Nicky Siano Interview: Disco's dignitary

Images: Nicky Siano

Nicky Siano is one of New York’s more outspoken disco heroes. His club, The Gallery, first opened in the city in 1973 then reopened in 1974, enjoying a golden run until 1977, during which time it saw debut performances from Grace Jones and Loleatta Holloway.

Icons of the scene such as Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan worked there, carefully observing Siano’s prowess behind the decks, and high profile designers including Calvin Klein were regulars at the hedonistic weekly parties beyond the door.

Like many throughout his scene, Siano has endured his fair share of battles with both drink and drugs. Having founded the hugely influential Gallery at just eighteen years old, the tragic and city altering AIDS epidemic saw Siano retire from DJing at a surprisingly young age.

He trained as a HIV counsellor, and eventually wrote No Time To Wait, a widely praised and influential book on dealing with the disease. Eventually returning to DJing in 1997, his killer record collection still intact, Siano’s recent parties at The El Dorado Auto Scooter, a dodgems track with a world renowned sound system, continue to capture the heady vibe of disco’s underground peak.

Although he’s no stranger to victory laps and comebacks, Siano’s upcoming UK gigs - he heads to Manchester's Deaf Institute on Friday 30th October with a return to Liverpool's People's Balearic Disco on Friday November 7th (see ticket box) - could well be his last in the UK. We caught up with him to talk technicals, meditation and overcoming creative tension.

You are arguably one of the absolute pioneers of beat-matching and blending records together perfectly (watch above). How did the technique come about?

It was a thing called ‘the blend’ when I first started playing, and that was all timing. Getting the next record to just come in from the top, but it was all about timing, and I got pretty good at that. The whole thing about holding the record, that’s where I started experimenting, holding it gingerly on the belt drive. 

Were you working on the technique alone, or with your contemporaries?

There were a bunch of people in this pool who pushed it forward. I was the most visible at the time, so I get a lot of credit for it, but it was more like a pool of people who were doing it and made it happen. I’d say Richie Kaczor, myself, and Bobby DJ.

We would see each other, and back then, DJs went out to the club every night. You were constantly looking for new product, and if you didn’t go out, you wouldn’t hear anything. We were constantly trading information, you know? Did you hear this one, etcetera? But before that happened and before you knew that person, you’d have to be in the club.

So trading tips was the preliminary Discogs?

It was all as manual as you could get. Walking legs! And a dollar for the box on the corner.

Was there a strong sense of community?

It was a great sense of community. Those first ten DJs - the likes of Michael Capello, Larry, Frankie, Richie Kazar. I mean, we went on vacation together. We’d meet at 4AM every morning after playing clubs at the same cafe, David’s Potbelly, down the Village, to have breakfast together.

It was really a community. And it was constant sharing. David Rodriguez and Michael Capella both lived downstairs from me, and Larry lived with me for a very long time. It was really a tight knit community.

It’s a well worn tale, but can you reflect on the acid in the punch prevalent on the New York scene, most infamously at the Paradise Garage?

It wasn't that which made it happen. People were going out every night without that element. People were addicted. Nobody had heard any music like this, nobody had freestyled like that before, nobody had done the hustle. It was just masses of people, wanting to dance.

It was the gay guys first of all, and they were bringing their girlfriends, and they loved to dance. And they were forcing the boyfriends to come along because they wanted to go out, and they didn’t want to go out, believe me. But they went, because the pussy was there, baby!

You founded The Gallery (above) when you were 18 years old, which is an amazing achievement at that age, to have that kind of vision and make it a reality. You come from a Broadway background, but where did that level of vision come from?

I have no fucking idea! I met a girl called Robyn when I was in high school and she was my confidence. She was my believer. She believed in me, in my talent, and she helped me at every turn. I had the ideas, and she had the means. It was a perfect storm. I doubt it would have happened without her.

Did she continue to work with you throughout your career, and on the second incarnation of The Gallery?

She was there from the start. My brother was a 50% partner, and she and I were 25% shareholders. When The Gallery was at its first height, she wanted out, and we broke up as partners, and she felt she couldn’t be around me.

All this drama that kids go through. She disappeared for a while, and she got over herself, and I got over myself, and we became really good friends again.

You had Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles working at The Gallery for a time. Were you aware of their ambition to play records?

No, they had no interest in playing records, they wanted to be designers. And that’s why The Gallery was such a fashion industry watering hole. They told everyone who went to F.I.T where they were going, and to go there. So that’s why you’d see Calvin Klein walking in, or Steven Burrows, it was overwhelming.

Did the crowd tend to debut new styles at The Gallery?

It was uncanny. Larry had designed this cap sleeve shirt, like a short sleeve, but rolled up for you. He had that sewed up and wore it around The Gallery. About eight weeks after he started that, Capezio had a whole rack of these shirts, and in six month, Calvin had it in Bloomingdales.

The models that used to come! We had a girl in a mini-mini-mini skirt and when she raised her arms, you could see her name embroidered on her underwear. 

How influential was The Loft and David Mancuso on your scene at the time? The Gallery was surely influenced by what was happening at The Loft.

I was, but David never mixed, he never did and he never will. He used to try it, but he just gave up completely. As far as sound goes, he was an innovator, but so was I. As far as records go, David was light years behind everyone else.

If he didn’t get a record from someone, he didn’t have it, but as he was looked at as a Godfather, people brought him stuff. I certainly did. Whereas we’d be out every night, we’d see him once every six months.

So as much respect as you had for him, was their a sort of youthful competitiveness amongst you that you wanted to push things forward?

I looked at it like Broadway. I grew up in the Broadway theatres, and I would be into the lighting, lighting changes and the sound, and that’s how I saw each song, as a lighting and sound performance for the dancers. David was more like, whatever happens, it was meant to be, and it’ll just happen.

So, I was a control freak, and he is a control freak too, but he lets go a lot when he plays. He doesn’t change the EQs. He used to! Most people don’t remember the first Loft, 647 Broadway, and when he moved from there, he stopped playing with the tweeters, and everything became secondary to the system. 

How did the club evolve to maintain that freedom of creativity? What did you implement to keep it fresh and evolving?

The opening of the second Gallery, in 1974, it was like the opening of Studio 54. It was futuristic. Track lighting was not in. People had never seen it before we put it together.

Every club that came after took elements of my club. It was the premier place of it’s time. It didn’t last long, as far as being the premier place, but when it opened, it was the template that everyone took. It was a really great design, simple, inexpensive but effective beyond anything else.

Paradise Garage and Studio 54 were very different clubs when the opened, but they had in common the influence of yourself. Did you ultimately take that as a compliment?

I was so supportive of what both Larry and Stevie were doing. I lived with Larry, I would have done anything for Larry. My club kept evolving. When we opened it was white, then I painted it black. We would change the design and artwork every week, and the lighting. We always had to change something and make it different.

And because we were dealing with the same people every week, we wanted to make them say, “Wow.” We opened the basement as a lounge. All my ideas! But we would fight every step of the way. I’d wind up bringing my friends in at night and doing it myself, and then they’d say, “Yeah, that really does look good.” And then I’d come back and they’d thrown an American flag over it, and they thought that looked good.

It sounds like you endured a lot of creative tension. Do you look back on that era fondly? And do you think you’re a good collaborator?

Oh, very fondly. And you know, it made me who I am today. The parties that I give today are so far better than anyone else’s things, and it shows. I think I’m a good collaborator. I’m working with Nick Hook now, on a new record.

And I’m working with two guys on a script for a TV show I want to do, and that went really easy and well. I have a kind of turn off switch when people start to repeat themselves, or when they talk and talk and talk and do nothing. The action has to match the quality of the speech you’re giving me. So, those two things aside, I’m good.

After that, when disco hit it’s commercial peak, I know that you had some issues with the term ‘disco’ itself, as did many others. Can you elaborate on that?

My thing with the word, is that it was invented to can it, wrap it up and sell it. They named it, and created a new Billboard chart. Bill Wardlow, who was the guy who did a lot of this shit that I sort of speak out against, was homogenising it to sell easier.

And Studio 54 reached a bigger, more exclusive and arguably less diverse audience than what you had seen at The Gallery or The Loft. You had a short but memorable stint DJing there, including playing records when Bianca Jagger famously arrived in the club on a white horse. Did you expect it to become something different when it began, than what it eventually became?

Yes, way different. I expected a similar thing to how The Enchanted Gardens was, which was the first club I played for Steve Rubell at. And that was about the music, and the DJ, the usual. But Studio 54 was about the club, the drugs, who was being photographed, and that’s kind of what threw me. 

Did you feel that there was still a good scene for you and your crowd alongside that?

The whole scene was becoming homogenised, becoming what it is today, which is nothing. Grace Jones talks about it in her book. Nobody’s new, they’re just recycling old stuff. Nobody’s doing something original. And we did things that were original.

It’s not because the ideas aren’t there, it’s because the money people are thinking they’re the idea people. Instead of hiring the idea people, and putting them in control. 

How have the records you’ve been producing with Nick Hook been turning out, what can we expect?

Oh my god, so great. Unreal. He’s the only guy I hear using live drums that sound like a live drummer, or sound original. He doesn’t use loops. Everything is him, he’s creating all the wild stuff you hear.

You famously collaborated with Arthur Russel earlier in his career (listen to the track above). You seem to have a distaste for the kind of mechanised sound of dance music, drum machines and so on. Did you feel no affinity with the sounds coming out of Chicago and Detroit as the eighties progressed?

Let me put that into perspective. That was the first time drum machines were being used, and the elements and the way they were being put together was very interesting to me.

But when it comes down to 2016 and you’re still hearing one or two loops in a whole song without any fills or any kind of thing to motivate the dancefloors, to change from chorus to verse, from verse to break, then we’ve got a problem. And EDM, or whatever the fuck it is, it’s like one sound the whole fucking song. It’s unbelievable that anybody could find that interesting.

On the live recordings from The Gallery you’ve recently released (listen to one below), I enjoyed the looseness of the recording, the way it blends but records will slip in and out the mix slightly and so on.

Yes, it’s perfect in it’s imperfections, that’s what I’m saying too. And the whole thing is that we’ve gotten away from that human element, and music has become disposable. It’s terrible!

During and in the wake of the AIDS epidemic in New York, you essentially retired from DJing. You trained as a social worker and even wrote a book from the perspective of a licensed HIV counsellor. When you returned to DJing in 1997, did you approach things differently, and how had your perspective changed?

I kept what made me who I am, but now I understand it. I thought that magic came into the place with the right combination of drugs. But no, it’s me, stepping out of my own way. I learned to meditate in those years. And that’s really the core of what I do. I step out of my own way to let creativity come through.

I was in therapy back then, and the therapist told me I should understand this ‘magic’ I’m talking about. And now I understand that it’s God, or a higher power, or that energy in the room. That’s what playing records is about. Tapping into the room, and stepping out of the way, and not letting ego play the records, but letting inspiration take over.

What was it like seeking therapy in the seventies, especially as a part of that scene? Did your therapist understand what you were a part of?

I had a brilliant therapist, an older woman who helped me come to terms with being gay. And then I stopped therapy for a very long time, but got back into it very heavily when I got sober in 1984. I then stayed in therapy all the way through until 1996 or 1997, and still go once in awhile.

It’s as good as the therapist. The difference between now and then is that the people into it back then, were into it to help people. If they wanted to help you, they’d bend every rule in the book, in regards to lowering the price, but I don’t feel that now at all. But it does change your life, if you’re open to it.

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