August 10, 2023 • 41 mins
Les Bains Douches was a glamorous nightclub in the center of Paris that’s parties attracted some of the most famous and influential stars in the world. Housed in what was once Paris’s first and most decadent bathhouse, Les Bains Douches was a magical, musical experience that gave musicians like Mick Jagger, Diana Ross, and Prince a space to unwind, let loose and soak in the magic of beautiful Parisian nights.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
So far in this series, we've explored a range of
dance floors that captured a unique moment in history, clubs
that were brilliant in groundbreaking, but that were only open
for a few years. Because so many of the world's
greatest nightclubs don't exist anymore. The buildings are gone or
have been transformed so much that they're barely recognizable. But
(00:23):
in this episode, we're going to explore the story of
one building that's been around for one hundred and thirty
eight years and is still standing, a building in the
middle of Paris that has lived three lives. In its
second life, it was home to one of the most
iconic clubs in Paris, a nightclub where some of the
(01:00):
world's most famous and influential people would escape to just
be themselves for a night without judgment, without scrutiny, and
with total freedom. Because even the rich and famous need
a place to escape. This is the story of Le
Bonduche in Paris, France. When I was a teenager growing
up in the inner city of Baltimore, I read a lot.
(01:23):
I would get lost in books that took me to
places around the world, and Paris always seemed so magical.
When I suddenly became a music artist. The world opened
up to me. I went to Paris for the first
time and it did not disappoint. But Jean Pierre, the
future owner of Le Bon Duche, grew up in Paris,
(01:45):
and he didn't just read or hear about Le Banduche.
He'd known about it his whole life. His father owned
the building, but it wasn't until his mid teens that
he went to a party at Lebon for the first time.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I found the invitation for the opening on my dad's desk,
and I decided to go.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Paris is one of those truly beautiful cities. There's a
decadence and energy that feels old world, romantic, and progressive
at the same time. I can still remember visiting the
City of Lights for the first time and getting wrapped
up in the immense beauty, art, creativity, and cosmopolitan opulence
(02:29):
of Paris. As Jean Pierre walked through the city, he
felt a similar kind of excitement and anticipated all the
places his and I could go as he walked down
the cobblestone streets that led him to the club. When
he arrived, there was a long line to get.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
In I showed up, the streets was packed. Police had
to come. He was blocking traffic. He was going all
the way to the boulevard. The only way to see
the trans was to book the streets and check people's look.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
The people who went to Leban in the eighties were
deeply embedded in the city's art and fashion scene, so
dressing up came naturally to them. Paris is the fashion capital,
after all. But there was another reason people put so
much thought into what they wore when they headed out
to the club.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
There was this lady at the door called Marilyn. This goddess,
Marilyn blonde, blue eyes, strong, beautiful, mid thirties.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Marilyn was Leban's legendary bouncer.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
She was very unpowered woman, and she was very intimidating.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Bouncer's hold the keys that have the potential to either
unlock all of your nightclub dreams or leave you outside
in the cold. And later on in the series, we'll
explore a club in Germany known for its tough door policy, Burgheim.
But let's get to know Marilyn in the role she
played at the door first.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The huge part of the legend of Levanduche is Marilene
on top of this two making everybody panic. And every
time I've mean some people who say, oh my god.
You know, she was so scary. Sometimes she wouldn't mean.
Sometimes she would not very famous people who tell me, now,
oh my god.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
When I was young, I.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Was trying to get in that she would never let
me in, or you would tell me I was completely unknown,
but she would not mean anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Throwing a good party comes down to the guest list.
The people you invite can completely change the tone of
the night. As the gatekeeper, it was Marilyn's job to
hand pick the people who would make for the most
interesting night.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
She would be there and pick up who could come
in and who could not. And she was like a painter.
She was all like a perfumer, picking up ingredients to
make sure that the smell would be amazing, and she
would pick up people, making sure that the party and
the night would be magical.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Everybody had to get marilyn seal of approval before they
walked into the club. You had to have a spark
of something special to get into the club, a certain
geenisee croix, an intangible aura that pulled people in.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
If you had a cool look. If you would bring
something interesting about you, you could get in. Whether you
were rich, or you were a struggling artist, or you
were just like an employee. You know, but you knew
how to dress, or you knew how to dance, you
could get in, which.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Is what made standing in line outside Lebon so thrilling.
You had no idea if you were going to get
in or not, but if you were granted admission, stepping
into the club felt like walking onto a film set
for the very first time.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It was so real. You would walk in, I mean,
and he was amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Levanduche was beautiful and architectural feet, with luxurious interiors and
priceless art.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
That place was one of the best club in the world,
attracting the most atalanta, famous, amazing people you can think of.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Through all those.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Years, Levanouche was the place where the rich and famous
went to escape the pressures of fame. Outside they had
to maintain a polished image, think about everything they said,
and keep up appearances. But at Levane they could have
unfiltered fun, away from the scrutiny that came with fame,
and truly let loose on the dance floor, surrounded by
(06:28):
people who were just like them and didn't really want
anything from them. As Jean Pierre walked in, he saw
musicians and actors sharing meals with new people.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
You would see Me Jagger having the nurvous jerryol or,
you would see David Bowiev Imana.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
The supermodel Iman. I remember meeting her once when I
was in Paris, and it was a magical experience. I
had grown up idolizing her as one of the most
beautiful women in the world, but it was unusual to
see beautiful people at leban The club was filled with
glamour models and designers.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
On the right side, you would see Katine Donald with Isalloon.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Then you would see Jerry.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Mugler and John Guardiano having dinner together.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
You would see any wall all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Levan Duche was the pinnacle of Parisian glamour, luxury and celebrity.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I saw all that many, many, many times, so it
was just stunning.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
When the lights went down, the club filled up and
the dance floor came alive. At Lebonduche, an ordinary but
chicly dressed person living on the outskirts of Paris could
dance with an actress until dawn. A reclusive superstar could
get up on stage and do a spontaneous midnight performance.
(07:56):
A supermodel could walk down the stairs to the basement,
holding a cigarett in one hand and a champagne glass
in the other, kick off her heels and jump head first,
fully clothed into a swimming pool. From London Audio iHeartRadio
and executive producer Paris Hilton. This is the History of
(08:18):
the World's Greatest Nightclubs a twelve part podcast about the
iconic venues in people that revolutionized how we party. Some
of the world's most legendary nightclubs were known for the
unique community they welcomed, others for the cultural movements they started,
(08:39):
and some for the musicians and DJs they introduced to
the world. The best nightclubs champion new music, transform lives,
and provide an escape from life's pressures. One more thing.
This is the history of some of the world's greatest nightclubs.
Not a ranking of every club in the world. It's
an exploration of the spaces, people and club nights that
(09:02):
made a lasting impact on night life and music today.
I'm your host, Altnate. I'm a singer, songwriter and musician,
and I found my purpose in club culture. This is
episode six. Le Bonduche, Paris, France. Le Bonduche was a
glamorous building in the center of Paris that lived three
(09:25):
lives as a spa, a nightclub, and a hotel. In
each of its lives, it was a meeting place for
some of the most famous influential artists of its time,
the place they escaped to to let loosen and were
free to truly have fun at. It was a temple
of beauty, music, and glamour. A sense of magic filled
(09:48):
the air because each night at Levanne was rich with possibility.
Anything could happen. In cities that have been around for centuries,
every building feels like a museum in its own right.
They carry hundreds of years of history and several lifetimes
(10:10):
worth of stories. Almost every club we've explored so far
started off as something else, usually as warehouses or old factories,
abandoned not so beautiful places that became something special when
they were transformed into clubs. But Le Bon Douche is
(10:31):
not like the other clubs. It started as one of
the most beautiful, luxurious places in nineteenth century Paris.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
It was originally created by a guy called Auguste Guerbos
and August Gerboys was famous in Paris for having a
cafe which was really ded to toe me of a
cafe society, which was called Cafe Gerbour.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The cafe was at the center of Paris's art scene.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
In that cafe was born the Impressionist movement, the painting
school is the likes of Renoirs, Mane, Mayne Cicily, all
the famous groundbreaking artists that now are being in the
biggest museum around the world.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Our Gust wanted to create another place for artists like
Renoir and Mane to congregate.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
He had a dream which was to make the most
beautiful and luxurious bathhouse in Paris. We would call it
a spa today.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So in eighteen eighty five August bought sixty three thousand
square feet of land, commissioned an architect and opened a
new building Levan Gubois, the first luxury spa in Paris.
People from all around the city visited the spa to
relax and receive beauty treatments hydro therapy, steam showers and massages.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And it also had a hair salon.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It had a restaurant, it had a bar, so for
that matter, it was really unique.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And the spas beauty attracted some of Paris's great his mind,
from artists like Claude Monette to writers like Marcel Preust.
The spa was opened for over half a century before
closing in the late nineteen sixties. It was empty for
(12:18):
a few years. The beautiful spa, swimming pools and treatment
rooms were beginning to gather dust.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
The airs of August Gabois.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
The Gaboet family sold the building to my father in
the early seventies.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
In the seventies, Jean Pierre's father, Professor Maurice Marroois, was
working at a medical school in Paris. He thought the
buying Leban would be a great investment, but it was
an unconventional building.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It was this strange space with mainly no windows, a
lot of stairs up and down, and it still had
a swimming pools, steam rooms, showers. He had this big
space which he really didn't know what to do, and
it sat there for quite.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
A while until two young men came knocking.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Two kids in their early twenties. One of them was
like twenty one, the other one was maybe twenty four.
Had the idea to do a place that would be
a restaurant, a concert hall, and a nightclub.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
They tried to convince Professor Marua to let them sile
a lease on the building.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Since at the beginning my father said, I'm not interested
and wouldn't take their call anymore.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
But then they walked into.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
The the university and they walked into the office theater
or I was giving a lecture for two hundred students,
and at the end of the class they came to
see him and they said, you know what you don't want.
You don't want to take us on the phone anymore.
We'd love to, you know, rent displays. We have an
increllible project. And he said he was pretty bold, cool,
(13:52):
and he told them, okay, call.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
My lawyers and let's see what we do. So let's
how it all started.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And for some reason they managed to convinced my father
to give.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Them a lease.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Those two young men were Jacques Renaud and Fabris Co.
They had a vision for the club, and once they
signed the lease, they began to bring it to life.
In nineteen seventy eight, they reopened the building as a
nightclub called Le Bandouche, and.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It instantly became the place to leave.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
The first thing they had to do once they signed
the lease was figure out how to make a nineteenth
century bathhouse into a club.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
So they hired a guy that was a friend of theirs,
that was, you know, maybe three four years older than them,
totally unknown, coming out of an interior design school in Paris,
and they said, all right, we're a shoe string as
a budget, but let's do something that people will remember.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
That friend was architect and designer Philippe Stark, which.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Is now one of the most famous designer an interior
designer in the world.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
They wanted Philip to preserve some of the most beautiful
features of the spa while bringing its early eighteen eighties
foundations into the late nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It's a gorgeous building.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
It was inspired by the seventeenth century architecture of Place Devoge,
but with a nineteenth century twist, the Osmanian twist as
we call it in the architectural world, and its brick
and the white stone building. It has a massive entrance
with a stoop you need to go up, and with
(15:34):
statues on both sides holding lights.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
When you walked in, you walked straight into the restaurant
and it was.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Not very big.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I would say. It was maybe at the very most
two hundred square meters two seventh square feet, but.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
It was beautiful. Philip Stark had covered the walls with
white and blue tiles, and the room was furnished with solid,
expensive tables and chairs.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
You could see I don't know, maybe sixty people for
dinner at the very most.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
There were candles on each table, and at night the
flames flickered and reflected off the glitter and sequence around
the room. The club's restaurant was decadent and glamorous, but
it wasn't a museum. It was a place where people
had a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
That is Claude Shaw, a DJ and art director who
used to party at Leban in the seventies and would
later go on to manage it in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Le Musique.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Claude is saying that he is a lover of love
and a lover of music. He spent a big chunk
of his life at Leban and counts himself lucky to
have met some of the best musicians and most beautiful
women in the world during his time there. Okay, back
to the restaurant at Leban Douche, it wasn't one of
(16:56):
those glamorous places where people couldn't relax. The restaurant was
the party. According to Claude, they would play music from
all over the world in the restaurant. For a while,
the resident DJ in the club was Guy Kueva, a
(17:17):
Cuban DJ who would play bands like buen a Vista
Social Club and Las van Van the kind of music
that felt like summertime and big, vibrant family dinners.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
That music.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
For Claude, the music was extremely important. He noticed that
it didn't matter what time of day it was. People
could come in during the early evening and throughout the
night and they would come to dance, to move, but
above all else, to listen to music. The music playing
on the first floor had a family reunion vibe that
(17:53):
created an atmosphere where people could catch up with old
friends and share private, joyful moments with each other.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
The music.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
The Claude understood that people went out for the sake
of meeting their friends, that they simply wanted the pleasure
of sharing, laughing, and having fun together. The first floor
of Le Banduche was a meeting place for people to drink,
talk and unwind while listening to music from all around
the world. But it was three stories high.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
You would have a second staircase.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And if you walk towards the beautiful staircase and down
the stairs, they would take you to the club where
you would instantly be hit by the sounds and sights
of people partying. Jacca and Fabris wanted to make Leban
the best club in Paris to hear live music.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
They had this idea to have a concerts, so they
had a guy that was Pierrebinard. He escaped to London
when he was seventeen and decided he was going to
be a rock photographer and he became close to Malcolm
Claren and all this crowd, and then he followed the
sex Pistols in like seventy eight when the punk movement exploded,
and so he hang out with all the music scene,
(19:11):
the London music scene, the British music scene.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
When he came back to Paris, they immediately hired him.
They knew he had some of the best connections in Paris,
so they told him.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
All right, you're in charge of booking talents.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Pierre began to fill the dance floor with some of
the most iconic musicians of the era, booking exciting new
and up and coming bands to perform on.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Stage, and he did an incredible joke and he booked
bands that were completely unknown, like we were saying earlier,
and it became massively famous. So then we played for
US three hundred people in like nineteen seventy eight or
seventy nine, and then you fast forward.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Five years and they would fill outdoor stadium.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Levan quickly transformed the building that housed the old Spa.
It's one of the hottest clubs in Paris. In the
early eighties there was a massive counterculture movement that started
in London and spread throughout Europe, with music and culture
shaped by punks, goths and new Romantics. While Leban stubbornly
(20:14):
remained a very Parisian club that was about exclusivity, glamour
and a certain kind of unattainability, some nights it welcomed
in bands that reflected the cultural shift to perform live gigs,
a you.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Example as a Depeche Mud, Simple Mind, Ub forty Irim
and the legendary concert by Joy Division.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Let's talk about that concert for a second, because it
was one of the nights that gave Lebon its celebrated status.
It was the winter of nineteen seventy nine December eighteenth,
to be specific, Joy Division, the post punk English band
that we talked about in our episode about the Hacienda,
was in Paris to play some small concerts, including at Lebanduche,
(21:01):
and a journalist at a French national radio station had
heard about the gig.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
There was a hula journalista Thiss national radio, and heso
that Toy Division was worse airing, and he convinced his
boss to do a live recording of the concert. And
this is how all the technician came in and went
live on the national radio.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
That Joy Division concert in nineteen seventy nine was broadcasted
live onto a French national radio station. Nine of the
(21:44):
songs recorded at that concert were captured and released as
a Joy Division album two decades later. The album was
named after the night leban Douche eighteen December nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
A big part of the region of is this.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
One, But that's just one of many. The history of
Lebonduche is filled with stories about memorable nights just like that,
one of unexpectedly magical moments and performances that took the
whole room by surprise. Nineteen seventy nine was just the start,
because the most legendary era of Lebon's history, the eighties,
(22:24):
was just around the corner. Leban was filled with stars,
but it took a kind of invisibility to really capture them.
In the most unfiltered states, the best photographers teach themselves
how to fade into the background. The people around them
don't feel pressure to be anyone but themselves. At Leban,
(22:48):
the almost invisible man behind the camera was the renowned
French photographer Fok Khan, who was one of the few
people allowed to take photos at the club.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
As stared around the eighties. I just bought a nikon
around eighty one.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
It takes a heightened level of perception to be able
to take a photo that translates the mood of the room.
A photo of Jack Nicholson smiling as he walked out
of the club with a French flag painted on his face.
The odd but delightful moment when Nicholas Cage wrapped his
arm around Grace Jones as they turned to face the
camera and pose in sunglasses. The first photo that Falk
(23:29):
took at Lebon is still one of his favorites. He
was standing near the club's entrance talking to the dorman
when he saw someone inside the club that didn't quite
fit in with the supermodels and film stars.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
And we show old babak cooler.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
A bab a cool is French slang for a hippie.
As Falk looked at the man, the dormant asked him
a question.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
How did you see this guy? Yeah, it's old cool
he's old and ugly.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But the dormanto Fock to guess again, to really look
at the man's face, and when Fox looked a little
bit closer, he realized who the barbercle was.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
His nakugger. Oh my gods.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So Fox rushed inside to snap Mick Jagger's photo. He
could miss the opportunity to get a picture of one
of the most famous rock stars of all time.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
So I got to lak a jacket. I've put a
flash and I shoot five of pictures of Sez Jager.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But Mick Jagger noticed Fox camera.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
He went to me and said, show me your camera.
And the little laker was scrapped around my fish and
I gave him camera. I said, nice camera, I can
catch it all the museum. We'll you will hang other
pictures you shot.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
You shoot from me.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
That was the first photo Fox took in the club,
but it was just the beginning. He went on to
become one of the club's resident photographers for over twenty years.
In nineteen eighty four, the club was sold to Claude Shaw,
who we heard from earlier, and his business partner Ubert Bukubsa.
Together they ushered Leban into the heated excess of the eighties.
(25:21):
The eighties marked a shift in Parisian culture. For the
first time in almost thirty years, a socialist party was
in power, and with them came a wave of liberalism
that swept across media, art and education. It was a bold, luxurious,
brightly colored decade, and it was the age of the.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Supermodel Urlutafodella and Topodza, Christimcnnemi Kitmas.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
The women who spent their days modeling for high fashion
campaigns and the pages of Vogue spent their nights partying
at Leban. It became the de facto venue for fashion
week after parties, and the models would arrive wearing fresh
off the runway looks from the designers for whom they
were muses, their dresses shimmering in the light as they
(26:10):
filled the dance floor.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Then Tony Dunn, no me comeback.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
That's Claude again. He considers Naomi Campbell his friend, and
according to Claude, she would go up to the DJ
booth asking them to play different tracks. And those weren't
the only famous faces that spent their night at Laban Douche.
While others mingled on the dance floor, one music legend
would sit alone.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Prince was at the height of his career and he
loved Levian.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
After Prince played shows in Paris, he would head over
to Lebon.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
He was living dinner there every night.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I mean I would see him all the time, dinner, dancing,
chasing girls and having a blast.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
One day in nineteen ninety two, before a huge console,
he called up the managers of Leban.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Told the management listen, I'm playing Persia, which is the
largest indoor sit him in Paris. I having to play
like for four nights. I want to have dinner after
the concert. Can you save me at table?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
But there was something else, so he.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Said, if you set up the stage with drums, mics, amplifiers,
this and that, maybe one of those nights after dinner,
I will play for fun. So he didn't guarantee it,
but of course the management set the stage on an
order for him to side whether or not you would play.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
But then on one rainy night in July nineteen ninety two,
a limo arrived outside. There were crowds outside the club
and lines of people waiting to get in. When Prince
stepped out of his limo, he was wearing a black
and white suit and strode into the building with.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Purpose, and he ended up one night getting on stage.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
So the very same night where he played in front of.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Like thirty thousand people, went to live, had dinner, and
so two hours after finishing in front of thirty thousand people,
he played in front of three hundred.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
People for fund for free fiver. You know, it lasted
like two hours.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
He played some of his favorite songs, including Purple Rain,
which on a rainy day in Paris felt especially magical.
And that wasn't the only time Prince did a spontaneous
concert at the club Jump Session. Claude witnessed Prince played
Leban for free. Watching him was an extraordinary experience because
(28:43):
he played every instrument. He played sex, he played drums,
and according to Claude, Prince never slept. He just played
music and piano all night. But when Prince stepped into
leban he had one very room, no pictures.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Lenya eat Kim's lub. First, he sends his boody glounce
ta king uzarum uzunaikub. When they show Cameoa, he came
to the eye and broke it down.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Sometimes when Prince's bodyguards found someone with a camera in
the club, they would take the camera and break it
because Prince wanted to dance, sing, and perform for people
who wanted to be in the moment with him. To
this day, there are no photos or physical reminders of
his spontaneous performances in the club, only stories, and the
(29:39):
club's history is filled with wild and magical stories. Just
like that. At Levan you could see a group of
models fresh from a runway show spinning around in the
middle of the dance floor, or an artist and an
athlete deep in the middle of a passionate conversation over
a bottle of wine. It was kind of like the
(30:00):
French Studio fifty four. In fact, Levanduche opened the same
year that Studio fifty four opened in New York. Here's
the story Jean Pierre heard from one of his friends
who was a regular at both clubs.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
The other day I was with Jacque Gone.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Jaques is a very famous interior designer de Carta if
Salon's interior designers.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Jacques was at the center of the Parisian art and
design scene in the eighties.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
He reminded me that at the time you could fly
Concord direct flight from Paris to New York and back
and he would only take like three hours and twenty minutes,
which is ridiculous. When he was in Paris, he would
go to liver for dinner and see everyone you know,
from Lagerfeld to salonontindnav a lot of people from New
York and London, you name it.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And then after dinner he would head to the airport
and get onto the Concord flight, would.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Fly the Concord and he would say that on the
plane he could see like thirty percent of the people
on the plane she saw.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
The night before at Lima. But wait, it's not finish.
Then he would land.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
In New York and then go to see your fifty
four and see again people that were at livanduche two
nights before.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
The clubs were in different countries that spoke different languages,
but the scene was almost identical.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
So that's to tell you how it was like a
micro society, unbelievable of like all those super talented people
that would party not only fifty four or in Paris,
but they were traveling all the time, and you could
see the same crowd in both places. So I found
that story really mesmerizing.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
But what made Levon unique was the warm, intimate nature
of the club. Only a select few photographers were allowed
to take photos, and so there was this sense that
if you walked into Lebon, you were walking into a
private party with people you knew you could really be
yourself around. It was like a family reunion with some
of the world's biggest stars, but in a place exclusive
(32:13):
enough for them to actually let loose.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
So you would find those super famous people, the Monaco family,
all those people. You would see all those artists. You know,
we have pictures of not only all the big rock
stars and movie stars like Fami geep up to Rapper
de Niro too, I mean everyone, but also we have
the pictures of the of like Andy Waha having dinner,
(32:36):
key starring and chatting with friends.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
It's mindly remember how in its first life Lebon was
a spa.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
When Philip Start, the architect of the club, redesigned the
interior of the building, he preserved one of its most
central features, the swimming pool in the basement. People would
jump into the pool in the middle of the night,
wearing their party dresses and expensively tailor suits. They would
frolic in the water and dance to the sounds of
(33:04):
the club on the floor above them. And back then,
people could dance fully clothed or not, in the swimming pool,
be spontaneous and hedonistic, with the freedom of knowing that
their faces wouldn't be all over the internet the next morning.
There were no cell phones and no social media. Back then,
people couldn't just reach into their pockets to document the night.
(33:27):
They had to just sit and experience it. And that's
part of what made nights at Lavon feel so magical.
Each night in Levon was filled with moments that would
never happen again, at least not in the same way.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
La Le Loustasia of all.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
A Claude. Back then, the nighttime made everyone happy. At
the end of the night, they would ask themselves, did
we have a good left tonight? Did we meet beautiful people?
And the answer was always yes. From the eighteen eighties
to the nineteen sixties, Lebon was known as Lebon Gaubois,
(34:12):
Paris's first spa, became home to the city's greatest artists
and thinkers. Then, from the eighteen seventies until the early
two thousands, Lebon was known as Lebon Douche, one of
the most glamorous, star studied nightclubs, not just in Paris
but in the world.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Throughout in history.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
We always had the ability to attract the biggest talents
of its time, and it's very unique, like one place
we'd attract all those silents for almost one hundred and
forty years.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Because it's still going on today.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yes, Lebon is still open, but in a new way.
After all, if there's one thing this club does well,
it's changed form to adapt to the new era, all
while maintaining its unique charm. In twenty ten, the nightclub
was forced to close down. While under the control of
the previous manager, the walls were seriously damaged.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
In twenty ten, the owner was kicked out of the building.
I mean, I'm sorry, it's have to it's the reality
as atter facts by the police and by the authorities
because he decided to do some remodeling job without hiring
the proper engineers, architects, contractors, without insurance at all.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Jean Pierre had inherited the building from his father, so
when the authorities arrived, Jean Pierre had to resolve things.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
At the end, the authorities closed the place down. Like
I had a court injunction to save the building.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
The building had been declared dangerous and partially unsuitable to
hold the club, and by twenty ten Paris had changed.
The nightlife scene had evolved, and a club like Lebon
didn't quite fit into the culture of the twenty first century.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
People were telling me it's over, let it go. Everybody
told me, you're never gonna put it back on the map.
He's never gonna have that. It's gonna work out.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
But Jean was determined. Lebon was so deeply intertwined with
his family's history and his own cultural upbringing. He wanted
to find a way to save the building and preserve
its artistic and musical history. But he was running into challenges, and.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
So at some point I said, all right, I cannot
find a new tenant.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Nobody wants to take it over.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
After being a spa and a nightclub. It was time
for Lebon to step into its third life, and.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
We turned the hotel into a five star hotel.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, so let's be real fo a minute. We sigh
when we hear about cultural landmarks being turned into office buildings,
and mourn whenever an iconic club gets turned into a
luxury apartment. It's heartbreaking to think of losing that musical
and artistic legacy to something cooper or tasteless. But that's
(37:02):
not what happened with Lebon. This is one club with
a happy ending.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I'm a film producer.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Originally it's storytelling, so it's to seem like making a movie.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Jean Pierre wanted to continue the story of Lebon, to
usher it into a new era.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So it's about telling the story the best way possible
with the most talented people. The idea was to get
the best guy to book the bands, the best chef
to make the appropriate food, the best interior designer to
make the coudest bar and restaurants and rooms.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
So he preserved the legacy of the club while updating
it to cater to the fashion, music and art scene
of the twenty first century. They preserve some of the
furniture the remnants of Philip Stark's architecture and the swimming pool.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The other thing which I did is that decided that
we should go back to have live concerts in the
place because of all the legendary concepts that occurred in
the past.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
They created a space with a capacity for around two
hundred people to host weekly intimate concerts and live performances,
and Jean Pierre was pleasantly surprised to find that the
people who had loved Lebon in the eighties came back
and found the same kind of love.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
The fun thing is like brasturants coming back thirty years later.
But not only is she partying in the nightclub. We
actually had a big party in her honor actually, but
also she was sleeping there, which is fun. And you
would bump into the swimming pool at two pm.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
So this is the new.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Liba and like the spa and nightclub before, the new
Leban has opened its doors up to welcome in a
new generation of stars.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
As we speak, Deeplow from Major Lasers staying at the hotel.
We did an incredible concert cool a new bands like
London Grammar, du A, Liba. We should sow intimate concert
for those kind of artists. Massive attack. We had a
metron me. I mean, I'm super happy that I managed
to get the place back on the map as a
(39:05):
concert hall.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And remember how Lebon Gaubois the Spa was the place
where nineteenth century artists congregated. That tradition has continued in
the building's current life as a hotel. Artists and designers
continue to flock to Leban.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Not only that, but now they can sleep there, which
is makes the lesion even more insane.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
So many iconic clubs close, they get demolished, but Leban
maintained its place in Parisian culture.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I don't know why the longevity, I think compared to
other clubs.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I think because there's.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Been many talents and honors that we're in love with
the place and were in love with the concept and
said we have to go out of our way and
think out of the box to making it happen.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Leban came into the world over a century ago, and
since the building opened up, it's lived so many different
lives and welcome so many different people.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I think it's mysterious. It's like a chemistry, like some
sorcerer did. How many buildings is there in Central Paris
tens of thousands. Why one address seven Ride Bolab in
very center of Paris has attracted for nearly one hundred
and forty years the biggest dollar. Why has it been
(40:24):
at place? Read energy, lots of fun. The answer is
a mystery.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
But why is there something in the water. In the
next episode, We're heading to New York City and into
one of the most iconic clubs, the Paradise Garage, and
get to know the legend that is Larry Levine. The
(40:54):
History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is produced by Neon
Harmmedia for London audience and iHeartRadio for London Audio. Our
executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson and Bruce Gersh.
The executive producer for Nion Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our
producer is Rufio Faith Masarua. Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez
(41:18):
are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal Genesis.
Our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is our production
manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator. This episode
was written by Rufio Faith Masarura and fact check by
Katherine Newhand theme and original music by Asha Avanovitch. Our
(41:42):
sound design engineers are Sam Beer and Josh Han. I'm
your host, Ultra Nate Ay, and we'll see you next time.
On the history of the world's greatest nightclubs,
So far in this series, we've explored a range of
dance floors that captured a unique moment in history, clubs
that were brilliant in groundbreaking, but that were only open
for a few years. Because so many of the world's
greatest nightclubs don't exist anymore. The buildings are gone or
have been transformed so much that they're barely recognizable. But
(00:23):
in this episode, we're going to explore the story of
one building that's been around for one hundred and thirty
eight years and is still standing, a building in the
middle of Paris that has lived three lives. In its
second life, it was home to one of the most
iconic clubs in Paris, a nightclub where some of the
(01:00):
world's most famous and influential people would escape to just
be themselves for a night without judgment, without scrutiny, and
with total freedom. Because even the rich and famous need
a place to escape. This is the story of Le
Bonduche in Paris, France. When I was a teenager growing
up in the inner city of Baltimore, I read a lot.
(01:23):
I would get lost in books that took me to
places around the world, and Paris always seemed so magical.
When I suddenly became a music artist. The world opened
up to me. I went to Paris for the first
time and it did not disappoint. But Jean Pierre, the
future owner of Le Bon Duche, grew up in Paris,
(01:45):
and he didn't just read or hear about Le Banduche.
He'd known about it his whole life. His father owned
the building, but it wasn't until his mid teens that
he went to a party at Lebon for the first time.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I found the invitation for the opening on my dad's desk,
and I decided to go.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Paris is one of those truly beautiful cities. There's a
decadence and energy that feels old world, romantic, and progressive
at the same time. I can still remember visiting the
City of Lights for the first time and getting wrapped
up in the immense beauty, art, creativity, and cosmopolitan opulence
(02:29):
of Paris. As Jean Pierre walked through the city, he
felt a similar kind of excitement and anticipated all the
places his and I could go as he walked down
the cobblestone streets that led him to the club. When
he arrived, there was a long line to get.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
In I showed up, the streets was packed. Police had
to come. He was blocking traffic. He was going all
the way to the boulevard. The only way to see
the trans was to book the streets and check people's look.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
The people who went to Leban in the eighties were
deeply embedded in the city's art and fashion scene, so
dressing up came naturally to them. Paris is the fashion capital,
after all. But there was another reason people put so
much thought into what they wore when they headed out
to the club.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
There was this lady at the door called Marilyn. This goddess,
Marilyn blonde, blue eyes, strong, beautiful, mid thirties.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Marilyn was Leban's legendary bouncer.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
She was very unpowered woman, and she was very intimidating.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Bouncer's hold the keys that have the potential to either
unlock all of your nightclub dreams or leave you outside
in the cold. And later on in the series, we'll
explore a club in Germany known for its tough door policy, Burgheim.
But let's get to know Marilyn in the role she
played at the door first.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The huge part of the legend of Levanduche is Marilene
on top of this two making everybody panic. And every
time I've mean some people who say, oh my god.
You know, she was so scary. Sometimes she wouldn't mean.
Sometimes she would not very famous people who tell me, now,
oh my god.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
When I was young, I.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Was trying to get in that she would never let
me in, or you would tell me I was completely unknown,
but she would not mean anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Throwing a good party comes down to the guest list.
The people you invite can completely change the tone of
the night. As the gatekeeper, it was Marilyn's job to
hand pick the people who would make for the most
interesting night.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
She would be there and pick up who could come
in and who could not. And she was like a painter.
She was all like a perfumer, picking up ingredients to
make sure that the smell would be amazing, and she
would pick up people, making sure that the party and
the night would be magical.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Everybody had to get marilyn seal of approval before they
walked into the club. You had to have a spark
of something special to get into the club, a certain
geenisee croix, an intangible aura that pulled people in.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
If you had a cool look. If you would bring
something interesting about you, you could get in. Whether you
were rich, or you were a struggling artist, or you
were just like an employee. You know, but you knew
how to dress, or you knew how to dance, you
could get in, which.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Is what made standing in line outside Lebon so thrilling.
You had no idea if you were going to get
in or not, but if you were granted admission, stepping
into the club felt like walking onto a film set
for the very first time.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It was so real. You would walk in, I mean,
and he was amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Levanduche was beautiful and architectural feet, with luxurious interiors and
priceless art.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
That place was one of the best club in the world,
attracting the most atalanta, famous, amazing people you can think of.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Through all those.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Years, Levanouche was the place where the rich and famous
went to escape the pressures of fame. Outside they had
to maintain a polished image, think about everything they said,
and keep up appearances. But at Levane they could have
unfiltered fun, away from the scrutiny that came with fame,
and truly let loose on the dance floor, surrounded by
(06:28):
people who were just like them and didn't really want
anything from them. As Jean Pierre walked in, he saw
musicians and actors sharing meals with new people.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
You would see Me Jagger having the nurvous jerryol or,
you would see David Bowiev Imana.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
The supermodel Iman. I remember meeting her once when I
was in Paris, and it was a magical experience. I
had grown up idolizing her as one of the most
beautiful women in the world, but it was unusual to
see beautiful people at leban The club was filled with
glamour models and designers.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
On the right side, you would see Katine Donald with Isalloon.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Then you would see Jerry.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Mugler and John Guardiano having dinner together.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
You would see any wall all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Levan Duche was the pinnacle of Parisian glamour, luxury and celebrity.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I saw all that many, many, many times, so it
was just stunning.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
When the lights went down, the club filled up and
the dance floor came alive. At Lebonduche, an ordinary but
chicly dressed person living on the outskirts of Paris could
dance with an actress until dawn. A reclusive superstar could
get up on stage and do a spontaneous midnight performance.
(07:56):
A supermodel could walk down the stairs to the basement,
holding a cigarett in one hand and a champagne glass
in the other, kick off her heels and jump head first,
fully clothed into a swimming pool. From London Audio iHeartRadio
and executive producer Paris Hilton. This is the History of
(08:18):
the World's Greatest Nightclubs a twelve part podcast about the
iconic venues in people that revolutionized how we party. Some
of the world's most legendary nightclubs were known for the
unique community they welcomed, others for the cultural movements they started,
(08:39):
and some for the musicians and DJs they introduced to
the world. The best nightclubs champion new music, transform lives,
and provide an escape from life's pressures. One more thing.
This is the history of some of the world's greatest nightclubs.
Not a ranking of every club in the world. It's
an exploration of the spaces, people and club nights that
(09:02):
made a lasting impact on night life and music today.
I'm your host, Altnate. I'm a singer, songwriter and musician,
and I found my purpose in club culture. This is
episode six. Le Bonduche, Paris, France. Le Bonduche was a
glamorous building in the center of Paris that lived three
(09:25):
lives as a spa, a nightclub, and a hotel. In
each of its lives, it was a meeting place for
some of the most famous influential artists of its time,
the place they escaped to to let loosen and were
free to truly have fun at. It was a temple
of beauty, music, and glamour. A sense of magic filled
(09:48):
the air because each night at Levanne was rich with possibility.
Anything could happen. In cities that have been around for centuries,
every building feels like a museum in its own right.
They carry hundreds of years of history and several lifetimes
(10:10):
worth of stories. Almost every club we've explored so far
started off as something else, usually as warehouses or old factories,
abandoned not so beautiful places that became something special when
they were transformed into clubs. But Le Bon Douche is
(10:31):
not like the other clubs. It started as one of
the most beautiful, luxurious places in nineteenth century Paris.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
It was originally created by a guy called Auguste Guerbos
and August Gerboys was famous in Paris for having a
cafe which was really ded to toe me of a
cafe society, which was called Cafe Gerbour.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The cafe was at the center of Paris's art scene.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
In that cafe was born the Impressionist movement, the painting
school is the likes of Renoirs, Mane, Mayne Cicily, all
the famous groundbreaking artists that now are being in the
biggest museum around the world.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Our Gust wanted to create another place for artists like
Renoir and Mane to congregate.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
He had a dream which was to make the most
beautiful and luxurious bathhouse in Paris. We would call it
a spa today.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So in eighteen eighty five August bought sixty three thousand
square feet of land, commissioned an architect and opened a
new building Levan Gubois, the first luxury spa in Paris.
People from all around the city visited the spa to
relax and receive beauty treatments hydro therapy, steam showers and massages.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And it also had a hair salon.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It had a restaurant, it had a bar, so for
that matter, it was really unique.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And the spas beauty attracted some of Paris's great his mind,
from artists like Claude Monette to writers like Marcel Preust.
The spa was opened for over half a century before
closing in the late nineteen sixties. It was empty for
(12:18):
a few years. The beautiful spa, swimming pools and treatment
rooms were beginning to gather dust.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
The airs of August Gabois.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
The Gaboet family sold the building to my father in
the early seventies.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
In the seventies, Jean Pierre's father, Professor Maurice Marroois, was
working at a medical school in Paris. He thought the
buying Leban would be a great investment, but it was
an unconventional building.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It was this strange space with mainly no windows, a
lot of stairs up and down, and it still had
a swimming pools, steam rooms, showers. He had this big
space which he really didn't know what to do, and
it sat there for quite.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
A while until two young men came knocking.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Two kids in their early twenties. One of them was
like twenty one, the other one was maybe twenty four.
Had the idea to do a place that would be
a restaurant, a concert hall, and a nightclub.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
They tried to convince Professor Marua to let them sile
a lease on the building.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Since at the beginning my father said, I'm not interested
and wouldn't take their call anymore.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
But then they walked into.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
The the university and they walked into the office theater
or I was giving a lecture for two hundred students,
and at the end of the class they came to
see him and they said, you know what you don't want.
You don't want to take us on the phone anymore.
We'd love to, you know, rent displays. We have an
increllible project. And he said he was pretty bold, cool,
(13:52):
and he told them, okay, call.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
My lawyers and let's see what we do. So let's
how it all started.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And for some reason they managed to convinced my father
to give.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Them a lease.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Those two young men were Jacques Renaud and Fabris Co.
They had a vision for the club, and once they
signed the lease, they began to bring it to life.
In nineteen seventy eight, they reopened the building as a
nightclub called Le Bandouche, and.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It instantly became the place to leave.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
The first thing they had to do once they signed
the lease was figure out how to make a nineteenth
century bathhouse into a club.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
So they hired a guy that was a friend of theirs,
that was, you know, maybe three four years older than them,
totally unknown, coming out of an interior design school in Paris,
and they said, all right, we're a shoe string as
a budget, but let's do something that people will remember.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
That friend was architect and designer Philippe Stark, which.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Is now one of the most famous designer an interior
designer in the world.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
They wanted Philip to preserve some of the most beautiful
features of the spa while bringing its early eighteen eighties
foundations into the late nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It's a gorgeous building.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
It was inspired by the seventeenth century architecture of Place Devoge,
but with a nineteenth century twist, the Osmanian twist as
we call it in the architectural world, and its brick
and the white stone building. It has a massive entrance
with a stoop you need to go up, and with
(15:34):
statues on both sides holding lights.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
When you walked in, you walked straight into the restaurant
and it was.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Not very big.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I would say. It was maybe at the very most
two hundred square meters two seventh square feet, but.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
It was beautiful. Philip Stark had covered the walls with
white and blue tiles, and the room was furnished with solid,
expensive tables and chairs.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
You could see I don't know, maybe sixty people for
dinner at the very most.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
There were candles on each table, and at night the
flames flickered and reflected off the glitter and sequence around
the room. The club's restaurant was decadent and glamorous, but
it wasn't a museum. It was a place where people
had a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
That is Claude Shaw, a DJ and art director who
used to party at Leban in the seventies and would
later go on to manage it in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Le Musique.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Claude is saying that he is a lover of love
and a lover of music. He spent a big chunk
of his life at Leban and counts himself lucky to
have met some of the best musicians and most beautiful
women in the world during his time there. Okay, back
to the restaurant at Leban Douche, it wasn't one of
(16:56):
those glamorous places where people couldn't relax. The restaurant was
the party. According to Claude, they would play music from
all over the world in the restaurant. For a while,
the resident DJ in the club was Guy Kueva, a
(17:17):
Cuban DJ who would play bands like buen a Vista
Social Club and Las van Van the kind of music
that felt like summertime and big, vibrant family dinners.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
That music.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
For Claude, the music was extremely important. He noticed that
it didn't matter what time of day it was. People
could come in during the early evening and throughout the
night and they would come to dance, to move, but
above all else, to listen to music. The music playing
on the first floor had a family reunion vibe that
(17:53):
created an atmosphere where people could catch up with old
friends and share private, joyful moments with each other.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
The music.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
The Claude understood that people went out for the sake
of meeting their friends, that they simply wanted the pleasure
of sharing, laughing, and having fun together. The first floor
of Le Banduche was a meeting place for people to drink,
talk and unwind while listening to music from all around
the world. But it was three stories high.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
You would have a second staircase.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And if you walk towards the beautiful staircase and down
the stairs, they would take you to the club where
you would instantly be hit by the sounds and sights
of people partying. Jacca and Fabris wanted to make Leban
the best club in Paris to hear live music.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
They had this idea to have a concerts, so they
had a guy that was Pierrebinard. He escaped to London
when he was seventeen and decided he was going to
be a rock photographer and he became close to Malcolm
Claren and all this crowd, and then he followed the
sex Pistols in like seventy eight when the punk movement exploded,
and so he hang out with all the music scene,
(19:11):
the London music scene, the British music scene.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
When he came back to Paris, they immediately hired him.
They knew he had some of the best connections in Paris,
so they told him.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
All right, you're in charge of booking talents.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Pierre began to fill the dance floor with some of
the most iconic musicians of the era, booking exciting new
and up and coming bands to perform on.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Stage, and he did an incredible joke and he booked
bands that were completely unknown, like we were saying earlier,
and it became massively famous. So then we played for
US three hundred people in like nineteen seventy eight or
seventy nine, and then you fast forward.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Five years and they would fill outdoor stadium.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Levan quickly transformed the building that housed the old Spa.
It's one of the hottest clubs in Paris. In the
early eighties there was a massive counterculture movement that started
in London and spread throughout Europe, with music and culture
shaped by punks, goths and new Romantics. While Leban stubbornly
(20:14):
remained a very Parisian club that was about exclusivity, glamour
and a certain kind of unattainability, some nights it welcomed
in bands that reflected the cultural shift to perform live gigs,
a you.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Example as a Depeche Mud, Simple Mind, Ub forty Irim
and the legendary concert by Joy Division.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Let's talk about that concert for a second, because it
was one of the nights that gave Lebon its celebrated status.
It was the winter of nineteen seventy nine December eighteenth,
to be specific, Joy Division, the post punk English band
that we talked about in our episode about the Hacienda,
was in Paris to play some small concerts, including at Lebanduche,
(21:01):
and a journalist at a French national radio station had
heard about the gig.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
There was a hula journalista Thiss national radio, and heso
that Toy Division was worse airing, and he convinced his
boss to do a live recording of the concert. And
this is how all the technician came in and went
live on the national radio.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
That Joy Division concert in nineteen seventy nine was broadcasted
live onto a French national radio station. Nine of the
(21:44):
songs recorded at that concert were captured and released as
a Joy Division album two decades later. The album was
named after the night leban Douche eighteen December nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
A big part of the region of is this.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
One, But that's just one of many. The history of
Lebonduche is filled with stories about memorable nights just like that,
one of unexpectedly magical moments and performances that took the
whole room by surprise. Nineteen seventy nine was just the start,
because the most legendary era of Lebon's history, the eighties,
(22:24):
was just around the corner. Leban was filled with stars,
but it took a kind of invisibility to really capture them.
In the most unfiltered states, the best photographers teach themselves
how to fade into the background. The people around them
don't feel pressure to be anyone but themselves. At Leban,
(22:48):
the almost invisible man behind the camera was the renowned
French photographer Fok Khan, who was one of the few
people allowed to take photos at the club.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
As stared around the eighties. I just bought a nikon
around eighty one.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
It takes a heightened level of perception to be able
to take a photo that translates the mood of the room.
A photo of Jack Nicholson smiling as he walked out
of the club with a French flag painted on his face.
The odd but delightful moment when Nicholas Cage wrapped his
arm around Grace Jones as they turned to face the
camera and pose in sunglasses. The first photo that Falk
(23:29):
took at Lebon is still one of his favorites. He
was standing near the club's entrance talking to the dorman
when he saw someone inside the club that didn't quite
fit in with the supermodels and film stars.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
And we show old babak cooler.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
A bab a cool is French slang for a hippie.
As Falk looked at the man, the dormant asked him
a question.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
How did you see this guy? Yeah, it's old cool
he's old and ugly.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But the dormanto Fock to guess again, to really look
at the man's face, and when Fox looked a little
bit closer, he realized who the barbercle was.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
His nakugger. Oh my gods.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So Fox rushed inside to snap Mick Jagger's photo. He
could miss the opportunity to get a picture of one
of the most famous rock stars of all time.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
So I got to lak a jacket. I've put a
flash and I shoot five of pictures of Sez Jager.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But Mick Jagger noticed Fox camera.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
He went to me and said, show me your camera.
And the little laker was scrapped around my fish and
I gave him camera. I said, nice camera, I can
catch it all the museum. We'll you will hang other
pictures you shot.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
You shoot from me.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
That was the first photo Fox took in the club,
but it was just the beginning. He went on to
become one of the club's resident photographers for over twenty years.
In nineteen eighty four, the club was sold to Claude Shaw,
who we heard from earlier, and his business partner Ubert Bukubsa.
Together they ushered Leban into the heated excess of the eighties.
(25:21):
The eighties marked a shift in Parisian culture. For the
first time in almost thirty years, a socialist party was
in power, and with them came a wave of liberalism
that swept across media, art and education. It was a bold, luxurious,
brightly colored decade, and it was the age of the.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Supermodel Urlutafodella and Topodza, Christimcnnemi Kitmas.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
The women who spent their days modeling for high fashion
campaigns and the pages of Vogue spent their nights partying
at Leban. It became the de facto venue for fashion
week after parties, and the models would arrive wearing fresh
off the runway looks from the designers for whom they
were muses, their dresses shimmering in the light as they
(26:10):
filled the dance floor.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Then Tony Dunn, no me comeback.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
That's Claude again. He considers Naomi Campbell his friend, and
according to Claude, she would go up to the DJ
booth asking them to play different tracks. And those weren't
the only famous faces that spent their night at Laban Douche.
While others mingled on the dance floor, one music legend
would sit alone.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Prince was at the height of his career and he
loved Levian.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
After Prince played shows in Paris, he would head over
to Lebon.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
He was living dinner there every night.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I mean I would see him all the time, dinner, dancing,
chasing girls and having a blast.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
One day in nineteen ninety two, before a huge console,
he called up the managers of Leban.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Told the management listen, I'm playing Persia, which is the
largest indoor sit him in Paris. I having to play
like for four nights. I want to have dinner after
the concert. Can you save me at table?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
But there was something else, so he.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Said, if you set up the stage with drums, mics, amplifiers,
this and that, maybe one of those nights after dinner,
I will play for fun. So he didn't guarantee it,
but of course the management set the stage on an
order for him to side whether or not you would play.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
But then on one rainy night in July nineteen ninety two,
a limo arrived outside. There were crowds outside the club
and lines of people waiting to get in. When Prince
stepped out of his limo, he was wearing a black
and white suit and strode into the building with.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Purpose, and he ended up one night getting on stage.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
So the very same night where he played in front of.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Like thirty thousand people, went to live, had dinner, and
so two hours after finishing in front of thirty thousand people,
he played in front of three hundred.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
People for fund for free fiver. You know, it lasted
like two hours.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
He played some of his favorite songs, including Purple Rain,
which on a rainy day in Paris felt especially magical.
And that wasn't the only time Prince did a spontaneous
concert at the club Jump Session. Claude witnessed Prince played
Leban for free. Watching him was an extraordinary experience because
(28:43):
he played every instrument. He played sex, he played drums,
and according to Claude, Prince never slept. He just played
music and piano all night. But when Prince stepped into
leban he had one very room, no pictures.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Lenya eat Kim's lub. First, he sends his boody glounce
ta king uzarum uzunaikub. When they show Cameoa, he came
to the eye and broke it down.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Sometimes when Prince's bodyguards found someone with a camera in
the club, they would take the camera and break it
because Prince wanted to dance, sing, and perform for people
who wanted to be in the moment with him. To
this day, there are no photos or physical reminders of
his spontaneous performances in the club, only stories, and the
(29:39):
club's history is filled with wild and magical stories. Just
like that. At Levan you could see a group of
models fresh from a runway show spinning around in the
middle of the dance floor, or an artist and an
athlete deep in the middle of a passionate conversation over
a bottle of wine. It was kind of like the
(30:00):
French Studio fifty four. In fact, Levanduche opened the same
year that Studio fifty four opened in New York. Here's
the story Jean Pierre heard from one of his friends
who was a regular at both clubs.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
The other day I was with Jacque Gone.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Jaques is a very famous interior designer de Carta if
Salon's interior designers.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Jacques was at the center of the Parisian art and
design scene in the eighties.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
He reminded me that at the time you could fly
Concord direct flight from Paris to New York and back
and he would only take like three hours and twenty minutes,
which is ridiculous. When he was in Paris, he would
go to liver for dinner and see everyone you know,
from Lagerfeld to salonontindnav a lot of people from New
York and London, you name it.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And then after dinner he would head to the airport
and get onto the Concord flight, would.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Fly the Concord and he would say that on the
plane he could see like thirty percent of the people
on the plane she saw.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
The night before at Lima. But wait, it's not finish.
Then he would land.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
In New York and then go to see your fifty
four and see again people that were at livanduche two
nights before.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
The clubs were in different countries that spoke different languages,
but the scene was almost identical.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
So that's to tell you how it was like a
micro society, unbelievable of like all those super talented people
that would party not only fifty four or in Paris,
but they were traveling all the time, and you could
see the same crowd in both places. So I found
that story really mesmerizing.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
But what made Levon unique was the warm, intimate nature
of the club. Only a select few photographers were allowed
to take photos, and so there was this sense that
if you walked into Lebon, you were walking into a
private party with people you knew you could really be
yourself around. It was like a family reunion with some
of the world's biggest stars, but in a place exclusive
(32:13):
enough for them to actually let loose.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
So you would find those super famous people, the Monaco family,
all those people. You would see all those artists. You know,
we have pictures of not only all the big rock
stars and movie stars like Fami geep up to Rapper
de Niro too, I mean everyone, but also we have
the pictures of the of like Andy Waha having dinner,
(32:36):
key starring and chatting with friends.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
It's mindly remember how in its first life Lebon was
a spa.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
When Philip Start, the architect of the club, redesigned the
interior of the building, he preserved one of its most
central features, the swimming pool in the basement. People would
jump into the pool in the middle of the night,
wearing their party dresses and expensively tailor suits. They would
frolic in the water and dance to the sounds of
(33:04):
the club on the floor above them. And back then,
people could dance fully clothed or not, in the swimming pool,
be spontaneous and hedonistic, with the freedom of knowing that
their faces wouldn't be all over the internet the next morning.
There were no cell phones and no social media. Back then,
people couldn't just reach into their pockets to document the night.
(33:27):
They had to just sit and experience it. And that's
part of what made nights at Lavon feel so magical.
Each night in Levon was filled with moments that would
never happen again, at least not in the same way.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
La Le Loustasia of all.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
A Claude. Back then, the nighttime made everyone happy. At
the end of the night, they would ask themselves, did
we have a good left tonight? Did we meet beautiful people?
And the answer was always yes. From the eighteen eighties
to the nineteen sixties, Lebon was known as Lebon Gaubois,
(34:12):
Paris's first spa, became home to the city's greatest artists
and thinkers. Then, from the eighteen seventies until the early
two thousands, Lebon was known as Lebon Douche, one of
the most glamorous, star studied nightclubs, not just in Paris
but in the world.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Throughout in history.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
We always had the ability to attract the biggest talents
of its time, and it's very unique, like one place
we'd attract all those silents for almost one hundred and
forty years.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Because it's still going on today.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yes, Lebon is still open, but in a new way.
After all, if there's one thing this club does well,
it's changed form to adapt to the new era, all
while maintaining its unique charm. In twenty ten, the nightclub
was forced to close down. While under the control of
the previous manager, the walls were seriously damaged.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
In twenty ten, the owner was kicked out of the building.
I mean, I'm sorry, it's have to it's the reality
as atter facts by the police and by the authorities
because he decided to do some remodeling job without hiring
the proper engineers, architects, contractors, without insurance at all.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Jean Pierre had inherited the building from his father, so
when the authorities arrived, Jean Pierre had to resolve things.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
At the end, the authorities closed the place down. Like
I had a court injunction to save the building.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
The building had been declared dangerous and partially unsuitable to
hold the club, and by twenty ten Paris had changed.
The nightlife scene had evolved, and a club like Lebon
didn't quite fit into the culture of the twenty first century.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
People were telling me it's over, let it go. Everybody
told me, you're never gonna put it back on the map.
He's never gonna have that. It's gonna work out.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
But Jean was determined. Lebon was so deeply intertwined with
his family's history and his own cultural upbringing. He wanted
to find a way to save the building and preserve
its artistic and musical history. But he was running into challenges, and.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
So at some point I said, all right, I cannot
find a new tenant.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Nobody wants to take it over.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
After being a spa and a nightclub. It was time
for Lebon to step into its third life, and.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
We turned the hotel into a five star hotel.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, so let's be real fo a minute. We sigh
when we hear about cultural landmarks being turned into office buildings,
and mourn whenever an iconic club gets turned into a
luxury apartment. It's heartbreaking to think of losing that musical
and artistic legacy to something cooper or tasteless. But that's
(37:02):
not what happened with Lebon. This is one club with
a happy ending.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I'm a film producer.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Originally it's storytelling, so it's to seem like making a movie.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Jean Pierre wanted to continue the story of Lebon, to
usher it into a new era.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So it's about telling the story the best way possible
with the most talented people. The idea was to get
the best guy to book the bands, the best chef
to make the appropriate food, the best interior designer to
make the coudest bar and restaurants and rooms.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
So he preserved the legacy of the club while updating
it to cater to the fashion, music and art scene
of the twenty first century. They preserve some of the
furniture the remnants of Philip Stark's architecture and the swimming pool.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The other thing which I did is that decided that
we should go back to have live concerts in the
place because of all the legendary concepts that occurred in
the past.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
They created a space with a capacity for around two
hundred people to host weekly intimate concerts and live performances,
and Jean Pierre was pleasantly surprised to find that the
people who had loved Lebon in the eighties came back
and found the same kind of love.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
The fun thing is like brasturants coming back thirty years later.
But not only is she partying in the nightclub. We
actually had a big party in her honor actually, but
also she was sleeping there, which is fun. And you
would bump into the swimming pool at two pm.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
So this is the new.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Liba and like the spa and nightclub before, the new
Leban has opened its doors up to welcome in a
new generation of stars.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
As we speak, Deeplow from Major Lasers staying at the hotel.
We did an incredible concert cool a new bands like
London Grammar, du A, Liba. We should sow intimate concert
for those kind of artists. Massive attack. We had a
metron me. I mean, I'm super happy that I managed
to get the place back on the map as a
(39:05):
concert hall.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And remember how Lebon Gaubois the Spa was the place
where nineteenth century artists congregated. That tradition has continued in
the building's current life as a hotel. Artists and designers
continue to flock to Leban.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Not only that, but now they can sleep there, which
is makes the lesion even more insane.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
So many iconic clubs close, they get demolished, but Leban
maintained its place in Parisian culture.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I don't know why the longevity, I think compared to
other clubs.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I think because there's.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Been many talents and honors that we're in love with
the place and were in love with the concept and
said we have to go out of our way and
think out of the box to making it happen.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Leban came into the world over a century ago, and
since the building opened up, it's lived so many different
lives and welcome so many different people.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I think it's mysterious. It's like a chemistry, like some
sorcerer did. How many buildings is there in Central Paris
tens of thousands. Why one address seven Ride Bolab in
very center of Paris has attracted for nearly one hundred
and forty years the biggest dollar. Why has it been
(40:24):
at place? Read energy, lots of fun. The answer is
a mystery.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
But why is there something in the water. In the
next episode, We're heading to New York City and into
one of the most iconic clubs, the Paradise Garage, and
get to know the legend that is Larry Levine. The
(40:54):
History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is produced by Neon
Harmmedia for London audience and iHeartRadio for London Audio. Our
executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson and Bruce Gersh.
The executive producer for Nion Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our
producer is Rufio Faith Masarua. Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez
(41:18):
are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal Genesis.
Our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is our production
manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator. This episode
was written by Rufio Faith Masarura and fact check by
Katherine Newhand theme and original music by Asha Avanovitch. Our
(41:42):
sound design engineers are Sam Beer and Josh Han. I'm
your host, Ultra Nate Ay, and we'll see you next time.
On the history of the world's greatest nightclubs,
Host
Ultra Naté
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