Article originally published December 21, 2012 by The Grid online (thegridto.com).

In this edition of Then & Now, we travel back three decades—and up 1,100 feet—to revisit the CN Tower’s beloved in-house discotheque.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: Sparkles, 301 Front St. W.

Years in operation: 1979-1991

History: When the construction of Toronto’s iconic CN Tower began in February of 1973, few would have imagined it filled with strobe lights and spandex. The Canadian National Railroad’s Tower would be an impressive engineering feat, serving as both tourist attraction and a communications boon for radio and television broadcasters seeking a taller building on which to place transmitters for stronger signals.

The CN Tower opened to the public in June 26, 1976. At that time, the surrounding area was far from dense or residential. The north side of Front Street was largely parking lots, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre had not been built, nor had the SkyDome (now Rogers Centre). In fact, one accessed the Tower by walking through a pedestrian bridge—starting from where Rogers Centre is now—that crossed over sets of train tracks. There was a reflecting pool at the Tower’s base, and fields nearby.

In 1979, to coincide with the Tower’s third anniversary, one-third of the indoor observation level was developed into a discothèque. The goal was to attract diverse evening crowds to this floor, which lay below the Tower’s rotating 360 Restaurant and above the outdoor observation deck.

The nightclub was given its identity as Sparkles by Thornhill resident Judy Godsman, winner of the Toronto Star’s “Name the Disco” contest, in August 1979. There were more than 15,000 entries, with other name suggestions including Cloud Nine, Glitters, and Infinity.

Sparkles opening invite. Courtesy of Linda Keele.

Godsman and the 25 contest runners-up were invited to Sparkles’ Oct. 4 opening party. A preview article that appeared in the Star that day revealed that 500 guests would be entertained in the new $750,000 dance club by a disco fashion show. (Think flashing lights and skin-hugging jumpsuits.) Two more nights of launch parties followed.

In late-’70s Toronto, there were plenty of places to dance. The city’s more than two million residents finally had options outside of hotels, like Yorkville discos Checkers, Fingers (later known as Chimes), PWDs, Arviv’s, Mingles, and Remy’s. Yonge Street held Hotspurs, The Hippopotamus, Rooney’s, The Ports of Call’s downstairs disco, and more. Not so far away were after-hours hangouts including Le Tube and Katrina’s on St. Joseph, Stages on Yonge, and Peaches on Pears (named after its location on Pears Avenue). Said to be largest of all was Heaven, a glitzy disco in the bowels of the Hudson’s Bay Centre at Bloor and Yonge.

But Sparkles, built at 1,136 feet or 346 metres and promoted as “the highest nightclub in the world,” clearly had the height-and-view advantage. Open as a lounge by day and full-blown disco by night, it would operate every night of the week for more than a decade.

Sparkles promotional shot from a 1982 CN Tower souvenir book. Courtesy of RetrOntario.

Why it was important: “Sparkles was definitely a destination,” says Randy Charlton, a manager at the club from 1980 to 1985. “We had a lot of regulars, and it was surprisingly busy considering attending wasn’t as easy as parking your car and walking in the door. There was the hassle of walking across the pedestrian bridge to get across the railroad tracks, then coming down an escalator, then going up an escalator, getting in line to pay your [usually $5] cover, and then going up an elevator 1,100 feet.

“On a calm night, it would only take a minute to take the elevator up but, if it was windy, the computers in the Tower would automatically slow the elevators to a quarter speed. At the end of the night, if a lot of people had stayed until then, there was always a line-up at the elevators. I think it’s a testimony to Sparkles being a really good experience for the patron that so many people came back week after week and went through the whole process.”

This journey was part of the adventure. When patrons first exited the elevators and walked in to Sparkles, they literally entered a different dimension.

“Think of the room as one third of a donut,” Charlton describes. “Right in the middle of that donut is a horseshoe-shaped dancefloor and an elevated DJ booth.”

The back of the DJ booth faced out over the city while the dancefloor was directly in front of it. Red booths and stainless-steel tables were positioned alongside windows that curved around the room. And although its view may have been Sparkles’ shiniest star, the club’s lighting and effects certainly commanded attention, too. There were more than 50 strobes, loads of neon tube lights, lasers, smoke machines, and so many bells and whistles that the DJ booth was said to resemble a plane cockpit because of its high-tech lighting-control panel. Mirrors reflected it all back while people also responded to Sparkles’ booming soundsystem.

The New York Times, reporting on Sparkles’ opening in an October 10, 1979 article titled “A New High for Disco in Toronto’s Tower,” stated that the sound and light system had been installed by John Savill, employee of Bacchus International Discotheque Services of London. (Savill passed away in the 1980s.) The Times also revealed that fellow Brit and Bacchus talent Paul Cohen, “a disc jockey who is working his way around the world,” was the night’s DJ. Cohen would go on to be one of Sparkles’ longest-serving resident spinners.

The fact that CN would hire an international DJ service to supply equipment and talent wasn’t a shocker—this was still a fairly common practice in hotels and more corporate environments—but it certainly surprised the local DJ community.

“There’d been great rumours about who was going to get hired at Sparkles,” recalls songwriter and producer Vince Degiorgio, then a DJ at Le Tube and employee of Disco Sounds, one of Canada’s earliest dance-music shops.

“The fascination of seeing Sparkles for the first time was there but, since nobody we knew got the DJ job, the feeling was ‘the outsiders are coming in,’ and people weren’t sure what to make of them. The first time I went up, I was completely horrified, because there was this guy from England and his people, and they talked over everything. To a disco purist, that was utter sacrilege. We would call ‘last call,’ but that was the only time in a bar you would ever use the microphone.”

That said, Degiorgio and many other local DJs did take in Sparkle’s sights and sounds.

“In the beginning especially, it was a real club and absolutely a place to go, although I don’t know how much people were going for the music,” Degiorgio recounts. “Sparkles was an event. A lot of people would go to the CN Tower first, and then they’d go to the after-hours spots, like Le Tube or even Peaches or Chimes, which stayed open until 4 a.m.”

DJ Paul Cohen (right) with Sparkles waitress Suzanne. Photo courtesy of David Kurtz.

One thing the Bacchus-hired DJs understood above all else: They had to do more than play music. They had to entertain. Paul Cohen, Sparkles’ on-and-off anchor DJ until the mid-’80s, is said to have set quite the example.

“I remember one Halloween, Paul was made up as Dracula, and we were all dressed up like pallbearers,” recalls Charlton. “At midnight, we carried a coffin through the crowd, and then Paul sprung out of it and started DJing.”

“Paul was one of the greatest DJs and entertainers I have ever met,” says David Kurtz, a Toronto-born DJ who started at Sparkles in 1979 as Cohen’s back-up, signed a contract with Bacchus, and played at the Tower until 1981 during his first stint there.

“Paul, who was my mentor and changed my life forever when he hired me, is someone I will always respect.” (Cohen later went on to DJ in the Middle East, but left the nightlife behind when he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He now lives in the U.S.).

Another DJ who enjoyed his dual residency with Cohen—Sparkles had two DJs on most evenings, trading back and forth between the decks and lights—was fellow Brit Alan “Gibbo” Gibson. Hailing from Birmingham, where he was an established DJ by the age of 19, Gibson arrived in Toronto in 1985 as a Bacchus talent who’d lived and played briefly in Norway, Thailand, and Germany.

“When Bacchus tried to hire me, I insisted on having [a residency at] Sparkles within a year of signing with them,” Gibson recalls. “They said it was impossible as it could only be local DJs, but we worked it out.”

At the age of 22, Gibson worked six nights a week alongside Cohen. He may have only landed a six-month work visa, but Gibson’s personality was so huge he made a lasting impression.

“Alan was a great mixer, and got up to all kinds of antics,” says Charlton, who later named a son after Gibson. “When we hosted a party for [Liberal Party candidate] John Turner, who was running for Prime Minister and later won, Alan stood in the background of a photo wearing those glasses where the eyeballs come up on springs. Any time anybody was in there shooting a news story, his head would pop up around the corner. He was certainly a character.”

“I wore a wig, red suit and tails, red bow tie, red shoes, and generally tried to be the life of the party,” says Gibson of the Turner party. “I liked to chat, be funny, do dedications, make fun of people or myself. I just had to play the clown, play the pop, and please the people. Hence, the wigs, pink suits, huge glasses, juggling, moonwalking, dancing on the speakers or the bar or the tables. I’d spin on my back on the floor when there was space. I even ate fire, but the low ceiling and fire regulations soon put paid to that! I also did magic tricks at tables during early evening or on quiet nights.”

Paul Cohen (left) and Alan Gibson (centre) with friends. Photo courtesy of Gibson.

While Charlton regales me with tales of Gibson mixing bits of Monty Python into Spandau Ballet’s “True,” the DJ mentions favourite tracks of the time including Pet Shop Boys “West End Girls,” Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life,” Psychedelic Furs’ “Heartbeat,” and Pukka Orchestra’s “Cherry Beach Express,” which he plays to this day.

“I realized that, in a club like Sparkles, the music’s familiarity was key,” emphasizes Gibson by email. “[The patrons] were office workers on a night out, tourists looking for a good time, or girls and couples looking to hear the songs they heard on the radio.

Sparkles playlist. Courtesy of Alan Gibson.

“Sure, I could mix with the best of them, but I realized that our guests wanted to hear the three-minute pop song that they knew—not some poser DJ who could scratch, mix or whatever. I think I went against the grain compared to the rest of T.O. at that time.”

“I remember Alan as being a little bit fearless,” comments Degiorgio, who also co-ran T.O.P.A. (Toronto Programmers Association), an important 1980s DJ pool of which Sparkles’ DJs were members. “Alan was a fusionist; he was unafraid to play New Romantic stuff alongside the productions of people like Bobby Orlando. He loves to be a part of the party.”

Following Gibson’s departure in late summer 1985, Toronto native David Kurtz returned to serve as Sparkles’ lead DJ for the next two years. By then, he’d worked for Bacchus in clubs across the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, and Thailand.

David Kurtz (left) and Tony Meredith (right) with friend Kim Race at Sparkles.
Photo courtesy of Kurtz.

Kurtz had learned more about the DJ-as-entertainer role, and was most frequently paired in the Sparkles booth with “my great partner in crime, Tony Meredith a.k.a. Tony T.”

Meredith, who’d been a regular on 1970s CityTV dance program Boogie, had been hired at Sparkles after his dance group performed one night and he particularly impressed.

“I took the mic and energized the crowd,” says Meredith who then worked for years as a Sparkles hype man, lighting person, and DJ.

“Tony and I were more than just DJs,” says Kurtz. “We entertained, rapping and dancing in sync, back before most DJs even thought to do it. The music we played had rhythm and soul. We were very heavy into artists like Earth Wind and Fire, The Whispers, Kool and the Gang, and Rick James. We played mostly commercial stuff but, every now and then, we found some strange, great dance groove and played the hell out of it.”

“We had to swing it a bit to the audience that was there, but we got to take some chances too, like running Bette Midler’s ‘The Rose’ over rap beats—that kind of thing,” Meredith tells me in a phone call from Oslo, where he and Kurtz now both live. “Sometimes, we could go a little bit off, but at the CN Tower you had to be versatile. You had to create magic.”

Photo courtesy of Alan Gibson.

By all accounts, Sparkles’ crowds were a mix of suburbanites, tourists and downtowners, generally dressed with great care, ready to party and pose.

“The crowd was made up of the rich and famous as well as suburban yuppies and everything in between,” describes Kurtz. “The people who were regulars came out almost every night. They loved good music and danced to anything we threw at them. Our amps would overheat on the weekends, with the excessive heat caused by way too many people on the dancefloor and around the booth.”

Meredith recalls that some in the audience especially stood out.

“There were some regulars who’d just come in and go off,” he chuckles. “There was a model named Dorset who’d come in and dance and dance. There were a number of Korean and Filipino dancers who’d really get down. Certain people just added a whole lot while others sat and watched.”

Meredith also speaks highly of DJ Julie Ley, with whom he was partnered in the booth in the early ’80s.

“We had something special going on,” says Meredith of the DJ, who got her start at Sparkles. “Julie has such a beautiful personality and that great, raspy voice on the microphone. I called her ‘Tina Turner on the wheels of steel.’ We had so much fun, and would just blow that place out.”

Ley had been spotted working the door in a club by a Juliana’s Sound Services rep, who dug her voice, presence, and clear love of music. (Juliana’s bought Bacchus in 1982, and the two international companies provided club services under both names.)

“A few lessons, and they threw me into the lion’s den,” is how Ley describes it. “There I was, at the highest nightclub in the world! I had to find my own rhythm, not only in music but also in personality. I talked a lot on the mic, with a tambourine in hand, just getting down with the sound. We had three turntables, which made it interesting to play. There was lots of scratching, and double playing on the same song.”

One of only a handful of women spinning in Toronto at time, Ley went on to DJ for 20 years, becoming a lesbian icon as she injected huge energy and hits into mainstay clubs including Togethers, Chez Moi, and The Rose.

Julie Ley (left) and Tony Meredith. Photo courtesy of Meredith.

Who else played/worked there: Numerous DJs added their playlists and personalities to Sparkles over the years, including yet another Brit, DJ Tony TG. In the early-to-mid-1980s, Sundays featured the sounds of swing and big bands, with host Paul Fisher of CHFI. Mondays were devoted to oldies, with CFTR personalities Mike Cooper and Dan Williamson alternating from week-to-week.

There were occasional concerts, ranging from the jazz of Jim Galloway and The Metro Stompers to the new wave of Michaele Jordana of The Poles, a local band who had an underground hit in the form of 1977 single “CN Tower.”

Sparkles also hosted loads of fashion shows, including one featuring the designs of Gloria Vanderbilt in 1980. But lesser-known is the fact that the disco was taken over by some cool overnight events that same year.

“These parties would go all night, from midnight on, in Sparkles and the entire indoor observation level,” explains Charlton. “They would go until daybreak; the party would end, and it would turn back into the observation level.”

On Victoria Day weekend, a group of promoters and friends associated with the clubs Stages and Dudes presented a spectacularly gay affair with Sunrise High, featuring star DJ Greg Howlett. More than 1,000 people attended.

Later in 1980, punks and new wavers got their all-night play time in the Tower at parties with names like Spaced Out and Paradise Lost. Not surprisingly, Sparkles was also a bit of a celebrity magnet.

Paradise Lost memories. Courtesy of Isabel Moniz.

“There was no place anywhere else where there was a dance club 1,100 feet in the air, overlooking a major city,” says Charlton. “Sparkles drew its fair share of celebrities. Andy Gibb appeared in a Mirvish musical at The Royal Alex, so he was frequently up there. I remember Peter Fonda being up for an event, and Peter O’Toole, too, when he was in town shooting a TV version of Pygmalion with Margot Kidder.

Spaced Out memories. Courtesy of Michael Sweenie.

Meredith, being both personable and a great cook, became friends with people he met at Sparkles—including Gibb, Tina Turner, her piano player Kenny Moore, and members of The Harlem Globetrotters—and would host stars and Sparkles’ staff alike at his Dundas and Sherbourne condo. (Today, he’s a popular chef in Oslo and owner of cross-cultural restaurant The Backyard.)

There was, of course, also dozens of managers, bartenders, waitresses, and other staff that made Sparkles run over the years. Many mention managers including Ahmad Ali, Pepi (Margaret) Perenyi, and Guy LeBlanc. Gareth Brown, who would later make his mark as a rock promoter and manager of clubs including Rock & Roll Heaven, was among Sparkles’ security staff. Charlton, who later became main manager at The Diamond Club, brought there with him Sparkles’ bar staff, including Pat Violo (co-owner of Catch 22 and now Velvet Underground) and Caroline Toth.

Another early Sparkles bartender was Victor Miller, founder of the long running Bartending School of Ontario and a familiar face for those who went to Toronto live music venues Piccadilly Tube and Blue Note. Miller still remembers logistical frustrations at Sparkles, including a constant lack of clean drink glasses and the club’s early adoption of an automated drink-dispensing system.

“The bar was computerized, and this was unique, but a real pain in the ass,” writes Miller in an email. “It did not allow us to make all the cocktails that were asked for due to poor programming by the management. It also did not allow us to monitor shots, so many would become quite drunk in a short time.

“Maybe the altitude had something to do with this fact. Many people dressed to the nines were sick in the elevator and lobby while leaving for home.”

The Tower’s elevators figure into many a story.

“I had one golden rule: before I got in the elevator to either go up or down, I went to the bathroom and peed first,” laughs Charlton. “In my five years, never once did I get stuck in an elevator, and I think I’m the only employee that didn’t.

“Also, I must say that I never got tired of looking out the windows. The view was absolutely outstanding. We were on the side of the Tower from which you could see the TD Centre and Bank of Montreal buildings, and Union Station. You could see the trace of the lake, all the way to Niagara Falls and the lights from Rochester on a clear night. Amazing.”

David Kurtz (second from right) and friends at Sparkles. Photo courtesy of Kurtz.

Similarly, David Kurtz—now a marketing manager for Norwegian publications Reis and Travel News—remains friends with many DJs he met at Sparkles, including fellow Toronto native Tony Meredith, the godfather of his children.

Sparkles got a sound and lighting overhaul in 1985, when management ended their contract with Bacchus/Juliana’s. Still, it remained busy right into the late-’80s.

DJ/producer Paul Grace, who played there for about three years following the club’s transition away from Bacchus’ DJs, shares some insights into the period.

“You’d think a place like that wouldn’t do so well, in terms of getting a solid local crowd, but they did,” he says. “I loved the space, and enjoyed working there, but I didn’t like the management. Things started to get really corporate. They’d even close the dancefloor down for certain corporate parties. You just don’t do that.”

While I was unable to locate anyone who could be specific about decisions leading to Sparkles’ closure, Toronto Star listings reveal that the venue was promoted as more of a dining room and lounge by early 1991. It closed later that year for renovations.

Flyer for the Vertigo rave designed by Terence ‘Teeloo’ Leung (original was die-cut and folded). Courtesy of Claudio Santon.

In May 1992, the space relaunched as pop, jazz and R&B lounge, Horizons. Live acts like The Hi-Lites performed weekends while DJ George Andrew played similar sounds throughout the week. Occasional special events still took place in the venue, including the legendary Vertigo rave produced by Atlantis (Don ‘Dr. Trance’ Berns, Iain McPherson, Claudio Santon, and James K) in October of 1993.

Today, the space is known as upscale bistro and private event venue Horizons Restaurant.

Thank you to participants Alan Gibson, David Kurtz, Julie Ley, Paul Grace, Randy Charlton, Tony Meredith, Victor Miller, and Vince Degiorgio. Thanks also to Barry Harris, Claudio Santon, Ed Conroy of Retrontario, Irene Knight (PR for CN Tower), Isabel Moniz, Linda Keele, Lorne Goldblum, Michael Sweenie, Timothy Hopton of Bacchus, and the Vintage Toronto community.

The post Then & Now: Sparkles appeared first on Then and Now: Toronto Nightlife History.

Article originally published December 4, 2012 by The Grid online (thegridto.com).

With the help of two rare DJ mixes, we revisit the early-‘80s Yonge Street club that provided Toronto’s gay community with a safe haven and showcased cutting-edge dance-music sounds, before the spectre of AIDS brought the party to a close.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: Stages, 530 Yonge

Years in operation: 1977-1984

History: The northwest corner of Yonge and Breadalbane was once occupied by the Hotel Breadalbane. In 1945, the Bolter family purchased the hotel and would transform the downstairs of 530 Yonge into The Parkside Tavern. The Bolters also owned The St. Charles Tavern, at 488 Yonge. By the mid-1960s, both taverns were known to be gay bars.

At that point in history, gay nightlife in Toronto was still very much underground. It was common for the heterosexual owners of gay bars to be contemptuous of their clientele. This seems to have been the situation at The Parkside, a dingy beer hall largely frequented by a daytime crowd. The Parkside’s owners allowed police to regularly spy on patrons in the washrooms, waiting to nab men engaged in any sort of sexual acts. Arrests were made, and the practice continued throughout the 1970s, even as gay activists organized leafleting campaigns and called for boycotts of the bar.

These conflicts were characteristic of the time. During the mid-to-late-1970s, Yonge Street was the main artery of Toronto gay social life (it would shift to Church in the mid-1980s). Those looking to dance could hit a number of spots near Yonge and Wellesley, like The Manatee, The Quest, Katrina’s, Club David’s, The Maygay (later Charly’s), and Cornelius, which sat above biker bar The Gasworks. By 1977, there were even two gay-owned bars in the area: The Barn, opened by Janko Naglic at 418 Church, and small cruise bar Dudes, opened by Roger Wilkes, a founder of the York University Homophile Association, and his partner David Payne in an alley just behind The Parkside.

While there were lots of options to dance and cruise, Yonge and its surrounding streets were not necessarily safe for queer people. Not only did the police frequently harass gay hangouts (most notoriously during the 1981 bathhouse raids), gay men and lesbians were all-too-often physically attacked.

“Those were the days when, on Halloween, people would throw eggs and ink at drag queens,” says Arnie Kliger, the man who would open Stages. “It also wasn’t particularly safe for gays to walk around the side streets.”

Kliger had both safety and glamour in mind when he worked with partner Stephen Cohen to open after-hours gay disco Stages. Its location, above The Parkside, had housed numerous clubs since the late-’60s, among them The August Club, Mama Cooper’s, The Milkbar, Quasimodo, and Bimbo’s.

Influenced largely by New York gay and after-hours clubs like The Saint, Studio 54, and 12 West, Kliger and Cohen chose to open an unlicensed dance club where music, dancing, and men would be the focus. There was nothing like it in Toronto at the time.

Stages’ doors opened at 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 1977. People lined up to begin the new year in this new disco that would raise the bar for late-night dancing in Toronto.

“Many of the straight-owned clubs were rundown, the owners didn’t care, and just wanted to make a buck,” recalls DJ/producer Barry Harris. “Charly’s upstairs at the St. Charles Tavern was a good example of that. The gay crowd accepted it for years as gay clubs were still somewhat taboo, but eventually stopped supporting them.

“Stages was opened by an owner who appreciated good sound, good quality everything, and took care of his customers.”

Courtesy of Andrée Emond.

Why it was important: “We wanted to offer a different late-night experience, and take the whole party to a higher, better level,” says Kliger of his venture with Cohen (who would depart a few years after the Stages’ opening to pursue his main interests in design and architecture).

Kliger was committed to creating an experience as good as—or better than—those he had at the New York and San Francisco clubs he frequented. When patrons made it through the line that ran up the stairs to Stages, they turned left, paid a small cover (generally $5-$8) and walked in to a sizable but intimate rectangular room with a large wooden dancefloor in the middle. At the far end was a long bar that sold juice, water, and oodles of Perrier. The bar was adorned with bouquets of flowers and trays of fresh fruit, while bartenders would also pull out boxes of percussive instruments—tambourines, bongos, maracas—for customers to play. On the east and west walls, overlooking the dancefloor, were two built-in bleachers that ascended almost to the ceiling. They were deep and upholstered, with huge custom cushions adding to the comfort.

“Arnie Kliger was the best bar manager Toronto ever had,” DJ/producer Paul Grace tells me. “Arnie wanted a space where he would be comfortable and happy partying—one that was safe, where there were no problems. He set up the club so people could relax.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Kliger created membership cards for Stages, and hired former policeman Bob Bush, nicknamed Gloves, to keep potential troublemakers out.

“Gloves was an ex-London bobby, and he was our sole security man,” Kliger says. “He could take care of 10 guys trying to come up that stairway. In the entire time Stages was open, there was never a problem inside—no fights, nothing. I think that speaks volumes.

“We wanted people to have a safe place when they came in with their friends, all twisted and bent,” Kliger adds. “They knew that once they got off of Yonge Street and through those doors, they were secure to do whatever they wanted—party, take their shirt off, play a drum, whatever. Nobody came there for an hour; they stayed till morning. Most of our clientele carried sunglasses.”

Stages ran Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with doors generally opening at 11 p.m. and music heard until 6 a.m. or later. The 600-capacity club attracted large, loyal crowds, primarily of gay men, but also lesbians and straight folks attracted to the music and vibe.

“Stages was the only club I had ever heard of at the time that was mixed, gay and straight,” recalls Harris, an occasional customer who would later fill in as a guest DJ there. “I believe this was unusual, but was also something that made Stages very ‘chic.’”

“Fridays were definitely more straight, or mixed, but Stages was a place that was very ‘tolerant’ on any night, sort of setting up for a sensibility the Twilight Zone carried through,” recalls musician, producer and photographer Don Pyle, a Stages regular for years after his sister introduced him to the club in 1979.

“More than tolerant, Stages had a slightly decadent feel because it was night people and pretty sexual on the dancefloor, with all orientations having fun.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Club people flocked to Stages for many reasons, with its stellar sound and lighting high on the list.

“The lights came from New York’s Times Square Lighting,” says Kliger. “I couldn’t afford [renowned sound designer] Richard Long, but I copied his music systems.”

“Stages was one of those magical clubs you just had to experience,” states Paul Grace. “It’s still my favourite club, and that includes [clubs in] New York. It was relatively small, but had a killer soundsystem and great lights. There were these lovely big scoop speakers for bass that you could actually crawl into. I knew guys who would, and then they’d trip on the bass all night.”

“On the dancefloor, it was like a nice, warm fuzzy blanket because you were cocooned in the lights and the music,” recalls Richard “Bambi” McNicoll, a Stages lighting tech from 1982.

“The speakers completely surrounded you. Stages was intimate and had sound that could have been in a club three times its size. The lighting was also far ahead of its time. Where most club lighting systems were pretty static and the fixtures stayed where they were, what made Stages so unique was that you could change the light show every week—and that’s what I did.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

McNicoll, who came to Stages after working lights at Charly’s, was shown the ropes by lighting woman Andrée Emond. A veteran of venues including Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven, Emond worked at Stages from 1980 to 1983, brought in by one of her best friends, legendary Toronto DJ Greg Howlett. Emond and McNicoll would squeeze themselves into Stages’ tiny booth, working to create energy and mood directly beside DJs including Howlett, Wally MacDonald and, later, Paul Grace.

Emond recalls taping up her fingers to work the many toggle switches on Stages’ vertical lighting board, built into the wall. The DJ booth was directly on the edge of Stages’ dancefloor, with nothing but wire fencing separating crew from crowd. Five mirror balls were clustered in the dancefloor’s centre.

“The square dancefloor had a fairly low ceiling—pin spots, spinners and strobe lights were set above and on a suspended industrial grid that covered it,” says Emond. “But it was the Christmas lights and the Kelly controller that blew me away. There were at least 1,500 hundred lights that could be changed to provide rows of basic colours.

“The crowd would scream with excitement when those blasts of bright light came perfectly timed with the music. I learned not to be afraid of the dark, and to let music flow through my hands at Stages. Greg and Wally’s music, mixes, and effects provided all of my cues.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Stages, as all the people I interviewed tell me, was largely defined by its music. The crowds were deep into new sounds, and they were educated by some of the greatest dance-music pioneers this city has ever produced.

“The two DJs who played Stages for years were Greg Howlett and Wally MacDonald, both very good, with very different styles,” says Grace, who danced at Stages during the years when he himself was DJing at venues including Cornelius, the CN Tower’s Sparkles discotheque, and Yorkville’s Bellair Café.

“Wally played lots of weird shit—he liked to wake the crowd up all the time—whereas Greg was the master of the continuous mix. He’d start at 11 o’clock, slowly build the tempo up, and by 4 a.m. he’d be around 140bpm, then start to bring it down. By 5 a.m., he was down below 120 bpm, getting sleazy. It was very trippy and wonderful.”

MacDonald—who DJed during Stages’ earliest years, as did his brother Larry on occasion—was also adored for his impeccable mixing, late-night sleaze sets and devotion to underground disco.

“Wally loved to twist songs around and inside out,” says Barry Harris. “He also used a reel-to-reel tape machine to fuck with people’s heads by using the delay playback, bringing the echo in and out. In 1979, DJ mixers were just mixers; there was no delay, reverb, echo or effects at the time. It was very difficult to even find a mixer to buy, so Wally was doing a lot of really innovative and creative DJing.”

MacDonald was also a pioneering remix artist. He reworked songs like Antonio Rodriguez’s “La Bamba” and Harlow’s “Take Off” into epic extended versions. MacDonald’s masterful remix of Amanda Lear’s “Follow Me” sounds fresh to this day.

“Wally influenced me greatly during my entire DJ and remix career,” says Harris, who started DJing in 1983 at Dudes (whose address, coincidentally, is now home to pro-audio shop Saved By Technology).

“I remember one Sunday, Wally played “At Midnight” by T- Connection,” Harris continues. ”He was playing a reel-to-reel tape version that he had re-edited himself. He extended the big percussion intro and played bits and pieces of ‘I Will Survive’ intro overtop. Now, something like that sounds like no big deal, but at the time, no DJ used to remix anything like this—they simply played the records.

“Another time he played “Heroes” by Big Ben Tribe, then somehow mixed into the original David Bowie version. Brilliant! By the end, the whole crowd started applauding. I had never seen an audience applaud a DJ.”

MacDonald would bounce between clubs as a resident DJ, also playing venues like Sugars, 18 East, The Albany, and Wonder Bar.

Greg Howlett would soon become Stages’ main music man. This former resident DJ at Le Tube was known to play joyful, uplifting dance music, with a lean towards dancefloor classics and disco edits, like “Souvenirs” by Voyage and Yvonne Elliman’s “Love Pains.”

“Greg was our house DJ for at least five years,” enthuses Kliger. “Greg was the star. He had such a following, and an amazing ability to read the crowd and do it right. I trusted him 9,000 per cent.”

“I loved listening to Greg, and I try to emulate him to this day,” offers Grace. “He would play for hours, and you’d never know when one record was going into another. He was so smooth, and really worked at that. He constantly had a new set of stuff he’d play each night.”

DJ Greg Howlett. Photo courtesy of Andrée Emond.

Andrée Emond shares a favourite example of Howlett’s confidence behind the decks.

“I will never forget one evening with Greg. The crowd was particularly bored, so he turned off the turntable and stared at them. They stood there, shocked. Once the drone came to a complete stop, he played their favourite song of the day. Everyone went crazy and the rest of the night was amazing.”

Both Howlett and MacDonald were trendsetters, but took different paths as dance music began to splinter.

“The big ‘disco crash’ occurred around 1979,” Harris explains. “Dance music was fragmenting, and everyone was very confused as to where club music was going. It was the beginning of a new decade, new attitude. New wave was now cool, and disco was not. So the ‘cool’ Stages people followed the trend; my perception is they followed Wally, who really embraced the new sound as a fearless risk-taker. Greg did not follow the new sound, and would not—no way. He was going to stick to what he felt was ‘gay music.’ Greg stuck to his guns, and took a lot of shit and attitude from a lot of people.”

“Wally MacDonald was the only gay club DJ in town playing new dance music that had come out of post-punk or early electronic scenes,” confirms Pyle, author of Toronto punk–history book Trouble in the Camera Club.

“Some songs I distinctly remember being very excited to hear in a gay club were ‘Nowhere Girl’ by B-Movie, ‘I Travel’ by Simple Minds and ‘Numbers’ by Kraftwerk. ‘Numbers’ was always a very late-night track, with the breakdown at the end being used to shift the mood.”

“Stages was an amazing dance club because of the DJs, and when it came to mixing, no one was better than Wally,” enthuses Lena K, former bartender at restaurants like Le Pigale, Cornelius above Gasworks, and a regular at Stages for most of its existence, especially on the eclectic Sunday nights. “I still feel the electricity run through me when I think about Wally’s mixes.”

As the disco-vs.-new-wave battles played out on Stages’ dancefloor during the early ’80s, MacDonald was let go from the club, and then notably rehired in January of 1983.

DJ Wally MacDonald. Photo courtesy of Lorne Goldblum.

Stages had a devoted following. Like all the best nightclubs, it fostered both a feeling and a community.

“I knew what I wanted to see, and have people feel: happy, happy, happy,” says Kliger. “And they were. We had the tambourines, the fan dancers, the whole works going. I made the place and gave people somewhere to express themselves, but the crowd created it for themselves.

“I’m sure some of the drugs contributed to this”—poppers and MDA were the main substances of the day—”but there was a feeling of membership, camaraderie, friendship, love. We fed a feeling, and it worked.”

Pyle also fondly recalls the club’s festive vibe. “It was a very celebratory space. Everyone really got down. I recall men in skirts, cheerleader outfits, fan dancers. There was so much excitement and anticipation.”

Kliger tells the tale of an evening when uniforms were especially prominent: “There was a fetish party one night on Church Street, with everything: guys dressed up in police uniforms, there were bras and garter belts, transsexuals, you name it. We had very heavy theatre-type dry ice at Stages—we didn’t use the cheap smoke—and it creates a very heavy steam. We would pump that place so full of dry-ice smoke that you couldn’t see yourself, with gigantic fans that would suck the air out onto Yonge.

“This night was in January and, when I turned the fans on, some people on the street thought the building was on fire. Toronto Fire responded quickly, came running up the stairs, and I happened to be at the front door. I looked down the stairs and said to Bob, the bouncer, ‘Don’t charge them. They’ve got great outfits.’ I got pushed up against the wall with an axe by a fireman telling me to get out of the way, and then I realized my mistake. Greg, being as sharp as he was, put on the song ‘Fire in my Heart.’”

Lighting man McNicoll also recalls a strategic use of the dry ice machine.

“It wasn’t used all that much, because proper dry ice costs a lot. Back during the days of ‘It’s Raining Men,’ somebody decided to splurge. The dry ice came out over the dancefloor through dryer hoses and billowed down. As soon as it did, everybody opened umbrellas and started dancing around with them. Stages was one of those mad places where every weekend, something happened.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Who else played/worked there: Paul Grace came onboard at Stages after a young Chris Sheppard had brought more new wave to Fridays and a stretch of Sundays.

“Fridays were fairly mixed, a bit trendy, and eventually became more alternative in music and everything else,” explains Kliger. “That’s where Chris came in, later. He ran the Friday switchover to alternative music and club kids in crazy outfits—’Rock Lobster’ and all that kind of stuff. I just didn’t understand it because I’m hardcore gay, but I learned.”

Kliger did understand the allure of late-night socializing, and was equally at home mingling with the owners of clubs including Le Tube and Twilight Zone, as well as TIFF (then still known as the Festival of Festivals) party planners. Stages, in fact, hosted some of the film fest’s earliest parties, with appearances from celebs like Tom Cruise, Peter O’Toole, Richard Chamberlain, and Kathleen Turner.

Tina Turner also paid the club a visit, as did longtime gay favourite Eartha Kitt.

“Eartha Kitt happened to be playing at the Royal York’s Imperial Room—it was at the time that ‘Where Is My Man?’ was big—and I did everything I could to get her up to Stages,” shares Kliger. “We sent flowers, notes, a bottle of scotch, and begged her to come up. We sent a limousine to the Royal York and, sure enough, she bit. Greg had the back-up tracks going and we had a microphone ready, even though she wasn’t engaged to perform. She loved it so much she grabbed the mic and did the song.”

Stages’ staff tended to be just as attractive as the celebs they served.

“The staff and family at Stages were incredible, along with being some of the beautiful men you ever saw,” says Emond, citing people like bartender/manager Andy Armstrong and cashier John Bannerman.

“It was a casting call,” agrees Kliger. “We wanted to have the best-looking people with their shirts off. The bartenders were more than bartenders; they were friendly, they were happy, and, in the middle of the night, if it got hot—and it would get really hot in there—we’d send them out on the dancefloor with trays of watermelon and cantaloupe, oranges, ice, popsicles and water. Clubs didn’t do that.”

Stages bartender Brent Storey, who would later be an integral staffer at gay bar Boots,  was also one of Toronto’s most avid of fan dancers.

“There were a lot of fan dancers at Stages,” says Grace. “When it was busy, they would dance around the edges and, as the night got later, and people started to leave, these guys would start taking over the dancefloor, until finally, the whole floor was full of fan players.”

The fan dancers were a key part of Stages’ core family, and certainly helped to establish the club as decidedly gay at a time when more sexually ambiguous alternative clubs, like Voodoo and Nuts & Bolts, appeared on the scene.

“There was no shortage of places to dance, but nothing could touch Stages—Stages was like finding Mecca,” says Lena K, who now works in the legal field, specializing in intellectual property law. “Although I had gone to other dance clubs, there was no other place where I felt as safe and blissfully free to just be me. I made real friends there, most of whom have been lost to AIDS, but a handful remain and are still friends over 30 years later. That club brought us together every weekend, and that’s some kind of special thing.”

Greg Howlett’s calling card. Courtesy of Andrée Emond.

What happened to it: By 1982, there was talk of GRID, a.k.a. gay-related immune deficiency, later to be known as AIDS. Many in the gay community began to die in this time of great uncertainty.

“The AIDS crisis was just beginning, and people were really afraid,” shares McNicoll, who would later work the lights at clubs including Boots and Chaps. “We were losing a lot of artists and friends, and nobody really knew what was going on, so there was a lot of fear. I think that really had a detrimental effect on club life as a whole. There was a tremendous loss.”

Both Greg Howlett (who would go on to heat dancefloors at clubs including Komrads and Chaps) and Wally MacDonald passed away from HIV-related complications in the 1990s.

“I made and lost many friends at Stages,” says Emond, who later worked the lights at both The Copa and The Diamond, and is now a web developer and teacher. “I still miss the wonderful people I met, and was honoured to play with during that special time. The memories are bittersweet.”

But Stages also closed because Kliger felt it was time.

“It started running out of steam,” he offers. “I felt that what could be done there had already been done, and I was out of themes and ideas. I wanted to take the Stages family out on a high note, so I made the decision that it was best to put a period at the end of a sentence.”

Stages held a final New Year’s Eve party on December 31, 1983 and closed in early 1984. Within weeks, Kliger was hired by the Chrysalis group to transform the former Jarvis Tavern into gay club Bar 101. (Years later, the same space would become Tazmanian Ballroom, home of the infamous Rock & Roll Fag Bar.) Kliger later managed venues including The Copa, Bemelman’s, and the Bellair Café before moving into the hotel business.

Barry Harris would follow Kliger to DJ at both Bar 101 and The Copa, before becoming a resident at Charles Khabouth’s Stilife. He later had a huge production and remix career as half of both Kon Kan and Thunderpuss. More recently, Harris has returned to his rock roots and is working on an as-yet unnamed project.

Paul Grace also became an in-demand producer/remixer, particularly as a member of Boomtang Boys. He then turned his talents to scoring for film and television, was a music consultant for the TV show Queer As Folk, and maintains a home studio.

Before all of this, Grace partnered with Brent Storey and David Strand to re-open the Stages space as Avalon in 1984. About a year later, the upstairs of 530 Yonge briefly reopened as Changes. Both it and The Parkside Tavern below closed in March of 1986 to make way for a Burger King. The building is now a Sobeys Express. [Addendum: the Sobey’s has since closed, with the location listed for retail opportunities.]

Thank you to interviewees Andrée Emond, Arnie Kliger, Barry Harris, Don Pyle, Lena K, Paul Grace, and Richard McNicoll, and to Carlos Mondesir, Eric Robertson, and James Vandervoort. Special mention to Lorne Goldblum for the DJ mixes and to the late Rick Bébout for his Promiscuous Affections documentation of gay Toronto social life.

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