So how did the dancing compare the dancing at the Paradise Garage? You played more new wave and hip hop than Larry, so how did that change things? The Garage and the Loft were notorious for having people dance for hours on end—get lost in this mesmeric rhythm. There was more of a solid groove and if the music moved around it didn’t move around at quite the same pace as it did at Danceteria. It’s easy for me to identify how the music was different, but what I don’t really know is if dancers behaved differently. Did the Danceteria crowd get lost on the dance floor and stay there for hours on end just like they did at the Garage?

OK, Larry would take people on a journey, in kind of like the same groove while Danceteria was about... When I would do the mix, I would make them scream, I would take them another step up the stairs. I was taking people up the stairs and Larry was taking people on an escalator. I was making a step and he was like slow-groove.

And how did that affect how dancers moved their bodies?

Now we’re going to get into the length of songs. Larry would play the same song for eight to twelve minutes sometimes, doing his whole mix, while I was dealing with seven-inches that were three minutes long, or a twelve-inch that was six minutes long. OK, some records I would work and play the instrumental, play the vocal; some records I would make long. But Larry would play six songs in one hour and I would play twelve songs in one hour. And, you know, obviously Larry would be more instrumental and I would be more vocal-oriented because I’m playing seven-inch singles. It was more work but it was also—boom!—you’re really shocking people. Larry would go into a breakdown, where he’d take the vocals out and go instrumental. For me, I would go from an instrumental to a vocal. So it was really the same thing, but we were just doing it a different way. I hope you’re keeping all of this for my book, right?

Of course! I want to ask you a bit more about hip hop, electro and rap. The easy thing for me to say is, it was all a mix at Danceteria, but I want to be a bit more analytical, a bit more precise. I haven’t got much of a feel yet for how much hip hop or rap or electro was part of what you did.

OK, Tim, I need to talk about technology first. Hip hop and electro were born when this new technology of music came through in the early eighties. It was technology that really was the first spark that gave people the opportunity to be creative with machines and not with your best friend the drummer. For me that’s the most important thing. If you want to talk about hip hop and electro, they wouldn’t have existed without technology. But in the early eighties, with those first drum machines, they fundamentally changed the direction of music. Now we can talk about Kraftwerk, which was electronic music before machines—before commercially available machines—and obviously Kraftwerk was Bambaataa’s a good friend. I talk to Bam and he’s always telling me that his biggest influence is Kraftwerk. And, you know, early Eurodisco, like early Giorgio, the French group, Magique, Jean Michel Jarre maybe.

These were an influence on Bambaataa, you’re saying?

For Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc and Flash, for them the first tool was the mixer, which allowed them to take two beats from one record and then switch to another record. So the main technology for them was the mixer. But then Bam then hooked up with Arthur Baker and Robie, and then that led to “Planet Rock” and Rockers Revenge, and which led to—jeez—to everything.

What hip hop were you playing at Danceteria? What was working for you? And what did it mean for you culturally? Did it feel like you were playing Bronx music or were you playing something that was part of the New York mix?

I played everything, OK? I didn’t play a lot of hip hop but there were hip-hop records that were big hits for me.

Such as what?

Bambaataa’s first records, before “Planet Rock”. Some of the stuff on Sugar Hill. Jazzy Jeff. As a DJ I would play in three-song sets, so the night kind of moved. So hip hop for me was three songs and at that time the Beastie Boys were a punk band—before they did their first record. Then Russell Simmons started Def Jam. My Beastie Boys record with Rick Rubin was the first and the second release was LL Cool J, but Danceteria was really all about playing everything. For me it was almost like a plane trip. I’d come in from Belgium, play a little hip hop, then I’d go to London, then I’d go to Italian disco. For me I was kind of moving around the world, musically, at that time. I thought about it a lot a few days after we spoke the first time and now I look back I think I kind of moved around the world musically. But every record had this common theme, this common vibe, this common heart that enabled me to go from an Italian record to an English record to a German record into a reggae record into hip-hop. Although I can’t define it, it existed and it worked.

So did rap sound new? Did it sound gimmicky? Did you think “Yeah, this is gonna work on the dance floor?”

I was really into Jamaican music growing up and I knew about MCs. Those guys were to me the original rappers and if you really want to think about it, Cab Calloway was a rapper. For me the significance of hip hop was that you didn’t have to be a musician any more to make money, you didn’t even have to know how to sing to make money. So for all of these kids, uptown and downtown, it was a matter of ‘Let’s do it’.

So it was just another music coming in that you wanted to play?

No, I knew it was something important, revolutionary, but I was dealing with a lot of other genres at the time. As things evolved in the club business things got more specific. Like one club would just be hip-hop, one club would be reggae, one club would be Madchester. Things started to define themselves. But Danceteria was really the club that planted the seeds of everything.

When did things start to define themselves do you think?

I think around ‘82, ‘83, ‘84. ‘85. The first house records started coming out in ‘85, ‘86. The Summer of Love was a monumental time for dance music. Around ‘86, ‘87 I started really getting into Italian music, like “Right On Time”, for example.

The first house tracks comes out in 1984 and 1985. Then Marshall Jefferson released the “House Music Anthem” in 1986 and that’s when house started to really take off, right?

OK, but I was still considered a rock and roll DJ at that time.

At what time?

Eight-five, ‘86. That’s why I’m not in Bill Brewster’s book; I’m considered a rock and roll DJ. Meanwhile I played, you know, black and house music and hip-hop, always. I was playing Black Ivory. I was blacker than any black DJ in New York, you know what I mean? But that’s my own little thing I deal with when I talk to you guys. I will fight this to the day I die. I’m white and I’m straight, and there’s this concept that any great DJ has to be black or Latin and gay, you know? It’s crazy.

Jim Fouratt also objects to the rock discotheque term and the way this didn’t capture the range of music that could be heard at spots like Hurrah, Danceteria and the Mudd Club. I agree it’s not very satisfactory to have you described as a rock DJ. I can only repeat, what interests me in the 1980-83 period in New York is the way everything mixed together, and that was happening as much at Danceteria as anywhere. So Danceteria was never just rock. It was more a result of what happened when rock intertwined with all these other sounds and that’s why it was so important. Tell me a bit about François [Kevorkian] and your friendship with François.

François was DJing in a club called New York, New York the same time I was DJing at Trax. I just went in and introduced myself to him. That was right after I’d worked in Greece for a year as a DJ. So we just hit it off as friends. That was before he started working for Prelude and before I had a club of my own.

Was it an important friendship?

Well, we were great friends and, again, the wonderful thing at that time was every DJ had a completely different repertoire of music. You look at today, everybody’s got the same records now, you know? But in those days every DJ really had their unique two or three crates of records, and that was the magic. At that time I was working at the record shop, selling my European imports, and François came from France and had his European sensibility. Francois was great. What I learned from François was how to mix two records. François was a great mixer.

In those days I wasn’t a great mixer but I had an unbelievable choice of records. Whereas a lot of DJs would go for the perfect mix, giving up playing the best record because another one was easier to blend, I always went for the best record, for the best song, for the scream. I went for the scream. I never went for the perfect mix. One of the first things I learned was, five seconds after a mix there’s not one person in the club that can tell you what the record was before. That’s true; they have no idea. So for me it really wasn’t about the technical mix, it was about the song, you know?

When did you stop DJing at Danceteria?

I think I left in ‘85.

So you stayed long after Jim Fouratt moved on?

I left with Rudolf. What was Rudolf’s club after that? I think we opened the Tunnel after that. I was always Rudolf’s DJ. In ‘86 I did the Palladium opening with Jellybean. That was a disaster for me. Then Larry Levan came into the Palladium and started playing Peter Gabriel Su-su-studio. But we’re jumping up to Palladium. Where did I go after Danceteria? Oh, I opened a club called the Harem.

So you were at Danceteria until ‘85?

I was there from the beginning until ‘85.

So what were the politics of Danceteria between then? Because at some point Jim had a disagreement with Rudolf and John Argento, who had taken on a managerial role.

Jim was a control freak and at the end of the day Jim really had no respect for DJs. He had no respect for a heterosexual DJ like myself. Jim booked the best bands, which I give him so much respect for. But what DJ wants to be told what to play from the boss? And that’s what he was saying at some points. Play this, play that.

When did he start to do that?

He always did that from the beginning. But I think if you have a full dance floor with people screaming it’s really hard for the guy to tell you what to play. Jim was a very sober person. He didn’t like to see staff drinking, e didn’t like to see people partying. Rudolf was the opposite. Rudolf had a different girl every night. Jim was gay and politically gay; this was the beginning of AIDS. Obviously he was anti-drugs as well.

Why obviously?

Jim knew what he was doing musically and he wanted everybody to be on his page, but we couldn’t all be on his page, we had to do the same thing on different pages. But I mean, the bands Jim booked, they were unbelievable. There was Haoui Montaug as well. Haoui’s cabaret was very important. He gave Madonna her first show at Danceteria on the roof. Haoui Montaug was the doorman and he started doing this cabaret where he booked really underground performance artists in New York.