The Short, Beautiful Life of The Performance Center
My lifelong journey in the music industry began in earnest when I helped Roger Abramson manage The Performance Center, a small two-room club on the third floor of The Garage in Harvard Square at 36 Boylston Street (now JFK Street). Although the club only lasted nine months (December 1973 through August 1974), it was way ahead of its time and only failed due to infighting between the investors and landlord. Abramson was a transplant from Cleveland, where he managed Joe Walsh for a time, and managed to bring some incredible acts to The Performance Center during its brief run.
Bonnie Raitt opened the first shows in December ’73 – introduced by a recent Emerson graduate and local comedian named Jay Leno! – and the venue was off and running. It consisted of two rooms, one with a 500-person capacity and one that held 350, and both had state-of-the-art staging, dressing rooms and sound at the time. That said, I do remember one night in May 1974 when Aerosmith blew the Bose system while filling in for the New York Dolls after Dolls’ bassist Arthur Kane twisted his ankle wearing high heel boots. A team from Bose showed up the next day to replace all the speakers.
My job was booking the local talent and working as stage manager and emcee for both rooms. It was a blast running back and forth between them, getting the bands on stage. I could not believe that I was getting paid to do it because the music was amazing: great, wide-ranging acts like Rudy Vallée (who was in his 70s at the time), Captain Beefheart, a pre-fame Patti Smith, Todd Rundgren and Utopia, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Tower of Power, Waylon Jennings, Howlin’ Wolf and many more. In addition to such national acts, many popular local ones appeared including Richard & The Rabbits (with Ric Ocasek, Greg Hawkes and Benjamin Orr of The Cars), James Montgomery, Bob McCarthy, Chris Rhodes and John Lincoln Wright. I made a lot of great friends, and a lot of great memories.
One of my favorite memories was the week-long engagement of The Johnny Otis Show. Otis traveled with an entourage of at least 14 musicians, including his 20-year-old son Shuggie and saxophonist Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson with his backup singers, including Three Tons of Joy (Marie Adams and sisters Sadie and Francine McKinley). The club’s policy was to give each band member two or three free drink tickets per night; I usually handed them to the manager or road manager. However, the second night Otis appeared, I was taking Three Tons of Joy up the elevator and they “volunteered” to pass out the tickets to the rest of the band. Busy as I was, I handed them 54 tickets against my better judgment and considered my duty done. The next day, however, Otis himself came into our office and begged me and Roger to “never let that happen again.” He said the ladies had kept almost all the tickets for themselves, got roaring drunk and started fighting with all the band members over the tickets, which resulted in the band almost getting kicked out of their hotel. Roger and I laughed so hard after Johnny left….
It’s a shame The Performance Center’s run was so short-lived. Roger’s vision was to make it the best club for the performers and audience, and for those nine months, we worked incredibly hard to make sure it was.
(by Peter Wassyng)
Peter Wassyng has spent a life surrounded by music. After his time working at The Performance Center, he went on to have a very successful career in promotions for Capitol Records, EMI-America and A&M Records, among others.
