Studio 54 founder Schrager looks at New York club scene then and now

Andy Warhol and Calvin Klein danced, Liza Minelli and Diana Ross sang - and in the middle of it all, founders Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell celebrated one last hurrah at Studio 54.

The next morning, they both went to jail.

Few other nightclubs have had as profound an effect on culture as New York's Studio 54, despite having been around less than three years under Schrager and Rubell.

The two friends founded the club in 1977 with the goal of making the ultimate nightclub, changing the universe and earning lots of money.

It seemed they had fulfilled their wish, with Studio 54 a spectacular success from opening night. While plenty of celebrities came, what made the club stand out was the mix of people - especially from the gay community, where many still hid their identity at the time. In Studio 54, they felt safe enough to loosen up on the dance floor.

"You felt you could be anybody you wanted to be. Nobody cared. You could be a celebrity. Nobody cared. Everyone was down just to have fun. It was real," says Schrager, who recently turned 75.

In an interview with dpa, Schrager recalls how he found out he and Rubell would be on the cover of the New York Post with legendary pop icon Cher: "It was almost like, you know, Steve and I, we did it."

But only very few people were allowed into the club - which made plenty of others angry. Tax authorities eventually searched the venue and found drugs and cash. Schrager and Rubell were sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for tax evasion in 1980.

The duo sold the club, which operated for a few more years after they went to prison, but eventually it closed in 1986. Now it's a theatre.

After their prison sentence, Schrager and Rubell opened another nightclub, the Palladium, and invested in hotels - now numbering dozens around the world. Rubell died in 1989 from AIDS complications.

Schrager, a father of three, continues to run the hotels and now sees a "golden opportunity" for the hotel industry following the coronavirus pandemic. However, he's more sceptical of the New York club scene, which he says has been emasculated while other cities, including Berlin, have managed to catch up in the meanwhile.

"Nightlife is an important everyday incubator for a lot of cultural ideas. And that's why there's such a fascination with it," he says.

"A lot of things come out of that," adds Schrager.

He's not against reviving Studio 54 - but he wouldn't be on board.

"You know, it was the first business I ever had. And it was like holding on to it, like I thought it was so exhilarating. You have so much fun, you know. So it was like my first love. But I always kind of move on. And so I'm always looking, always looking forward."

Not to mention that technology makes things more difficult, he says.

"You have to come up with ways to protect people's privacy, because they can't feel free" if there's someone with a phone, he says.

"You have to deal with those things during every era. Yeah, but you don't change the fundamentals. You have to have people feel free, to have somebody think they can come here and do what they want as long as you don't hurt anybody, if you don't do anything illegal."