The Last Party

Packed with stars models socialites and everyone else who could sneak past the fabled velvet ropes Studio 54 defined disco and launched the celebrity-driven culture of today. Noted writer Haden-Guest takes readers behind the scenes and tells the whole story -- the glory days the drugs the deaths and the corruption.There was a place where virtually all the themes and energies of the '70s -- disco the cult of celebrity the coke and the quaaludes the glam and the glitter the pre-AIDS sexual abandon the emergence of gay culture uninhibited women and the general air of debauchery -- were played out with maximum flamboyance.<P>It was a place that epitomized an era and exemplified the zeitgeist. No one is better suited to chronicle the Studio 54 story than Anthony Haden-Guest. He has re-created the scene and rendered the action in vivid detail from his personal experiences with the key players: the owners bartenders and bouncers; the celebrities and the dealers; the divas DJs and doormen; even the prosecutor who busted the owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager for tax evasion. The Last Party is more than a biography of one place. It also tells the story of Nightworld a realm spawned by Studio 54 comprising past and present clubs. Nightlords and Nightpeople their doings and their secrets which are still unfolding.