The Loop Files: An Oral History of the Most Outrageous Radio Station Ever

by Rick Kaempfer

wasn’t part of the original planning of any of this and I’m not taking credit for anything. I do, however, remember being in Les’ office when they started to talk about it. Schwartz, Les Elias, Jessie Bullett, Mike Veeck, and I were in there and they started planning Disco Demolition night for a between game promotion on July 12th. Each one of us wrote a number on the blackboard of how many people we thought it would draw. Comiskey held about 42,000 people. I don’t remember who guessed what, but I do remember nobody guessed higher than 28,000. So that’s what we went with: 28,000 and that turned out to be part of the problem. None of us knew how big this was going to be. Even we didn’t know how big our fanbase had become or how rock and roll crazy they were, but that night was going to teach us all in a hurry. It was 98 cents plus a disco record to get into the stadium that night. Fans would come in, drop their disco record in a bin, then get in for the games. Mike Veeck Look at what we were averaging that year. Look at the club that year. I would’ve set my father and myself on fire if it had drawn people. We were desperate. Let’s face it. Everyone was like ‘Why did you do it?’ Because we were going out of business, which we basically did the following year. Jeff Schwartz After that, it was a bunch of people working together to make it happen. Mike Veeck never said no to a crazy idea, I never said no to a crazy idea, but Steve was worried about attendance, and thought that ...