“I’d moved to New York in 1977 for 18 months, where I worked at Studio 54,” he recalled in 2006. Legendary gay disco DJ Talullah, who up until his untimely death in 2008 was still DJing in London and abroad, had first-hand experience of New York disco at its height. they like to dance to funky music – like Tina Charles, The Stylistics and Natalie Cole.” The right world where they feel secure and they can let their hair down (if they’ve any left). Speaking at the time in Gay News, London proselytised for the newly overground clubs: “Discos create the right environment for gays. For London’s scenesters and discophiles, a trip to Bang in its early days, with its vastness and hedonistic disco energy, could be as liberating as going on a Gay Pride march (whose numbers in those days were scarcely bigger than a Bang crowd).
Gary London, already resident at the Sundowner on straight nights, took his inspiration for Bang from the big gay clubs of New York, LA and San Francisco. That was also the year of the first commercially available 12-inch single, perfect timing for a night such as Bang, offering improved audio quality and extended track length for a bigger and better dancing environment. The venue also boasted its own lighting engineer, opening up the possibility of a string of dramatic lighting effects. Held at The Sundowner on Charing Cross Road every Monday night and subsequently opening on Thursdays as the night’s popularity grew, Bang had a 1,000-plus capacity, a good, loud soundsystem, all the hot, new disco imports played by experienced DJs including Gary London, Talullah and Norman Scott. But Fangs, although not one of Tricky Dicky’s longer-lasting nights, demonstrated that the scene had enough dance-hungry punters to fill even the bigger clubs.ġ976 was a groundbreaking year for gay disco in London, thanks to the arrival of Bang, London’s first gay superclub.
The night didn’t last long due to interference from the venue’s owners, who were none too happy about homos taking over their space.
GAY BAR LONDON SUNDAY NIGHT FULL
In 1975 Tricky Dicky held a one-nighter called Fangs underneath a hotel in Paddington and, much to his surprise, the place was full to capacity, with 600 dancing queens lapping up every minute. With his pop and soul music reviews and disco chart in Gay News, Tricky Dicky received coverage from a gay press more interested in politics, cinema, theatre and opera than the commercial gay scene. His Dick’s Inn Gay Disco operated out of straight venues as far afield as Croydon, Ilford, Bishopsgate and Euston, packing in a few hundred gay boys and girls at a time. And there were the small dives with postage stamp-sized dancefloors where young queens would boogie their tits off to the latest 7-inch soul, funk and proto-disco imports provided by DJs such as Talullah, AKA Martin Allum, at Shanes in West Hampstead (where the DJ frequently doubled up as cloakroom attendant) and Chris Lucas at The Catacombs in Earls Court.ĭJ Tricky Dicky was one of the first promoters to grasp the idea of the one-nighter – hiring out a pub or bar for the night, just to put on a gay night.
GAY BAR LONDON SUNDAY NIGHT PLUS
There were the members’ clubs that provided dinner and dance, plus cabaret, for the stately-homo set. Before 1976, gay venues in London came in two categories.