Words: Harry Shukman
Photography: Fred Castleberry
Ian Schrager was the genius behind Studio 54 — the greatest nightclub ever to have lived or died. 42 years on from its peak, the PUBLIC hotelier and serial entrepreneur shows little sign of slowing down. At his beach house in the Hamptons, the King of Clubs talks to Harry Shukman about long nights, dark days and bright ideas.
Studio 54. You had to be there. And even if you were, you’d scarcely believe it. Studio 54! The club that changed nightlife forever, where the crowds were so big they had to call in the fire brigade, where the brightest stars of the 1970s — Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry, Grace Jones and Andy Warhol, to name a handful — snarfed mounds of cocaine, crunched cereal bowls of Quaaludes and danced past dawn. Studio 54 drenched New York nightlife in kerosene and set it ablaze, running for a discocharged 1,000 nights from 1977 to 1979, before detonating with a birthday party for Bianca Jagger (she rode in on a white stallion, naturally) and imploding with a police bust (more on that later).
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