Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 2: Disco! – Podcast 153

I’ve always loved movies, especially the films I grew up with in the 1970s. I was seduced by their gritty realism, social commentary, complex characters, and a more honest portrayal of the human condition. And I was fan of that generation of film stars too: always surprising, sometimes conflicted figures, artists more than the celebrities that we have today. Movie genres seemed less important to me, so when I first saw Wade Nichols in an adult film on the big screen, it had just as big effect on me as, say, seeing Brando in ‘The Godfather’, De Niro in ‘Taxi Driver,’ or that fish thing in ‘Jaws.’ Ever since then, it feels that Wade Nichols has always been a part of my life, never far away from my thoughts. I’ve sometimes found myself wondering what it would’ve been like if Wade Nichol’s career had continued into the mainstream. Wade Nichols is Indiana Jones in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ perhaps. Or how about John McLane in ‘Die Hard.’ Mr. Miyagi in ‘The Karate Kid.’ Ok, scrub that last one. The point is that he captured my imagination in a way that was just as powerful as many of the recognized greats, and so I wondered about the possible twists and turns of his life that were prevented by his death. Years ago, I turned my attention to finding who he really was, and perhaps also, why he’d remained important to me ever since my teenage years. That disproportionate impact of an early moment in your life that is instrumental in creating your adult sense of self. This is Wade Nichols: ‘Like An Eagle’ – His Untold Story. This is Part 2. Parental Advisory Warning for those not familiar with The Rialto Report: this podcast episode contains disco music. This may be disturbing for younger listeners who may wish to switch off. As for the rest of you, clear a space on the dance floor and let’s get down. This podcast is 42 minutes long. ————————————————————————————————————————————– In 1975, Donna Summer was a little-known American singer who’d been living in Germany for eight years where she’d appeared in stage musicals. One day, she was playing around with a single lyric, ‘Love to Love You Baby,’ which she sang to an Italian musician and record producer, Giorgio Moroder. He liked the hook, and came back a few days later, having turned it into a three-minute disco song. He suggested to Donna they record it together. She wasn’t sure about the idea, mainly because the whole thing that Giorgio had come up with just sounded so damn sexual. In the end, she agreed to sing it as a demo which they could give to someone else. So she did, but the trouble was that her erotic moans and groans so impressed everyone who heard it that, they decided to release it as a Donna Summer single anyway, and ‘Love to Love You’ went on to become a small-time hit in Europe. Fast forward a few weeks, and a tape of the song found its way to Neil Bogart, who was the president of Casablanca Records in the U.S. He listened, liked it, and decided to play it at a party at his home the same night. Next day, Bogart got Moroder on the phone. There was a problem with the song, he said: at the party, he’d started playing the song and approached a girl, but by the time he’d started speaking to her, the three-minute single had come to an end. So he had to run back to the tape deck, rewind it, and start playing it again before resuming his pick-up lines with the girl. Just as he got to the stage of propositioning her, the damn song ended again. Same drill: rewind the tape, and start it over again. A few minutes later, he was at the point of asking the girl to join him in the bedroom when, you guessed it, the song finished once more. So,