Book dossier

The last party

by Anthony Haden-Guest

There was a place where virtually all the themes and energies of the seventies - disco, the cult of celebrity, the coke and the ludes, the glam and the glitter, the pre-AIDS sexual abandon, the emergence of gay culture, newly uninhibited women, and the general air of pre-fin de siecle debauchery - were played out with maximum flamboyance. It was a place that epitomized an era and exemplified the zeitgeist. That place was Studio 54. No one is better suited to chronicle the Studio story than Anthony Haden-Guest. He has re-created the scene and rendered the action in vivid detail from his personal experiences and intimacy with the key players: the owners, bartenders, and bouncers; the celebs and the dealers; the divas, DJs and doormen; even the prosecutor who busted the owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager for tax evasion. The Last Party is more than a biography of one place. It also tells the story of Nightworld, a realm spawned by Studio 54, comprising past and present clubs. Nightlords, and nightpeople, their doings and their secrets, which is still unfolding and getting darker all the time. Haden-Guest ends with in-depth interviews with beleaguered club-lord Peter Gatien and attended the last party of Club Kid/murder suspect Michael Alig.