And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records

At first glance, Larry Harris doesn't look like the best person to present a history of Casablanca Records. Sure, he liked his drugs (he stayed away from the "hard stuff"--just pot, hash, coke and especially Quaaludes). But the tall, gangly guy from Queens, N.Y., was always a hard worker and family man at heart. And--in his sex life, at least--a straight arrow.

So what was a nice Jewish boy doing as the second in command of the label that defined disco in the '70s? Working and playing, working and playing.

Harris (along with his co-writers, Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs) gives a funny account that manages at the same time to mesh a lot of information about the business side of the record label that grew too big too fast. The genius behind Casablanca was Harris' cousin, mentor and best friend, the legendary Neil Bogart

After having worked for other labels, Bogart, with Harris in tow, set up his own record company. His first big signing was Kiss. It's emblematic of the way Bogart saw music that his ride to riches was on the backs of a band better known for such than substance. The other act was just as showy, funkmeister George Clinton.

But it was his next big signing, of a then-unknown German producer and an American expatriate singer then living in Munich, that would enable Casablanca to compete with giants like Capital, Warner Bros. and Columbia. It's to Bogart's and Harris' credit that they immediately recognized not only the genius behind Giorgio Moroder's propulsive use of synthesizers, but also the hypnotic effect of young Donna Summer's voice.

Their first effort, "Love to Love You, Baby," was a monster hit, a record that broke records. But it was the next one, "I Feel Love," that became a classic still heard on the dance floor and the herald of an entire new genre of music, techno.

Bogart saw the future, and it was disco. Even though there were other labels producing great disco records, Casablanca rode that tsunami like no one else. With the record "industry" just a joke today, it's hard to imagine that a new type of music could come along and take over the industry seemingly overnight.

Yet, that's just what disco did. It way overshadowed anything before, even the British Invasion of rock bands. And it was, of course, gay gay gay gay gay. Harris, who cut his teeth as a promo guy hawking songs to radio DJs and programmers, saw firsthand how disco revolutionized records: Instead of radio, songs were being introduced and popularized by club DJs.

By the mid-'70s, everyone at Casablanca's exploding headquarters on Hollywood's Sunset Strip was in bell bottoms and ingesting coke like it was, well, Coke. As far as the gay thing goes, Harris (at least by his own reckoning) seems to have an "I could care less" attitude.

He does describe the latent homophobia expressed by the rock department as they saw themselves eclipsed by this new gay music, which became particularly acute when the label signed its next huge act, the Village People.

"With the addition to our roster of the Village People, disco became Neil's new bubblegum," Harris writes. "Not everyone at Casablanca was unaware of the sizable homosexual prsence in disco culture, and a fissure grew between the disco and rock contingents. As our disco department expanded, a few homophoboes in the company--mainly in the pop department--began to reveal themselves."

They were fighting a rear-guard action (ouch), however. Even though they were being paid $100 a week each at the height of their fame and lip synching at every performance, the Village People's thinly disguised paeans to life in the Navy, the Y and Fire Island became pop anthems.

Bogart and Harris became so intertwined with their business that there was no distinction between Casablanca and their personal lives. Harris married a fellow executive. Bogart ended up with the woman who had managed Kiss and would become Summer's longterm manager. (She and the label's publicity manager are the two white chicks on the classic Bad Girls album cover.)

Every party has to end, however, and Casablanca's came crashing down the day Polygram, the European giant which had bought it, finally realized that Bogart was keeping the music flow going by spending outrageously on promotion. Bogart committed the ultimate L.A. sin of believing his own hype. In one funny-horrifying passage, Harris describes how he blew a chance to have Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan!) produce records through simple arrogance.

Harris exited before the last dance, but up until the end, he knew where all the bodies were buried.

Like disco and all that promiscuous sex, the '80s were the long hangover to the previous decade's excesses. Harris wisely doesn't spend much time post-Casablanca. Instead, there's a fascinating "where are they now" list of the books' characters. One, the third-ranking executive, is driving a limo. Many died of AIDS. Some went on to bigger and greater things. But for a while, they were all working for a company that was like Studio 54 in broad daylight.

It was a hell of a ride, and Harris gives us a nice window into all of the outrageous goings-on. Like Mel Cheren's excellent memoir of Paradise Garage and his own label, West End Record, Harris is informed by a sense that he takes disco seriously enough to respect it, its artists, and its fans.

Which only goes to show that even straight arrows know how to bend.

by Larry Harris, with Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs. $25 hardcover. Go to the publisher's website for more information.