THE more things change, the more they stay the same 65 floors above Midtown. Or so it seems at the legendary Rainbow Room, which began its 75th year of operations atop Rockefeller Center last month. The club where Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie once performed is waiting to see if the city will grant it landmark status, which it applied for in
September.

When the Rainbow Room first struck up the band in 1934, the Great Depression was in full swing. Bank closings and home foreclosures were rampant and unemployment rates soared. The Giants had won the NFL championship by spoiling a foe’s otherwise perfect season. A Harvard-educated lawyer from the Democratic party had recently wrestled the presidency from the Republican incumbent with a message of hope – and, in doing so, secured House and Senate majorities. And, by no coincidence, strong yet fancy cocktails were all the rage.

Sound familiar?

True, the Rainbow Room’s only open about two weekends a month since being purchased by the Cipriani restaurant family in 1998. And the crowd it attracts tends to long for the days of old rather than a future of change.
That said, history is always in the making at the Rainbow Room, according to those who know it best.

Take Klein Brewer, the club’s well-coifed captain. He’s waited on every sitting president since Carter. Well, except for one.

“He was going to come in, but he wanted us to change the windows so they’d be bulletproof,” Brewer says of a visit from President George W. Bush that never materialized. Considering the room offers a 360-degree view through floor-to-ceiling windows, that request was deemed unrealistic – not that it would’ve mattered to Brewer.

“I kind of said no on that one. I probably don’t want to come in for that,” he adds.

He remembers President Clinton differently, in part because No. 42 ordered iced tea regardless of the time of year.

And, you know, for other reasons.

“He was always seated between two women, and there was this sexual electricity and magnetism that people hear about,” says Brewer.

“And I can tell you it certainly existed. And it didn’t diminish when he got his iced tea.”

Despite the Rainbow Room’s visits from dignitaries like Nelson Mandela, Princess Di and Prince Charles, bartender Sharif Magaiya best remembers serving a king of a different sort.

“A guy I served in the early ’90s was John Gotti,” says Magaiya, recalling how the Dapper Don immediately slapped a $100 bill on the bar before ordering. Although it would’ve made for a great story had Gotti ordered a Cosmo – a drink the Rainbow Room claims to have invented, “Sex and the City” be damned – Gotti was a Cristal man.

Magaiya, a nondrinker who’s been at the restaurant for more that two decades, says martinis served straight up are his specialty. A regular customer once tipped him $250 on the $21 cocktail.

While he’s received tips as high as $1,000 for playing a single song, bandleader Joe Battaglia is happy to lead his 17-piece house orchestra through whatever requests come his way free of charge.

“I don’t play for tips. When I was a kid, I played for tips,” says Battaglia, who has played with Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra and Tito Puente.

Battaglia fondly recalls fellow musician John Mayer – “the guy who runs around with all the little chippies” – having his 30th birthday party at the Rainbow Room almost exactly one year ago. As Battaglia tells it, Mayer’s dad pulled him aside and confided to him, “man, I’m glad you’re playing this kind of music instead of my son’s music.’ I had to laugh.”

Battaglia also recalls an evening this summer in which a group
of 20 to 30 kids were tearing up the club’s famous circular revolving dance floor.

“I said to myself, “These kids are great dancers,’ ” he recalls.

The “kids” turned out to be the cast of Broadway’s “Mamma Mia!”

Battaglia’s also played for visitors who were not quite so fleet of foot.

“I danced with Barbara Walters – she wasn’t that good,” he says, adding that comedian Jackie Mason, a fan of the band and
former Rainbow Room performer, is no Fred Astaire, either. Actors Michael Douglas and Gianni Russo, however, stood out as strong dancers. As Battaglia learned first-hand, “Dancers know the beat even better than musicians. When you play for dancers, you better be good.”

No one knows that better than dance teacher Sid Grant, who’s been bringing his ballroom students to the Rainbow Room for the past decade.

“I’ve taught and danced all over the world, and I can tell you without reservation that Rainbow Room is the most magical room to dance in, in the world,” says Grant, a dancer who lists a role in “Mona Lisa Smile” on his résumé. Grant’s favorite dance partner is tap instructor and former
Rockette Jean Martin, who danced for $77.50 a week at Radio City Music Hall in the ’50s as a Rockette.

“Every time I walk in that room, I think, “My God, it’s like a movie set,’ ” says Martin, whose husband, a retired violinist she met while he was with the Radio City Orchestra, isn’t a dancer himself. Like Grant, Martin admits there’s a healthy competition among the pro dancers who pay $45 a head to dance at the Rainbow Room after 10 p.m., when the floor opens to the after-dinner crowd.

“We always get up and do a little step at the end and, you know, kind of show off,” confesses Martin of the choreographed finish she and Sid do when Battaglia’s band plays Louis Prima’s “Sing Sing Sing.”

“You dress up, and where do they do that in New York City now?” asks Martin.

Here’s hoping the city’s tallest party continues for another 75 years.