Nelson Sullivan - Early Life

Early Life

Sullivan was born in Kershaw, South Carolina in 1948. His family was upper-middle class, and from an early age he was given music lessons, with an eye toward a career as a classical pianist. After graduating from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1970, he moved to New York, part of the post-Stonewall wave of young gay men who were then heading to either San Francisco or Manhattan to partake of the more liberated lifestyle they had been reading about in newspapers and magazines. He landed a studio apartment in the West Village and soon made a decision to pursue a career as a composer. By days Nelson worked at Patelson's, the famous classical music store behind Carnegie Hall. He moved from apartment to apartment over the next ten years, never getting one quite large enough to comfortably fit his piano. In 1980, he saw a building on the corner of Gansevoort and 9th Avenue in the Meat Packing District with a For Rent sign on the door. The price was right, and the dilapidated old duplex was soon the center of a unique, revolving universe of friends and scene-makers. It also became a hotel, way-station, and halfway house for people either visiting or moving to the city. Artists, musicians, and performers dropped by at all hours to hang out, and it was this feeling of an ongoing 24-hour salon that gave Sullivan the idea to begin videotaping his life.