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Taken From DJHistory.com - Truely Sad, Another Legend Gone. :(
I found out about Francis' death when one of his friends sent an email a day after his body had been found in his apartment, apparently from suicide. This email alone was justification enough for writing Last Night A DJ Saved My Life. His friend thanked us for writing it and for giving him his place in history. (Originally appeared in Jockey Slut.)
Francis Grasso Obituary
Francis Grasso had had a difficult time of things in the last few years. You?d only to look at his face ? ravaged by hard partying and a particularly vicious beating at the hands of thugs ? to see that he was a man who had lived a bit; and had seen the dark side of life as well as its sunnier aspect. He admitted that the only thing that kept him going was the love he had for his dogs.
Unfortunately, then, I can?t say it was a massive surprise when one of his friends contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me of his untimely death. On March 18th, friends found him dead in his Brooklyn apartment though, as we go to press, neither the cause of death nor how long he had been there is yet known. It was ? is ? an extremely sad death for a man who deserves to be remembered by anyone who holds any passion for dance music (though in all probability, he will be swiftly forgotten).
For those of you who know nothing about Francis Grasso, allow me to recap. A Brooklyn native, Francis cut his club teeth in the late sixties as a dancer at Trude Heller?s Trik, but became a DJ at Salvation Too when the resident there, Terry Noel, turned up late and was sacked (the result of an altercation with a tab of acid). Francis found he had an aptitude for the job aided by the fact he had a decent record collection. There was also something else. DJ Francis provided a quantum leap in the art of DJing. He hadn?t been the first person to mix records (that honour goes to Terry Noel), but he elevated what Noel had done to an entirely different level. Beginning in Salvation Too and progressing to The Haven, The Sanctuary and Club Francis, at his peak he was the original DJ pop star. He dated Liza Minnelli, was engaged to a Playboy bunny and indulged in more gratuitous sex and drug-taking than a roomful of Dereks and Brandons.
If you want to see him at his height, go rent Klute where, if you put it on slo-mo, you get a fleeting glimpse of him in the DJ booth (a pulpit) at the Sanctuary midway through the movie; or track down a copy of April 1979 Penthouse for the coolest ever picture of a DJ. Every aspirant DJ should have his achievements burned on their retinas. Francis Grasso deserves to be remembered because he did it for love not money, and because he achieved more in his short career than we can ever hope to achieve in ours. And because he was an innovator and, if only for a short while, the hippest motherfucker in Manhattan.
I found out about Francis' death when one of his friends sent an email a day after his body had been found in his apartment, apparently from suicide. This email alone was justification enough for writing Last Night A DJ Saved My Life. His friend thanked us for writing it and for giving him his place in history. (Originally appeared in Jockey Slut.)
Francis Grasso Obituary
Francis Grasso had had a difficult time of things in the last few years. You?d only to look at his face ? ravaged by hard partying and a particularly vicious beating at the hands of thugs ? to see that he was a man who had lived a bit; and had seen the dark side of life as well as its sunnier aspect. He admitted that the only thing that kept him going was the love he had for his dogs.
Unfortunately, then, I can?t say it was a massive surprise when one of his friends contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me of his untimely death. On March 18th, friends found him dead in his Brooklyn apartment though, as we go to press, neither the cause of death nor how long he had been there is yet known. It was ? is ? an extremely sad death for a man who deserves to be remembered by anyone who holds any passion for dance music (though in all probability, he will be swiftly forgotten).
For those of you who know nothing about Francis Grasso, allow me to recap. A Brooklyn native, Francis cut his club teeth in the late sixties as a dancer at Trude Heller?s Trik, but became a DJ at Salvation Too when the resident there, Terry Noel, turned up late and was sacked (the result of an altercation with a tab of acid). Francis found he had an aptitude for the job aided by the fact he had a decent record collection. There was also something else. DJ Francis provided a quantum leap in the art of DJing. He hadn?t been the first person to mix records (that honour goes to Terry Noel), but he elevated what Noel had done to an entirely different level. Beginning in Salvation Too and progressing to The Haven, The Sanctuary and Club Francis, at his peak he was the original DJ pop star. He dated Liza Minnelli, was engaged to a Playboy bunny and indulged in more gratuitous sex and drug-taking than a roomful of Dereks and Brandons.
If you want to see him at his height, go rent Klute where, if you put it on slo-mo, you get a fleeting glimpse of him in the DJ booth (a pulpit) at the Sanctuary midway through the movie; or track down a copy of April 1979 Penthouse for the coolest ever picture of a DJ. Every aspirant DJ should have his achievements burned on their retinas. Francis Grasso deserves to be remembered because he did it for love not money, and because he achieved more in his short career than we can ever hope to achieve in ours. And because he was an innovator and, if only for a short while, the hippest motherfucker in Manhattan.
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