David Mancuso of The Loft (Interview)
David Mancuso of the Loft speaks to Bernie about the people and the music that
is the Loft experience. A history of the New York Record Pool and high-end audio is also included.
Written By Bernard Lopez of DiscoMusic.com
An interview with New York Disco DJ and founder of the Loft, David Mancuso.
David
Mancuso at the Loft in 1975.
It should come as no surprise that great things can happen when groups of people are
brought together with the right music. Music promotes a sense of well being and radiates energy, which in turn is reinforced
by the group. This positive energy is then expended in the form of dancing and social interaction and gives life to a party
and its participants. While one may think that only adults can tap into this energy and well being nothing could be further
from the truth as evidenced by the following story.
Shortly after the end of World War II in a room in a Catholic orphanage twenty or so children up to the
age of six gather around a table waiting for Sister Alicia to start the festivities. She takes care of the children on a daily
basis and this is another of the many parties that the nun puts on for them. She's decorated the room with balloons and made
it look as cheerful as possible. In the center of the table she has a record player and a stack of records all set to go.
Despite the fact that some of the children are too young to even talk, the music is what brings them all together and gives
them great pleasure.
David Mancuso: "I had no real ambitions at this point... Just make friends, enjoy myself, and be responsible...
Basically, I didn't get into any trouble. My independence was very important to me."
One of those children is David Mancuso,
who years later would organize New York's longest running Disco parties known simply as "The Loft." David explains, "There
was one room where these childhood parties would be held-I didn't remember the room, but forty years later when I saw the
pictures of the room, they were geographically the same layout almost to the "T" of my Loft." he goes on to say that there
are a lot of associations with the past like the invitations he uses for the Loft parties, which depicts four children gathered
around a table with party hats, balloons and a record player.
New York Not New York City
David Mancuso was born in October of 1944 in the small New York town of Utica.
His first four years were spent in an orphanage and then he was reunited with his mother till he was fifteen and a half. Leaving
home and shinning shoes to support himself he quit school at sixteen to get more work to pay the rent.
Since he had no one telling him what he could and couldn't do, David was now free to do whatever he wanted.
One of the things he was told not to do was go to the "other side of the tracks." This is the area that the Blacks and Hispanics
lived in and Mancuso says, "I connected with some of them. It opened up a whole world for me and then I started finding out
about Black music-The Shirelles, James Brown... I fell in love with these records and also made some very close friends who
treated me very well. After school we would go to someone’s house and listen to music and dance. It's always about dancing
and music."
Asked if music was instrumental during his formative years Mancuso had this to say, "Music gave me a lot
of piece of mind since there was a lot in my environment that was not stable. Music is therapeutic; it raises your life energy...
If your life energy is raised then music is healing-what more can we want."
Since many of his friends were from the "other side of the tracks" we spoke briefly about the racial climate
in Utica during the late 1950's early 1960's and I asked Mancuso what his thoughts were. He replies, "I didn't agree with
the status quo of the environment that I was living in. I knew instinctively that it was wrong. I liked everybody."
New York City street scene.
The Move to New York City
During
the Labor Day weekend of 1962 David Mancuso and a friend took a trip to New York City. One of the first things that struck
David was the openness and diversity of the people. It was a refreshing change from the socially repressive town of Utica.
New York City was vibrant and the mixing of cultures and ideas appealed to him greatly. Mancuso says, "I immediately fell
in love with the city."
During that short weekend visit, he made some new friends. One of them offered him a place to stay until
he got on his feet. About six weeks later on the first day of his eighteenth birthday and during the height of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, David decided to move to New York City and take his new friend up on the offer.
He spent his first two months living in the Bronx. Able to find a menial job at a fast food place he soon
found his own apartment in Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Asked if he had any plans when he came to New York Mancuso said, "I just want to live and be happy. I was
happy to be able to pay my rent, to have my independence. This was like the best thing in the world for me. I had no real
ambitions at this point... Just make friends, enjoy myself, and be responsible... Basically, I didn't get into any trouble.
My independence was very important to me."
David Mancuso remained in the Upper West Side till around 1965 moving at least twenty times. It was during
this time that he began dabbling in interior decorating and later antiques through his many associations. Once he got into
antiques he focused on small silver goods and traveled extensively to and from Europe and did very well at it. He continued
in the antique field till around 1973.
The Broadway Loft and the Klipschorn’s
"(The Loft) It was basically a rent party. Private: by invitation only. It was NOT a club-not a membership-none
of that stuff."
Around 1965 Mancuso moved into his first loft at 647 Broadway near Bleecker Street. The loft space was
huge. Mancuso recalls it being roughly 25 feet by 100 feet with 14-foot high ceilings and a wooden floor. When asked what
attracted him to the loft space he had this to say, "I think it goes back to the orphanage… Somehow or another I always
identified with large spaces, old buildings…" David further explains that the neighborhood at the time was very desolate
compared to what it is now. After 6pm everyone would disappear since the neighborhood was comprised mainly of factories and
warehouses. Since the area was zoned for commercial use people were prohibited from actually residing in the lofts. What Mancuso
and others did was to hide their beds along with pots and pans from the prying eyes of the city’s building inspectors
who would show up unannounced.
One of David’s hobbies was tinkering with electronics and stereos, which gave way to his interest
in high-end audio. One of his friends was the late Richard Long the noted audio designer who would later create the sound
system for Larry Levan’s "Paradise Garage." Having a large loft space allowed Mancuso to purchase two pairs of Klipschorn
® loudspeakers in 1966-67. The three-way horn loaded speakers were huge units that needed to be placed in a corner and had
a frequency response of 33hz-17khz. The Klipschorn's ® are known for their efficiency and ability to play clearly at loud
levels. These were mated to a McIntosh amp and pre-amp and two AR (Acoustic Research) turntables.
The loft space and high-end audio equipment were perfect for a party and a party is exactly what Mancuso
had in mind. The gatherings and fun that he had with friends in his youth never left him and he soon was holding parties at
his loft on a regular basis. It was strictly fun, music and dancing for him and his group of friends. The parties continued
till around 1970 when economic constraints forced David Mancuso to scale back a bit and require his friends to "chip in."
At first the parties were held about twice a month. Within six months this was increased to every Saturday night with the
parties beginning at midnight and finishing at 6am.
In the beginning there was no mixer so Mancuso merely switched turntables by using the "phono 1" and
"phono 2" switch on the McIntosh preamplifier. Later he rigged two Shure phono preamps with a level control to fade between
them. This eventually gave way to a custom built mixer around 1973. Apparently long overlays were never part of the equation
as the mixer merely served as a means to segue from one record to the other or allow Mancuso to stitch together two copies
of the same song to create a longer version. In due time however, Mancuso realized that he and his guests weren’t hearing
the full potential of the vinyl record or stereo system. He explains, "Getting into high end audio I realized how much nuance
there was in the record and also that the record should stand on its own. I don’t want to interfere with what the artist
intended or the integrity of the recording cause that’s the artist’s message so I play the record from the beginning
to the very end. Occasionally if I had one of those ‘DJ friendly’ records where it starts off going boom-boom-boom
for thirty seconds or more I would time it to begin a little later… In order to get Class-A sound, you had to get rid
of the mixer. So what happens is you find a way to keep the flow going so there’s no space unless you intended it to
be that way." He continues by saying that he is not a beat mixer and doesn’t care for BPM’s and the like and NEVER
uses the pitch control.
David Mancuso's invite to the Loft parties.
When asked what kind of music
he played at the loft parties Mancuso simply responds, "Dance music Bernie, dance music. I would play everything from Jazz
to classical and everything in between." Mancuso made it a point to explain that he is not into categories and was and still
is open to all forms of music. He went on by saying that he had no set playlist and played mainly by ear and from what he
and his friends would research, discover and share. Many a times the guests would bring some of their records to have played
at the party.
Here is where Mancuso goes to great lengths to describe what these parties were and weren’t, "It was
basically a rent party. Private: by invitation only. It was NOT a club-not a membership-none of that stuff. I made it very
clear; this was an invitation and you made a contribution. The money only came into it because I had to do it. When the money
came into it, I didn’t want it to spoil it. I wanted to maintain the integrity of the party and provide as much as I
could and it worked."
The Loft parties would be attended by as many as two hundred guests in the course of an evening, but around
1972-73 Mancuso was given permission by the landlord to knock down a wall and join two loft subdivisions together. This greatly
increased the space and now attendance was as high as three hundred people.
DJs Influenced By Mancuso
and the Loft
A large number of these guests would later go on to prominence as DJ’s, remixers and even club owners.
People such as...
Tony Humphries François Kevorkian Frankie Knuckles
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Danny Krivit Larry Levan David
Morales
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Nicky Siano
All of the above were regulars of the Loft parties. In a 2002 interview Danny Krivitt remarked, "The
Loft was unique and being the original RECORD POOL, it was a musical center and Mecca for DJs. This is where I began my longtime
friendships with DJs Larry Levan & Francois Kevorkian (Francois K).
Formation of the New York
Record Pool
In 1974 David Mancuso moved the Loft parties over to a larger space at 99 Prince Street in Manhattan’s
SoHo section. It was during this time that he and Steve D’Aquisto came up with the idea to unify the city’s Disco
DJ’s by starting a record pool. This record pool would lobby the record labels to distribute promotional records to
DJs who were members of the pool. Despite the fact that Disco DJ’s were becoming more instrumental in breaking new records
without any support from radio, they were having a difficult time acquiring new product from the record labels. Mancuso explains
the reason for forming a record pool, "There were about twenty six DJ’s at the time and it was getting harder and harder
to get promotional records. You had to be on someone’s special list, there was discrimination going on as to who got
in and didn’t…We made an announcement that if they (Disco DJ’s) wanted to meet to work things out they were
welcome to come to my space to see what we can do. At that meeting I suggested a pool-somewhere we all join together and that’s
where the record pool concept came in."
Mancuso’s love for music was usually at odds with a business mentality so I asked if the pool was
a business and he replied, "Not at all. If you go by today’s record pools, yes. First of all, I financed it for the
first two years because DJ’s had no money. I had the space so I donated the space. I had moved to 99 Prince Street and
it took 17 months to bring everything up to code so I had spare time to develop a record pool… We did it for the music."
"There were a lot of ways to make money if I just bent the rules a bit and I never did any of that. I kept
it very straight up."
Mancuso proceeds to explain that he had the record pool incorporated as a non-profit venture and
did everything democratically with the members voting on issues that affected them and the pool. Mancuso was voted president
and secretary while D’Aquisto was vice president. In order for DJ’s to belong to the record pool they had to supply
a letter from their employer with a corporate seal stating how many nights they worked… This was easier said than done
since most DJ’s worked off the books. This letter helped to establish the legitimacy of the DJ to the record pool, but
most importantly to the record labels since in effect the DJ’s had been prescreened. Some of the original members of
the New York Record Pool included Steve D’Aquisto, Francis Grasso, Michael Cappello, David Rodriguez, and Nicky Siano.
When asked if he realized the significance of the record pool at the time Mancuso responds, "All we wanted
to do was get music and share it and do it as simply as possible. Some of these DJ’s were literally working seven days
a week, 12 hours and not getting paid and when they did get paid it was like $20-50 dollars a night and on top of that they
had to buy their own records."
The New York Record Pool flourished and soon boasted three hundred members. This however was taking a great
deal of time from Mancuso’s first love, which was hosting his Loft parties. He explains, "I had enough and I don’t
mean that in a negative way. It’s like you can love your children and raise them, but there is a point… it’s
gotta go on its own… I gradually let it (record pool) go." By 1978 Mancuso had completely divested himself of anything
to do with the record pool. It is around this time that a Loft staff member by the name of Judy Weinstein would take over
operations of the pool. She would later begin a revamped record pool called "For the Record" to which all the top New York
Disco DJ's belonged. In a 2002 SpeedGarage.com interview Weinstein said, "I started to work for him (David Mancuso) at the
Loft when it was on 99 Prince Street... and actually started running the record pool along with Mark Riley and Hank Williams..."
Information, Politics and Money
"I didn’t do the record pool for material gain or
for power… There were a lot of ways to make money if I just bent the rules a bit and I never did any of that. I kept
it very straight up." This is what Mancuso said as he gets into more detail about where the New York Record Pool was heading.
He says that he was very pleased in what the pool had accomplished, but continues by saying, "Unfortunately, things changed
quite quickly and we started getting people opening up pools and record pool directors sleeping in bed with the record companies
and all that shit-that part made me sad." On many occasions Mancuso thought he should go back in and try to clean house, but
things had gotten to the point of no return.
Mancuso declares that the records released during the record pool era of 1975-1980 were the best since the
feedback the record pool DJ’s gave back to the labels was "straight up feedback and no bull shit." Mancuso continues,
"The feedback would be just two things, personal reaction and floor reaction. From that the record label would go back and
redo it or whatever until they got it right.
"I had to ask Eddie to resign. Anybody who had a hidden agenda or did anything to threaten the record pool..."
Mancuso and the Split With Eddie Rivera (I. D. R. C.)
I wanted to touch upon what I thought could be a thorny subject
with Mancuso and that was the split with the late Eddie Rivera. Eddie Rivera was a DJ and member of Mancuso’s New York
Record Pool who, for reasons we will soon find out, started his own record pool called the International Disco Record Center.
Mancuso was kind enough to give me a thorough explanation to which I will condense for the sake of brevity.
In 1976 one of the officers of the New York Record Pool did something that was not acceptable so Mancuso asked him to step
down and replaced him with Eddie Rivera. Mancuso says, "I found Eddie Rivera to be very friendly, intelligent and focused.
A flag went up however when he (Eddie) said we should make a Latin music department and I asked why do you want to do that
for this is a pool? Records are coming from every different direction we should get them from all labels-period. That was
my first indication that he was up to starting his own record pool."
Mancuso, who rarely missed a meeting, continues by explaining that every meeting was tape recorded as a
record of events. However, on one occasion he was out of town and missed a meeting. On his return Eddie Rivera tells David
Mancuso that they all decided on certain issues during David’s absence. Mancuso asks to hear the tape to which he is
told none exists. Mancuso says, "I had to ask Eddie to resign. Anybody who had a hidden agenda or did anything to threaten
the record pool-we were like an eggshell… We generated 4 million dollars for the music industry in New York and there
was a lot of focus on this pool and I really wanted this thing to be right. I asked Eddie to resign, which is what I think
he wanted... There was obviously a split between Eddie and I, and then he decided to form his own pool, which is what he wanted
to do from the very beginning."
Alphabet City
After the departure from the New York Record Pool, Mancuso devoted
his time entirely to the Loft parties again. His home and the parties was now at 99 Prince Street where he remained till 1985.
The gentrification of the downtown area saw rents skyrocket and available spaces and the size of them dwindle. This forced
a move to a building on 3rd Street in one of New York’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods known as "Alphabet City." He
saw a 65% loss in the amount of guests attending the parties, but he managed to stay there for eleven years. His attorney
at the time defrauded him and several others and Mancuso ended up losing the building on 3rd Street. Moving became more frequent
with brief residences on Avenue A and later B.
David Mancuso and the Loft Parties On Tour
By 1995 Mancuso saw that it was
next to impossible to find any reasonably priced spaces in downtown so he had to think a little differently. He explains,
"I started to do what I thought I would never do or could do and started to do tours. I did tours and I still do, but rarely
because I am very fussy about everything (music / location / electronics…). I started with Japan and I thought I would
be leaving my family, but then it got down to survival… It turned out that they would respect the way I wanted to set
the sound, balloons and everything so I said at least it’s something-it’s getting the message out there. I’m
learning and growing again in a way I never thought I would."
In addition to touring around the world, Mancuso hosts his Loft parties about 4-6 times a year at an undisclosed
location in New York that he rents out for the occasion. When asked why so few parties compared to the past he replies, "I
can’t find the space and I don’t have the resources like I used to. After I lost the building on 3rd Street I
have been economically restrained. I’ve had offers that you can’t believe, but there are catches to them and I
can’t give in to them. I’d rather take the subway and do without the Mercedes Benz… I’ve known some
of my guests for more than twenty-five years and I can’t go away from that. The Loft parties are very personal, intimate
thing. It’s the thing that keeps me going in life."
When asked how long he sees himself doing the Loft parties Mancuso replies, "To my last breath-if they let
me do it, sure. A party is made of many components: the group, the music... It’s a whole-shared environment and there
are many pillars that give it strength. It doesn’t revolve around the person. Once that starts to happen, forget about
it." Mancuso currently does about 6-8 tours a year.
Continuing our discussion on his music projects David says that he is currently in negotiations on an
upcoming series of 12 inch "audiophile" vinyl record releases. When asked if they will appear on CD he says, "I don’t
know about the CD part. Personally I don’t like CDs-I have a whole issue with them. On the vinyl side they will be high-end
audiophile material-Sheffield pressing-incredible stuff. It’ll be a lot of stuff that never got released or things that
I know about… I have one record called "One Day of Peace" that was never released that is an incredible record." Mancuso
doesn’t have a release date yet, but it will be posted here at DiscoMusic.com when that time comes.
Discussing Today’s Music
"Take Latin music. Why has Latin music survived?
With all these trends and all, why has it survived? It’s live musicians. I think we drift away from the creativity or
the energy that music has to offer when we rely too much on electronic devices. I don’t mind if a drummer misses a beat
once in a while. I’m not a perfect dancer. It’s harder to find interesting life energy raising music, but those
are cycles and I think things will get better." That is what Mancuso had to say when asked about today’s music. He stresses
that he doesn’t want to judge anything, but those are his feelings and he still finds plenty of music now that raises
his life energy.
The Loft Experience
When asked what makes the experience complete Mancuso
replies, "It’s a vibe. You’re having a peace of mind or you’re not. Usually the more you shed your ego the
more peace of mind you will have. The music… that’s what it allows us to be, free. The Loft parties doesn’t
function about how good the DJ is-it’s about the music."
Wrapping Up
In closing I must thank David Mancuso for his willingness to discuss
the Loft parties despite his busy schedule. He was most candid and forthcoming and put up with a lot of questions. It must
be noted that during the time frame of our discussions the Loft celebrated its 33rd anniversary and we wish David Mancuso
many, many more years of spreading musical joy.
The End
DAVID MANCUSO
AND THE ART OF DEEJAYING WITHOUT DEEJAYING
Club culture is a nowadays a global business, dance music transcending language, translating via rhythm
rather than words. Inter-city has become inter-continental where the top DJ’s are concerned and, be it Moscow, Tokyo,
New York or Manchester, it’s increasingly a case of have records will travel. Suffice to say that the person who picks
and plays the music that people come out to dance to has never been more revered (at least not by so many), with the resultant
financial rewards potentially vast and the lifestyle of a pop star thrown in for good measure. No wonder so many young people
(and a fair few older ones) aspire to be a DJ!
But it wasn’t always like this. Where there’s an ocean there’s a source, for all roads
lead to Rome and what is now internationally mainstream was once inherently underground, evolving in the parties and clubs
of New York, the city its adopted son, John Lennon, once described as ‘the new Rome’. Nothing happens by accident,
the fates decreed that following the highs and eventual lows of the 60’s, an epoch when events on the West Coast of
the US would overshadow the still considerable creative and spiritual expression of the East Coast, that the baton should
pass from San Francisco to New York as one decade blended into the next.
‘Love Saves The Day’, an essential new book, which charts the development of New York (and
subsequently worldwide) club culture, takes it’s name from a party held on Valentines Day 1970 at the home of David
Mancuso, a loft space at 647 Broadway & Bleeker, in NoHo, NYC. This was at a point when the hippie ideal of peace and
love lay shattered in the aftermath of Altamont and the Manson murders. The age of innocence was over and, set against the
backdrop of the ongoing Vietnam war, the advent of the Seventies, to a large section of young Americans, presented an altogether
darker and more foreboding scenario.
Mancuso, a Sixties seeker, like many of his generation, had been profoundly affected by acid guru Timothy
Leary, whose ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ mantra had been the sound bite of the summer of love. Leary, along with
Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, had written ‘The Psychedelic Experience’, a manual for LSD experimentation,
which was based on the ancient text, ‘The Tibetan Book Of The Dead’. This became Mancuso’s ‘bible’.
It was the same book that had inspired John Lennon to write the epic Beatles track, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, which
closed the 1966 album ‘Revolver’, heralding the psychedelic era with its instruction to ‘turn off your mind,
relax and float downstream’. What was, until then, only known within underground circles, was about to be unleashed
on an unsuspecting world in spectacular style, via the spaced-out celebrations of 1967’s ‘Summer Of Love’.
Leary himself saw the Beatles as ‘ four evangelists’, describing them as “prototypes
of a new race of laughing freemen: revolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with mystical power to create a new human species”.
During his lectures in ‘67, Leary would hold up The Beatles’ ‘Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’
album as an endorsement of his vision, and he would also, of course, be one of those present at the Montreal Bed-In where
Lennon’s anti-war anthem ‘Give Peace A Chance’ was recorded in 1969.
Mancuso became increasingly involved with Leary, attending his lectures and then his private parties
in the West Village HQ of his ‘League For Spiritual Discovery’. These parties, which were ‘more social than
serious’, and included food and music, would inspire Mancuso, along with a handful of friends, to experiment with LSD
in his own home, using ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ as a guidebook. Following Leary’s lead, music played
a central role in these gatherings and Mancuso made eclectic and atmospheric ‘journey tapes’ to accompany the
trips, whilst Leary’s advice on ‘set and setting’ would also be closely followed.
People got up and danced from time to time and when this aspect of the experience started to gain momentum,
as more guests began to attend, Mancuso improved his sound system and reorganized his space to provide a bigger area for dancing.
Invitations were also sent out for bi-monthly get-togethers and, bit-by-bit, the concept behind the Loft parties, as they’d
come to be known, began to take shape.
But just as it was all coming together it all fell apart. Mancuso, in accordance with Buddhist principles,
relinquished his material belongings to, in effect, follow the way of the monk. Only problem being that there was no monastery
for him to retreat to where likeminded people could have helped him on his journey within, so instead he found himself admitted
to the psychiatric ward of New York’s Bellevue Hospital.
At this juncture, David Mancuso was probably regarded by the authorities as yet another hippie ‘acid
casualty’ who’d taken one trip too many and burnt-out, but fortunately he was made of sterner stuff and came back
stronger and wiser for his experience. As any good student of Buddhism knows, in order to find yourself you must first lose
yourself.
Not wishing to change the strict no drugs regime he’d been following, he’d initially concealed
the pills the doctor gave him under his tongue, before disposing of them in the bathroom, but had finally been caught out
and forced to take the anti-psychotic, Thorazine, the effects of which cause a strong dulling of all functions (physical,
mental and emotional). Echoing the words of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, Mancuso had indeed surrendered to the void
until, in his own words: “something finally snapped, and I told myself that this was not where I wanted to go”.
Having battled the ego and returned to tell the tale (‘escaping’ during a field trip to
a museum a few weeks after being admitted), he began to put his life back together, staying with a friend and going through
a cleaning out process, whilst considering his next moves. Fate lent a hand and he was able to return to his abandoned loft
space, where after retrieving his sound system, he decided to start holding regular parties.
The fact that drugs played
such an important role in the birth of the Disco era is no surprise. LSD and dancing had first come together via the Merry
Pranksters and their legendary ‘Acid Tests’ in the mid-60’s, a full-on off-your-face freaked-out festival
of sound and light, the prototype Rave, over 20 years before the British Acid House explosion, where the Grateful Dead cut
their teeth and psychedelic lightshows were born. Prior to this, Ken Kesey, the chief Prankster had famously taken his Magic
Bus across the States, from West Coast to East Coast, meeting up with Leary’s more sedate group at Millbrook, Leary’s
original NYC drop-out centre.
Having said this, it’s only now, thanks to ‘Love Saves The Day’, that the Leary /
Mancuso connection becomes crucial to our understanding of the origins of dance culture. Other writers have touched on it,
but this is the first book to reveal the extent of Leary’s direct influence on Mancuso, and, as such, it’s author,
Tim Lawrence, the director of the Music Cultures program at East London University, has unearthed a hugely significant missing
link.
Reading about his early Loft parties I was instantly struck by the fact that this didn’t sound
like a DJ from over 30 years ago, but a DJ of the future! Two decades on when, following Acid-House, some people began to
talk about DJ’s as though they were Shaman, it was clear that they were taking their ecstasy induced euphoria a bit
too far! However, if there was anybody worthy of this title it would surely be David Mancuso, who is often described as a
somewhat mystical figure, for not only was he playing great music in an environment of heightened sensitivity, but consciously
guiding his guests on a journey of self-expression, helping them lose their inhibitions (or personalities) in order to move
closer to their essential nature.
A major irony is that David Mancuso, one of the most influential DJ’s of all, never
even wanted to be a DJ, preferring to be viewed as a ‘musical host’. Remembering how he started out, as a result
of his shared love for basically the same music that his friends were into, Mancuso says: “No way did I want to be a
disc jockey, I only did it because I used to hang out with these people all the time so I knew what kind of music we liked”.
But, once behind the decks, he realised that rather than missing out on verbal contact with his guests, he was now able to
communicate, via the music he played, on a completely different level.
As a ‘DJ’, Mancuso was completely unlike anyone else, before or since, and maybe this is
the reason that it’s taken so long for his efforts to gain full recognition. Until Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s
groundbreaking book ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’ was issued in 1999, documenting, for the first time, the history
of the DJ, there was precious little in print about his monumental role in shaping this culture that has affected us all in
one way or another. His name was always in the frame, alongside a handful of New York’s finest, but his unique contribution
has been barely understood, until recently.
Tim Lawrence cites the ‘Love Saves The Day’ party as the beginning
of dance culture as we now know it. The name, like Leary’s ‘League For Spiritual Discovery’ and Lennon’s
‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, included the initials LSD (although Lennon insists that, in his case, this was
a complete coincidence, resulting from a drawing his son Julian had brought home from school). There’s no doubting,
however, that Mancuso’s party was inspired by lysergic acid diethylamide.
There were obviously other major factors
in the growth and development of The Loft. As well as Leary’s gatherings, their inspiration came from ‘Mancuso’s
favourite form of entertainment’, the rent parties that were held within New York’s black community. The type
of people who attended was obviously a key element, with not only black and white, but also gay and straight mixing easily
together in an atmosphere devoid of the prejudice of the outside world, giving The Loft a reputation for being a safe haven,
where people could be themselves without fear of any negative fallout. Admission, of course, was by invitation only, with
no alcohol available on the premises.
The Loft would set the standard for sound reproduction within a party space, Mancuso’s ear for
detail and never ending quest for sonic purity ensuring that the fruits of his ongoing endeavours in the pursuit of aural
excellence would be subsequently applied at the more serious-minded venues in New York and beyond.
Perhaps the most important aspect of all was the influence of Sister Alicia, a Nun at the orphanage
Mancuso had spent the first five years of his life (before eventually being reunited with his Mother). Sister Alicia’s
party room, complete with balloons and record player, left a vivid impression on Mancuso’s young mind, and the good
Sister’s way with the children would translate directly to his own parties, where people would be encouraged to re-connect
to their childhood and, within the sanctuary of the environment he provided become, in a sense, children once more for a few
precious hours. Balloons, an essential feature, would come to symbolize this direct link back to Sister Alicia’s inspiration.
The name for the parties came about organically: “Because I lived in a loft building, people started
to say that they were going to the Loft. It’s a given name and is sacred”, Mancuso explains.
These all-night events became a regular occurrence (for a number of years on a weekly basis) and, throughout
the coming decade, would be attended by pretty much every DJ of note in the Big Apple. It was almost a rites of passage for
the great and the good of the New York club scene and, although Mancuso was a total one-off in his approach, his influence
rubbed off on pretty much everyone, to varying degrees, eventually spreading beyond New York to places where, at the time,
the name David Mancuso meant nothing, including a small seaside town on Merseyside called New Brighton, where I myself was
starting out as a DJ and would often play a classic oldie called ‘Soul Makossa’ by Manu Dibango, one of a number
of tunes I’ve since realised was first played at The Loft, having been ‘discovered’ by its musical host.
Apart from ‘Soul Makossa’, Loft classics between 1970-73 included Barrabas ‘Woman’,
Beginning Of The End ‘Funky Nassau’, The Equals ‘Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys’, Eddie Kendricks ‘Girl
You Need A Change Of Mind’ and War ‘City, Country, City’. It’s interesting to note that a number of
records associated with Kool Herc, who was busy originating Hip Hop elsewhere in the city, like Babe Ruth’s ‘The
Mexican’ and James Brown’s ‘Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose’, were also favourites with Mancuso’s
audience. Although the majority of music played at The Loft was by black artists, tracks including Van Morrison’s ‘Astral
Weeks’, and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ by The Beatles, would also feature, illustrating the diversity of records
played in this Proto-Disco era.
Mancuso structured the party into three stages or, to use the term from ‘The Tibetan Book Of The
Dead’, three Bardos (Leary had applied this to his LSD sessions): “The first Bardo would be very smooth, perfect,
calm. The second Bardo would be like a circus. And the third Bardo was about re-entry, so people would go back into the outside
world relatively smoothly”, he explains in ‘Love Saves The Day’.
Neither clocks nor mirrors were a feature of The Loft. The exclusion of clocks emphasized the ‘outside
of time’ perception experienced by people under the influence of acid. Within the intensity of the party all that mattered
was the here and now, and in this way the dancers were encouraged to take off the masks of their everyday lives and express
their primal (or childlike) selves. Having no mirrors meant that people wouldn’t catch a glimpse of their openness and
begin to feel self-conscious. Everything possible was done to cultivate an atmosphere of uninhibited unity amongst those in
attendance.
Although it’s most intense period was during the 70’s, David Mancuso has continued to host his
Loft parties throughout the 80’s and 90’s and on into the new millennium. Moving with the times, he’s now
spreading the vibes worldwide, and in November 2003 I experienced his London Loft gathering. No longer an all-nighter, beginning
instead at around 4pm on a Sunday afternoon and continuing for the next seven hours or so, it was a wonderful event, organized
by Tim Lawrence (with Colleen Murphy, Nikki Lucas and Jeremy Gilbert), which gave a further insight into this remarkable non-DJ.
Stood behind the decks for the full duration, Mancuso didn’t mix, but played his records in their entirety, respectfully
acknowledging that this is the way that the artists (or remixers) intended them to be heard. Furthermore he didn’t use
headphones, yet there was nothing disjointed in his presentation and the whole day flowed in a way that gave the illusion
of being almost effortless. The level of the music was also refreshing, for, unlike most DJ’s, who equate the quality
of the sound system with how loud they can pump it up, Mancuso goes for clarity rather than volume.
I’ve no doubt that as time goes on more and more DJ’s will use a diluted version of the
Mancuso approach as the blueprint for a new way of deejaying, even though it dates back over thirty years. I say diluted because
it’s unlikely that many DJ’s would want to subject themselves to the type of personal and spiritual upheaval that
Mancuso did before he started playing records to an audience. For it was this hollowing out process that makes David Mancuso
worthy of the term ‘unique’, enabling him not only to play records, but to channel them into a carefully constructed
environment, which operates totally on his own terms (and in accordance with his countercultural values and principles).
Furthermore, he continues to leave a deep and lasting impression on those who attend his parties, as
one of the people I shared the day with in London testified the following week: “Enjoying and experiencing David Mancuso’s
music and magic was a wonderful trip, and I keep going over and over it in my head…he took me out of myself and allowed
me to be with the best part of my, and everybody else’s spirit, for a brief moment in time”.
Times may have changed, but the message remains the same.
Love saves the day.Tim Lawrence’s
book, ‘Love Saves The Day - A History Of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79’, is published by Duke University
Press.
The Loft 1970 -
David Mancuso - dance - club - underground music - Loft classics (playlist) - New York
Intro
The Loft was the legendary New York private party, held since 1970 by David Mancuso.
The Loft is the location for the first underground dance party (Love Saves The day) that was created by
David Mancuso on February 14, 1970. Since then, the term The Loft has come to represent Mancuso's own version of a non-commercial
party where no alcohol, food, or beverages are sold. Mancuso's vision of a private party is similar to, and inspired by the
most basic parties of all: the rent party and house party. In fact, Fred Wesley's "House Party" is a quintessential Loft Classic
which Mancuso featured on his out-of-print compilation "David Mancuso presents the Loft Vol. 2". This is in fact one of the
most important differences between The Loft and a typical nightclub. His parties are by invitation only and feature an audiophile
sound system to enhance the experience. Loft parties also include free beverages, munchies, and hot food. Equally important
is the relaxed "non-authoritarian" vibe, including, when possible, a BYOB policy, as well as a truly diverse cross-section
of music lovers and dancers. Of particular note in the late 1960's, when Mancuso threw his first informal house parties, was
that the gay community was often harassed in the bars and dance clubs, whereas at The Loft and many other early, private discotheques
they could dance together and be themselves without fear of police action, thanks to Mancuso's legal yet underground business
model. The Loft concept was borrowed by many nightclub entrepreurs, and Mancuso is indirectly responsible for the success
of The Gallery, the Paradise Garage, and The Saint, to name but a few. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loft [Feb 2006]
