Palladium

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The Palladium was a concert hall and later a nightclub in New York City. It was located on the south side of East 14th Street, between Irving Place and 3rd Avenue.

Designed by Thomas W. Lamb and originally called the Academy of Music, it was built in 1927 across the street from the site of an earlier venue of the same name. Opened as a deluxe movie palace by movie mogul William Fox, the Academy operated as a movie theater through the early 1970s. Beginning in 1971 it was also utilized as a rock concert venue to fill a gap left by the closure of the Fillmore East. It was rechristened the Palladium in 1976, and continued to serve as a concert hall into the following decade.

In 1985 the Palladium was converted into a nightclub by Steve Rubell, after he was forced to sell Studio 54. Rubell soon sold the Palladium to Peter Gatien, under whose ownership the club achieved renown.

One of the more noteworthy weekly parties held at the Palladium was Arena, an afterhours party that lasted from 10pm Saturday through noon Sunday, which featured DJ Junior Vasquez, known for his remixes and progressive house music sets.

The Palladium closed in 1998 and was demolished. New York University purchased the land and built a 12 story residence hall keeping the name Palladium. It houses 975 undergraduate and 170 MBA students.

Music

The Palladium was a major venue in New York for rock bands who wanted an audience larger than a club but not quite arena size, like Madison Square Garden. Many bands performed at the Palladium as part the middle of large arena and stadium tours, due to the prestige of the club and the more intimate audience size.

Frank Zappa and his band performed on and around Halloween several times, including performances in 1977 which were included in the film Baby Snakes, a legendary series of shows in 1978, and a 1981 performance which was simulcast live on radio and MTV. As the Academy of Music, the venue hosted numerous rock concerts in the early '70s; among these were the series of New Year's shows played by The Band on December 28-31, 1971; recordings from these shows were released as the 1972 live album Rock of Ages. New Year's Eve 1973 featured the eclectic line-up of Blue Oyster Cult, Iggy Pop, Kiss, and Teenage Lust (who had recently backed up John Lennon). Genesis performed the NY concerts of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway there in 1974.

Thousands of bands played shows at the Palladium, including many UK punk and new wave acts who made their New York debuts there, including the Clash, the Boomtown Rats, The Fall, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Rockpile, U2 and the Undertones.

New York proto-punk musicians The Patti Smith Group, John Cale, and Television all played there at a show New Year's Eve 1976. In 1979 Dire Straits played a concert there as part of their first world tour. In 1980 Kiss played here to kick off the Unmasked tour. It was Eric Carr's first live performance with Kiss.

The venue was also where many heavy metal acts made their initial impact in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and other participants of the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

In 2004, punk pioneers the Ramones reissued a live album they recorded at The Palladium. The album is called "Live January 7, 1978 at the Palladium, NYC [LIVE]" and was released by Sanctuary Records. During this same era, the photo which would later be used for the front cover of the Clash album London Calling was taken from their September 21, 1979 show at the Palladium.[1] The photograph on the back of the Cramps' original 1979 debut EP, Gravest Hits, was taken at the Palladium.

Several music videos were filmed inside the Palladium, among them the video for "Because Of You" by The Cover Girls (#27 Billboard Hot 100, #47 R&B, #16 Dance/Club Play).

In 1992, C+C Music Factory recorded a song under the moniker S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. for the Soundtrack to movie The Bodyguard (starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner). The song, "It's Gonna Be A Lovely Day", was the only song on the soundtrack performed by an artist other than Whitney Houston to be released as a single in the US. The remixes of the song, which were released via Arista Records on CD single, cassette single, and Double-12" Vinyl single, were titled "The Palladium House Anthem I" and "The Palladium House Anthem II". At that time, C+C Music Factory member Robert Clivillés was the resident DJ at The Palladium.

The Palladium was converted from a concert venue into a nightclub by Steve Rubel, who saw the possibility of a much larger audience for a downtown ‘new wave’ and house music club. From its celebrity-studded opening in May 1985, through the 80s it was one of the major features on the vibrant New York club scene.

Junior Vasquez's Arena party, held Saturday nights and Sunday mornings at Palladium between September 1996 and September 1997, was one of the most popular parties in the New York club scene at the time. Although the promoters billed Arena as "The Gay Man's Pleasure Dome," the party drew an eclectic mix of gay and straight from Manhattan and far beyond. Vasquez commemorated Arena in the titles of the remixes he produced that year. Among his noteworthy "Arena anthems" commercially released are Cher's "Paradise Is Here", Whitney Houston's "Step By Step", K.D. Lang's "Theme From The Valley Of The Dolls", and Dolly Parton's "Peace Train" (a cover of the Cat Stevens song).

Besides Junior Vasquez, DJs at the Palladium included Dwayne Holt, Robbie Leslie, and Steve Fabus.

Architecture

After the conversion from a venue to a club, the main dance floor of the Palladium was a huge space which used to hold the theater and seating. One innovation at the time of opening the club was the large banks of TV monitors in grid formations, use to play music videos. Each could operate separately, or one large picture could be shown across the grid.

The entire club was big held different areas, the equivalent of three or four clubs. Besides the pounding main dance floor area there was a multicolored basement, and the famous upstairs "VIP room," The Michael Todd Room. Murals were created for this space by the well known New York artists of the 1980s Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf.

After the Palladium closed in 1998 the building was sold to New York University (NYU) which demolished it, including the huge distinctive art deco mural on the facade, dating from the 1927 Academy of Music. Since 2001 NYU's institutional style "Palladium Hall" dormitory stands on the site. Manhattan's first branch of Trader Joe's was installed in the ground floor retail space of NYU's complex in the spring of 2006.

External links

• ACADEMY OF MUSIC/THE PALLADIUM Blog entry, posted D.C. Thursday July 28, 2005, at streetsyoucrossed blog.
• pictures of the Palladium
• pictures of the Clash 1980 concert at the Palladium