In the beginning . . .

Before the emergence of the Hideout and other teen-oriented clubs in the middle sixties, followed by the ballroom / concert theaters of the late decade, a tangible local music scene barely existed in and around Detroit.  Rock 'n' roll's first forays into the Motor City arrived by way of the strange and illustrous personalities on Detroit's local radio programs and since cars and highways were the entertainment venue of choice for the young, the music they played fueled far more cruising than dancing. As author Ben Edmonds pointed out in his history of Detroit rock, the DJ's were really Detroit's first music stars, staging all manner of promotions and personal appearances to bolster their ratings and recognition factor.

The earliest emergence of what grew to become Detroit's local music scene began to occur from late 1962 and up through 1964 at places like Walled Lake Casino, Wamplers Lake Pavillion and a handful of similar recreation centers that were just then discovering the value of having live combos to take up the slack before and after the DJ's who brough in lip-synch artists to do their thing.  It was performers like Billy Lee and the Rivieras (later to become Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels), Johnny & The Hurricanes, Steve Monahan & The Tremelos and Doug Brown and The Omens that were some of the first artists to glimpse a bit of prosperity at this stage.  Still other bands like Tino and the Revlons, Jamie Coe & The Gigolos and The Royaltones who had made their name in the city's bars and lounges, also started appearing at these venues and began to pick-up a dance-crowd following.  Detroit also had it's share of coffee houses with live entertainment such as The Raven, Living End and The Chessmate and these venues had also begun to mix acoustic folk music with a bit of electrified blues and nascent rock music.  Yet, in an area dominated by a city as large as Detroit and all the surrounding suburbs, none of this amounted to much more than a blip on the scope of cultural upheaval.   But, unseen by all but a few, the force to change everything was looming on the horizon

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Kinks and a hundred other British beat groups began to dominate the airwaves and the television shows by mid 1964 as the trans-Atlantic music invasion had finally reached the Motor City. The implicit message in this music (and the visuals) was that working-class kids could indeed make something of themselves in a band.  And nowhere else in the country was that message better received or understood than around Detroit.

In response, guitar and drum lessons began to fill the evenings and Saturdays of teenagers and it didn't take long before every neighborhood had one or two bands rehearsing in a garage or basement.  Almost overnight, these green groups began spilling out everywhere looking for a chance to play . . . for next to nothing.  And it didn't take long before a few savvy promoters glimpsed an opportunity to cash in on the first wave of teenage consumerism which followed by bringing these cheap acts to recreation halls and roller rinks -- places that heretofore relied on recorded music and DJ's.

Luck may be what happens when opportunity meets preparation but sometimes, it's all in the timing -- or maybe just the stars . . . who knows?  Around Detroit, the occurance of regular gathering spots where the attraction was -- first and foremost -- live rock 'n' roll arrived at nearly the same instant there was a sufficient number of bands ready to take a stage and a large enough audience to support both. The rest, as they say, is history.  From the impossibly unlikely Hideout and other suburban teen clubs of the middle sixties, a riotus Detroit area music scene was born -- a little wobbly, but full of energy . . .  and ready to rock!
 
 

Teen Clubs

• The Hideout(s) #1 - Harper Woods & #2 - Southfield

 

 
 
 

• The Crows Nest & Crows Nest West

 

 
 
 

• The Mump

 

 
 
 

• The Chatterbox (Allen Park)

 

 
 
 

• The Pumpkin

 

 
 
 

• The By-Pass (Brighton)

 

 
 
 

• The Fifth Dimension (Ann Arbor)

 

 
 
 

• Something Different (Birmingham)

 

 
 
 

• Village Pub (Birmingham)

Later became The Palladium
 
 
• The Inferno (Gibraltar)

 

 
 
 

• The Hullabaloo(s)...everywhere!

 

 
 
 

• Club BMF (here, there and everywhere)

 

 
 
 

• The Club (Monroe)

 

Dance/Concert Venues

• Grande Ballroom

 

 
 
 

• Grande Riviera

 

 
 
 

• Harbor Lights Theater

 

 
 
 

• The Palladium (Birmingham)

 

 
 
 

• The Vanity Ballroom

 

 
 
 

• Eastown (Theater) Ballroom

 

Parks / Recreation Centers & Social Halls

• Greens Pavilion

 
• Greenlawn Grove

 
• Brimingham-Bloomfileld Teen Center

 
• Walled Lake Casino

 
• Wamplers Lake Pavilion

 

Outdoor Events, Festivals & Historic Concerts

• Ann Arbor Gallup Park (Peoples Park) Sunday Free Concerts, 1968-70


 
 
• Mt. Clemens Pop Festival 1969


 
• Goose Lake Pop Festival 1970


 
• Detroit-Windsor Pop Festival 1970


 
• Saugatuck Pop Festival 1969


 
• Free John Sinclair Rallies


 
 
• Detroit Rock & Roll Revival Michigan State Fairgrounds--May 1969

• and all The Events and Places as YOU Recall Them

The Club - Monroe

True, The Club didn't spawn the kind of musical legacy that arose from Detroit's suburban teen spots like the Hideout and Hullabaloos or Ann Arbor's Fifth Dimension which is why it's seldom (never?) mentioned in context with the garage/punk band heritage of Michigan. But for all the kids to the south who's roadmaps didn't include Detroit, that didn't matter much.

Unquestionably a spot for teenagers; it's advertising sported the quote: "You must be under 21 and prove it!" -- The Club was founded in mid 1966 by Monroe business partners and entrepreneurs Jim Cerqui and William (Bill) Black who discovered some neglected real estate on Telegraph road at the south edge of town (just past a Pet Cemetery) upon which rested a long-deserted roller-rink and said "why not...?" Conscious of the emerging teen club scene around Detroit, they applied their vision to the disintegrating structure.  After investing untold hours of labor adding gallon upon gallon of black paint (on every surface -- even over the windows), lots of bamboo and island grass (for its curiously designed Polynesian-style stage), a ton of surplus telephone cable spools (for tables) and a huge mural of the Cheshire Cat, they threw open the doors in August of that year.

A weekends-only venue, The Club featured two bands each night booked from Monroe County's own talent pool rather than its Metropolitan neighbors.  Bands with names like "Caesar and the Romans" , "Princeton IV", "The Avengers", "The Sheradons" and "The Chevrons" rotated shifts on that peculiar stage while word-of-mouth proved, as always, to be the best advertising.  The line-up at the door grew steadily longer each weekend over the first few months and for the first time, these part-time bands had both the playing time to sharpen their repertoire and sufficient exposure to develop a fan base, albeit a purely local one.

Dancing would always be The Club's raison d'être.  The atmosphere was fun and inviting -- a place where farm kids, frats, freeks, jocks and the last of the greasers mixed freely and cordially.  And it proved a place where the bands and the club-goers matured together.  Over the span of The Club's first years, the crowd grew, both in numbers and in consciousness, demanding music that was more adventurous and original -- both from the Monroe bands as well as from the superb regional talent pool that the owners began to book in for shows.  At least one night every month the Monroe groups (which testified to their influences and development with new music and more abstract names like "Haymarket Riot", "General Contractors" and "Storybook") shared the stage with Michigan's best club-circuit acts such as Bob Seger & The Last Heard/System, The Rationals (the two favorites of the Monroe crowd), Thyme, Talismen, Pleasure Seekers, Scott Richard Case, Amboy Dukes and Brownsville Station.

Eventually the Club ranked as a big attraction for kids (and bands) from the Downriver area as well as pulling a crowd from nearby Toledo.  But, like its counterparts near the big city, military duties, college, counterculture, marriage and maturity eventually proved a stronger draw than rock music and a dance floor.  Despite a second, very short run as "The Borderline", the original Club lasted only into 1970: The relationships, sounds and memories for a lifetime.
 
 

Bumper Sticker, 1968

The 

On the weekend of October 7, 1966 – one day after LSD was outlawed in California – Detroit ushered in the psychedelic era of the Midwest when the Grande Ballroom opened its doors as a concert forum (after 2 decades of inactivity).  Built originally in the 1920’s, flaunting Moorish architecture and a spring-suspended dance floor for easier movement, the Grande’s enduring fame arose from those latter days, when the growth of rock music as a concert and recording industry occurred simultaneously with the emergence of a new youth culture. For the next three years, the “Gran-de” was the premier rock music concert facility in the Great Lakes area and one of the very few venues of its kind outside of the San Francisco Bay area to achieve anywhere near a comparable notoriety.

The notion of a concert hall as the social center of a youth community was deeply impressed into the mind of Dearborn high-school teacher and WKNR-FM radio DJ “Uncle” Russ Gibb, who saw the possibilities after visiting the Avalon Ballroom and Bill Graham’s Fillmore in early 1966. San Francisco had already lured a number of Detroit artists, musicians and free-thinkers away from home with its counter-culture acceptance but Gibb knew a much larger contingent was still roaming Southeast Michigan in search of their own tribal gathering spot.  Upon Gibb’s return to Detroit, he sought out a similar space and leased out the weathered old dance hall, commissioned and installed one of the largest strobe lights ever built, and organized a string of legendary dance/concerts which initially centered around the city's local talent but eventually brought in a diverse array of famous recording acts and paired them with the best talent Michigan could provide.

While Gibb supplied the space and handled the scheduling, it was Detroit's own ‘underground’ artists collective, Trans Love Energies – headed by poet/musician/activist John Sinclair that created the scene, the light shows and the marketing, tapping into – at first a trickle, but later an explosion -- of young folks now heading into the city for music and the supposed delights of Plum Street – Detroit's slightly skewed attempt at generating a hippie oasis in the manner of Haight-Ashbury.

Sinclair worked with Gibb to install the Motor City Five (MC5) as the “house band” and, at the beginning, the Five played nearly every weekend, eventually providing the warm-up for many of the touring acts that had started to take the Grande stage.  Only being relegated to opening act status was never part of the Five's plan.  A uncanny flair for showmanship, relentless drive and their unique Chuck Berry-and-The Who-meet-John Coltrane-at-James Brown's-house musicality ("avant rock" was their term) won them a rabidly devoted local audience and their high-energy performances at the Grande did indeed chew up and spit out many of the more famous touring groups.

The Grande's stage also became the home to many more local musical legends.  Sinclair, in alliance with Hugh “Jeep” Holland from nearby Ann Arbor, delivered Gibb the prodigious talent of Jeep's stable of bands under his A2  (A-Square) management/booking agency.  The Rationals, Thyme, Scott Richard Case and a host of others became Grande regulars during the formative days of the ballroom.  Aspiring to the Grande's stage was a huge motivation for several more waves of Detroit talent that followed with groups like Savage Grace, The Third Power, Up, The Stooges and many, many more finally getting their shot.  Whether Detroit's bands made the Grande or the other way around is a debate that is still unresolved, but once the ballroom's host and ringmaster, Dave Miller took command of the evening, the concert-goers always knew they'd be getting their money's worth from the local talent.

With kids flocking to Detroit from the suburbs and surrounding towns each weekend and with more talented rock musicians than most cities could even dare to imagine, the Grande needed only one more building-block to establish itself as the premier musical and social destination:  Artists Gary Grimshaw, Carl Lundgren (and a handful of others) were the final, crucial element in the Grande experience.  It was their incredible artwork and typography, borne in the Grande's promotional posters and handbills that created a visual equivalent of the music and their graphics became the ballroom's most enduring hallmarks.

A Short Memoir

Things just sort of happened to me at the Grande.  It's not a lengthy list but a memorable one.  The worst of which was a pretty benign mugging a few blocks away and the best of which involved meeting people -- especially women -- of a kind that definitely weren't living in my hometown.  That, and being immersed in the glorious triumvirate of the late sixties -- sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll -- in infinitely varying order and proportions.

I don't doubt that I caused some of the damage to my hearing by continually gravitating to within a few feet of the P.A. columns (especially during one Procol Harum show where I tried to crawl inside) and may have messed up my urinary tract one night because I wouldn't give up my spot on the floor to go to the can while The Who were cranking out a phenomenal set.  But so what?  Except for the mugging, I 'd gladly re-live every minute I spent there and try for double the time if I could.  Nights at the Grande were like that:  Catching Clapton, Bruce and Baker play a full two hour set on their first North American tour or watching Iggy assault himself on stage then jump into the crowd (twenty-plus years before it became fashionable), being mesmerized by the light show and slipping into a trance (of sorts) when the Five would end their closing set with "Black to Comm" or simply standing slack-jawed when confronted by Arthur ("I am the God of Hellfire") Brown's stage show for the first time and a thousand other incredible moments I remember from that stage.

I certainly didn't play any sort of role in the Grande's history, other than putting a few guilders in the ballroom's coffers on the intermittent weekends.  Nor did I pay much attention to it's lore or the details of how it began.  I was just another kid among the crowd and by the time I was going there on a semi-regular basis, it had already become the de-facto center of the universe.  But climbing those stairs on a weekend evening was a transcendent experience.  The sounds, sights and smells were confined to a cozy universe that made perfect sense in an otherwise hostile world.

Even then, we knew the place had significance.  But, it was more than the music (or drugs or the sexual intrigue) that made so many of us crave the Grande experience.  Everyone from the disaffected to the outrageous had a shelter within those walls; a place to create their own possibilities -- musically and otherwise.  Anything could happen at the Grande . . . and just about everything did.

Goose Lake Pop Festival

THE BEGINNINGOF MY HIPPIE DAYS by Allen Roberts
 

My hippie days didn't last too long, they didn't really even begin.  My mother told me I was too young (and) she was right, too.  In fact, it wasn't until about two years after hippies were no longer fashionable (old hippies were all on communes in Oregon, and new, young hippies, called themselves freaks and no longer cared about the Age of Aquarius) that I even understood what being a hippie meant.

Even though I missed the whole era, I didn't miss out on everything.  I have my hippie memorabilia.  And not anything that I had to find at a flea market or antique shop.  No, my memorabilia is something that I earned, something that I won (My major award).  It's a ticket to the three-day music festival at Goose Lake, outside of Detroit, Michigan.  I still have the ticket.  It's hard plastic, about the size of a half dollar and I've drilled a hole in it so occasionally I wear it as a necklace.

Here's how it happened: I was fourteen, fresh into high school, no money, no girlfriend, no prospects for a girlfriend, no interest in sports, OK no social life.  Sure, I had friends, but friends were different from a social life.  Friends are buddies you hang out with, and do stuff with.  A social life is stuff you do that you brag to your friends about.  New stuff.  Exciting stuff.  There was very little new and exciting in my life.

So there I was, fourteen and in bed by 10:30.  Not asleep mind you, I was reading some shoot-‘em up adventure book I'd swiped from my older brother Doug, and listening to the radio.  This was real radio too, before anybody even knew there was F.M. radio, and A.M. was all top forties played on forty-fives.

WKNR was the radio station.  Keener we called it, and to call in and actually talk to a DJ with your song request, gave you bragging rights for a week, (it took usually an hour of busy signals).  Back then I listened to a lot of radio.  I'd been listening to a lot of radio since the early sixties.  To this day, I still can sing along with every oldie played on any oldie station, any time of the day, and I could back then too.  That's how I won.  The prize was a free ticket to the Goose Lake Rock Festival.  The contest was simply to name the last three oldies the DJ had played.  For me that would be as easy as PB and J.  The tough part was getting through, being the third correct caller.  I swung out of bed and headed into my parents bedroom for the phone.  There were two phones in our house.  One downstairs in the kitchen, in the basement, the other, off limits, in mom and dad's room.  Tonight off limits didn't matter.  Dad was at school, and mom was downstairs with all the older kids who could stay up 'till they decided they were ready.
So I won, and it was easy.  After two busy signals the phone rang, the DJ answered, I answered the question, and won.  The DJ took down my name and address, then I hung up and went back to bed.  Nobody knew.  Just the DJ and me.  I was so quick and quiet that nobody knew I'd even left the covers.

Of course, in the world between pimples and armpit hair, things don't stay focused for too long.  By the next morning I'd forgotten all about it — I was hooked into a math word problem:  How many kisses would Joyce Carpenter owe me if she owed me a half-lip kiss from thirty days ago, at 5% interest?  (I've yet to collect on that one, the tally is astronomical)

So, three weeks later I remembered that I'd won. I remembered because I got my ticket in the mail.  Well, I didn't really get the ticket, my mom did.  I never checked the mail, I never got mail so why should check the mailbox.  My mom got the mail; she gave me the letter, already opened.

"So where do you think you're going?"
 

"What do you mean, I just got home?"

This letter, do you know what's in this?"

Mom was always doing this.  She was always asking those kind of questions like even if we knew we would tell her.
 

"A letter?  Somebody sent me a letter?  Who's it from?  What's in it?"

"It's a ticket of some sort, from a radio station.  The letter says…"
 

"Mom, I can read my own letter.”

I read the letter as she stood over me.  Then it all came back.
 

"I won!  I won it mom.  There was this radio contest and this is what I won.  Isn't that cool?"

"I hope you don't think you're going to go."
 

"Go?  I don't know.  Why not?"

I really didn't know why not.  I had no idea what a three day rock festival was; I'd never ever been to a rock concert, much less a festival.  To me it was just something I'd won.  I'd never even thought about going.
 

"Why can't I go mom?"

"Because I said so that's why!  Because you'll come back changed.  You're not old enough to change.  You’re too young, you’re just too young, that's why!"

I never argued with her.  I didn't know what I was arguing for anyway.  I didn't know what was involved with going to a three-day rock festival in the first place.  I didn't know there would be thirty, world-class rock bands, playing from eight in the morning 'till two the next morning.  I didn't know there would hippies all over, sharing everything they had from their smiles to their food.  I had no idea that it would be a beautiful scene pastelled with beautiful people.  Besides that, she was my mom and I didn't disagree with my mom, I didn't start disagreeing with my mom till I was at least seventeen; at least not to her face.

So I didn't go and I never missed it.  In fact, it wasn't 'till I was a year or so older that I finally tuned into Woodstock and the Age of Aquarius.  It was my older brothers who showed me the lifestyle.  My older brothers grew their hair long, kept late hours and brought girls around the house called Sunshine and June Flower.  Before I could actually embrace the lifestyle and become a hippie, the era had passed.  The Woodstock, summer of peace and love, ended at a Rolling Stone Concert outside of San Francisco, when someone was violently killed by the Rolling Stones'  Hell's Angels body guards.  Soon after that, student protests on college campuses lost their romantic appeal, when 15 students were shot and killed at Kent State University in Ohio, by State Troopers.  I guess when they found out the life of a hippie protester was dangerous they dropped out of that too.

So, I missed it, and all I have to show for it is a green plastic medallion.  Interestingly enough my older brother was at The Goose Lake Rock Festival.  He had his own ticket and tent and stayed all three days.  A year after the event he was talking about it, so I found out I could have gone.  Then, I didn't know he had a ticket, and he had no idea that I had a ticket.  He's seven years older than I am and wasn't wasting time on his fourteen-year-old kid brother.

Now, some twenty years later, he tells me my little ticket -- my major award -- could be worth big bucks to some collector.  I'll keep it though.  Just because I didn't have to give big bucks for it doesn't mean I'm not a collector.
 

Allen Roberts is (or was) a middle school teacher, probably in Illinois

He wrote this reminiscence, published on January 12, 1998 at KidPub.com

Allen – if you’re out there somewhere and you find this, please get in touch.

Hideout #1

 Dave Leone and Punch Andrews, young Detroiters only barely out of their teens themselves, leased the building (then a VFW hall) for a series of Friday and Saturday night dances, intending to promote The Fugitives and some other local talent.

 In his story Michigan Punk Rock, music writer and historian Dick Rosemont noted:

"Opening night of the Hideout in May of '64 brought 87 people and two fights. But there was this band playing "Louie Louie" and doing things people had never heard before on stage. The word spread: two weeks later, 337 teenagers showed up."

Replicating a racuous "basement" party with live bands and without chaperones comprised the essential Hideout experience. Punch recalled the atmosphere in an interview with Brian McCollum of the Detroit Free Press in 1997

 "We stuck with local bands," says Andrews, who has managed Seger for three decades. "The kids we drew wanted to dance. We didn't even have tables and chairs in these places -- they'd just dance for four hours nonstop."

As a hefty percentage of the teen crowd adopted a hippie stance and subsequently departed to the Grande, the original Harper Woods club closed down in 1967. The others lasted only a bit longer but the Hideout name lived on as Seger and Andrews production company. And, in history, as the epicenter of the seismic scene that rocked Detroit.

The Eastown

 The dank, red-and-black Eastown was shut down in 1971 for violating city health and safety codes. A Free Press investigation shortly before the closure revealed that the theater's mezzanine was a "veritable drug supermarket." The club opened again in 1973 for a short time, and the Free Press reported that "during the concert by singer Joe Walsh, the sweet, pungent smell of marijuana, popcorn and sweat mixed with the blaring rock music and shouts."

 Eastown regular Alice Cooper remembers it fondly: "It was the best audience in the world. And I'm not saying that just because you're writing it down. Any other city, people went home from work to put on their Levis and black leather jackets for a concert. In Detroit they came from work like that. The Eastown -- those were pure rock 'n' roll times."

 The venue sits vacant today.

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