Boogie Nights
The craze for electronic dance music rages on unabated—the DJ Calvin Harris made $66 million last year tweaking the pulses of glow-stick wavers—but the man who first brought this synth-rich sound to the mainstream was, for a time, largely forgotten. The Italian producer Giorgio Moroder started out performing in German discotheques in the ‘70s and went on to define the sound of that era. He fell off the map about the same time disco slid off the charts, but he re-emerged, to great fanfare, in 2013, on Daft Punk’s hit album Random Access Memories. Next month, Moroder is releasing his first record in 25 years, featuring up-and-comers like Charli XCX. Its lead single? “74 Is the New 24.”
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“I won my first Oscar in 1979, for the Midnight Express score. Dean Martin presented the award to me. I bumped into a light walking to the stage. Up there, I spoke about stupid things. Disaster.” Courtesy of Giorgio Moroder.
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“This is the entryway to my home in Ortisei, Italy. I was born there and inherited the house, which I remodeled 35 years ago. It’s hard to count the gold records.” Courtesy of Giorgio Moroder.
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“I’m recording a song for the 1982 film Cat People with David Bowie and the director, Paul Schrader, in Switzerland.” Courtesy of Giorgio Moroder.
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“[This] is the cover of my 1977 record From Here to Eternity. This look has sort of become my image. But now I have a smaller mustache. The one in the photo is a little too big.” Courtesy of Casablanca Records.
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“The picture was taken at the Grammys last year. Next to me is Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo; I know because he’s the shorter member of Daft Punk.” Photograph by WireImage/ Getty Images.
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“I’m with Donna Summer in Munich, in ’76 or ’77. We’re at my studio, Musicland, where we recorded ‘Love to Love You Baby,’ our first No. 1 hit. I used the ‘four-on-the-floor’ tempo for the first time, which became a must for most dance songs then. It was the beginning of disco.“ Photograph by Getty Images.
7
“I designed this car. It’s called the Cizeta-Moroder—a beautiful car. I still own the prototype; I think we sold seven or eight of them. The Sultan of Brunei owned two. I had a lot of projects: I made cognac, computer art. Some were well thought out, others not.” Courtesy of favcars.com.
