How House Music Was Born (Music Documentary)

let's see if we can find some good old-fashioned house music [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] like crowd of people you throw a rock you're gonna hit five DJs in Chicago I felt that we could take this music and make it into thumpin thing really did move the boundaries because we didn't know where the boundaries work we barely knew what we were doing and that was the genius of it I don't think we thought about the fact that it was a movement he just me with you on or something I obviously started right from the get

[Music] was nothing that to do combining as that old Paul McCartney song everybody recognizes it behind ring of the bed do me a favor [Music] there's my message and let the people and baby it's 1970 and I have been going out dancing a little bit and collecting records [Music] and I'm at a party at my brother's house and it's the most boring party snoresville USA everyone's falling asleep I put on you're the one or something like that and this girl comes out of the bedroom and says hi I'm Dale I'm dating your brother you like

his music I'm gonna take you to a fabulous party 6:47 Broadway I'll never forget it David Mancuso's lost we go in this little hallway open the door and I move on to this dance floor and as the record is playing it comes to a peak and these bright lights go on and then everything goes off and all I hear is this sound this perfect sense I knew in my soul in my heart in all my body that that music was moving me to my core and I knew it was going to move a lot a

lot and that was for me the beginning of dance music the music is just a reflection of the culture it's a microcosm of what's actually happening out in the world people started to ask for their voices to be heard the women's movement the gay movement like power movement all these things started to cross pollinate each other and we became comrades and it played itself out in nightclubs the loss made you feel welcome regardless of where you were coming from if you were gay straight black white Puerto Ricans it was the precursor the template for those

clubs that would follow when the gallery opens everybody showed up there we went from having 80 to a hundred people to having 600 an overnight success needs more staff more food more everything I hired Frankie Knuckles and he said to me I had this friend his name is Larry Levan I'd like to bring him and I said we need two people on balloons fine I trust you judging at 12 months Larry started playing at the Continental best and Frankie worked his life Larry took all the influences that he had David at the loft me at

the gallery and he was a great teacher right out of the box and then six or eight months later Frankie took over the Larry at the band he sounded and played just like Larry Flynt he didn't really have an identity as a DJ when he was in New York [Music] 2:06 tough differences in house the warehouse with the great Frankie Knuckles three levels of pure partying it's like a landmark in my mind [Music] Chicago's there and the people who was never introduced to an after-hours sing like flock the New York so I launched the we're

out it was a private gay club to opened up at 12:00 midnight we close they're like 8:00 in the morning something like that the people in Chicago had never heard a sound system like that people were losing their mind initiative I didn't have a DJ so I had to go back to New York and ask learn the band a couple others a mountain delay and they told me no but in New York Frankie Knuckles was in the shadows of layer of the band so he was not going to go anywhere there and when he saw

the place it was like yeah this is cool for club this area this is a coat room right here this area right here where that guy's office is where you used to be my office all of this was open okay hello sir how are you this used to be a dance club the old building you know in the 70s where you went down to the dance oh thank you please right here and here all the way back here with the DJ booth during the disco era it was the worst financial time in America since the

Great Depression we had a very very horrible recession culturally in America things were pretty bad every record company had their versions of this color and this is up this is a night like you know tasteful one disco single okay disco single and the Atlantic one covered half of the dance disco single people would go in the store and unplayed unlisted on O the record hundred thousand copies would sell just because it said this on it they started putting this banner on every piece of [ __ ] they wanted to sell and after two years of

that this became really a bad taste in people's mouth [Music] it was build with teen night at Comiskey Park for the Twilight doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tiger the feature attraction with a disco demolition between games local radio morning man Steve Dahl was the catalyst he is anti disco between games Dahl was finished by blowing up a box full of disco records which the fans were to bring with them to the ballpark but some seven to ten thousand fans poured onto the field setting bonfires and burning more disco records by the

time Chicago police were able to clear the field the damage had been done I was not sure taking people to their Steven ball games while saving up money for my first synthesizer Steve Dahl was on the radio saying that disco sucked he was frustrated because he had been fired from da I because they're changed from the rock format to a disco format I was on the ground at the front gate and all of the records that were piling up at the gate weren't necessarily disco records most of them were just black records the message was

well if you're black or you're gay then you're not one of us you're not truly a Chicagoan we didn't think that it was real we just thought that people were having fun but it played out in our lives in a very dramatic way all the sudden there was sort of a them and us and I think that us was strong because we went further on the ground we went deeper remember first time I saw you was at the warehouse what you had on this path of the skirt maybe a pink top oh my god do

you remember that heck no I went to the warehouse when I was 15 years old there was this place on 63rd and we saw always going right to get a phony Illinois State ID or you could just take somebody's random birth certificate that was 16 years old my first time going to the warehouse I've heard all kinds of rumors and things about you know being a gay club once you got into the music none of that even mattered anymore but the warehouse was a members-only crazy they want people to go there and not bring any

of that outside [ __ ] in you know no homophobia no sexism towards women down system at the warehouse was designed by Richard law one of the best sound designers in the world you can go in the warehouse and you can experience music you can literally fit their hire not because of the musical making hi I've stumbled into the warehouse by word of mouth it wasn't like oh oh that's music and I'm going to go dance to that it was like what is this never experienced anything like this in my life [Music] house music at

that time it was anything that Frankie Knuckles would play at the warehouse which was the coolest underground dance music some groups you wouldn't hear anywhere else except anywhere out here what you know what you were crazy like I only Harry Rex on here you'd have Europe in Philadelphia New York all playing on the same dance no matter what style of music was a definitive the same it works so you heard all found textures [Music] [Music] some directors were too short so Frankie would mess with them and have two copies and make them longer and also

like play the breakdowns wives or play the best part a couple of times we'll give the shitty part I mean I almost couldn't quite figure out if there were songs at one time and sometimes it was just like this sir soundscape [Music] one of the founders explained he would do would be this train it gets louder and louder and louder until it comes by we like a revelation he didn't just mix a couple of Records he brought in a whole new style of music back Franklin give out these tapes of its mixing expect we go

around a thousand degrees because people would make copy the copies of copies of copies you hear a Frankie Knuckles remix and you know as Frankie Knuckles best style of DJ's spread throughout the city because your own taste didn't have to be places to party because of the gang problem so we would prefer to sit at home between house parties and listen Frankie tapes the city had said the grounds no longer safe like in my cave in so you better stop and Frankie was like oh it's good chance for me to become a club owner so

that's when he opened up the club the power plant I didn't have a DJ so I approached trying hurry I got a new club for you the misery box when I first went to the music box I was about 16 and when I went I heard music playing like walking up the closer I got the heart is felt like I've never heard anything like that and I got their life blonde hottie was just like all night all night to get Ron Hardy at the music box would play anything at any time anywhere any kind of

way he was spinning backwards we would retching needle across the record I love mrs. Robbie because he's everything she's going to get his actual style came out of him being a heroin addict because he thought the music was a little slow so he pitched it up [Music] so as I remember the music box it was in the lower Wacker Drive area an area that was loading dogs it always looked the same time he's lifted for me his almost green as I remember it felt like you were into a sci-fi movie went in there pitch-black one

cheesy color lightbulb couldn't see nothing in it there were no seats no chairs just a big dance floor music was so loud they do a force to dance to it when I think back to the early days listening to Ron Hardy playlist in the Frankie play my thrill was really the way that they were directing the crowd you can move him higher just higher and just bringing them into them and just crazy frenzies it was a good period of time where I was just going over different people's houses and learning how to DJ basically until

I got my own equipment then I was in hydration for eight hours a day I'd be o'clock in the morning my mom when he talked I told myself out it's bad timing with records in Reverse and making feeling be out of phase to record together when I first started DJing I had to bring my home phone for the wings to have sternal questions like against each other and junk you know back then we had to buy two copies of every record that's how you did tricks back in the day you know cut wanted to good

that's how that was our equivalent of sampling that stuff if we had a new record then nobody else knew about we take a magic marker and we black out the whole label so if some other DJ came home and say hey what's that your plan they have no idea and we proceeded to get out there and just DJ every high school party you can imagine every sweet 16 every anything a lot of schools in the late seventies early eighties with throw dances to raise money for school activities Mendo was all Catholic boys school they found

quite a business in high school dances people would come from all over the city to go to these parties back then I was doing promotions myself and I bought Frankie Knuckles cementum I made $10,000 in high school I never forget it too because I had a Louie Vuitton briefcase and I had all the money in the briefcase his party's kind of bridged that gap and kind of made the connection with the underground gay discos and these middle-class black days on the council that was the perfect storm for what was to become house music yes record

your love was like the handsome for years everybody wanted a copy of what we were making cassette so somebody got lucky enough to get a real real and they made cassettes and I actually pressed one up I paid like $50 a universal to make an acetate oh but that's how big that record car blastin going down Rush Street oh yeah everybody's car doors windows down laughter we know what it was kind of the catalyst for the beginning of this whole thing everyone has a different opinion of warehouse came from and who started it back around

84 it started to mold into a particular sound started to be a particular pattern the tubes started hearing I mean they got labeled as Houseman Jamie principal he was a guy from Chicago led some music in his ears and put it down tape and then somehow Frankie got a hold of it and started playing it [Music] it became a cassette tape that was passed around because Frankie played at the warehouse everybody heard it there Jamie principal your love was huge in society must have been 2,000 copies of that tape and we would all fit in

our houses or listen to him [Music] thank you [Music] I thought it was European I didn't know he was a brother from Chicago one of those things that when you hear it you knew something special about happy didn't regret this I am free okay here we go this is this is a test pressing of on and on the Jesse Saunders in no eternal fear classic and then you see it's probably it's probably brand new I had become pretty popular with music vents Lawrence started coming around and brought me his record I think I was 17

years old I had put together my group of friends three-factor and we have written her personal fast cards I wanted to keep him around to kind of pick his brain because I had ideas to make a record at the time I played this bootleg mash-up with Donna Summer Tsun Tsun kb3 period it had the horn from the funky town it has took the mesmerising group that I thought they would be perfect to be kind of a signature company but somebody stole my liquor and that was one of them and it pissed me off so much

that I decided that I was going to make my own version so Vince Lawrence and I are in my bedroom which at the time was our studio that had my four-track recorder my poly 61 and an 808 roller said that said 808 was designed as a practice device but for us you know just at the beginning we just really wanted to make a record that would move people the way the best parts of the best songs move people at those parties [Music] I think I had 800 dollars to my name of the tire and that

Larry Sherman and Brenda prepping plant and said hey I want to get you know as many 12-inch records of this as I can get so we started pressing we learned the pressing process we'd be a plant back to myself to come up with just stick it with a storyteller it started snowballing so much that we had to come down here to this base of it and we formulated it like a picture I remember standing right here when they did the ABC TV news energy when I first told indict I wanted to be the next Motown

and very good just a record we went from store the store to store like a paper route and we might have sold 10 or 12,000 records that first week that's a [ __ ] are you we're the record business man I felt that we could take this music and make it into something big it didn't matter that on and all was a bootleg of a bootleg of a bootleg it was a record I don't think house would exist without owner only having been depressed before that I don't think any of us ever dreamed that we

could make a record I hope the entire city woke up and started making records everybody started doing [Music] just clap to the beat just late [Music]