Peter Gatien

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 The Limelight, the Tunnel, Club USA, and the Palladium were among the most successful and popular clubs in New York City and around the world. Across four decades, the clubs’ mysterious and ambitious owner, PETER GATIEN, was the man behind the curtain. Here, for the first time, the mogul and impresario of global nightlife tells his own story of those heady and fascinating times. THE CLUB KING: My Rise, Reign, and Fall in New York Nightlife (Little A; April 1, 2020) - offers an inside account of the meteoric rise and stunning takedown of Gatien’s nightclub empire.

                From the blue-collar Canadian mill town of Gatien’s childhood to the freedom of the ’70s, through the excesses of the ’80s to the conservative crackdown in the ’90s, THE CLUB KING looks at nightlife’s golden era.

                In his early 20s, Gatien opened his first club: the Aardvark, in his hometown of Cornwall, Ontario, with an as yet unknown band named Rush as his opening-night act. Always looking for the next big thing, Gatien moved south to the United States, opening clubs in Miami, Atlanta, and Chicago before taking on the city that never sleeps. When the Limelight opened in an old church in 1983, it was like nothing that had come before it, and its owner let the space speak for itself.

                Soon after, he and his team of innovators further created the backdrop for New York nightlife, expanding his empire to include the Tunnel, Club USA, and the Palladium, each with its own vibe and scene every night of the week, and catering to people from all walks of life: from disenfranchised club kids to the newly rising grunge and hip-hop scene, gay or straight, punks, rock ’n’ roll and techno—all were welcomed into Gatien’s alluring world.

                The Limelight rose to worldwide fame by booking major acts such as Prince, Whitney Houston, Pearl Jam, Guns N’ Roses, Lenny Kravitz, the Ramones, Mötley Crüe, and Billy Idol, while hosting a pantheon of A-list celebrities that included Mick Jagger, Madonna, Cher, David Bowie, Jack Nicholson, Angelica Houston, and Duran Duran, to name a few. Andy Warhol co-hosted the openings of many of Gatien’s venues and was a frequent patron. At the Tunnel, Gatien created legendary Sunday night hip-hop parties, with performers like Jay-Z; 50 Cent; Sean Combs, a.k.a. Puff Daddy; the Notorious B.I.G.; Mary J. Blige; and Missy Elliott.

                But as fabulous as the hedonistic high was, it was inevitable that the fall would be just as cataclysmic. At the height of Gatien’s success in the mid-1990s, New York became strict under mayor, Rudy Giuliani. Targeted by Giuliani and the U.S. government, Gatien was accused of encouraging the use of illegal drugs at his clubs, and his high-profile federal trial captivated New York headlines for months. A murder, a sting, and aggressive bullying from both the feds and local police ultimately brought down Gatien’s empire, landing him in the hands of ICE. He was eventually deported to his native Canada.’