Jorrrr-mmma! Rock and Roll at the Academy of Music

On 14th Street just east of Union Square once stood the Academy of Music, an old vaudeville venue which during the 70s hosted many great rock acts who were too popular for the clubs, but not sufficiently commercial for Madison Square Garden: Jefferson Starship (in their early days), the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Robin Trower, Hot Tuna - even the comic duo Cheech and Chong played the Academy, a once grand theater with two balconies. It was where I heard my first real rock and roll show – Jefferson Starship in 1974. Tickets for the upper balcony cost about $7.

To appreciate the experience of going to the Academy it’s important to remember that the Union Square area during the Seventies was not loaded with cafes, a green market and places like Starbucks. The park was seedy, loaded with drug dealers and considered too dangerous to go into at night. On 14th Street right off of the Square sat one of the many branches of Tad’s Steak House, where kids went when they had a few bucks and could afford the $3 dinner special, featuring beef that was as tender as a dog’s rawhide bone.

There was always a crowd under the Academy marquee. Lots of times kids went there without tickets, just to hang out. Dealers would weave through the crowd mumbling things like “I got Secanols; I got Phenobarbitals…” And of course there were the scalpers, whose usual rate was about ten bucks more than the face value of a ticket. The laissez-faire marketplace didn’t stop once you got through the door. A visit to the bathroom would find each stall occupied by a vendor of a different type of substance. And since nobody was ever stopped from bringing in booze, Boone’s Farm Apple and Matteus Rosé – the favorite of concert-goers everywhere – were always being passed around. Nobody ever threw away a Matteus bottle, of course; they were always recycled as candle holders and even table lamps (you could send for a kit).

No doubt about it. The best show we ever caught at the Academy was Hot Tuna – the blues band formed by Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane. Tuna was incredibly popular, despite getting almost no radio play, and they were almost always touring. Actually, there were two versions of the band. Acoustic Hot Tuna (as heard on the self-titled first album) consisted of only Jorma on acoustic guitar and Jack on (electric) bass, occasionally joined by a harp player. And then there was the Electric version, in which Jorma played at least five different axes, with Jack on both Flying-V and Fender P-basses, plus a drummer (at the time we saw them this was Bob Steeler).

Tuna typically did two sets a night – 8:00 and 11:30 PM, as did most Academy rock acts. But real Tuna fans always went for the later show. Since they didn’t have to clear out the hall, Jorma and Jack could – and did – play for upwards of four or more hours. It was like going to hear the Dead, except that Hot Tuna did not go out for long space jams; these guys played hard electric blues for the entire set. When I didn’t home after about 5:00 AM on the night of my first Tuna show, my mother called the police, who informed her “We always get calls from parents when Hot Tuna plays.”

All of us mourned when the Academy became the Palladium discothèque. Let’s face it; fans of bands like Hot Tuna and the New Riders were not likely to be seen lining up outside of 2001 Odyssey! I caught Jimmy Cliff there once in 1989; it was a good show, but the new owners had gutted the place, which now resembled, well, a disco. A while later New York University replaced the entire building with student housing. As they showed years later with the Bottom Line, NYU showed itself to be no friend to rockers.