Who

One of the most famous DJs in New York (and in the world for that matter), Junior has kept the records spinning for three decades now.

Backstory

The son of a butcher, Donald Mattern was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—the heart of Amish country—and arrived in New York by bus in 1970. He enrolled at FIT and had plans to become a fashion designer; when that didn't pan out, he worked as a hairdresser and fashion illustrator. Having immersed himself in the club scene throughout the '70s, whiling away nights at David Mancuso's legendary Loft parties and Larry Levan's Paradise Garage during the golden age of dance music, Junior turned his attention to producing music. In the early days he collaborated with dance music pioneer Shep Pettibone, while also making a name for himself as a DJ. In 1989 he co-founded the Sound Factory and served as resident DJ throughout it's early '90s heyday.

Junior spent the 1990s as one of the most in-demand record producers and remix masters, collaborating on tracks by the likes of Elton John, Cher, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Janet Jackson, Annie Lennox, Paula Abdul, Justin Timberlake, weirdly, John Mellencamp. But he also kept up his DJ career. Although Sound Factory closed in 1995, Junior went on to man the turntables at Peter Gatien's Tunnel and Palladium, before returning to the former Sound Factory space when it reopened as Twilo in 1997. Since the shuttering of Twilo in 2000, he's been a regular at Pacha, Exit, and Spirit—the space that once housed Twilo—and spends many days year on the road, bringing his music to party-loving people in Miami, Ibiza and major Euro capitals.

Of note

Although he's almost 60, Vasquez hasn't retired and shows few signs of slowing down, even though his star has dimmed a bit and his epically long sets have been trimmed. (In the old days, his sets lasted up to 18 hours; clubgoers famously arrived at the club after dawn.) But he remains a nightlife icon and DJ role model. Thousands of nightlifers mourned the passing of an era when Vasquez proclaimed in the March 2007 issue of Out that he intended to retire following the June 2007 Gay Pride Week's "Last Dance" party. Those who called bullshit were, of course, correct—within months he had new gigs lined up at venues like Sol and Cielo.

For the record

He adopted the name Junior Vasquez in the 1970s for no other reason, he says, than because "he liked the sound of it."

Drama

Vasquez was a pal of Madonna's until they had a public falling out. The story goes that after Madonna backed out of a performance at the Tunnel that Vasquez had arranged, he remixed a phone message she'd left on his answering machine into a dance track, interspersed with clips of a man saying, "If Madonna calls, tell her I'm not home." Madonna wasn't amused by the joke and cut her ties to Vasquez, although she permitted him to remix her song "Hollywood" in June 2003.

Vice

In 2005 the buff DJ admitted a six-year-long addiction to crystal meth, but says he kicked the habit in early 2006.

Personal

The openly gay Vasquez, who has homes in both the city and Fire Island, said in an interview that his three long-term relationships were with partners who later contracted AIDS and passed away. He currently has a boyfriend and lives in a full-floor loft near Union Square.

No joke

His "suspended" DJ booth at the Tunnel in the mid-1990s was custom-designed by Dolce & Gabbana. When he worked at Twilo, the club had to design a booth just for him; his contract forbade guest DJs from stepping inside.