Book dossier

Clubland

by Frank Owen

"Clubland is the story of Owen's six-year journey behind the velvet ropes, into the cavernous clubs where any transformation was possible, every extreme permissible - even murder." "Four men defined the scene, all of them outsiders who saw in clubland the chance to escape their pasts and reinvent themselves by making their own rules. Peter Gatien rose from a small Canadian milltown to become the most powerful club operator in America; Michael Alig, a gay misfit from the Midwest, escaped to Manhattan, where he won a legion of fashion-and-drug-enamored followers; Lord Michael Caruso left Staten Island's bars for the rave parties of England, returning as clubland's leading drug dealer and techno music pioneer; and Chris Paciello began as a brutal Bensonhurst gang member, then recast himself as the glamorous prince of Miami Beach, partying with Madonna and Jennifer Lopez at the exclusive nightspots that he created. Each of them had secrets that led them over the edge, and when clubland fell, it left behind tragic human consequences: the disillusioned, the strung out, and the dead."--Jacket.