Synopses & Reviews
Studio 54 was the icon of excess—a place where Andy, Mick, Bianca, and Elton lounged in the VIP section while patrons did drugs in the fabled unisex bathroom, and wannabes waiting for hours outside hoped to catch the eye of the nineteen-year-old doorman who was, for a brief moment, the ultimate gatekeeper of cool.
The Last Party is the story not just of Studio 54 but of the whole Nightworld, vividly recalled by a writer and reveler who was there on opening night and on many, many nights thereafter. Anthony Haden-Guest takes us past the velvet rope, down onto the pounding dance floor, up into the polymorphously perverse balcony, and into owner Steve Rubell's office, where millions of dollars were surreptitiously skimmed from the golden goose. Vibrant, shocking, nonstop, and revealing, The Last Party is as packed with sparkle, scandal, and celebrity as Studio 54 itself.
Synopsis
Studio 54 was the epicenter of disco culture and pre-AIDS debauchery. Now, journalist and nightworld denizen Anthony Haden-Guest takes us behind the velvet rope that separated the celebrities from the wanna-bes, into an all-night world of revelry, sensation, and decadence.
Going beyond the endless partying with Liza, Bianca, Halston, Andy, and Mick, Haden-Guest probes the seamy underside of Studio 54: the drugs, the deaths, and the corruption that eventually shuttered the club. It is the story of Studio 54's flamboyant owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, who achieved early success beyond their wildest imaginings, came within a hair's breadth of great power, and then crashed and burned.
Synopsis
Packed with stars, models, socialites, and everyone else who could sneak past the fabled velvet ropes, Studio 54 defined disco and launched the celebrity-driven culture of today. Noted writer Haden-Guest takes readers behind the scenes and tells the whole story -- the glory days, the drugs, the deaths, and the corruption.There was a place where virtually all the themes and energies of the '70s -- disco, the cult of celebrity, the coke and the quaaludes, the glam and the glitter, the pre-AIDS sexual abandon, the emergence of gay culture, uninhibited women, and the general air of debauchery -- were played out with maximum flamboyance.
It was a place that epitomized an era and exemplified the zeitgeist. No one is better suited to chronicle the Studio 54 story than Anthony Haden-Guest. He has re-created the scene and rendered the action in vivid detail from his personal experiences with the key players: the owners, bartenders, and bouncers; the celebrities and the dealers; the divas, DJs and doormen; even the prosecutor who busted the owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager for tax evasion. "The Last Party" is more than a biography of one place. It also tells the story of Nightworld, a realm spawned by Studio 54, comprising past and present clubs. Nightlords, and Nightpeople, their doings and their secrets, which are still unfolding.
Synopsis
The Last Party is Anthony Haden-Guests account of Studio 54 and the legendary New York nightlife scene of the ‘70s and ‘80s, now available as an IconIt Classic.Vivid, nonstop, and revealing, The Last Party is as packed with as much sparkle, scandal, and celebrity as Studio itself.
About the Author
Anthony Haden-Guest's journalism has appeared in New York, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker.