Larry Levan

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Larry Levan (born Lawrence Philpot, 1954-92), an American DJ best known for his decade-long stay at Paradise Garage in New York City, which has been described as the prototype of the modern dance club.

He established a cult following who called his sets "Saturday Mass" in his honor.

François Kevorkian, a influential post-disco DJ, credits Levan for bringing the dub aesthetic to dance music.

Levan, alongside Kevorkian, experimented with drum machines and synthesizers in his experiments and live sets, ushering in an experimental, post-disco sound that presages the rise of house music.

He DJ'd at Club Zanzibar in the 1980s as well as the Jersey Sound brand of deep house or garage house.

Early life

Levan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Minnie (née Levan) and Lawrence Philpot. Isaac and Minnie, his older brother and sister, are biological twins. He was born with a congenital heart disease and asthma from an early age, making him vulnerable to fainting in class. Despite being a fragile young boy, he excelled in math and physics, giving the impression that he would be a genius one day, according to his teachers. He inherited his passion for music from his mother, who was devoted to blues, jazz, and gospel music, and he was able to use a record player from the age of three. "I'd make him put records on so we could dance together," his mother says. The flamboyantly Vanguard Levan (who dyed his hair orange nearly a decade before the rise of punk rock) was regularly bullied by his classmates while attending Erasmus Hall High School in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the Flatbush neighborhood transitioned to a majority African-American population amid white flight. He grew out of high school and discovered assuagement in Harlem's long-standing ball culture as a dressmaker, where he first met fellow designer and lifelong best friend Frankie Knuckles.

During a brief encounter with hippie DJ David Mancuso, who introduced Levan to Manhattan's burgeoning underground dance scene, he became obsessed with the prospect of making the "music that will never stop." Mancuso, the owner of The Loft, a minimally furnished, members-only dance club (uniquely located in his house), was on display in lieu of alcohol and music, with "punch, fruit, and candy" instead of alcohol and music processed by a state-of-the-art sound system. "You could only enter the Loft by private invitation," Levan and Knuckles' acquaintance said. This was not because Mancuso wanted to establish an elitist environment; he had intended to bring together diverse groups of gays who would not ordinarily gather together to create a democratic, united body. David was as drawn to black music and culture as well as males, so the Loft party was instrumental in bringing together wealthy, white gay men, many of whom were musicians, with this black musical dance style he adored.

Personal life

Levan was outright gay. Nicky Siano (a fellow Brooklynite and Mancuso disciple who had been in a love triangle with Mel Cheren) was previously involved in a romantic relationship with him. Frankie Knuckles and Levan were lifetime friends who were introduced to each other by a "drag queen" named Gerald when Levan was 15 years old; Levan and Knuckles were both active in the local drag scene.

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Musical career

Levan got his start at the Continental Baths as a replacement for Nicky Siano, the Gallery's resident DJ, who briefly employed both men as decorators and taught them their pioneering three turntable techniques. Levan's DJing style was influenced by Siano's penchant for Philadelphia soul and upbeat rock, as well as Mancuso's jazz-inflected eclecticism; as with Mancuso, he briefly dated Siano during the period. Although Knuckles was still trying to make his way into the New York club scene, Levan's "diva persona" became a hit attraction at SoHo Place soon, after he had previously worked in the city's notoriously competitive black drag "houses.

Levan was offered a residency at the Paradise Garage during the 1977 disco boom. Although owner Michael Brody, the defunct Reade Street founder who "developed the methods as well as the sound," the new venue's newbie, Mel Cheren, Brody's former companion and a silent partner in the venture, planned a spectacular opening night attracting a predominantly white gay audience, Louisville, Kentucky, who would make him a herd. In 17-degree weather, people were kept indoors. Some of them never returned to school; the club didn't really have the same atmosphere that people remember it for until 1980."

The club and Levan's DJing gradually became mainstream, with only to a select group of people and housed in an otherwise unadorned building on King Street in Greenwich Village. Frankie Crocker, a respected WBLS DJ/programming engineer, often spoke of the club on air and based his playlists around Levan's sets. The Richard Long & Associates Sound system (RLA) of the club featured custom-built "McLaughlin" bass speakers.

Levan, a leading DJ/remixer who converted to evangelical Christianity following his conversion to evangelical Christianity, became a prolific producer and mixer in the 1980s, with several of his efforts making it to national dance music charts. Levan's remixes of "Ain't High Enough" by Inner Life, "Ain't Nothin' Goin't Don't Have Your Rent" by Gwen Guthrie and "Heartbeat," as well as Levan's production work on the long-awaited "Don't Make Me Wait" by the Beach Boys, which Levan created and was a member of (and who later became the New York Citi Peech Boys due to the similar sound of the Beach Boys's The latter song is a classic example of his soulful aesthetic, with a strong gospel tinge in the vocal arrangements and a tinkling piano. Despite the looming bankruptcy of West End Records, Levan tinkered with the song for almost a year, one of the first dance mixes to feature influences from dub music and an appended vocal-only edit. When the song was finally announced, it seemed that a lot of the song's word-of-mouth momentum had been slashed, leading to its stall in the lower reaches of the charts.

Levan became more dependent on PCP and heroin as the garage's fame in the mid-1980s soared, just as many patrons and friends succumbed to AIDS. He began to ensconce himself in a pleading entourage of drag queens and younger acolytes as he appeared. Levan was described as being "worshipped, almost like a god" at the Paradise Garage. Levan's idiosyncratic sets (running the gamut from Evelyn "Champagne" King, Chaka Khan, and Deodato with Camille to Kraftwerk, Manuel Göttsching, and British synthpop) provoked outrage from some quarters as beat-matching and ideological adherence became the norm among club DJs. Nonetheless, Levan's final sets at the Garage demonstrate his love for the rebel sounds of Chicago house and hip-hop; however, he remained at the forefront of dance music; recordings of his Levan's last sets at the Garage reveal his obsession for the insurgent sounds of Chicago house and hip-hop.

In September 1987, the Garage's operations came to an end, just weeks before Brody died from AIDS-related complications. Brody's death and Levan's departure shocked Levan, who knew that few club owners would tolerate his quirks and drug dependencies. Despite Brody's verbally bequeathed the club's sound and lighting systems to Levan, they were instead given to Brody's mother in his will. According to reports, Levan was caused by the late impresario's lover and boss, who reportedly despised him.

Despite protests and pleas from Mel Cheren's Brody family, the devices remained in storage as their home. After a short stay at the short-lived Choice in the East Village with DJ/proprietor Richard Vasquez and Joey Llanos, Levan began to sell his valuable records for drugs. Danny Krivit's friends will buy them back for him out of sympathy.

Levan was on the verge of a comeback as the 1990s rolled out. Despite being dismissed as a ghost in New York despite occasional appearances at the au courant Sound Factory, his fame among disco and early American electronic dance music enthusiasts had nevertheless grown among Europe and Japan's connoisseurs of disco and early American experimental dance music. He was brought over to London by Justin Berkmann to DJ at the Ministry of Sound nightclub in 1991. He ended up being on the lamniest of both groups, recording and recording songs for the club's record label during this period, as well as tuning the venue's celebrated sound system.

Despite being dependent on heroin, Levan's 1992 tour of Japan earned gushing praise in the local press. Cheren was compelled to recover and resumed his tentative recording forays. Francois Kevorkian characterized Levan's last Japanese sets as nostalgic and inspiring, with a hint of bittersweetness and closure.

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