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As it was, in 1965 Thanks to Alberigo
Crocetta and An afternoon set
for the younger kids, Finally a place
to listen to live 'Beat' The music was Great! |
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The space was underground and accessed by a stairwell. Rear exit doors let out to other stairs that put you back at street level. It had originally been designed as a movie theater, with balconies and a projection room that became the Sound/Light control room, run by Beppe (Il Mago) Farnetti. The lighting and projection systems
were way ahead of |
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The Shel Carson Combo
The Rokes
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Equipe 84 One of Italy's first (of
many to follow)
Maurizio Vandelli and his band. . . The Piper club served
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Other great bands that played here: The Merseybeats |
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From go-go dancer to Fame!
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Caterina Caselli
In 1965 recorded: "La Ragazza del Piper" Nicknamed "Casco d'oro" . |
Alberigo Crocetta hired
me to design The Pipers
They also backed Tito Schipa
Jr. |
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The backdrop to the stage area
was designed by Roman artist Claudio Cintoli and was titled: "Il Giardino di Ursula". Two big paintings and a sculpture made of car parts, tires and all. Very Pop The stage was wide enough to have
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The idea mushroomed
and soon And the rest is history... |
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I left Rome in 1971 and forever
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The following is a review published in
WHERE TO HOWL IN ROME By Ted Burke The Club Scene. A few years ago I asked a friend of mine what Romans do at night. He replied, "We do absolutely nothing. There is simply no night life." While New Yorkers, Londoners, and Parisians have been slipping their discs in discotheques these many moons, Rome's stay up late crowd has been enjoying long, late dinners, lingering in crowded cafes, or just plain walking up and down the streets taking the crisp night air. In short: Rome has been Dullsville. Today the big news is that Rome is starting to swing. Now the restaurants are emptier. The café crowds don't dawdle. There aren't so many strollers in the streets. Rome's first discotheque has changed the temper of the town. The new Piper Club is the place to go-go; and Rome will never be the same. The reason for it all is an immense subterranean cave full of frantic, screaming, clapping, stamping bodies, a sea of contorted torsos and flailing flanks that makes cookie-cutter discotheques seem prim little boites. To start with, the Piper Club is vast: a veritable stadium located a good hundred and fifty steps below sidewalk level. Put London's Dolly's, The Scotch, Paris' Castel's, and New York's Trude Hellers together, toss in Zandvoorts Whisky a Go-Go and Capris Number Two Club for good measure, and theres still space for a few hundred more dancers with plenty of room to motivate. |
On Saturday night the joint jumps as five hundred ye'-ye'
types, their older brothers and sisters, and everyone that wants to make
the scene twists, jerks, swims, surfs, monkeys, mouse or hully- gully in
a pulsating mass ritual that gives new meaning to the word "release".
No demure dancers, these. The décor cries out for exhibitionism. Seven raised platforms, each lit from the bottom, invite solo feats of improvisation. Three hundred and fifty low key stage lights blink pink, blue, yellow green, and white from the rafters. Eighty-five loud speakers relay a stereophonic cacophony. Four hundred dancers take the cues. Shy types tun into show-offs. Introverts blossom into extroverts. Tone-deaf hipsters find the beat. Everybody dances alone (who needs a partner, anyway?), a deux, a trois, and in gangs. They do just what they want to: change partners on the spur of the moment. Improvise instant dramas, or leap from one floor-illuminated stage to another one of the seven. The total effect is bacchanalian A combo belts out rock 'n' roll. Two giant Pop Art murals smile down on the scene, each a Fellini-size sex goddess, lips parted provocatively, white teeth gleaming. Two long-mained English beat groups take turns shaking the floor. In recent months the line up of groups there are always two who alternate in the same evening has included The Rokes, The Eccentrics, The Echoes, The Bushmen, The Missiles, The Primitives, The Honey-combs, The Meteors, The Bad Boys, and The African Beavers. And the dances: everyone does The Letkiss, Europe's new rage (no one knows quite how to dance it, but everybody seems to be getting the general idea), |
the Zorba-the-Greek Dance, and the timeworn hully-gully unbelievably eerie when a full three hundred dancers, each one oblivious to the others, line up chorus style to step the narcissistic paces a ritual that makes the parade of decadents in 8 1/2 seem plain vanilla. According to one regular, the Piper Club's magic is that "you can dance anywhere on a platform, on your table, on the ceiling. The management, God bless them,, couldn't care less". Another go-goer takes a broader view, "Romans are natural hams. We love to be stage center, and we're all terribly body conscious. We love to show off or watch someone else show off". On any given night a batch of Rome's prettiest ye'-ye' girls turn out to spark the action. They are the Piperine, some thirty strong in full force, who dress in "dirty-color" sweaters and clinging Capris, know all the new steps and gladly teach them but aren't paid a penny by the house. The boys, in jeans, well-cut trousers, or suits (with tie carefully askew), come to dance with them. And "older" people those in their late twenties and thirties and up come in after midnight to find out what goes. "We get a very mixed crowd here," says the manager. "In the winter a dinner jacket group arrives after the opera, rub shoulders with bohemians from the Spanish Steps, and loves it. After all, on the dance floor you can't tell the shop girl from a princess. Celebrities come at two and stay till we close, at three-thirty: Lelio Luttazzi, Don Lurio, Monica Vitti, Vittorio Gassman, and a whole flock of others". |
Below: Rome's swinging discotheque, The Piper Club: The Rokes, The Bad Boys, "piperini" and sex goddesses make the scene.
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The Piper Club has surely endured the years... Visit their website at: |
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. . In 2005 they released a 2-disc Below are some quotes from the insert calendar:
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In 2007 a book was pubblished by Rorrado Rizza and Guido Michelone:
Tons of great photos of all the people that attended the club and made it happen.I recognized many faces of young friends I hung out with and danced with...(Didn't see my face... Searched the croud shots.....) |
Photo courtesy of Sandro Stacchi © |
IT WAS FRIDAY THE 17th! "The date chosen by the two owners Bornigia-Crocetta (F. Muscinelli, "Alle origini del mito")
"It was like an underground temple, a cave accessible
by (Luciano Ceri, catalogo mostra "Beat!") . . . |
