Disco was born in Europe, in the France of the early Sixties when an enterprising Parisian restaurateur decided to provide recorded music for his customers. Hi then added a light show: whoila`, la discoteque! The idea spread to England, and then the US. At the end of the Sixties, boosted by the salsa-influenced American dance, the Hustle. Barry White's 1974 US Number 1 'Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Baby' and Gloria Gaynor's 'Never Can Say Goodbye' of the same year helped re-establish disco, this time whit a much more distinct soul based sound. Before Gloria Gaynor became the first Queen of Disco in her native America acts had dominated throughout the Sixties. At the turn of the decade, a small number of mainly Dutch groups enjoyed international success. EMI/imperial producer Klaas Leyen was responsible for the Cats, while George Bouens wrote, produced and performed with the George Baker selection. Their second million-seller, 'Paloma Blanca', owed much of its European success to the tremendous exposure it received in the discos of European holiday resorts during 1975.

Donna Summer casts a glance at mentor

Robert Van Leeuwen wrote, produced and played lead guitar for Shocking Blue. Their 'Venus' topped the American charts and sold 10 million copies worldwide in 1970. This sort of success showed that European material could sell globally, and encouraged others, like Italian writer and producer Giorgio Moroder, to try and produce English-language material for the world market. Moroder, the most successful of the continental producers, was born in St. Ulrich, South Tirol, where he studied at the local Academy of Fine Arts. He later traveled Europe as bass player in a band playing hotels and small clubs. In the early Seventies he wrote, produced and performed on a number of hit records in Germany, a country where soul was popular due to the US military presence and American forces network radio. Moroder based his recording activities in Munich. Only a three-hour drive from his home in Northern Italy, it was the nearest city with modern recording facilities. In 1970 he met Englishman Pete Bellotte, who later enjoyed some success as part of the studio band Trak. They formed Say Yes Productions and licensed their product to Oasis Records, which was based in the same hotel complex as the Musicland studio they used. Bellotte and Moroder enjoyed some success as songwriters, most notably with 'Son Of My Father' in 1972. In England, Chicory Tip took a cover version to Number 1, while Moroder's original was a minor hit in the States. Even then, the hook-line was played on a synthesizer, the instrument that was later to dominate Moroder's sound. Erotic epic It was the duo's historc partnership with Donna Summer, begun 1974, that was to make such a lasting impact on the disco world. After producing some locally-released records, the Bellotte/Moroder/Summer partnership struck gold with the 17-minute epic 'Love To Love You Baby', an erotic litany set to a mesmeric disco beat. An edited single version swept to international chart success at the start of 1976, and laid the foundation for a career that eclipsed all other disco stars. In the US Donna Summer enjoyed four Number 1 singles and three Numer 1 albums between 1978 and 1979. Explaining their success in Music Week in April 1977, Moroder suggested that 'our style was a lot different from the black American style. We make it really commercial, and we found a way to make the bass sound more interesting, and to add little melody hooks to make it stand out from the run-of-the-mill heavy funk that was around at that time ... We aim at a more laid-back disco sound, which not only makes the record danceable, but makes the dancer go out and buy it... I think that we invented the bass drum and bass sound that is a feature of the modern disco style, and we never break the dancing rhythm. In this way I think we have innovated the whole disco scene.' In an interview with New Musical Express 18 months later, Moroder defined their style. 'we take something from everything, than make it our own, although it is hard to analyse this exactly. There are obvious aspects we used from the Philadelphia sound.' Motown was clearly another major influence.

When Frank Farian created a hit record in the studio, he created Boney M (inset) to promote it.

In the earlier Music Week interview, Pete Bellotte had outlined the way he and Moroder worked. "The process starts with a reference track of rhythm machine. Without it we could never keep things tight for a 17-minute disco cut. Using that as a guide, we bring in the bass and drums to the rhythm section track, and then the arranger is called in to add things on top of that. However, most of the arranging is done in the mixing stage as a kind of post arrangement process. Very little is preconceived... the only thing that is really though out in advance is the bassline'. Moroder produced other acts such as Roberta Kelly and recorded four solo albums of his own. He also enjoyed great success with films, winning an Oscar for his electronic score of Midnight Express (1978). AS musical director of American Gigolo (1980), he produced Blondie's transatlantic Number 1 of the same year, 'Call Me'. His contribution to Foxes (1980) included Donna Summer's `On The Radio', while his soundtrack to Cat People (1982) drew widespread critical acclaim.

Michael Kunze was the production brain behind the mid-Seventies hits of Silver Convention (inset)

While Moroder and Bellotte were creating Donna Summer's sound, Michael Kunze was independently making similar excursions with Silver Convention. Kunze, a successful German lyricist, started producing in the early Seventies, and scored a moderate hit in 1975 with Silver Convention's `Save Me', initially on the Jupiter label. The repetitive, thumbing follow-up, 'Fly Robin Fly', went to Number 1 in the States at the end of the year and sold a million, as did their biggest British hit, 'Get Up And Boogie', released in 1976. There was other producers and artists at work who helped to create a 'European sound', notably French disco star Sheila and B. Devolution, while some of Abba's records, such as 'Dancing Queen' and 'Knowing Me Knowing You', helped to define the new European pop sensibility. One of the most successful acts in this field was Boney M, the brainchild of German producer Frank Farian. As a solo singer, Farian had topped the German charts in 1976 with the millionselling ballad 'Rocky'. He then produced a disco record, 'Baby, Do Ya Wanna Bump?', a studio creation made entirely by session men, which he credited to Boney M as simply a name to put on the record label. When it became a hit there were embarrassing requests for the act to appear on television, prompting Farian to create a group called Boney M to perform his music. 'Daddy Cool' was the firs Boney M single that the group sang on themselves. A string of Eurodisco hists followed, although their impact in the US was limited. In 1978 they hat two British Number 1 singles, including the massively successful 'Rivers Of Babylon'/'Brown Girl In The Ring', and a Number 1 album, Night Flight To Venus, which sold millions for the European-based Hansa Records. Two further UK chart-topping albums followed before in the bubble burst. Farian worked to a certain formula, first recording his backing tracks, usually in Munich, and then trying the tapes out at a disco, using public reaction to gauge the best cut before recording the vocals on top. In common with other Eurodisco producers, the syndrum, with is considerable range and pitch, was central to his sound, as was the extensive use of synthesizers. The so-called 'Munich Sound' became widely celebrated, with major bands such as the Rolling Stones and ELO using the Musicland studios, although - as Pete Bellotte pointed out - there was nothing particularly German about it. Rather, it was a meeting-point for talent drawn from all parts of Europe. Say Yes Productions, run by Bellotte (English) and Moroder (Italian), employed an Icelandic arranger and a teem of session players (who recorded a couple of albums as the Munich Machine) drawn largely from Britain and other parts of Europe. Germany calling Although Moroder has commented that they might all have been successful earlier if they had been based in London or Los Angeles, the fact is that they were based in Munich which was where, in the mid Seventies, everything came together at the right time. It was German record companies - Oasis, Jupiter and Hansa - who put faith, time and money behind Eurodisco. With that support, and as a result of the work of producers like Giorgio Moroder, Pete Bellotte, Michael Kunze and Frank Farian, Eurodisco became a significant strand of international popular music in the late Seventies. Demitri Argyropulo