Living for the Moment

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"You make it with some of these chicks, they think you gotta dance with them."

Tony (John Travolta)

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John Travolta was becoming a household name when "Saturday Night Fever" premiered on this day in 1977.

His career had been gathering momentum with his appearance in "Carrie" and his regular role on TV's Welcome Back, Kotter. Then "Saturday Night Fever" became a blockbuster — the fifth–highest grossing movie of 1977 — and Travolta's career took off. After an appearance in the very forgettable "Moment by Moment," his next two movies, "Grease" and "Urban Cowboy," were huge hits.

I don't think Travolta ever played a character quite like Tony Manero.

At the Brooklyn disco where he spent his evenings, Tony was the ruler of all he surveyed. Outside the disco, he was nobody — even in his own home. It was safe to say that he lived for those moments in the disco and that he gave little if any thought to the future. Outside the disco he got into fights with his father and struggled to live up to the example of his brother the priest.

And his job at a paint store was a dead end.

But that all changed when he was in the club. As I say, he lived for the moment there.

Things were different when he met Stephanie (Karen Gorney) whose thoughts and dreams took her beyond Brooklyn and the club. The fact that Tony didn't envision a life beyond Brooklyn frustrated Stephanie, who replaced Annette (Donna Pescow).

"You live with your parents," she told Tony at one point, "you hang with your buddies and on Saturday nights you burn it all off at 2001 Odyssey. You're a cliche. You're nowhere, goin' no place."

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Tony wanted to argue, but what could he say? He knew she was right. And that was his turning point.

What was less clear was what Tony's future treatment of women would be. Like many men of his generation — as well as generations before and since — Tony struggled to relate to women outside the bedroom or the dance floor. While the Tonys of the world are getting paid back today in the form of sexual harassment scandals, I doubt that a movie like "Saturday Night Fever" could be made today. After all there was overt as well as covert sexism going on in that movie that would not be permissible in today's politically correct–charged atmosphere.

"Saturday Night Fever" supposedly told the story of the social scene in the U.S. in the '70s, but ironically it was based on a 1976 article by British journalist Nik Cohn that Cohn admitted — 20 years later — had been fabricated.

"Without Cohn's original story, it's possible that disco would be a dimly remembered fad from the days of the Ford administration: no Bee Gees megahits, no Travolta superstardom, no nostalgic polyester parties for decades ever after," observed Mark Rozzo in the New York Times. "Barry Gibb reportedly once said to Cohn, 'It's all your bloody fault, isn't it?' He may have been right."

Travolta received the movie's only Oscar nomination — for Best Actor — but he couldn't compete with Richard Burton, Woody Allen, Marcello Mastroianni and the winner, Richard Dreyfuss.

The best–selling soundtrack featuring songs recorded mostly (but not exclusively) by the Bee Gees received no Oscar nominations. Nevertheless it is one of the bestselling movie soundtrack albums of all time.

And it is a testament to the influence of disco music on '70s America — even if that influence was exaggerated at times.

Nothing's Gonna Touch You in These Golden Years

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"I'll stick with you, baby, for a thousand years
Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years."

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The older I get, the more aware I become of the uselessness of many skills I had when I was younger.

Some of those skills were skills I learned in school — like how to process film (in my college photography class). In the digital age, dark rooms simply do not exist. As a result, that knowledge has no value anymore.

Other skills were useless even at the time. For example, I mastered the timing of the snapping of fingers and the clapping of hands at the beginning of David Bowie's "Golden Years," which made its debut on this day in 1975. I was proud of that at the time, but it has had zero value in my job searches over the years.

Employers simply aren't interested in whether someone can snap fingers and clap hands in time with the background singers on "Golden Years," and it is a skill that is incredibly difficult to work into one's resume.

It is even more difficult to work into a conversation.

But, anyway.

"Golden Years" never really seemed like it belonged on Bowie's "Station to Station" album, which came out in January 1976. Musically, I suppose it had more in common with the "Young Americans" album that was released earlier in 1975. It had kind of a funky, soul–like quality to it. It even had a touch of disco in it — but not much, really.

It was just out of place on "Station to Station." To me, "Station to Station" always seemed to have more of an edge.

Want another kick in the head? Bowie has said he offered the song to Elvis Presley, but Elvis turned him down. Can you imagine "Golden Years" sung by Elvis?

"Station to Station" was an extension of Bowie's journey into funk and soul, I guess, but "Station to Station" had more of a synthesizer sound than the "Young Americans" album — or "Golden Years," for that matter.

Bowie was in a transitional phase when "Golden Years" was released. As I understand it, his cocaine addiction was at its worst at that time, too, and he has said that he remembers little of the "Station to Station" recording sessions.

I knew nothing about his cocaine dependency when "Golden Years" was being played frequently on the radio. In my rather sheltered hometown talk of things like cocaine really didn't exist in 1975. Conversations about marijuana were about as hardcore as it got.

I don't really think about it when I hear that song now, either. But I do think of what my life was like in 1975 and the line in Bowie's song that goes, "Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years."

And I think of all the people I knew, all the people I went to school with, my parents and their friends, my grandmothers (both of whom were still living at that time). The image is frozen in my memory as if we were all posing for a group photo. Many of those people I knew are gone now. Something obviously did touch them in the intervening golden years.

But I've been lucky, I suppose. I've had my share of setbacks, and I haven't had perfect health, but nothing has touched me that dramatically or directly. I have been touched indirectly, I guess — when I have lost people I cared about.

I recall once many years ago when I lost a friend to cancer. At the time, I was working as a teaching assistant at the school where I was completing my work on my master's degree. When I came home after the funeral, one of my students came up to me and asked me how I was doing.

"I'm all right," I told her. "If you live long enough, these things are bound to happen. You will lose people you care about."

I don't know. At the time, I guess I thought I was sharing some special wisdom with her, but it really isn't wisdom. It's something anyone can figure out — provided one lives long enough.

I've had far too many opportunities to reflect on that conversation in the years since. Many of the people I cared about are gone now. When I heard David Bowie singing "Golden Years," it never occurred to me which of my friends and family members I would lose in my lifetime. It just wasn't something I thought about. Of course, I don't remember giving much thought to the lyrics, either.

Yep, I've been lucky. I've lived all these years, these golden years, and nothing has touched me. One day, it will. It happens to everyone. It has already happened to many.

So Bowie wasn't entirely correct, was he? Something will touch us. Sometime.

It's still a catchy song.

This Booty Call Was a Wrong Number

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In 1975, K.C. and the Sunshine Band released their first two #1 hits — "Get Down Tonight" and "That's the Way (I Like It)."

And I hoped — in vain — that the disco craze would be over soon. Alas, it was not.

On this day in 1976, the group released what would become their third #1 hit — "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" — and, whether the events were related or not, disco remained with us for a few more years.

I always felt that "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" represented everything that was wrong with disco.

The music captured the essence of what it was like to be young, but the lyrics were so idiotic that it was impossible for the songs to have any real relevance to people as they went through life's stages.

The priorities of disco music were reversed. That's why the songs had no staying power.

I can listen to most of the music that has been popular in different periods of my life, and the very best songs — the ones that last — always have good lyrics in common. The music is usually pretty good, too, but, in most cases, outstanding lyrics can more than make up for less–than–outstanding music.

But, by and large, the lyrics for disco songs were insipid — even the lyrics of the songs by the performers who were considered disco's best (a list that included the likes of the Bee Gees, Donna Summer and K.C. and the Sunshine Band).

And that's saying something when you consider some of the songs — disco and otherwise — that were being written and recorded in the 1970s.