Nicky Siano

Nicky Siano is the DJing legend who, at the beginning of the seventies, helped define the early party scene with his space The Gallery.

Known for his passionate, exuberant style of mixing (he was the first DJ to use three decks, for airplane effects on his signature tune of Love Is The Message) Nicky wowed his dancers week after week throughout that decade. After a lengthy hiatus working with AIDS charities from 1982 until a comeback gig at Body Soul, he has recently become active on the music scene once again with his label Inspira Records who have just released Marlon Saunders Love Serenade with mixes by both Nicky and Michael Hind. Neil Maclean phoned him on behalf of Keep On Magazine, for a chat.

The interview

DS3:

You've often spoken of him as your mentor but how did you meet David Rodriguez?

NICKY SIANO:

I had been going to the Limelight as a dancer. At the time I had a girlfriend Robin and we would just go and we would dance for hours and he was always there. He was the DJ on Mondays and Tuesdays and any night that Michael Capello wanted to take off, so I would always see David there. We started handing flyers out around the Limelight and he had seen the flyers. The night that David Mancuso went to Spain we had an opening party, we had originally been open for straight people and it was working but not great. When David closed we had a lot of friends who went to the Loft so we invited them. And he (Rodriguez) came up to the booth and said "Mary, do you have Stoned Out Of Your Mind by the Chi-lites?" and I said no, and he said "It's to die for!" and he just walked up into the booth and took a stance right by me and stayed there for the whole night talking in my ear! He was like, "Don't cut off the words, you have to hear the first word and the last word, and it's all about the blend. You can tell a story with your music..."

DS3:

Why did you start the Gallery?

NICKY SIANO:

I was playing records at the Roundtable. It was a drag show and in the middle of the night the drag queens would come out and come up to me and go "Here's my records" and they'd go over to my girlfriend Robin and say "are those real?" and touch her breasts, that kinda thing. Then the owner would come up and say "we want you to play an extra half an hour for no more money" or "you've got to work another extra night for fifteen dollars." It seemed to me that if I had my own place then I could, not only play the music, but I could create an environment where people would be comfortable and it would be easier for them to have a good time because we would be all be friends. It would grow because it would be a friend telling a friend telling a friend. It really was family back then. I always thought about the Italian Los Familie - it was a very big thing, the Italian 'family', and I always felt like that at the Loft, like I was home, with my friends. That's how I felt I wanted the place to be.

I really loved playing records, if I heard a record and I didn't have it I would spend the whole day traipsing all over Manhattan to the six record stores that carried our music to find that record. I was possessed by it, I HAD to have it. And then with my girlfriend Robin, I would say, "let's sing bits!" I would memorise everything, I was totally possessed. That's part of being born with it. My father was an 8mm film freak, and in all the 8mm films he took, I'm dancing, I'm dancing! Every fucking movie I'm dancing! I danced back then just the way I dance now, moving my butt, it's the same thing!

DS3:

What kind of people went to the Gallery. Were there any characters you can remember?

NICKY SIANO:

It was very vocal back then, like people today go "ahhh, ohhh" but back then everybody was singing along or making noises or doing something and they had their tambourines, they had their maracas... there was this one guy who used to go "Aye, Oh, Que Pasa. Aye, Oh Que Pasa" in time to the music, all the time. And people would answer him! He'd go "Aye, Oh, Que Pasa!" and they go "Yeah Yeah!" and he'd go "Aye, Oh, Que Pasa!" - it was just wild! He was someone that I remember very, very distinctly, and of course I remember all my friends: Larry, as a character, he was my best friend, in my very formative years, from when I was 17 to when I was 25 he was my best friend, we were very close.

My friend Terry, she came to the Fourth of July party, she came dressed as the American flag but in this skimpy, sexy American flag outfit that she'd sewed together with this big head-dress that went all over everybody. And then there was this one guy who would pull down the balloons and dance with them, Michael Coster, and he would get really into it and the whole dancefloor would have to move over because he'd pulled down a whole row of balloons that were all strung together and he kept swirling them round and round and round. It was fabulous, but disruptive at the same time! He was incredible, there were a lot of very incredible people. A lot of them went on to be designers and legendary people like Frankie Knuckles, Grace Jones... these people used to come to my club, Steven Burrows, Calvin Klein, they used to come to the first Gallery on 22nd Street. All the DJs, Richie Kaczor, Bobby DJ, all the DJs, everyone. It was quite a place. Billy Smith from 20th Century records, it was about the first club he went to, I think Limelight and then the Gallery. A lot of people got their start there. I remember meeting Ray Taviana, the million dollar man. Warner Brothers paid him ten, twenty million dollars and he blew it all on cocaine. My club was the first place he stopped and I threw him on a bed and had sex with him. (laughs). Very crazy... Steve Rubell, I met him before he had the Enchanted Garden. He used to come to the Gallery, sometimes I'd do a Diana Ross medley back then, Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart, I'd play that then I'd play something like Stoned Love or Up the Ladder To The Roof, a few Supremes things He would come to the Booth and go "I love Diana Ross, I love Diana Ross!!"

A lot of people, a lot of characters... the seventies were a time when you really did experiment, especially the early seventies. It was a very positive thing. Unfortunately in some of these 'specials' they cut to all the negativity because some people went down a negative path at the end of it, but not everybody. A lot people didn't and a lot of people are still around - Frankie certainly didn't; Larry had the Garage all through the eighties. It was a negative thing that happened between '77 and '80, that was the end of it for me.

DS3:

What lay behind your decision to give up DJing in the 1980s?

NICKY SIANO:

A lot of that was drugs. I had to stop using drugs. I was such an addict, I couldn't even be around them too much or else I would start using them again. Now it's ok again. I felt like if I continued using I was gonna die, so I said, let me get out of the club scene for a while, and then while I was out for a little bit, David (Rodriguez) died of AIDS. I started going to help very early on at a GMHC kinda thing, something like that, and then they asked me to council at a drugs rehabilitation centre, it just happened. I wasn't working so I went down. I was just following where ever life led me, it was a very free thing and it led me to a really beautiful thing. As hard as it was working with people with AIDS I met some beautiful people and I really started to find out who I was and why I was here. What "Do Onto Others As You Would Have Them Do To You" really means. Things that are important tools to live. And I built my tools to live. When they asked me to come back and play at Body Soul it was a very natural thing because I had just quit my job six months prior. I had had it, I was meditating and I very clearly felt guided to quit and there I was playing records again! And I still love the music. I've just come back from three gigs overseas and everyone of them went fantastic and I think I'm just as good now as I was then, maybe even a little better.

DS3:

What would you say your style is now, is it different to what it was back then?

NICKY SIANO:

No it's not. It's eclectic. I do the same thing I used to do. I play a rock record if I like it, I play a rap record if I like it, I'm mostly based in house. I don't turn my back on a good record because it's not my genre. Also the tempo, if it's slower, like Quantic, I played Quantic Sunday night at Plan B and people didn't know what the record was! That guy is from England - he's fantastic! People don't know who he is! That guys a genius! The two records he's done are fantastic. I play six cuts off the two records. And that's at 138 BPM, people don't play it, why? Because they think they have to play faster. No. You, in your head, have gotten people used to thinking that you have to dance faster, and they are ready to dance faster, but if you did something else - there's no saying what they would do. It's just programming and what DJs do today; instead of taking their power they give it away. Instead of saying to the dancefloor, "ok you are gonna have a good time cos I'm gonna play stuff you know, but I'm also gonna educate you at the same time," what they do is they sell out and just play what they know. Very few DJs go out on limbs and take real risks. A real risk is to let a record play out right until the end then put on another record at a different tempo and do that a couple of times.

It's just so fear ridden, everything's about fear - they're afraid to do it this way, and I love the way people say "they won't dance..." - they WON'T? How do you know that? You didn't even try! You think in your brain that they won't dance. But if there is a devil, it is fear and if there is s a god, it's love. And when you love something and you are playing from that space of love you can never go wrong. It will always turn out right. Play for yourself the records that you love and if you connect with someone you connect, and if you don't, well at least you didn't sell out. That's my feelings about it (laughs).

DS3:

I know what you mean, I DJ as well...

NICKY SIANO:

Fear motivates choices. You are DJing and you hear in your head the next record to play. Sometimes you hear very specifically and you are going to play that record. And then you start second guessing yourself. Why? Ego and Fear, those are the two things. But that first thought, the first thing that came into your head, that was god, that was inspiration and that's what you should play. That's the choice that can never go wrong, the first thing that hits you, that's your inspiration. Don't start taking it apart, that's your ego and that comes from a different place, and it's not the energy you want to be inline with - trust me it always goes array. It may not go array that time but eventually it doesn't gell because you can't keep it up.

DS3:

What about the label. How did that come about and what's coming up?

NICKY SIANO:

I'm hearing house records sell 500, 400, if you are lucky and you sell a thousand - it's a hit! If you sell five thousand it's huge. And then I'm seeing the way people are giving records out, making them available, DJs aren't getting them. So I'm saying to myself "You know, it's that the records are not getting into the peoples hands, they're not being promoted correctly and they're picking shit music to put out on their labels". My first record, Smokin' It, has sold 1500 so far, and it's still selling! Love Serenade just sold out the first pressing, 800 records in two weeks. Why me and why not someone else? Am I coming along with a little bit of a different idea or something? Yeah I am! But you know what? I haven't even started using my different ideas just yet, that worked in the early seventies, that still work today. You bring the record to the DJ, you tell him about it while he's playing, he doesn't have to play it then but you bring it to him. You bring it to the DJs who you like and who are your friends, you call up record stores, you make sure it's in there, you call up radio stations, you do emails, it's simple. It's really quite simple, but no one is doing it! People are just putting out records and expecting them to just happen on their own. How is that? It doesn't work!

DS3:

Is production something you've always wanted to become involved with?

NICKY SIANO:

No, it wasn't. Arthur Russell got me into production because he used to come to my club to dance, every weekend for about a year. He came to me one night because he used to date my best friend. I didn't know he was a musician, I heard that he was but I didn't know what stuff he did. He had recorded something that was very underground and he was doing shows at these really avant garde kind of places and he said "Nicky we need to work together and it won't costs a lot" and blah, blah! I thought that I'd like to do that, so we did it. And that's when I realised, "wow, this is a major part of what I do!" I play piano, I play guitar, I know what a chord is, I know music theory, I'm a little bit ahead of other guys who don't even have that background. My parents sent me for music lessons when I was a kid. I was always into music.

When I work, when I produce, I'm able to say to a musician, that the A minor chord is not in key and work with people. It's working out for me!

But again I also think that there's a lot of negativity in music, a lot of weird, negative information. The golden rule is "do onto others as you would have them do to you" but it really is way beyond that, it's think about others the way you want them to think about you, because thought is a creative stream, your thoughts go out like energy and words go out with an even bigger energy. You say this word, like BMW, and you say BMW once, and you say it a million times and that energy starts to turn into molecules and take form, and if there's enough molecules they start to turn into mass. And that's what creation is about. This is what we are, a thought in Gods mind and we are created in his likeness and we can do the same thing. But we don't practise, we're too busy. We don't have time to meditate for forty five minutes a day because we are too busy. But if we meditated five minutes a day and put that energy out there we would see our whole world change. I'm not talking about hocus pocus, I'm talking about tried and true things. It's quantum physics, quantum physics has proved how energy takes mass.

In essence there's so much more than what is here, so much more going around. Follow your heart and what you have to do and that's what I'm trying to do with the label. I'm trying to follow what I feel I have to do and that's to put out some positive messages. Take a record like Love Serenade, "makes it cooler in the shade, it's a love serenade." The words to this song, I didn't write them, but they are brilliant. I found this guy who wrote the song, he was really inspired and when you have that inspiration with people, it's inspiring! Love is a revolution... You know, let's just talk a little bit more, let's just communicate. Look at what's going on on this planet. You can add to it or you can try and make a difference in your own little world. I'm not talking about a big thing, just in your own heart.

DS3:

Do you think the true story of the early clubs (with the internet, and Love Saves the Day for example) is starting to be told?

NICKY SIANO:

Yes, I do. I think Love Saves The Day is the closest thing we've had to the true story. I think the major problem with all of these books and specials is that they take on too much. You have to give up in order to get. I think that the story is ten volumes, year by year. I think that the true story of what became disco can be told in five volumes, 71, 72, 73, 74 and 75. After 75 it's all inconsequential, anything that happened after 75 wasn't what made the scene happen, everything that happened after 75 was just stuff that was taken, 'improved upon' and changed- it was nothing new.

Studio 54, as glamorous as it was, and everyone raves about it... Well, a friend, Terri, called me the other night after this VH1 disco special- she used to hang out with me, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. She told me that Ian Schrager was with her at the Gallery one night and they were sitting up on the balcony looking at the lights. My lights were set up on three tiers so they looked like they were going into the ceilings - we had very high ceilings. And the whole platform with the lighting came down to just about 18 feet above your head, and then the ceilings went up for another 23 feet so that when you looked up it looked like the lighting was going up into the ceilings. They were on the balcony. And on the balcony you could see a side view, you could see it going up, and he said to her "In a couple of years I'm gonna own a club just like this but bigger" And he did! If you look at the lighting that was in Studio 54, it was like I'd seen it somewhere before, it was uncanny.

DS3:

Do you think people are looking at the past because they can't get what they need from the present dance scene?

NICKY SIANO:

In the late seventies there was a lot of historic feeling about the late fifties and in the eighties there was a lot of historic feeling about the sixties with the Beatles and stuff, it just is a period where history always becomes important to people and it IS important. The dance scene is on it's knees, well why? Because everyone is copying, no one is coming up with new ideas, everyone is just doing what the next person is doing and trying to make it better but you can't because the best has already been done. Someone has to come up with some new ideas, and people do it all the time, but again, (whiny voice) "if we do that, people won't like it." Fear rules the nest. You've got to ask yourself, every time you make a decision, "Am I making this decision from fear, or am I making this decision from love?" There are really only two motivating factors in life: Fear and Love. And if you are motivated by love you can never go wrong. Even if it doesn't seem right at the time eventually it works out. So ask yourself, if you are motivated to make money, and that's your pure and only motivation, then you are in the wrong business because you've got to do what you love and the money will come. You can't do something just for money because then you aren't doing something out of the pureness of your heart and love. It doesn't work!

Steve Rubell said he built Studio 54 for cash. I knew him back then, I knew him very well, I knew him in my bedroom! He didn't build Studio 54 for cash, he built it because he wanted to make the most fantastic club that ever happened. And that's what he did baby! And it all started to turn after the first year and it just turned into an evil club. No one's evil, they just make bad decisions. I think everyone's essentially good, but a lot of people are making bad decisions. And there are negative forces trying to tear you down, believe in yourself!

Sometimes within the last four years a record breaks through with the words. I used to love the words, and that's the big thing I miss. When you listen to all these things that are just beats you can't go up there. Gimme that record that goes "Things are cooler in the shade, it's a love serenade". And why are there some many just beats out there? There's a lot of reasons for that but the people who are making music don't have to do that, it's a choice. And the music that you play as a DJ, you don't have to play just beats all the time, it's a choice. It's all up to you. I love instrumentals I mean, hey, City Country City would beat down anything from today. It doesn't have to be only one thing. Nothing has to be one thing. Don't you get bored? And if you are bored then they must be bored!

The full interview with photos can be read in the latest issue of Keep On Magazine.

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