Nightclub pioneer recalls early days
John Lyons once hired Madonna for $1,000. He helped build the House of Blues chain. And in Vegas, he has designed sound and light systems in nightclubs across the Strip.
I found him one cloudy afternoon at the Aria pool, checking out the sound system. I immediately asked if he really paid Madonna $1,000 to sing in a Boston club in 1983.
"I don't remember it being $1,000. I seem to remember it being train fare," Lyons says politely in a slow, deliberate pace -- a man who thinks before he speaks.
Maybe it was a grand, he guesses.
"But $1,000 seems really high for back then for an unknown person we were putting in front of a full room," he says.
Lyons and his brother Patrick have been working steadily since then. They opened 36 clubs nationally.
In Vegas, they designed light and sound for clubs Light/Bank, Jet/1 Oak, Body English, Tao, XS, Surrender, Encore Beach Club, Blush and other hot spots.
In their younger days, the Lyonses managed a Minneapolis club called Uncle Sam's, which later became First Avenue, the setting of Prince's "Purple Rain."
Before "Purple Rain" was filmed, they moved to Boston and hired an unfamous Prince to play a club on St. Patty's Day.
"Everybody thought we were crazy booking an R&B act in Boston on St. Patrick's Day," Lyons says with a smile. "He crushed it."
Way before that, Lyons and his brother ran a Boston punk club called Spit, where they had a run-in with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in the 1970s.
The Lyonses didn't have money for full security then, so they worked the door themselves. John Lyons was 19.
The two "Saturday Night Live" stars walked up to the door. Lyons didn't recognize them. He thought they looked like trouble.
"I'm sorry, I can't let you in, because I don't want to have to throw you out later," Lyons told the TV stars. "You don't really look like you belong here."
The actors asked to talk to the owner. Lyons said he was the owner and explained he was working security to stay in budget.
Customers started recognizing Belushi and Aykroyd, so Lyons told them to go into the club. Aykroyd wasn't having it.
"No sir, I can see you are understaffed here," Aykroyd said. "We are trained security professionals. We will work the door. Just please assign us. Tell us what you need us to do."
So Belushi and Aykroyd guarded the door at this punk rock club.
"They just stayed on the sidewalk, working their shtick," Lyons says.
Lyons ended up partying with them. They remained friends. When Aykroyd and Isaac Tigrett started the House of Blues, the Lyons brothers did the sound and lighting.
In L.A. now, the Lyonses run Avalon (Skrillex has been DJing there) and Bardot, where Prince, Stevie Nicks and pre-famous Bruno Mars have sung. Mars used to be the house band. Mars, now huge, loyally performs there.
In Vegas, many ex-Lyons workers occupy the upper ranks of clubs. To name just two: Sean Christie, who started Surrender and Encore Beach Club, and Andy Masi, CEO of Light Group -- they first worked for the Lyonses for a decade.
Lyons says Vegas is "the nightclub capital of the planet," because hotel-casinos have the big money to take the risk, and clubs in other cities face community backlashes over such issues as loudness.
Lyons doesn't want to open a club here. Even though he works late and long hours, he's a father to his first child, a 3-year-old, and he values personal time.
"People always ask me how I manage to be so successful. And I've always seen myself as somebody who's trying to get out of work! People see me as a workaholic. I see myself as a slacker."
His theory on success: "I think you just have to show up. You know?"
He never took up drinking or "intoxicants."
"I always treated the nightclub business as a business," he says. "I would never be on the dance floor or spraying the bar."
He tries to play nice, he says.
"All of the people I know that are very successful are nice people. And because they're nice people, other people want to work with them."
Consider the career of Aykroyd, who is a partner at Lyons' club Avalon in L.A.
"He understood the business is made up of lots and lots and lots of people. You may be up or down, but you're gonna cross those same people's paths in your career.
"Every person he comes in contact with, from the person that brings him coffee in the morning, he remembers their first name and their last name, asks them about their families and remembers them.
"Everybody who works with him likes working with him, so he's gotten a lot of work."
And so has Lyons.
Doug Elfman's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
