Seasoned New York City Club-Goers Share the Ins and Outs of the Downtown Scene of the ’70s and ’80s
From the DJ History archives: nightlife veterans Yvonne Leybold and Terry Hayden discuss early disco, fashion, Larry Levan and the inimitable Reade Street
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DJ History’s Bill Brewster met Yvonne Leybold, AKA Miss Yvonne, in New York through the late DJ Adam Goldstone. She worked at KISS-FM and provided vocals for a series of records Goldstone produced under the name Superstars of Rock, whose first album Brewster released. She also grew up clubbing in New York in the ’60s and ’70s, at the outset of disco, and became an aficionado of the downtown party scene.
\n\nIn this interview from 1999, Leybold and her childhood friend Terry Hayden tell Brewster about clubbing together in their teens, their early disco days at the Cheetah, the first gay parties, seeing Larry Levan DJ, why Reade Street was their go-to club and more.
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Tell me about yourself.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI was born here but spent the first 16 years of my life between here and Puerto Rico. When I was 15 I decided I didn’t want to go back there any more. I decided to get a part-time job for the summer. I was clubbing from about 14.
\n\nWhere?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe first real disco-type club was Cheetah. That was a lot of fun. It was a very mixed atmosphere. It was the first time I went into a place and you see lights, and you see atmosphere, instead of the rinky-dink places I used to go to after school and weekends.
\n\nLike sock-hops?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah, those sort of things. They were horrible, actually. Especially, if you belonged to CYO [Catholic Youth Organization], like I did. So what they used to do was have pizza parties for us, and I hated those things. The pizza was cold; you couldn’t get any booze. And I think back then before they had invented pantyhose, we were still wearing garter belts and I used to hide a bottle of rum inside my garter belt. So we did things like that. And of course there were the usual drugs. We started out smoking marijuana.
\n\nWas this at Cheetah?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah, definitely. And the braver ones were doing coke and heroin. Everybody did pills, but we didn’t indulge in them that much.
Like amphetamines?
\n\nYvon Leybold
\n\nAmphetamines, downers, basically whatever you could get out of your parents’ medicine chest. That’s how I used to get mine. I used to take my mother’s Librium and Valium, and my dad had some really fierce pain pill that I can’t think of the name of. That’s what we used to pop, especially at high school. We would take a pill for each different class. How we survived high school.
\n\nWhich school?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nCatholic high school, Cathedral High. It was in midtown Manhattan.
\n\nTerry Hayden.
\n\nIt’s still there. It’s on 51st and Lexington.
\n\nWhere was Cheetah?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nMidtown. On 47th Street. I think.
\n\nHow big was it?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nFor me it was gigantic. Gigantic. Huge space, soft lights. Different colors and shades of chiffon curtains that they had around. They had light shows. What I like was the emblem. It was a cheetah, but it had a woman’s face and breasts. But there was also another club called Trude Heller’s Trick.
\n\nWhat did Cheetah look like?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was cubby holes. Clusters of rooms. They had a huge dancefloor, and there were clusters of rooms on either side. It was bigger than Trude Heller’s Trick because that had a little dancefloor I remember.
\n\nTerry Hayden.
\n\nI think maybe about 100 people on Cheetah’s dancefloor.
\n\nHow many ante-rooms were there going off the sides?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nNow, see, you're talking about somebody who was 12 or 13 years old.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI was going to clubs at that time and I was 14.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nSneaking in.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nDressing up to look older. And they didn’t card you back then. Least I never got carded.
What year was it?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt might have been ’68 or ’69.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\n’67 for me.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nHot pants were the thing. So that’s what we wore, with fishnets.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nDo you remember what we were talking about the other day: window pane stockings, how we had them in different colors?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI remember my hair was up in this pom-pom with these little stupid curls on the side. It was pitiful.
\n\nWhat was going in the ante-rooms?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThey were more loungey.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was like levels with velvet on them.
\n\nWhat music?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nBack then it was typical R&B: The Temptations, Diana Ross and the Supremes.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\n[Sings] “Papa was a rolling stone...”
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nMarvin Gaye, Stax...
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThe music that was on WWRL.
I was just going in to hear the music and see stars.
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was a great time. Those were really my first two disco experiences.
\n\nWhat kind of composition was the crowd?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nFor me it was basically pretty straight.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nSee, you were older than me. I didn’t know the difference. I was just going in to hear the music and see stars.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was black, white and Latino. Very mixed, very straight.
\n\nTrude Heller’s?
\n\nYvon Leybold
\n\nTrude Heller’s was more of a soulful place.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThat was wild.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was in the Village and, at the time, what were considered the trendy people would go there. Basically, their crowd was more of a black and Latino crowd. They were the ones that knew about the music then.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nDuring that time, my friend from high school lived right across the street from Trude Heller’s and I lived uptown so it was exciting coming down to the Village. And I remember during that time, we were able to see Stevie Wonder at the Bitter End for $2. So you were getting a lot of people; a lot of jazz.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe Four Tops.
\n\nThese were playing at Trude Heller’s?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah. It was pretty big.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was small...
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was a small place, but it was cavernous.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBell bottoms!
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nThere weren’t bell bottoms. There were flares! A lot of wedgies. We used to wear water buffaloes. They were this sandal-type show with these big thick wedges made out of leather, and you wore them till they fell apart because they were so comfortable. They were so cool. They worked really well because we were still wearing hip-huggers and they made you sort of sway. And they made you look tall which made me happy! Midriffs were in back then...
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBecause we all had them back then!
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nBecause I was still in the middle of that period where rock was still the thing, and I was into Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI was considered strange because I was trying to imitate them. Even the kids in my neighborhood weren’t into it. When Woodstock happened, a lot of the kids weren’t into any of that.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI went to Woodstock, right out of high school.
\n\nBut Hendrix was more known in the UK at that stage.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nNobody knew about him then. You needed to really pay attention.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nMy parents were into Nat King Cole. They were music lovers. I grew up in a household were I would sing songs and didn’t even know where they came from: Bessie Smith, Chambers Brothers, Sam Cooke. But listening to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, that was different. I had this record player, it was a little box, I remember playing “Purple Haze” and Richie Havens.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nOh, a lot of Richie Havens. And Buffy Saint Marie.
\n\nOh no, spare me...
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nOh, I know, but then later we had Melanie. I really liked her. Then the later clubs I went to were the Dom, the Ice Palace....
Before we get on to that, let’s exhaust the possibilities of Trude Heller’s first.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nOK. There were nights when they had their rock thing, and nights where they had their soul thing. I went to both, because I like rock, too. That was a lot looser, but it was the nights when they had the soul parties there that everything and everybody who could get in there was there. That was the Studio 54 of the late sixties, early seventies. Very lively.
\n\nCapacity?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nBecause it wasn’t as big as the Cheetah, maybe they could get 300 people in there. Maybe.
\n\nAnd the decor and layout?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was wood. It looked like a ship, at least that’s how I remember it.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah. It was like a men’s club type of thing. That’s what it reminded me of.
\n\nLike Nell’s?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBut not as nice as Nell’s. Wooden floors.
\n\nGood sound system?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nWell, we thought it was good because it was so loud.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nExactly! Stereo made a difference, and mixers made a difference, I’m sure.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBut as long as you heard that BOOM! BOOM! it didn’t matter whether it was tinny.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was the beginning of people learning how to use the lights. The light shows and all that. It wasn’t like a lot of the rock clubs. At Trude Heller’s when they did the lights it was very psychedelic. Cheetah was trying to incorporate that and so was Trude Heller’s when they had their soul nights. You could see that they were trying to imitate one another and be a little more fierce than the other.
It was the beginning of people learning how to use the lights. It was very psychedelic.
So Ice Palace. Is that the one on Fire Island?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nWell, we had one in New York on 57th St. There’s a McDonald’s there now. That was a nice place. If I remember correctly it was all mirrors. They had these platforms that you danced on. When I was going there it was relatively gay, but I was going to other gay clubs prior to that. I used to go there Sunday nights.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nEven though I went to these other clubs, I never went to Ice Palace. I went to Reade Street.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nReade Street was when we started out.
\n\nWe’re getting ahead of ourselves here. You said you went to other gay clubs, but they must have been private given the time.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThey were all private pretty much. You had to know someone.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nOr a password.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah, or a password. Ice Palace was private, meaning you had an invitation to go on a particular night or depending on what the theme was that night. You could bring a guest and they didn’t have to pay the full fee. You pay like half price. Then you signed up on a register if you wanted to become a member. They had a bar that I can remember.
\n\nYou said something about passwords. What do you mean?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nYou had to know a word to get in. If you were a member you’d know. Either you’d get a call, or it would be that word for a month and it would be on your card. So you would give that word, whatever it was, and bring yourself and your guest.
\n\nWhat kind of words?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI remember one of the words being “psychedelic,” but it could be anything. Just a common word like “banana.” A word that nobody would have thought of. That’s what made you think you were really hot, because you knew this word.
The Loft wasn’t the Loft when we were going there. It was Reade Street.
What music did they play at Ice Palace?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nSoul music and what’s seen as classic R&B today. A lot of dance-gospel.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nSly & the Family Stone was pretty prevalent at that time. And there were a lot of concerts at Madison Square Gardens and we used to sneak in. We found a way in. So he was adding a soul-rock aspect to everything. Would he be considered R&B today?
\n\nOh, yeah.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI liked my rock music. And I liked my soul music, but I was also going to a lot of salsa clubs. I remember going to the Huntspoint Palace. Talk about huge. The place was gigantic. They had maybe two or three salsa bands in there. I would go there Sunday nights. I’d do maybe the Wednesday and Friday at either Trude Heller’s or Cheetah, depending on what was going on there. Then if I didn’t do Sunday at the Ice Palace, I would go to Huntspoint Palace in the Bronx. Soon as you got off the subway at Huntspoint, it was right across the street. Mainly Latino and black people. They had a DJ there also.
\n\n\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe Loft wasn’t the Loft when we were going there. It was Reade Street.
\n\nReade Street was Larry Levan’s thing, the Loft was another place entirely.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI went to the one on Prince Street later. The first one I remember you and I going to was Reade Street.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nWe practically lived there.
\n\nTell me about Reade Street then.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nDo you remember the parachute? That was the most vivid thing. It was an old parachute that they used to cover the ceiling.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBalloons.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nLights. A huge, huge warehouse.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThose were my best days.
Those were our best days, absolutely.
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nThose were our best days, absolutely. You had to walk up all these stairs because it was on the top floor. They didn’t have a liquor license.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThat was the best thing about it.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThat place was so big it had what we considered, or was called, the runway. All the kids from Alvin Ailey would come and dance there.
\n\nWhat’s Alvin Ailey?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nA dance school. They had this runway where everybody was doing vogueing. It was on that second floor where you sat down. Because they didn’t sell liquor, you snuck in your own booze. But we didn’t, because we were smoking too much pot and doing too many drugs to bother.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nAnd we drank their spiked punch.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nRight. And we drank their spiked punch.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nLSD! Different fruit punches, but it was spiked.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYou got water, tea, coffee, bread, juice, fruit. It was a spread.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nAnd you definitely needed a password to get in.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nOr you had to become a member to get in there.
We would get there about 11 or 12. And we never left before six or seven.
You said it was two floors. Top floor and the one below? Do you remember how many floors the building was?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was definitely a walk-up. I was going to say three or four.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI was there the day they closed it. But we would get there about 11 or 12. And we never left before six or seven.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI can remember sometimes not leaving there before noon.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nDanced till you were out of it. Then stop and go for a sleep.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThen you got up and danced some more.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nAt the end of the night they would release balloons from the ceiling, and you’d be like dancing among these balloons at the end.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe only way they were getting us out of there was to send in the fire department! All of a sudden you’d see these men coming up there with their hats and their hatchets. I thought, “Aw shit man, where’s the damn fire?” So you’d go some place else and you’d be too stoned to realize. You’d think it was Halloween or something because people used to dress up depending on what the theme was that night. Everybody dressed up in something different. I remember, because it was very, very gay, which very much impressed me at the time, guys were wearing bells on their legs and on their ankles and wrists. Nobody was wearing shirts. Everybody wore shorts. I remember going there dancing topless a couple of times. I remember having sex there a couple of times!
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nShe was a wilder girl than I was.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI was a beast!
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI didn’t even know they were gay.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThere were a lot of straight guys there, too.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was just people, you know? That’s how I relate to it.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nDo you remember the first time we went there, with this particular guy who was so uptight? We were waiting in this room to get in because they hadn’t opened up yet. He sat there very stiff and quiet, so I told him to loosen up. And I heard somebody say, “Don't say it’s gay so loud, they may not wanna go in.” I thought, “Please.” When we finally got in there there was this mad rush to get in and hear the music and to start dancing. That’s all anybody wanted to do.
My biggest thrill was being able to go in my overalls.
Terry Hayden
\n\nPrior to going to Reade Street, you got dressed to go the Cheetah. My biggest thrill was being able to go in my overalls. And then in most of the clubs you’d have to wait for somebody to ask you to dance, you know: wallflowers. You go to Reade Street, and you’re dancing by yourself, dancing with guys, dancing with girls. The music is moving you and you just doin’ your thing. That was what was so phenomenal to me. I remember having to walk to that damn 6 train and we could barely walk. It must’ve been near Spring Street.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI’m sure if I took a walk over there, I’d know. It was a block away from the water.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt’s really gentrified now.
\n\nWhat did that area look like?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nTotally warehouses. Meat market. Factories.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThere was nothing and nobody there.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was around the time when a few people starting buying lofts to live in illegally. A lot of artists would buy a space.
\n\nWhen did Reade Street start?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI started going in ’73 or ’74.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt really had taken off by ’76.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI was still in high school, working at the telephone company.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI met her she was 17-years-old. I was 21.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nShe was my idol! She was going out!
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI was goin’ out. We lived in the same neighborhood.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI’d say to my mom, “This is Yvonne. Can I go out with her?” Two little Catholic school girls.
\n\nWhere were you living?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\n122nd and 2nd Avenue. Spanish Harlem.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt’s still Spanish Harlem. It’s still there.
\n\nYvon Leybold
\n\nStill the same.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThere was a period in 1977 when I would be petrified of walking around there. It’s a lot better today.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was a wild west atmosphere.
Larry [Levan] played the Bee Gees. He helped make them famous.
Drugs?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nA lot of kids were doing PCP, and they were trippin’ and never coming back! And that would perpetuate a lot of the negative things going on in the neighborhood. I remember the first time I had angel dust. I think we were at the telephone company.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe first time I did it I was sitting in a park and I saw things zig-zag.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was really weird. We were working on the 12-4 shift on the doctor’s answering and information service. And people would call up and say their babies were sick!
\n\nWhat’s it like?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI thought it was a nice high. You hallucinate.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI couldn’t understand why people would get addicted to it, but then I was doing a lot more drugs prior to meeting her. I did a lot of acid.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI had a side of my family who sold a lot of drugs. Being raised by my mother, I was very hesitant at first, even before smoking marijuana.
\n\nWhat does PCP smell like?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nSweat. Pungent.
\n\nLike poppers?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nNo, that’s totally different.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nYou know when it gets a little funky? It smells like body sweat. I remember coming home one night on the train and I said to my boyfriend at the time, “We have to get out of here,” because I just felt like jumping on the tracks.
Reade Street had a freer air about it. It was like going to a carnival.
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nYou have to get air, because everyone who comes on the train has a very weird look on their face. Looking at you. And you’re bordering on paranoia and being high at the same time.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\n“What’re you lookin’ at?!”
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nAnd acid was good back then. It wasn’t really speedy like now. Those delicious deep belly laughs. THC was my favourite at the time.
\n\nTHC?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was marijuana, but it came in a pill. A pink pill. We used to pop them in the bathroom and then go to the club.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThe first time I did it was in school. I did THC and it changed my personality. It just makes you aggressive. You don’t give a good hoot.
\n\nWhen were you first aware of who the disc jockey was? Like at Reade Street, for example.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThrough different people.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nOr just being there. It was so much better on certain nights. You knew who was playin’. What was Larry's name?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nLarry Levan.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBut he had other people that would play with him.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI don’t remember.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI wanna say Michael...
\n\nMichael Cappello?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI think so. I never knew the surnames.
\n\n[I name some names, ending with Nicky Siano at the Gallery.]
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI went there! [Laughter] That was a loft also. I was going to the one at Mercer, because my girlfriend lived on 9th and 6th and we’d walk there. There were a lot of dancers at the Gallery. Young kids, you know?
\n\nWhat did it look like?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was different from Reade Street. I liked Reade Street better. Reade Street had a freer air about it. It was like going to a carnival. The Gallery was a huge space as well, but people went there to meet people, so your attitude was a little different also. Dancers, artists, actors, ballet and jazz dancers. Lots of Asians, Latinos. Chinese, Japanese.
Once you went to a gay club, who the hell would go to a straight one?
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nBefore people gave it that name, disco, they started taking the music and bastardizing it. Their version of disco was white and straight. Our version of disco was gay. Because that's what we knew. Once you went to a gay club, who the hell would go to a straight one?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nReade Street was the definitive gay club. No mistake about it.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nAbsolutely.
\n\nDo you think people were going there conscious of the fact that it was Larry Levan playing there?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYou weren’t conscious of the fact that it was gay or something, but I’m not sure how much bothered them. But you always saw people there who were straight and didn’t know what they were up against. They were very tense and uptight. Once they had a glass of punch...!
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nYeah, once they had a glass of punch or realized you were there to party.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThere was a very free and open atmosphere. When AIDS came in it was like a shroud. It changed everything. It made everybody so damned sad, because everybody had been happy. They had a place to go. They had a place where they could be amongst their own.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nAnd have fun.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nAnd have sex.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBut not just intercourse all the time. Making out. You go and you’re high and you’re horny.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nVery free! That’s what I loved about it.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBut AIDS changed all that.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt made me so sad.
When Reade Street closed, I remember sayin’, “Where do we go now? Where do we go next?”
When did Reade Street close?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI remember the day it closed.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI was wearing Chinese silk pajamas, little slippers with seashells on the shoes. I went to meet friend of mine who was a fire adjuster and I was going there to get drugs. I used to get sheets of this stuff they used to take. I would get them and sell them to my friends.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThe fire department closed it. They announced: “This is it. We’re sick and tired of coming.”
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was noon. Bright sunny summer day. Hot.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI wanna say the first time I went to the Garage was Halloween ’77, because I’d just had my daughter in the August. That was my very first time going. It closed about a year before the Garage opened, when Reade Street closed. I remember sayin’, “Where do we go now? Where do we go next?” Then I heard they were gonna open this place called the Garage.
\n\nDid you go to any other places: Soho Place, Flamingo, Continental Baths?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI went to Continental Baths. Let’s see, this was before or during Bette Midler having her shows there. It was not a very big place that I can recall. There was a little stage. There were tables. It was pretty chic. It had a swimming pool, steam room, showers. I wasn’t impressed by it, really.
\n\nIt’s being portrayed as a fuck palace. Was there a lot of sex going on there?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI think there was a lot of sex going on, before Plato’s Retreat opened.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nOh, so that’s where Plato's Retreat was!
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI liked some of the orgy rooms, some of the private rooms they had.
\n\nWhat were the orgy rooms?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nWell, they had these huge rooms that they were not using. They had mirrors all over the place. Mattresses everywhere. It was like one big huge mattress. And on the floors there were satin sheets. And you had a towel; they always gave you a towel. You took off all your clothes, but if you wanted to wear shoes, you could do. Some mules or something like that. And the orgy room was pretty much, you invited yourself in on whatever couple or couples were there. And had a really good time.
We’d never heard gospel music in a disco before. That was like, “Oh yes.”
This was Plato’s Retreat?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah.
\n\nDid they spend much money on it?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI don’t recall it being much better looking than CB.
\n\nWere people at CB for the sex or the music. Or both?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI think they were going there for both. They had pretty good entertainment there, aside from Bette Midler.
\n\nDid you ever see her?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nShe’d do her little cabaret thing.
\n\nWas she just playing with Barry Manilow at the piano?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI don’t remember Barry Manilow. But it would be her with, maybe, some backup singers. And she would be out there doing her little show. Singing songs. Tryin’ to get the people all hyped up. I thought it was a nice place and all but really if you’d been there a couple of times, you knew what to expect, so...I didn’t think it was all that.
\n\nWhat music did they play at Reade Street?
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was music we’d never heard before.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nWe’d never heard gospel music in a disco before. That was like, “Oh yes.” You heard gospel music in a church or on the radio, but not...
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nGospel music played to a funky beat.
\n\nDo you remember which acts?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nEdwin Hawkins Singers. Larry had a way with music, and whoever did the lights, the atmosphere, he had a way of working all that in.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nYou felt comfortable at Reade Street, even the people that felt uptight when they got there. Once you got there and realized you were not going to get hit on, that it was strictly the music and having fun, you felt free.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nToday’s clubs don't even touch it.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThey made money, but they were not focused on making money.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThey were focused on an atmosphere where you could be free and be yourself.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThe Garage was more focused on making money.
I thought they were pushing the gays out, and making it more urban and mainstream.
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nReade Street was about atmosphere.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThey didn’t even try and get a liquor license. The food, the water, the tea... That’s it. That’s what you got. And if you wanted a little buzz, they told you it’s spiked. Don’t misunderstand me, the Garage was a nice place, and for the lack of having anywhere else to go, but it wasn’t Reade Street.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt got a little too urban for me at a particular point. I thought they were pushing the gays out, and making it more urban and mainstream.
\n\nUrban meaning what?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nUrban meaning bridge and tunnel people started to come. Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens started to come, because they never really did that before.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was underground.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was very much underground. You had to know someone to go there and you had to go more than a couple of times even before they’d consider having you as a member.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThat was Reade Street.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe Garage was a nice place to go to but it was not Reade Street at all. But there are not too many people around that remember Reade Street. There aren’t too many alive to talk about it today.
\n\nDo you remember what it was like around the time people started getting sick and AIDS didn’t have a name yet?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nPrior to Sylvester dying I just kept hearing about this illness that a lot of gay men were getting. They weren’t saying what it was. “What’s with this gay cancer thing? Why don’t they give it a name?”
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nIt was very mysterious.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah, very hush hush. People were getting sick and not knowing why and we thought maybe, well, we did a lot of drugs on that dancefloor, the music encouraged you, the atmosphere encouraged you, that whole openness encouraged you.
\n\nYou thought maybe it was to do with the drugs?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThat’s what I thought. I thought, “Maybe it’s too much drugs.”
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI had a girlfriend who died in ’81 or ’82. Nobody knew what was going on. She got sick and was dead within six months.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI saw friends of mine who had different growths on their body, and skin lesions and they still didn’t have a name for it. If someone was ill, they’d just say, “Oh, so and so’s sick.” But they wouldn’t say what it was.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nAnd you knew by how they said sick what they meant.
When Saturday Night Fever came out I was so disappointed. That was a waste.
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nThere was a weird atmosphere in some of the bars I was going to like the Limelight, the Monster. I was going to Better Days which was basically black.
\n\nI started smoking marijuana by the time I was 11, I was pretty hardcore into the marijuana and pills by the time I was 14; 16 or 17 I was doing all the LSD I could get my hands on. Orange Sunshine, Purple Haze, Microdot. I loved Microdot. Like I said, it was pure. Opium, blotter.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nOh, the blotter was nice.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nSmoked a lot of opium. I was surprised to have had healthy kids!
\n\nI thought they were going to be born with one eye; or missing a leg or something! The last time I had did LSD I had become pregnant. I used to do it every single weekend. I remember when I was pregnant with Juan and carrying the one, and some friends of my kids’ father came over with this tin of Orange Sunshine. And it was so beautifully orange and neon, I was so mad I had to leave the house, because I wanted it. I said, I can’t stay here while you guys do this.
\n\nWhat do you remember about Better Days?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nVery black, very soul-y. Young black gay men. A few old men would come in and actually pick up the younger guys. There’d be transvestites. I remember the Gilded Grape, which was a very big TV place, that I used to go to on a weekends for the shows. That was at the time that AIDS had broken out. The Ruby Slipper was another TV place I used to go to. I liked those places. I like being around those people. They were just real.
\n\nWhen Saturday Night Fever came out I was so disappointed. That was a waste. When those clubs came about; that was what white people knew as disco. But disco was already popular. Even the Bee Gees. Larry played the Bee Gees. He helped make them famous. I’m sorry. He worked Donna Summer too.
\n\nWhat Bee Gees songs do you remember him playing?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\n“You Should Be Dancing.” He played the Trammps.
Terry Hayden
\n\nOh, now that was good. Churchy!
\n\nWhich Trammps stuff? “That’s Where The Happy People Go”?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah, that was Reade Street. Then later on, “Disco Inferno.” He played this song, I think it was called “Daylight.” I don’t remember the name.
\n\nHow many people did Reade Street hold?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nMuch more than it was supposed to.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\n300 people, easy.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nOh, more! 400. They hooked it up really nice.
\n\nWhat did it look like?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nOne floor was the main floor; the disco area. That was huge.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThe drinks and the fruit.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe drinks and fruit was downstairs; where they had the bathrooms and where you sat and lounged around. That’s also where they had the runway where people could dance. Two floors.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nSee, that was fun then.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThese kids don’t even know what fun is!
What do you think is different between then and now?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe openness. They’re not having fun. They don’t know how to have fun anymore. They’re uptight.
\n\nSegregation?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nLots of things.
\n\nWhat day was Reade Street open?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nSaturdays.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBut there were also people who had lofts and on the Sundays after Reade Street had closed, they would do tea dances. So you’d go in there at 12 o’clock. You start rockin’ and it was 11 o’clock at night before you got out.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI remember I partied Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I’d have to sleep at work the rest of the days.
\n\nSo, the Garage. What was it like the first time you went in?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI thought it was a great space.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI thought it was a great space, but my hormones were raging, I’d just had a baby, so I walked in and was just not having it. I’d just had Janine. To me, people were not having fun. Maybe I didn’t go with the right people.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI lost a few years when that AIDS thing came in, because I moved to Middle America. Terry and I had lost touch with each other. We had a ten year hiatus. Life took over. Just as I was about to go, Mudd Club had just opened up and people were talking about this sickness. There was a lot of gay bashing then. Drugs were rampant then. We went to the Loft, but it was too young. Reade Street had more mature crowd.
\n\n[Yvonne tells story about going to the Palladium in the eighties one night when Larry Levan was DJing there.] They said, “Larry’s here.” I go, “You’re kidding me.” So I went right across to the booth. I was wishing you were there with me. I was just amazed that Larry was still alive.
\n\nWhy?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nBecause he had been out there. He was fucking around.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nThat’s a nice way to say it!
Chaka Khan was always there. Was she ever! When she came in the place would stop!
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nHe was such a nice guy. He didn’t need to be doing that.
\n\nDoing what?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nDidn’t need to be doing heroin or anything like that. People were just dabbling. Even Keith Haring. I went to a couple of parties at his space with this guy who was a graphic artist also. I just thought, “Gee, none of you needs to be doing this.”
\n\nIt’s been said there was a heroin culture towards the end of the Garage.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nWell, yeah. Perhaps that was my turn-off. Because that’s not what we remembered the whole thing being about.
\n\nDid you ever go to Le Jardin?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah.
\n\nWhat was it like?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nStraight. Straight and white. Everyone was trying to be like the Loft, the Gallery, Reade Street.
\n\nIn Reade Street were there famous people going?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nChaka Khan. She was always there. Was she ever! When she came in the place would stop!
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nShe had a body.
\n\nDid they ever have performances at Reade Street?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nNo, just DJs.
\n\nAny other celebs?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nRick James.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nTeddy Pendergrass. This was at Reade Street.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nBut they were very low key. It was not like Studio 54. They came to party. They’d just finished some recording session and they wanted to get loose so they came down.
You walked in [Studio 54] and you saw Liza Minnelli drooling. I would be like, “I want some of that!”
Yvonne Leybold
\n\nBut they were very low key. It was not like Studio 54. They came to party. They’d just finished some recording session and they wanted to get loose so they came down.
\n\nStudio 54, then? A lot of people said it fucked everything up.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nI think it did. There were other places before that were like that. When it first opened, I was like, “Oh what a welcome sigh of relief.” Maybe here’s a place we can all go to that was going to be like what Reade Street, the Loft and Gallery were like.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nBut above ground.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nYeah. It wasn’t so bad the celebrities being there. They weren’t the problem. They were having fun. You walked in there and you saw Liza Minnelli drooling. I would be like, “I want some of that!” And I would see Andy Warhol all of the time.
\n\nSo if they were not the problem, who or what was?
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nWell, it was good to start with. After that it started to get tired.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nPeople had agendas.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was never as good as Reade Street.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nNothing was as good as Reade Street.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThat’s definite.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nI guess because it was a mature crowd having a great time. Nobody bothered you.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe punch was always spiked. Someone was always passing a joint around. Someone gave you a bowl of hash, OK? Somebody’s passing around the opium pipe. Somebody’s handing out the blotter. You either came with your stuff, or you met someone there. It was very free and open. I would go to some of these places and I would dance topless. It was hot in there, but it was so much fun that you wanted to take your clothes off! When I saw those gay guys in there with BBDs and bells around their legs and in rows dancing, I was panting. I was fucking panting! And the women, too. “If I’m going to die I’m gonna die here, with these people.” It was like that. When you went to one of those places, you’d never want to do to another straight bar. That’s what I thought.
Terry Hayden
\n\nThis is making me so sad!
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nIt was the same when AIDS came in. I thought, “My god, all those people that I knew.” All these people. Gone. Wiped the fuck out. Who do we talk about these times to now? They just don’t exist. They are not around to relive the memory anymore. If they are, it’s by sheer will and luck. It would be so nice to run across someone who has these memories. Do you remember this? Do you remember that? It’s a sad thing.
\n\nTerry Hayden
\n\nFrom the medical perspective research was not going on. Not like today. I can’t believe we still don't have a cure. The party ceased.
\n\nYvonne Leybold
\n\nThe party stopped. I couldn’t go to bars. I couldn’t go anywhere. I was just too involved. With the people who were dying around me. I said I would be there and so I was there. When my sister was diagnosed with being HIV positive, she totally lost it and committed suicide. She just simply decided: “I’m not living like this.” What we all thought or knew would be her way out. I knew back then after everyone had dropped dead around me, they’ve got, not exactly a couple of cures, but treatments and therapies. I said to her: “You have a chance.” But she wasn’t taking it.
\n\n
\n This interview was conducted in 1999. © DJ History