Larry Levan homepage Biography Eulogy Rememberances Jockey Slut  article Disco Years Timeline Big Paradise Garage Records

Larry Levan: Jockey Slut  Article (pg. 2) And yet it was more than just that. Levan was obsessed with perfection. He would spend hours re-arranging the speakers in the club until the sound was absolutely perfect. Then change it all again the next week so that the crowd didn't get bored. "He was a technical wizard," explains Weinstein, who got to know Levan working at David Mancuso's NY Record Pool. "He could re-build a radio from scratch. He helped Richard Long create the Garage sound system. Larry would tell Richard what he wanted and if Richard told him that they couldn't do it, he would keep on at it until it was invented for him. Larry would always find a way to make things happen." David Depino, Levan's best friend and the DJ who used to warm up for him, remembers his perfectionism on a different level: "He never wanted it to become stale, he never wanted it to become regular. He always said, 'The people won't come. They've gotta know it'll be different.' And they did. People never came into a stale place. I've seen nights where everyone was rushing around to get things open and they'd forget something like cleaning the mirror-balls. It'd be one o'clock and Larry would run on to the dancefloor with a ladder to clean all six mirror-balls. The record would run out and everyone would be standing there, just waiting. Not booing, not mad, just waiting. And when he finished, he'd go up and put the next record on the people would go mad. They loved that. The fact that even though he was the DJ, he'd spend half an hour cleaning all the mirror-balls." He produced his music with a similar passion. There were times he would be in the studio weeks as he tested new versions of songs on the Garage crowd. Some records took over two years to complete. His passion for Djing lead him to play on three turntables working studio effects and his own special edits into the mix. He invented the now commonplace trick of a cappella mixing. The presentation of the music and the pure entertainment of his crowd were paramount. He would use video clips and the huge screen above the dancefloor to accentuate certain records, and, as the night wore on, he would upgrade the turntables to ones with state-of-the-art needles for the ultimate experience on the floor. Communication with the dancefloor was his motivation. His message was one of love, hope, freedom and universal brotherhood. And the set of songs he played was the dialogue he used. He'd even leave gaps between certain parts of the journey. So if he played three songs in a row about music, and the next one was about freedom, he'd leave a short pause or drop an effect.