The Club King: My Rise, Reign, and Fall in New York Nightlife

by Peter Gatien

  For a long time, the vision of owning a New York venue had ruled my imagination. Though I might not have dared to dream that big while playing bumper pool in the Aardvark game room, somewhere deep inside, the American dreams of my youth still held sway, and those dreams zeroed in on the national epicenter of New York City. I meditated upon the possibilities of Manhattan continually, making grandiose plans in my mind, ones I wasn’t bold enough to announce publicly.

  By the dawn of the 1980s, I thought I was ready to take the leap. As at a high-roller poker table, it required a hefty stake to buy into a seat in the New York nightlife scene. Awash in cash from Atlanta Limelight, I had amassed more money than I ever thought I would possess. I had the buy-in I needed.

  First I had to settle on a location. Nothing average, nothing run of the mill, would do. I needed a building that stood out. Something that would function in and of itself as a calling card.

  I had been scouting New York quietly for as long as I’d been in America. On one 1980 visit, I remember being impressed but not blown away by Studio 54. By then, the club was well past its prime. Studio had flamed out in a tax-evasion prosecution, and then reopened under a new owner. Despite the fading reality, the freewheeling scene that had been created by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager remained etched in people’s consciousnesses. The public still viewed the club as the very definition of fabulous. On my undercover forays I was a spy in the house of the glitterati, visiting two or three times just to see what was what.

  The place was smaller than I had expected. I knew I could create a better lighting system and a better sound system than Studio. But I had to consider how to accomplish the feat. I didn’t think installing three miles of neon tubing rather than the two miles at Studio was going to cut it. The chrome-and-neon era had peaked. I couldn’t push it any further, so I had to find another direction.

  The Stones song “Gimme Shelter” had always been one of my favorites, with its mesmerizing “It’s just a shot away/It’s just a kiss away” fade-out. I was determined to take a shot of my own. For anyone with ambition, Manhattan was the Emerald City of Oz. If I can make it there, I’ll make it blah blah blah. After that early scouting foray, I returned to Atlanta and bided my time. From then on, I always kept an eye on New York. Well, one eye was all I had.

  I realized that a successful assault on the city’s nightlife would require not only a pair of brass balls but also a certain amount of ingenuity. I had logged enough time in the business to know that club-goers displayed a voracious hunger for novelty. I sought to cater to that hunger.

  Art and architecture were emerging as new and vital elements in the early 1980s, seizing the public interest in a way they had never done before. Almost overnight, a wave of storefront galleries opened in the East Village. A lot of them were improvised, often run by artists themselves. I once had dinner in a restaurant off Tompkins Square and watched as a crew of movers came in with oversize paintings to transform the place into an art gallery right before my eyes.

  Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Jeff Koons all came out of that scene. A parallel explosion was happening in photography, with young turks like Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibovitz, Peter Beard, and Bruce Weber joining the established guard of Helmut Newton, Scavullo, and Avedon, pushing the limits of the art.

  For my purposes, the artistic ferment indicated a renewed level of public obsession with aesthetics. Art, photography, and architecture, I realized, were like the yo-yos, peashooters, and Hula-Hoops of my childhood, trends that would flare up and blaze across the sky like meteors.

  I wanted to be in on it.

  “I have to be different,” I had told the real-estate broker handling my search for a club venue. “Give me something that is architecturally really interesting, a large space like a church or a museum. I want high ceilings, as few columns as possible, and I want a lot of entry points and exits.”

  We toured the city together. The broker showed me the Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side. I immediately concluded that the place was too big. And besides, another theater wasn’t going to cut it. Anything that might feel like a knockoff of Studio 54, which was located in an old opera house, represented stale territory. I needed to make it new, make it fresh, make it different. I’d already seen how eager the press was to compare any new club to the legendary Studio.

  “Find me a church,” I said again, growing surer of my direction. I had to hold myself back from demanding a Disney-style castle, but that was what I wanted, some sort of edifice covered in fairy dust in the middle of New York. The broker headed downtown, rumbling along the traffic-choked West Side Highway. Heading east to Sixth Avenue, we pulled up outside an abandoned house of worship.

  The former Church of the Holy Communion and the former Joseph Jean Pierre Gatien represented a match made, if not in heaven, then at least in purgatory. For one thing, the neighborhood represented the exact Manhattan sweet spot for me. If the three rules of real estate are location, location, location, Chelsea was a nightclub owner’s dream.

  In real estate, anything below Twenty-Third Street in Manhattan was considered downtown, the locus of the creative community that I hoped would become my customer base and constitute my workforce. Chelsea was developing into the center of the New York queer world. From my experience in Miami and Atlanta, I understood how much I needed a queer clientele. Gay people were the straw that stirred the drink of the straight world.

  Oddly enough, the church proved to have no real neighbors apart from industrial buildings and Garment Center satellite shops. By six p.m. the streets would empty out and the area would become a virtual desert. Nowadays you can’t toss a rock in the neighborhood without hitting a restaurant, but back then there was nothing. Along the former Ladies’ Mile shopping district on Sixth Avenue, huge mercantile buildings that were destined to become a Bed Bath & Beyond and a Barnes & Noble stood abandoned.

  For the sake of simple visibility, being situated on an avenue was ideal. To get anywhere in Manhattan, the traffic has to be routed along the main north-south thoroughfares, not the smaller cross streets. Jimi Hendrix had already taught this Canadian boy what he needed to know, that all crosstown traffic does is slow you down. Sixth Avenue would give me a steady flow of eyeballs rolling past the club, and the church’s conspicuous nature would make an impression.

  With the former Church of the Holy Communion, I could swoop down upon an architectural prize lying empty and discarded in the middle of heartless Manhattan. Personally, I was drawn to the place both as a Disney child and as a lapsed Catholic. I had spent a lot of time in churches. Now I was buying a church of my own, using my Atlanta profits for the $1.6 million purchase price and socking in another $2.5 million for renovations to the crumbling structure.

  When a church is deconsecrated, it loses its religious affiliation and becomes just another building. Churches, synagogues, tabernacles, and mosques had been turned into condos, artist studios, offices, and flea markets. I tend to think that a structure is defined by what people do in it. If they pray and worship, it’s a church. If they go to twelve-step programs, it’s a drug-rehab center. If they lose their minds and dance like no one’s watching, then it’s a nightclub.

  I didn’t go in for a deep analysis of my motivations behind the purchase. Because of my strict Catholic upbringing, did I have some grudge against organized religion? Was I a former altar boy acting out? If you insist, Dr. Freud. But really, things were less complicated and more straightforward than that. Churches are designed and built as places for human assembly, with lots of exits and large open spaces in their floor plans. It was as if the building had been designed with me in mind.

  The logistics made sense, and opening a club in a church was a mischievous move, one that shot out sparks every which way. A disco church represented a great publicity hook. I was banking on people coming to the club just to take a look at the place. A panther beneath the dance floor wouldn’t cut it—been there, done that. I was more interested in th
e attraction of a Holy Ghost up in the rafters.

  To some, putting a disco in a deconsecrated church will always be a poke in the eye of the Almighty. The reality of deconsecration faded in the face of the appearances. It was undeniable. No matter what kind of shingle hung outside, the structure on the corner of Twentieth and Sixth telegraphed as a church. If you asked a kid to draw a picture of a place of worship, the place on Sixth is what they’d come up with.

  I wasn’t totally naïve about the risk—just naïve enough, and just bold enough, to go through with it.

  New York City should have been an intimidating next step for me, but I was hot off of a massive success in Atlanta. Each club I opened had taught me something new, and I had built up to this, believing that I could compete in the boldface, big-town big league of the City. The numbers were in my favor. Eighteen million people lived in the immediate metropolitan area. There would always be enough warm bodies to fill any number of dance floors. Even more important, New York’s creative community was second to none. Countless musicians, artists, and other overachievers in almost every field of human endeavor flocked to Manhattan.

  But mere numbers weren’t enough. Even though the customers were out there, businesses failed in the metropolitan area all the time. It’s a thickly populated place, but a cruelly Darwinian one. The city has a way of brushing aside the timid and clueless. It’s a crucible of great success, but also of staggering failure.

  I was very well aware that as a club owner, I was in the business of show. Image was everything. I knew that most people didn’t see me as a businessman but rather as a freebooting buccaneer. I had chosen to project an aura of mystery instead of extravagance. Taking that approach allowed me to play to my strengths. I was shy in front of the press. I didn’t want to be out on the dance floor leading the charge. I wanted to be the ghost, present but unknowable. The small-town provincial kid from Ontario, Pierre, disappeared behind the eye-patch façade. That was a key aspect of my success. In New York, a little mystery and a unique look made you someone to pay attention to. I intended to leverage that for all it was worth.

  Through late summer and early fall 1983, I started to build the buzz. We worked to repair, refurbish, and rehabilitate the premises. Since New York City had declared the exterior a landmark in 1966, I couldn’t touch the outside of the building. But I would never have wanted to alter the crenellated tower that looked, for my money, like it was waiting for Rapunzel to let down her hair.

  The interior, on the other hand, needed a lot of massaging. We broke through and created a passageway from the main building to the nearby rectory. There was a room with great-looking built-in wooden bookcases where the minister formerly had his library. It would serve perfectly as a VIP enclave. The church’s multiple entrances and exits meant fire inspectors would allow a high occupancy rating, which I needed because I was intent on drawing crowds.

  The building had been designed with a lot of intersecting spaces, including a smaller chapel as well as classrooms, halls, and offices. In the early eighties, disco wasn’t dominating as it once had, and music began to evolve into different subgenres. Michael Jackson’s Thriller was huge, but New Wave and postpunk were both having a moment. Heavy metal experienced a resurgence, hip-hop was a rising force, and house, techno, and synth-pop swirled into the mix, too. The intricate floor plan of the church allowed me to install multiple sound systems, with different areas in the club devoted to different styles of music on the same night.

  The interior featured elegant ecclesiastical details, like the milled wooden beams that arched above the main sanctuary. I left intact the gorgeous stained-glass windows, which the broker assured me were created by Louis Comfort Tiffany, though we found out later they were actually crafted by his competitor, John La Farge. We also retained some of the old pews for seating and used others to construct a bar. I scrounged up a set of organ pipes, had them painted gold, and installed them behind where the altar used to be, as a backdrop to the stage and the DJ booth.

  Every theatrical producer understands that putting a “Banned in Boston” censorship label on a play will bring in the crowds. When word got out that the former church was slated to become Limelight nightclub, its deconsecrated status mattered not at all. I received a three-word, worth-its-weight-in-gold review from the Right Reverend Paul Moore Jr., the Episcopal bishop of New York:

  “We are horrified.”

  Our debut night, November 9, 1983, featured traffic jams on Sixth Avenue and lines down the block. Interview magazine sponsored the evening. Andy Warhol declared the opening to be “the party of the year.” I was getting my first hint of Manhattan fabulosity, and it tasted sweet.

  I stood at the door for the opening, surveying the tumultuous scene. Two or three protesters lingered at the edges of the crowd, with one carrying a placard that read “Don’t Dance on My Religion.” A performance artist in a Jesus-style loincloth approached the club, hauling around a huge wooden cross. The crowd, made up of celebs, fashionistas, and the merely curious, as well as the random black-clad Goth or pink-haired punk, became increasingly giddy.

  Clearly the circus had come to town, and I had assigned myself the role of ringmaster.

  Nightclubs are like marriages. Anyone can get married, and anyone can open a club. In both cases, the real trick is to keep it going beyond the honeymoon period. Most nightclubs flame out after a year. Almost by definition, they cater to a jaded clientele. A frenzied crowd of trendoids seem always to be rushing around New York City, ever in search of what’s new, what’s hot, what’s now.

  So, yeah, I’d made a big splash opening New York Limelight. I’d managed to hit during something of a lull in the City’s nightlife. Studio 54 was over. No new megaclub had arisen to take its place. Smaller boutique clubs like the World, the Pyramid Club, and especially the world-class Area were great, and I admired what they were doing artistically and creatively. But their capacities were limited to a thousand people, many times even less.

  Soon after New York Limelight opened, we nabbed the booking for the seventieth birthday party of Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs. Madonna, then just breaking big, sat alongside the former heroin addict and perennial gun-nut birthday boy, who as a favor to us left his assault rifles at home. It was hectic, it was a trial by fire, but we pulled it off. New to New York as I was, I already understood how to do this stuff. I knew how to organize and throw a party. I had been doing it all my professional life.

  From there on out, Limelight attracted a huge percentage of Manhattan’s literary and social elite, making each one of them feel as though they were getting an exclusive, unique experience. I may have been the new kid in town, but by some miracle of timing I also came in as the last man standing. Many of the other major nightlife venues had closed.

  Indirectly, at least, I owe a debt of gratitude to Studio 54. It had gripped the public imagination so completely, and had become such a huge, globally recognized phenomenon, that all nightclubs afterward benefited from its notoriety. The media apparatus that had gone into overdrive for Studio 54 now took a look at New York Limelight and knew exactly what to do. The tabloids descended like a flock of hungry crows. I took out token ads, mainly to support small, niche gay publications, but I got so much free publicity that mainstream advertising proved unnecessary.

  From hard-won experience in Cornwall, Miami, and Atlanta, I understood that I could only be as good as the crew I gathered around me. I had to create a community of sorts, a collection of simpatico workers to help me operate my club. The atmosphere around New York Limelight was so frenzied at the beginning that hiring was like inviting people to board a runaway train. Jack-of-all-trades Brian MacGuigan came along from Atlanta Limelight, and Jay Block journeyed north to run legal interference for the opening. Tony Pelligrino chose to stay behind in Georgia, a decision that sucked a bit of magic from my life.

  I sold my interest in the Atlanta club to my brother Moe. From its early days as a roman candle streaking across the Georgia s
ky, the club eventually fizzled down into a wet firecracker. I was almost, but not quite, too busy to notice.

  I did learn that nepotism has its limits. I had my four blood brothers, and then I had my other family of brothers and sisters, the creative community who helped make my clubs a success. In society, no matter where you are, out-of-step souls exist who are simply not built for office work. They echo Melville’s Bartleby the scrivener: “I would prefer not to.” Call it personality, background, or an imbalance of brain salts, a large sector of the populace can’t cope with regular nine-to-fives. These were my people. And New York had them in droves.

  I developed a great deal of fondness for the quirky, streetwise lineup of hipsters, artists, hustlers, strivers, and stoners that I employed, representatives of all races, creeds, sexual orientations, and upbringings. More than a few of them were graduates from the school of hard knocks. For the most part, staffers in my New York club, just as in Atlanta and Miami, possessed only short-term career goals. Limelight was a transient gig, a stepping stone to whatever bright futures they imagined.

  One employee became a celebrated fixture: Fred Rothbell-Mista, the memorable host of the VIP Room. Fred had a magical touch with bringing people together. The evening might start out with rockers in one corner of the VIP inner sanctum, art gallery sophisticates in another, fashionistas next to them, and by the end of the night everyone was socializing, talking to each other. The ultimate schmoozer, Fred had a flamboyant energy that kept New York Limelight’s VIP room popular for over a decade. In the midst of the AIDS crisis, he made the club-within-a-club into a second home for the embattled denizens of the downtown scene. What was once the library of the church’s minister became their refuge.