos claims that those taking part in a ‘straight pride’ parade represent “America’s most brutally repressed identity.” 

“It’s fascinating that this has happened now [2019],” said Echols. “It does sound very much in line with politics over here. It’s very … Trumpist.”