Man: Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Boy George, Michael Jackson, they will all come and hang out at the Paradise Garage.

Saunders: Gay, straight, any color.

It was mostly gay.

Man: Back in the day, the best crowd was the gay crowd.

Never any violence, never any arguments, never any drama.

It was quite a place.

[Upbeat music playing] Then I started to hear about Larry Levan, who was the DJ of Paradise Garage.

♪ Larry was always up front and grand entrance.

And "I'm here.

I'm queer.

Get used to it."

♪ Larry and I were friends.

And one afternoon Larry said to me, "Nicky, would you teach me how to play records?"

From that moment on, I would work with him on mixing techniques, on how to beat match, how to pick the next record.

Immediately, I saw in Larry that eye for making stuff become fabulous.

♪ Bernstein: No other clubs had a DJ like Larry who played the kind of music Larry played, who made the decisions that he made, who was as much in charge of the night as Larry.

♪ Man: He would be messing with the sound system as people were coming into the club.

That's how obsessed he was with making sure that the sound wrenched your guts out.

Man: ♪ Let's get on up... ♪ White: He could do anything.

Man: ♪ Get on down ♪ Larry could stop a room cold, and people would just stomp "Larry, Larry," just waiting for the next thing that he was going to do, and he might just not do anything.

Depino: He'd stop the music, get out a ladder and clean the mirror ball at 2:00 in the morning with 1,000 people sitting on the floor.

And then he'd take the ladder down, shut the lights, put a record on, and the place would go crazy!

[Singing indistinctly] Morales: Larry was way ahead of his time.

The first DJ remixer, the first DJ producer, the first DJ artist.

Siano: He is the modern template of what a DJ is now.

Larry would often go into the recording studio, see through all the excess tracks, and pull out the gold that would make a hit.