The El Mocambo is a live music and entertainment venue in Toronto, Ontario. Located on Spadina Avenue, just south of College Street, the venue has played an important role in the development of popular music in Toronto since 1948. It is best known for the 1977 surprise show by The Rolling Stones, which became nationally notorious for the presence of then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's wife, Margaret Trudeau, who was partying with the Stones.
Apocryphally, the original building at 462 Spadina had been a music venue since 1850 and was first used as a haven for escaped slaves. The current building was built in 1910 and housed a dry goods store, a barbershop, and restaurants in its first three decades.[1]
With the passage of the Liquor Licence Act of 1946, which allowed the sale of liquor in taverns and restaurants in the province for the first time since World War I, restaurateurs Joseph Brown and John Lang decided to apply for one of Toronto's first liquor licences and convert their property at 464 Spadina into one of the city's first cocktail bars. The establishment's name and iconic neon palm sign were inspired by a San Francisco nightclub.[1] In the club's original incarnation, which officially opened on March 23, 1948, the main floor was converted into a dining hall with a dance floor on the second floor that featured Latin music.[1] Live music was not permitted until July 1948, when the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario reversed an earlier ban.[1]
In later configurations of the establishment, musical acts appeared on separate stages located on the main and second floor of the building. By the 1960s, Adam Schuy owned the venue which, by then, featured music appealing to Toronto's Hungarian, Irish, and Portuguese communities.[1] A German dance club, Deutsches Tanz Lokal, frequently rented the second floor during this period.[1] By the time Schuy died in 1971, striptease was being featured on the main floor.[1]
The business and building were bought in 1972 by Michael Baird and restaurateur Tom Kristenbrun, who also owned the Jarvis House.[1] Under the pair's ownership, the "El Mo" became a youth-oriented blues and rock music venue. It brought bands like Downchild Blues Band (which became the club's house band), as well as Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters and many others, "up the street" and paid them a regular fee to perform. During the early 1970s, the upstairs featured mostly "retreads" and "has-been" acts, with the occasional group on the rise. Most of the time, drink sales determined which bands would return. The bands would start out downstairs and if the revenue they generated increased, they would sometimes graduate to upstairs.[citation needed] Up and coming performers such as Tom Waits, U2 and Elvis Costello performed at the El Mo in the 1970s.[1]
Changes in the record industry's touring practices, a failure to update the venue, and a deal with Concert Productions International (which prevented other promoters from booking the club) saw fewer international acts performing at the El Mo, which increasingly booked local acts instead. Baird and Kristenbrun sold the club in 1986, initiating a long period of frequent ownership changes and decline,[1] including it being padlocked twice in 1989[1] and brief closures in 1991 and 2001.[5]Herbert Becker and John Paolucci owned and ran the club from 1986 until it closed in 1989. The two had purchased the business, the name and logo from Michael Baird and Tom Kristenbrun.
The club was a mainstay of the 1990s underground music scene.[4] Dan Burke became the club's booker in 1998 and made it into a venue for garage rock acts and international bands such as White Stripes and Zoobombs.[4] A monthly queer rock ’n’ roll party called Vazaleen, organized by Will Munro, became a regular feature and helped launch Peaches on what became an international career.[4]
Recent years
Music stage in Level 3
In 2001, the El Mocambo was bought by Abbas Jahangiri, who renovated both floors and tried to turn the upstairs into a dance studio. The club was in this period a venue to all genres of music, from rock and roll and orchestra to heavy metal, reggae, hip hop and jazz.
Jahangiri became a missionary and used the club to host numerous charity events, with fundraisers for War Child, Amnesty International, Free the Children, World Vision, Blank-Fest and others. In 2012, he sold the El Mocambo in order to focus on his missionary work. The new owners had difficulty in booking the venue and put it up for sale in the fall of 2014.
The club was expected to close after a last show on November 6, 2014.[6] However, on the eve of its impending closure, it was announced that the club had been purchased for $3.8 million by Michael Wekerle, who arranged to renovate it and maintain it as a live music venue.[5][7] Currently, the El Mo is open and operational after its 30 million dollar renovations to two stages, several different bars, a recording studio, private rooms, and dance floors.[8]
On March 4, 1977, looking for an unprepossessing venue to record in, The Rolling Stones played the first of two performances at the club (the second one occurring on March 5, 1977), billing themselves pseudonymously as "The Cockroaches". It was their first live club date in 14 years. Their opening act was Canadian rockers April Wine of Montreal. The Stones show was recorded and released as one side (Side 3) of the double album Love You Live, which reached #3 in the UK, #5 in the US. April Wine took advantage of the high-tech remote recording equipment brought by the Stones to record their own show for a live album as well.[10] A standalone live album of these Stones performances, entitled El Mocambo 1977, was released in 2022.
On May 9, 2008, the acclaimed American hard-rock band Queens of the Stone Age had a surprise concert at El Mocambo as part of their Canadian tour.[11]
Live recordings
Live recordings made by other bands/performers at the venue include:
April Wine is a Canadian rock band formed in 1969 and based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Led by singer-guitarist-songwriter Myles Goodwyn from its inception in 1969 until his death in 2023, April Wine first experienced success with their second album, On Record (1972), which reached the top 40 in Canada and yielded two hit singles: a cover of Elton John's "Bad Side of the Moon", a top 20 hit in Canada; and a cover of Hot Chocolate's "You Could Have Been a Lady", a number 2 song in Canada.
Spadina Avenue is one of the most prominent streets in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Running through the western section of downtown, the road has a very different character in different neighbourhoods.
Lee's Palace is a rock concert hall located on the south side of Bloor Street West east of Lippincott Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Horseshoe Tavern is a concert venue at 370 Queen Street West in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and has been in operation since 1947. Owned by "JC", Ken Sprackman, Craig Laskey and Naomi Montpetit, the venue is a significant part of Canadian musical lore. It is captured in the memories of thousands of concertgoers, and in books such as Have Not Been the Same.
The Marquee Club was a music venue in London, England, which opened in 1958 with a range of jazz and skiffle acts. It was a small and relatively cheap club, in the heart of London's West End.
Love You Live is a double live album by the Rolling Stones, released in 1977. It is drawn from Tour of the Americas shows in the US in the summer of 1975, Tour of Europe shows in 1976 and performances from the El Mocambo nightclub concert venue in Toronto in 1977. It is the band's third official full-length live release and is dedicated to the memory of audio engineer Keith Harwood, who died in a car accident shortly before the album's release. It is also the band's first live album with Ronnie Wood.
Rarities 1971–2003 is a compilation album by The Rolling Stones that was released in 2005 worldwide by Virgin Records – as well as by the coffee-chain Starbucks in North America – and features a selection of rare and obscure material recorded between 1971 and 2003. The album peaked at No. 76 on the Billboard chart.
The Spadina Hotel was one of the names of the hotels operated at 460 King Street West, in Toronto, at the corner of Spadina Avenue and King Street. The hotel was built in late 1873, the three storey Victorian building featuring a small clock on the east facade. A four-storey annex was later built to the north of the hotel. It has been known by at least half dozen names, and has had many proprietors. It is now a commercial office building including a programming school.
Live at the El Mocambo is the second live album by the Canadian rock band April Wine, released in 1977.
The Perpetrators are a Canadian rock / blues band formed in 1999 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The band was nominated for a 2006 Juno Award in the Blues Album of the Year category for The Gas and the Clutch.
Zoobombs is a Japanese indie rock band, formed in Tokyo in 1994 by vocalist and guitarist Don Matsuo.
Paradiso is a Dutch music venue and cultural centre located in Amsterdam.
Mike McKenna is a professional Canadian rock / blues guitarist noted primarily for his electric slide playing.
The Palladium was a movie theatre, concert hall, and finally nightclub in New York City. It was located on the south side of East 14th Street, between Irving Place and Third Avenue.
"Around and Around" is a 1958 rock song written and first recorded by Chuck Berry. It originally appeared under the name "Around & Around" as the B-side to the single "Johnny B. Goode".
The Blind Pig is a music venue in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The club was established as a home for blues musicians, although today it books predominantly indie rock acts and local groups.
Stephen Keith Lang was a Canadian bassist best known for his time and work with the rock band April Wine from 1976 to 1984 during the band's most successful years.
Michael Wekerle is a Canadian merchant banker and television personality, best known for being an investor on the Canadian reality show Dragons' Den for three years first appearing in the ninth season.
El Mocambo 1977 is a live album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 13 May 2022. It was recorded on 4 and 5 March 1977 at the El Mocambo club in Toronto, Canada. The club had a capacity of 300, and the gigs were "secret", with winners of a contest invited to see Canadian rock band April Wine with support from a group called "the Cockroaches", who were actually the Stones. The set promoted the band's then-most recent studio album Black and Blue (1976); most tracks were taken from the second night, with only three from the first night.
Daniel Burke is a Canadian journalist and music promoter.
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