February 14, 2026 | Michail Takach

Mike Vaughn: spinning the soundtrack of gay liberation

Explore the extended remix of Mike Vaughn’s DJ journey through the disco era, which propelled him from Madison to Milwaukee to New York City.

Mike Vaughn

"I thought to myself, you're not in Wisconsin any more, little boy. This is heavy-duty stuff."

In the frigid winter of 1973, Mike Vaughn was a pre-med student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a 3.9 GPA and a future that felt prewritten. But on New Year’s Eve, he found himself pacing South Park Street, circling the block twenty times before he could find the nerve to enter a very specific nightclub.

“I was walking into a gay bar for the first time,” said Mike, “and I was certain everyone in town was watching me.”

Fortunately, Mike wasn’t alone. He was with his younger brother, home on military leave for the holidays, who’d been going to the bar since he was underage.

That night, as they stepped into the Back Door, they weren't just entering any old Wisconsin tavern. They were walking into a new world.

The air was thick with the "glitter era"— androgynous fashions, platform shoes, and the sweeping, orchestral strings of the Love Unlimited Orchestra’s "Love’s Theme."

“That was the first thing I heard when I walked in there on New Year’s Eve,” said Mike, “and I will never forget that moment.”

For Mike Vaughn, that night was the first drumbeat in a lifelong anthem that led him from the earliest gay nightclubs of the Midwest to the birthplace of gay liberation in Greenwich Village.

Mike and his dad

Humble beginnings in the heartland

Mike was born in Madison and attended La Follette High School.

“I was one of very few UW students who actually grew up in Madison,” said Mike. “When I’d meet people at the university, they’d always ask: where are you from? Where were you born? And the answer was always, ‘Madison.’ This surprised them. Out-of-state tuition was much more reasonable back then, so many of my classmates were from much bigger cities.”

“I was living at my parents house on the far east side of Madison,” said Mike. “Unlike other students, I was only on campus for classes.”

Oddly enough, the Vaughns had a family connection to the space long before Mike and his brother ever stepped in.

“Before it was the Back Door, it was an Italian restaurant called the Roman Inn," said Mike. “My father used to bartend there, back when he was a newlywed and new dad. At that time, you entered through the doorway at 20 S. Park Street."

"When it became the Back Door, they created an entrance on Spring Street, so people didn’t have to be seen entering through the front.”

Madison’s gay underground

Gay life in Madison was a game of chance before the Back Door.

“You would hear about these places where gay people went,” said Mike, “but it wasn’t great. We were only tolerated by the straight owners and customers. We weren’t truly invited, welcome, or accepted. We were tolerated, as long as we spent money. You didn’t feel great about these places, because they didn’t really make you feel great about yourself.”

Madison’s most popular spaces had been the 602 Club and Kollege Klub (known as the KK,) among several bars listed in the mail order gay guides of the 1960s and 1970s.

“On Friday and Saturday nights, frat boys would drop off their girlfriends at the sorority houses and head to the ‘Gay K’ to cruise each other in the corners,” said Mike. “These places were just throbbing with sexual energy that went nowhere. I never picked up anyone at either place, but it was such a strange thing to witness.”

By 1971, things had started to change.

Mike remembers the Pirate Ship, which featured low-lit ambience, a wood-masted schooner-shaped bar, and "Patty," a legendary bartender who ran the room with an iron fist. The Pirate Ship had been around for quite a while, but as more and more gay customers showed up, it became more of a queer space.

“Patty was visually impaired," said Mike. “But she did not miss a thing that happened in the Pirate Ship. She really watched out for people. If she thought someone was a hustler, she would not serve them.”

“It was very closeted. No dancing, no kissing, not even hugging. Just a lot of eyeballing each other from a safe distance.”

The Back Door changed the landscape. Founded by Rodney Scheel and Jack Faust, it propelled the community right out of the shadows. It was the first gay bar in Madison with a dance floor where men or women could safely dance together. In earlier queer spaces, dancing – of any kind – was strictly forbidden.

“I remember walking in that doorway and going down the stairs into the basement,” said Mike. “There were bench seatings along one wall, a pool tables, and a small bar. There was a kitchen downstairs where they served burgers and Sunday brunches. And then you’d go up the stairs to the big dance floor, where the magic happened.”

Later, Scheel remodeled the space, expanding into an adjoining apartment to create a more spacious wraparound bar upstairs. Through his relationship with New York City record stores, he was able to fill the jukebox with the hottest music of the moment, while other bars were still playing music from the 1960s.

“He had a real sense of the world and what was happening at any given moment,” said Mike. “He made sure the jukebox was stocked with music that gay men would dance to.”

After a few visits, Mike was hired as a cleaner, mopping floors between science classes. He eventually moved to the kitchen, cooking Sunday brunches, before being asked to work behind the bar.

“Rodney decided it was time to do something about our slow nights (Sundays and Mondays,)” said Mike.

“He bought an inexpensive turntable and a reel-to-reel tape deck, hired a few people to play music, and built a little sound booth upstairs on the dance floor. It was a very primitive set-up – no mixers or anything -- but it worked.”

Customers stopped plugging the jukebox: not just on Sundays and Mondays, but on the busy nights too. On Fridays and Saturdays, Mike was expected to play music from behind his service bar.

“That was my first DJ booth,” said Mike, “and I was making drinks and changing records with wet hands.”

“How was I never electrocuted?”

1976: the year of being “gay, male, and free”

After the Back Door remodel, Scheel installed two turntables and a mixing console, so Mike was finally able to play continuous music through the night by blending vinyl records. That was an alien concept for most Madison DJs back then.

Mike graduated with his bachelor’s degree in summer 1975. When medical school proved too competitive and expensive, Mike wasn’t sure where to go next.

And then Rodney Scheel offered him a different path.

“Rodney asked, ‘so what are you going to do now?’ I said I hoped to continue working for him. I didn’t have anything else. And he said, and I remember it like it was yesterday, ‘you’re pretty good with this music, and I think dance music is going to be a big thing.’”

“He said, ‘Billboard Magazine is having this big forum next year in New York City, and I’m going to send you there.’ I was just speechless.”

In January 1976, Mike attended the Billboard International Disco Forum at New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel. It was the Bicentennial year, a moment of peak American reflection, but for gay men in New York, it was the year of the "Great Awakening."

“That trip really changed my life forever. My eyes were really opened up, as wide as they could open, in so many ways. I finally found a place where I didn’t have to worry – at all – about being gay.”

Mike remembers landing at his “fleabag” hotel in Times Square -- a week before the event began -- and throwing on his leather motorcycle jacket, taking the subway to Christopher Street, and discovering a brand-new world: the “Everhard” Baths, the Ninth Circle, the International Stud, Keller's, the Eagle, Ty's, and more.

“You’re really not in Wisconsin anymore, little boy,” said Mike. “This was some heavy-duty stuff.”

New York City was a paradox in 1976.

The city was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, yet it was the wealthiest city in the world in terms of subculture.

The gay population of Manhattan exploded with "refugees" from the Midwest and South who fled the trappings of their hometowns.
According to a 1976 Gallup poll, while only 11% of Americans personally knew someone who was openly gay, in the West Village, that number was closer to 100%.

To be "Gay, Male, and Free" meant walking down Christopher Street and seeing a bar on every block. It meant the Piers were not a dog park, but a lawless, mind-blowing erotic frontier. It meant the Meatpacking District was a playland of sex -- in the back of trucks, at the piers, in the alleys -- not an outdoor mall of bougie hotels and restaurants.

It was an intense moment in history after Stonewall but before GRID (later AIDS) that is now remembered for pure, unadulterated hedonism.

“I spent my week running around from bar to bar,” said Mike. “I was totally enraptured. I couldn't believe there were so many gay people in the world.”

“I decided then: I’m going to live here someday."

The Back Door (46 N. Park St.)

Opening announcement, 1973

Back Door advertisement, 1976

The International Disco Forum of 1976

The 12-inch single was becoming the industry standard. At the Forum, Mike watched Claudja Barry, Andrea True, and The Trammps perform in ballrooms, realizing that the music he was playing in Madison was part of a global movement.

“I saw DJs mixing records for the first time, really mixing two records together to sound like one,” said Mike. “I met all the record company promotion people, all the vendors, all the performers, in a very small and select hotel ballroom."

"It was a life-changing experience in a very intimate space.”

Making it in Rockford: 7th Heaven

After returning home, Mike was recruited by Jack Faust to help him open 7th Heaven (528 7th St.,) the first openly gay bar in Rockford, Illinois.

“I’d only been to Rockford once before this,” said Mike. “I went down to visit him for the weekend, and we visited the Office Tap on State Street. It was not the kind of place you entered through the front door. You entered through an alleyway. It was owned by very, very strict people who were begrudgingly running this gay bar. They weren’t fond of their gay customers at all.”

“Jack bought a bar with a reputation for being a ‘hillbilly bar,’” said Mike. “I relocated to Rockford around Thanksgiving 1976 and we aimed for a December opening. We had to close the bar for two weeks to lose the previous clientele. 7th Heaven was an immediate success: the people of Rockford were very, very excited about it, because, again, it was the first place with a dance floor where gay people could dance together.”

As the bar manager and DJ, Mike traveled to Chicago frequently to support the bar. He joined a "record pool," a collective of DJs who received promotional 12-inch singles and albums directly from labels. He became a conduit, bringing the sounds of the New York underground to Seventh Heaven (and later, Milwaukee and Madison.)

However, Mike wasn’t a huge fan of Rockford. The city was still dry on Sundays, meaning that alcohol could not be served or sold anywhere but restaurants. And the city was still very, very conservative: very few customers would enter through the front door in 1977, fearing they might be seen.

“It wasn’t a place I wanted to stay for very long,” said Mike.

In spring 1980, Jack Faust tried to relocate 7th Heaven to the former Knights of Columbus Hall at 114 N. Winnebago St., but the permit committee unanimously denied him twice (first in February and again in May.) He accused the City Council of anti-gay discrimination, which seems likely as the Rockford Register-Star was quick to name 7th Heaven "a local bar frequented by homosexuals." Unable to relocate, it seems 7th Heaven closed sometime within the next year.

528 7th St today

The Factory (158 N Broadway)

Circus (219 S. 2nd St.)

Wreck Room (266 E. Erie St.)

Making it in Milwaukee: the “Fruit Loop”

While Mike was based in Rockford, he spent many weekends in Milwaukee. The Wreck Room on East Erie Street was his anchor. It was the premier Levi/Leather bar, famous for its absolute lack of pretension. For Mike, it represented the community’s no-nonsense resilience: blue-collar men who had carved out a playground for themselves in the city’s old warehouse district.

“I had a motorcycle at the time, and I’d park it outside the Wreck Room and walk between the bars," said Mike. “The Wreck Room guys wanted me to join their motorcycle club because then they’d have three motorcycles outside the club. At the time, only two of their members owned them!”

If the Wreck Room was for the leather crowd, The Factory (158 N. Broadway) was the dance spot. It was Milwaukee’s answer to the New York warehouse clubs, featuring a light-up dancefloor, thunderous music, and supercharged pheromones until the wee morning hours. Mike remembers calling other customers on the tabletop telephones (“just like the movie Cabaret,” he said) and the oversized devil’s head that originally served as a DJ booth. He also remembers the “loading dock” side stage and the notorious upstairs bathhouse.

"I always liked Chuck," said Mike. "He was always very sweet. He took good care of his customers and workers."

While visiting Milwaukee, Mike would stay overnight at the Club Baths, a popular community center and networking space at the time.

“One night, I was talking to Robert Uyvari, who had done some design work for the Circus Disco. He mentioned that the owner, George Prentice, was looking for a new DJ. I expressed interest, Bobby arranged for a meeting, and George gave me a test run on a Monday night."

At the time, “Disco Debbie” (a female DJ with radio experience) was the club’s resident DJ. However, she didn’t really mix records – she talked between tracks. And mixing was Mike’s specialty by this point.

“After playing one night, I got my big break,” said Mike. “I didn’t have to manage a bar or anything else. I was just a DJ. There was a dedicated light man, which freed me up to concentrate on the music. George invested a ton of money into new equipment. Circus had the best light show in Wisconsin at the time. And George always paid his talent very well.

Mike moved to Milwaukee in May 1977 to be the resident DJ at Circus. He stayed at Circus until 1980.

"George hadn’t told the other DJs that I was the new DJ,” said Mike. “I walked in there a little tense, because it was a big holiday weekend and I was the new guy."

"Circus was hosting a fundraiser that night for the Anita Bryant boycott. They were throwing whipped cream pies into people’s faces. One of my friends, who came to help me move, was sitting in the bar while I was DJing. When I came out of the DJ booth at 2 a.m., she had a whipped cream pie in her hand."

"I said, don’t you dare…. And then I got a pie in the face.”

“George said, ‘OK, you’re baptized now, you’re one of us.’ That was my first night DJing in Milwaukee.”

Mike remembers Robert Uyvari’s glass tiger swaying from the ceiling to thunderous disco beats.

“This was the time of Saturday Night Fever, Thank God It’s Friday, all those disco movies,” said Mike.

Three years went by in the blink of an eye, and Mike found himself ready to make a change. He was in a relationship now, and he wasn’t interested in running from bar to bar anymore.

“If I didn’t do something different, I’d be working in a bar for the rest of my life,” he realized.

Mike took a part-time teller job at First Wisconsin Bank. The shift was 12-5 p.m., which was perfect for someone who’d be up all night at the clubs.

“I started to slack off at Circus, and George noticed,” said Mike. “He found someone else, and I went over to the Factory for about a year.”

In August 1981, Mike decided to call it quits. His banking career was becoming more important to him, and the pace of nightlife work vs. daylight work was increasingly challenging. He had one last big night at The Factory and officially retired.

“I made mixtapes for Si Smits to play at Boot Camp, I spun at the MAGIC Picnics, the patio at Rod's Bar in the Hotel Washington, and guest spots here and there,” said Mike. “But after seven long years, I was just not interested in being a resident DJ anymore. I did keep my vinyl record collection current though."

He still hung out at happy hours, including This Is It, which attracted a more mature, professional crowd at the time. Mike likens it to New York’s Townhouse Bar, where sophisticated customers showed up at 5pm for cocktails in suits and ties.

In 1990, Mike moved into one of the first residential apartments in the Historic Third Ward, which was rapidly losing its earlier edginess. While the Factory was long gone, the M&M Club and Wreck Room were within walking distance.

“Before I left Milwaukee in the 90s, George welcomed me back to spin old disco in the front bar at La Cage,"said Mike. “It’s funny because I already felt too old for La Cage by that time.”

Making it in Manhattan

After seventeen years in banking technologies, Mike took a position with Citibank and moved to New York City in 1996.

“It took me 20 years,” said Mike, “but I finally made good on my promise to move to New York. And the best part was that it was a corporate relocation, so someone else paid my moving bill.”

In April 1996, he met his husband Ed Baskiewicz at the Townhouse Bar. Ed and Mike married in Massachusettes in 2009, when New York State was recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages prior to national marriage equality in 2015.

Today, Mike lives in the Murray Hill neighborhood, two blocks away from his first apartment in the city, which he can see from his front room window. He’s very active with the SAGE Men's Discussion Group, which meets twice a month. During the off weeks, several members meet for happy hour at Julius' (one of the oldest gay bars in the nation.)

The New York of 2026 is vastly different from the city Mike first fell in love with. In 1976, the "back door" of a bar was the only way to meet. In 2026, apps have made hooking up a high-speed exchange, while the physical gay bar has become a second choice rather than a necessity.

The West Village of 1976 was affordable and accessible. In 2026, it has become a real estate playground for the global elite. Although landmarks like Monster, Stonewall, Duplex and Ty’s remain, the queer community has scattered into Brooklyn and Queens, turning neighborhoods like Bushwick and Astoria into the new gayborhoods. Hell’s Kitchen is the new Manhattan hotspot, filled with gay bars, restaurants, and stores like Christopher Street and 8^th Avenue used to be.

While 2026 offers legal protections Mike couldn't have imagined in 1973 (marriage equality, non-discrimination laws), some of his peers lament the loss of the "secret world” they once called their own. The codes of yesteryear are no longer needed for survival.

“I kept my 20-odd cases of vinyl records for decades, hauling them around from home to home, until they found their final resting place in a NYC storage locker,” said Mike. “After a health crisis in 2015, I thought, what in the hell is my husband going to do with all this stuff? He’s going to call 1-800-GOT-JUNK! And that would kill me all over again.”

One day, Mike got a call from Joe Miller, a fellow DJ in Madison, Wisconsin, looking for a certain record.

“On a whim, I just straight out asked him: ‘would you like my records? This stuff is sitting in a storage locker and I’m not using it.’ He got a van, came out to NYC one weekend, and emptied out the storage locker. He took the vinyl, turntables, mixer, CD burner, everything, and took it back to Wisconsin where he’s still using it now.”

“And then, believe it or not, the opportunity to DJ at a SAGE event came up!”

Mike added a DJ app to his iPad, downloaded all his favorite vinyl tracks from the internet, and remixed them all over again. He spins for his SAGE group every other month at the Edie Windsor SAFE Center in Manhattan and the Queens Center for Gay Seniors.

“I’ve even got my own Soundcloud page now. The Boot Camp tapes are posted, along with my mixes from 2017 on."

The music never stops

Now in his 70s, Mike hasn’t slowed down for a moment. In 2019, he retired from Citibank, where he was a senior vice president. He and Ed have major travel plans for 2026: Mike's 37th Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a week in Italy followed by an adventurous Mediterranean cruise, and maybe even a Pride Month visit to Milwaukee.

More than anything, Mike is grateful that he was born and raised in Madison.

“Madison was a very liberating place to grow up,” he said. “I’d be a very different person if I was born and raised anywhere else, including Milwaukee.”

He’s grateful for the experiences he’s had since 1976, including viewing the AIDS Quilt in 1989 and attending Stonewall25 in 1994. He’s also grateful for his long-term friendship with Eldon Murray, who was his stockbroker, and Bob Stockie, who was his partner for 10 years and also the cover artist for GPU News.

“Eldon founded SAGE Milwaukee based on the New York City model, and I was on the first board of SAGE Milwaukee with him,” said Mike. "SAGE Milwaukee was the first SAFE affiliate outside of New York City. He really molded me as a person in the business world, where it wasn’t always so safe to be openly gay.”

“Eldon once told me, 'I could screw sheep in the middle of Wisconsin Avenue, and my customers won’t care as long as I keep making them money.’ He encouraged me to be an authentic person in the workplace and never to apologize for who I was.”

Mike Vaughn didn't just witness Wisconsin LGBTQ history: he spun the soundtrack for it.

When he hears a certain track, he isn't a man in his 70s in Manhattan; he’s a 21-year-old at the Back Door, watching the glitter kids go wild for Bowie, Iggy, and the New York Dolls.

"I’ve had a pretty interesting life," Mike reflects. “And I lived my life as one big old extended remix.”