First Avenue: Closer to the Stars

- [Narrator] This is First Avenue, the legendary nightclub in downtown Minneapolis.

It's got stars on the outside, sometimes on the inside, too.

There's a checkerboard dance floor, bathrooms to match, and a lot of black paint.

It's been made into a beer, a donut, even a Lego building set.

It's been a lot of things, but it all started with a concert by Joe Cocker at a place called The Depot.

- [Announcer] The Cocker concert is all sold out.

If there are any cancellations, we'll let you know.

(blues rock music) - I went to the first show at The Depot, which was Joe Cocker, and Mad Dogs and Englishmen, which was a big deal at that time.

- [Narrator] This was just months after Joe Cocker had played Woodstock.

Hippie culture was peaking in the Twin Cities.

- The place was packed, the band was fantastic.

- It was like a rolling carnival, with tons of artists, and a bunch of musicians in there.

They had jugglers and kids onstage, and it was like this big huge celebration of music and art.

- I got 2,000 carnations, and then we just threw 'em all over the place.

It was real hippie style.

- I had a prime seat, right there by the sound towers, and I could practically touch the performers onstage.

So I'll never forget it.

(crowd cheering) - The opening night was a huge success.

Lines to get in.

You know the top line doesn't mean anything.

You can have millions of dollars coming in, it's what's left at the bottom.

(blues rock music) You know there's an old saying, the best way to make a small fortune, start with a big one.

And so in the early days it was just a bunch of cash.

(rock music) The idea of the club was a variety of music, and I never thought about how much money I'm gonna make.

- [Narrator] This is Allan Fingerhut.

It was his cash that made The Depot possible.

His family had turned a little seat cover company into a multi-million dollar catalog business.

Allan wasn't interested in the family business though.

He dreamed of opening a rock club.

- This, this is Allan and myself.

I remember going by the old bus station, and I remember him saying, this is gonna be The Depot, The Depot nightclub.

- [Narrator] This is Sharron Grohoski.

She was married to Allan at the time, and she's talking about the deserted Greyhound Bus Station, at the corner of 7th Street, and 1st Avenue North, in downtown Minneapolis.

- I liked the Greyhound Bus Depot.

It was so open.

It didn't have posts everywhere.

Everybody can see the stage.

- I always wanted that depot.

- [Narrator] This is Danny Stevens.

In the 1960's, his band, Danny's Reasons, was one of the biggest acts in town.

- That's our 45 that was a regional hit.

- [Narrator] He got involved in the nightclub business, to insure his band always had a place to play.

- I wanted to keep us on top.

And if we became stagnant, they wouldn't come up to see our group, which was my income at the time.

- [Narrator] Danny didn't have the money to open his own club, but he did have access to a valuable liquor license.

So he and Allan Fingerhut formed The Committee, Inc. - [Interviewer] Let's talk about the Committee.

How'd that come about?

- The Committee, Inc?

- The Committee, Inc. - I just made that up.

I always wanted-- - [Interviewer] Who was involved in that?

- I would just as soon stay away from that.

- [Narrator] To this day, Allan and Danny don't agree on their business relationship, or even the roles they played.

- I was president of the corporation.

- My business relationship with Danny Stevens was very short.

- They made a deal that Danny would put in the liquor license, Allan would put in the money.

- [Narrator] This is Byron Frank.

He was an accountant for the Fingerhut family.

He also just happened to be Allan Fingerhut's best friend.

- [Byron] I don't remember if we met at Hebrew school, or in grade school.

He and I got very close, and we were best friends from then on.

Until he sued me.

- [Narrator] Okay, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The lawsuit comes later.

- We loved the pinball machines, and they had pinball machines in the Greyhound Bus Depot.

- You had to be 18 years old in order to play the pinball machines.

Byron and I would get kicked out about every half hour.

- [Narrator] So the old depot was a familiar spot, and in 1969, the transformation began.

- When I walked in, it still looked like the old bus depot, and right in the middle of this big open space, was a huge pile of rubble.

And then it started to take shape.

There were carpenters there, building stuff.

The sound system was going in.

- [Sharron] Here, this was after you guys cleaned it up.

(laughing) - Oh Lord, look at that, yeah.

- As far as I knew in the Twin Cities, to open up a nightclub and bring acts in, it was a big creation.

- [Announcer] Admission is a dollar Tuesday through Friday, and three dollars Saturday.

Tickets are on sale at all Dayton stores, and at the door.

This week, at The Depot.

- When the club first opened, it was ours, it was not some older guy's.

Fingerhut and those guys were all the age of musicians, and so they were putting together something that was for that generation.

- There were people always cramming to get in.

I remember that.

It was always people talking about the Depot, and coming in in the different groups.

- We wanted to attract anywhere from the freaks to the straights.

We had The Kinks, we had Frank Zappa.

- Almost all the people that came in, called me 'Mama', because I was pregnant.

He was pretty wild, Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders.

He'd like throw the booze bottle, you can see it right here in his hand.

He signed it, and then of course on the back he gave me his phone number and address.

(laughing) - [Narrator] In 1970, 11 local groups gathered at The Depot for a live recording.

- It was an album of bands that played there, with some level of frequency.

I think Sound 80 did the recording.

I just remember showing up in the afternoon, and playing on a tune, or two or three.

A lot of energy, okay here's this band is done now, you guys move on, get your thing, now you move off, so it was a real production.

(rock music) - We had no idea what we were doing.

We were experimenting.

- The acts we were bringing in, were hippie acts, and you don't make money off the hippies, that come high and have no intention of buying a drink.

- I was the accountant, and The Depot ran out of money very early.

- Money was ridiculously being spent.

Allan had no idea.

- You know, Allan would have put every penny he had into that to keep it going, and I think pretty close to doing that.

- He thought tomorrow he was gonna make more money.

He was gonna come up with something new, and finally, there just wasn't any more.

It was closed.

The Depot was closed for months.

- [Narrator] Allan Fingerhut's rock club dreams seemed over.

But in 1972, a Cincinnati-based company called American Avents was opening nightclubs across the country.

When they reached Minneapolis, they approached The Committee about renting the liquor license and space from the old Depot.

American Avents turned the club into a garish, patriotic-themed discotheque, called Uncle Sam's.

It reveled in recorded music, putting the DJ on the stage, and adding a drummer.

They even had a mascot, a guy dressed up in an Uncle Sam costume.

They had flashing lights on the dance floor, they had flashing lights on the walls.

The scene was captured by director David Burton Morris, for his 1974 film, "Loose Ends."

Of course, this is two years before John Travolta showed the world how to light up a dance floor.

You should be dancin' yeah dancin' yeah - Disco was huge, so everybody was dancing on plexiglass with the lights and balls and crazy (...), excuse my language.

- [Narrator] This was about the time the head office in Cincinnati promoted a young bartender named Steve McClellan to a management position.

- This is where they take over, they give a false history, and then people believe, people will believe that I backed your false history.

- [Narrator] This is Steve McClellan.

- Ah Jesus.

- Well Steve is Steve, yeah, okay.

- Kind of the Oz behind the curtain, kinda guy.

- Would you get this stuff out of here?

- He'd terrify us.

He'd like, what the hell you guys want?

You want a (...) show this month?

- He's crazy, he's out of his mind.

- We would flip a coin to see who had to go upstairs and settle with Steve, 'cause we were all frightened of him.

- I waste a lot of my time saying meaningful things, and have it all end up edited out.

- Volatile.

- I'd better not talk about that case, it might be still pending.

- Definitely intense.

- Well he's a loud mouth, puffy guy, and the most lovable guy in the world.

- People are scared of Steve.

(laughing) - I don't know, I was a college kid that decided I wasn't gonna take classes for a few quarters.

My biggest venture in the nighttime entertainment was foosball and Joe and Pete's Two and a Half Bar.

It was not my world.

- It was nightclub culture, which was actually new to Minneapolis at the time.

- [Narrator] This is Richard Luka, front door security at Uncle Sam's.

- All the stuff in New York, with Studio 54 and all that, hadn't made its way here.

Uncle Sam's was sort of the bargain basement version of that.

Studio 54 for people on a budget.

- Uncle Sam's, from the DJ's point of view, the DJ's that I knew that were disco DJ's, it was a laughing joke.

It was a kiddie place, it's where the kids went.

- [Narrator] This is Roy Freid, AKA Roy Freedom.

He and DJ Kevin Cole were hired by Steve to keep the Uncle Sam's crowd moving.

- I was hesitant about Uncle Sam's at first, and didn't tell any of my friends I was working there.

- [Narrator] The DJ's would soon bond over their love for unconventional music.

- When I met Kevin, the first thing I asked him, I says, what kind of music you into?

I said, "Do you like Brian Eno?"

And he said, "Yes," and I says, "We have no problems, we'll be just fine."

- We both loved Brian Eno, and the new Elvis Costello record, and Devo, and it was like, okay, I like this guy.

- [Narrator] Their personal tastes were not in sync with the club.

- Roy and myself were called (...) all the time, for like playing all this weird music that people couldn't handle.

- You know it was very much a mainstream disco.

- They used to open up with "Tubular Bells" and have bubbles coming down at the beginning of the night, that's how they'd start the night off.

- I do remember dancing on the Uncle Sam's dance floor.

You felt like you were somewhere really important, but it also had a little bit of a schmaltzy, American Bandstand sort of quality that had a lower cool factor than what First Avenue is today.

Move together tonight at Uncle Sam's - [Narrator] Although DJ's with drummers ruled most nights, Uncle Sam's still had live music.

(heavy rock music) You make my heart sing - A little while ago we went to Uncle Sam's in downtown Minneapolis.

Every Sunday night there they close down the bar, and don't let anyone over 18 in.

But we went in with our cameras, and with a local group called Mind and Matter.

One two three four - When I got there, the Wednesdays were the concert nights.

There was already a calendar with Wednesday nights were Fairchild, Jessie Brady, Sterling, Judd.

- [Narrator] Steve was learning how to book bands, scanning Billboard charts, and booking whoever was at the top.

Hot child in the city - [Narrator] And he learned a valuable lesson in the fall of 1979, when a band with no radio play sold out.

- When I booked The Ramones, and all of a sudden I sold out, no radio play.

I think The Ramones, back to back with Pat Benatar, I mean it was a clear example of where by experiencing it, you learn more than reading books.

And it told me a lot about where you can depend on audiences with radio.

I was the highest grossing club that week, in the American Avents chain, and I got a little letter thanking me.

- [Narrator] So music was changing, but Uncle Sam's was still stuck on disco.

- Which personally, I always liked anyhow, that wasn't a problem for me.

- [Narrator] This is Jack Meyers.

He went to high school with Steve McClellan.

McClellan, Meyers?

MC, ME?

Alphabetical order, Catholic.

Yeah, I sat right behind him in home room.

- [Narrator] And when his plans to be a commercial airline pilot didn't work out, he ended up behind the bar at Uncle Sam's.

- But, as we all know, thanks to the Chicago riot, disco sucks.

Where's the band?

And American Avents apparently did not see this coming.

And they just said to Allan Fingerhut, well, nothing we can do.

It's yours now.

- [Narrator] Allan Fingerhut had a decision to make.

Give up, and close the doors, or give it one more shot.

- There's no reason why he should have kept the club open, and I think most of his advisors were looking, Allan, come on, strike one, strike two, don't go for strike three.

- But the business really shouldn't have been around.

It should have closed up.

Another businessperson probably would have.

- If it had been left up to everybody but him, we would have never got to First Avenue.

- It may not have been a wise decision, but it was such a love of mine, and also Steve's, that we decided to keep it going.

- I always say the golden era at that club began when American Avents left.

Because we had no money, that's the bad news, but we had the freedom to do anything we wanted.

- Give a nightclub to like three or four dozen twenty-somethings, and what could go wrong?

- Nobody knew what they were doing, but everybody was excited that we were doing it.

- He said, "Well what you major in college?"

And I go, "Mathematics."

He goes, "Oh, then you do the accounting."

I had no kind of experience in running an operation.

So this was all learned.

- [Richard] Steven, for whatever reason, surrounded himself with good people.

I mean, Chrissie Dunlap, basically holding Steven up for years.

- Chrissie Dunlap was really the godmother of the local music scene.

- [Narrator] But before long, reality landed on Steve's desk, in the form of unpaid bills from the Depot days.

- Which kind of surprised me when I looked at the bill.

Hey this is a bill for stage lighting for The Depot.

The hell is this?

- I don't know, Allan, or some attorney explained me, oh no no, yeah, you gotta pay those.

That's what I inherited, my first day on the job, I owed, this would be 1979, I owed 60,000 dollars, which seemed like, well it is, even today, a lot of money.

- Now, we're trying to make changes, so that we can show people, this is a new club.

Well you can't just change the name, invite people in to the same situation they walked in on the previous 10 years.

They're not fooled.

I wasn't a very smart manager, but at least I had the common sense to understand, we have to do something.

- [Narrator] With no money for changes, Steve took the stationary, and crossed out Uncle.

- The neon dance floor, and the neon, all had to go.

- Steve said, "We're gonna take the lights out of the floor, "and put it up on the ceiling where it belongs."

- [Narrator] The club was now Sam's, a danceteria.

- We used to come down here and we would just dance, in our little circle, and we would dance and dance and dance, from the first song to the last song, and then we'd go home.

- [Narrator] The club was undergoing another transition.

Steve was looking to make live music a bigger attraction.

- He said to me, "Trust me Jack, "I'm gonna get a thousand people in here on Saturday night."

You know, we were doing like 300, I said, "Yeah, sure."

And doggone, he was right.

("Brass in Pocket" by The Pretenders) You got brass In your pocket - Steve didn't necessarily know the music at the time.

He relied on people like Chrissie, or Roy, or myself, that knew the bands, and knew what was going on.

Gonna make you, make you, make you notice - It almost didn't matter if we got paid or not, because it was just so much fun to be introduced to all the new music, all the new people.

It was the mixture of disco and this new live music thing.

That was by far and away the most exciting time.

- [Narrator] The biggest name in local music also noticed changes at the club.

- I did front Prince, his first gig, that's like a badge of honor.

It was like everybody just should have just laid down their guitars and went home, and everybody just, all we need is Prince.

- I remember one night when I was just spinning, and I was just kind of hunched over the turntables, and felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned around, it was Prince, and he's just holding an acetate of Irresistible Bitch, and he just says, "Will you play my record?"

- He would be like over by the lower bar, just watching people, hiding behind a pillar, just watching people dance.

- [Narrator] The club was becoming known as a home for all types of music.

- You know, that's part of what Prince was doing too.

He was mixing genres, and styles, and I think that's one of the reasons he just felt at home at First Avenue, and attracted to it.

- [Narrator] But not every night was about the music.

- We did a lot of things that we aren't super proud of I guess.

- [Narrator] The club continued to be a mix of dance nights, live performances, and whatever else anyone could come up with to draw a crowd.

- Well it was at a time when anything, you give me an idea, I can open another night.

I'm closed this Sunday, we got nothin', let's try it.

- [Narrator] And they tried everything, strippers, mud wrestling.

- Those are different times, you know.

- [Narrator] Comedy nights.

They even brought in a swimming pool.

- The summer splash party.

If you wore your swimming suit you got in for like free, and you could swim to disco music.

Boom chickaboom Don't you just love it Chickaboom chickaboom Don't you just love it Chickaboom chickaboom boom boom - We're at Sam's danceteria in downtown Minneapolis, for the finals competition, in the Great Pretenders contest, where lip-syncing is raised to a fine art.

Cardboard guitars, eggbeaters for microphones.

Contestants pantomime the stars with such conviction, it's possible to forget that's not the real Mick Jagger up there.

- Steve was using independent promoters, anybody who had an idea that he thought could fill the room on a Tuesday night, we would do.

But, to be a more serious music club, we started getting rid of the gimmicks.

- We did a 'dump disco' night.

People here were just upset.

They were banging on Steve's door, all night long.

What is this, you're changing all the music and everything.

- [Kevin] It was hard though, the first couple of years.

The transition was definitely a challenge.

- Steve gave us the freedom to play whatever we wanted to.

He trusted us, and it worked out well.

But it was the beginning of everything.

- As a sales commodity in entertainment, you need to have people want to pay to see you.

So to do stuff progressive is very easy.

You just have to cover the losses when 10 people show up, on whatever the band cost.

- Steve is a people person, and he saw the club as a means to bring people together.

What that meant was a diverse mix of music, and I think that played to, First Avenue's longevity because the club was, from that point on, never tied to a specific style, or genre.

- You know I always tell people the calendar wasn't any kind of genius of me, the calendar was me throwin' (...) up and seeing if it drew.

Okay, let's try jazz.

Oh yeah, didn't stick, nobody came.

- Steve was giving away tickets sometimes to shows, just 'cause he wanted to see the artist.

Like I saw Bad Brains there, and literally, there was probably seven people in that place.

But from that, the reputation grew.

He brought Sunny Ade here.

Nobody knew about African music, but Steve brought him here, because people needed to hear this.

- He was a champion and a supporter of everybody.

Thinkin' about the reggae music that he brought to town, that no one else would have done.

It was polka, it was folk, it was Men Without Hats.

- Steve used to walk around, and in his pockets, would have drink tickets, and concert tickets, comp tickets, just literally sticking out all over the place.

And if somebody walked up to him and asked, hey, can I get a ticket to Green Day?

He would honestly, no matter how busy he was, I bet you he would stand and lecture that person for five minutes about all the other non-Green Day shows that we had coming up, or all the other non-Semisonic shows, or whatever, and he would, I guess, use those comps maybe as a way to educate people.

- All right, the Entry, what about it?

I remember when I first came into the Greyhound Bus Depot, there was a full kitchen in there, with tables, it was a coffee shop.

- [Narrator] The old Greyhound coffee shop was just sitting there.

- God, it was used for storage, it was used for coat check.

It was a game room.

- Kevin, it was Kevin Cool.

He come up with the concept of the 7th Street Entry.

- Well, it was sort of a collective thing, with Roy, Steve, and myself.

And we just thought we should open a rock club.

- [Narrator] Steve had been taking regular trips to New York City, and he taken note on how they ran their crappy little punk clubs.

- Steve had witnessed the Mud Club, and it was a hole in the wall, it fit 200 people.

I'm not even sure if it didn't have a dirt floor.

I was there.

Either that or it was awful dirty, I remember I didn't like touching the, anyway, it was minimal.

- So I came back, thinking, Christ, compared to some of the clubs I went to in New York, this is (...) grand scheme, we're not so bad.

- And so he came back, and said, we're gonna do that here in our coat check room.

And I said, "Okay."

- The bar was where was where that stage is, the stage was where the bar is, it was a flat floor.

We didn't even paint it.

- [Jack] I said to Steve, "We gotta paint it."

He said, "No no no."

- When we first opened, we're talkin' buckets of ice, to chill the beer.

- And we opened it up with Curtiss A, and Wilma and the Wilbers.

- [Jack] So, okay, we opened and it worked.

See, he knew.

- Opening The Entry in 1980, created a home for non-commercial bands, or bands that were doing original music, and that was the key to that room.

And a way to keep something really exciting, and maybe even dangerous.

(lyrics muffled) - It was like somebody's basement.

It was like a garage, it was completely unpretentious.

- Everything from the entry was second-hand, beg, borrow, and steal.

- [Narrator] This is Bill Batson.

He and his brother Ernie, started a garage rock band called The Hypstrz, back in 1976.

They were part of a new scene of local bands, writing and performing their own original music.

- [Steve] I had stumbled into a niche in the market, and it was all these bands that were looking for stage space, that had audiences.

- [Narrator] These bands had created their own scene, down the street, at The Longhorn Bar.

- We were definitely looking for a new home for the scene.

It was a given that The 7th Street Entry was friendly to original music, like the Longhorn had been before it.

- Somebody knocked over, whoever it was that knocked over my beer, go get another one.

- At the time that we first started out, this place was not open to alternative bands.

We were the first, alternative, punk band, to ask for a gig here.

- We realized this is something happenin'.

I've got a girl, never gets old I got a girl (muffled) I got a girl - It was just a, you know just a funky room with a stage in it, and didn't sound particularly good, unless there was a (...) ton of people in it.

And then kind of sounded all right.

It just had a vibe to it, though.

- We didn't know until we tore that back wall out, there was a basement.

And it became a perfect dressing room.

We didn't even know it was there.

(lyrics muffled) It looks like they've repainted it, because last time I was in here, there was people learned how to do graffiti in white.

And they keep trying to-- - I work here, I know these walls real well.

****hole Surfers, they wrote that on here.

- The only prerequisite to a new band thing, is that they got new material.

In other words, original, we don't do the cover band routine.

Ramada Inns do cover bands, we do original material.

- [Interviewer] First gig, when was it, where was it?

Main room, Entry?

- It was in The Entry, back when the had church pews, microphones that looked, can you get this thing on the camera?

They had microphones looked like that there, and Stiv Bators' ****.

(laughing) (punk music) - Our philosophy back in the 80's, was we wanted the customer to come in, pay the cover charge, and then say, "Who's the band tonight?"

And if they saw a picture in the main room, of what's going on in the Entry, they might go over there and check that out.

We were always trying to mix rooms.

- [Narrator] One way they tried to mix rooms was The Cameo.

- [Jack] The Cameo was a brief appearance in the course of a dance night, where you got live music.

- We were the first, we were the guinea pigs, and they just tore us up, man.

It was wonderful.

We'd step up on stage for a 10 minutes set, and they, 250 people leave immediately, demanding their money back.

- The curtain would pull back, and you'd play one or two songs, and then the curtain would go back, and it would go back to being a disco.

So that was always fun, because it's like, we're crazy punk rockers.

- It was Steve's way of trying to mix it up.

I think he thought in some cases, that maybe if we put one of these bands, like The Replacements, or Husker Du, in a cameo thing in front of a packed house of people dancing, that that might actually translate to people liking us.

I don't think it really panned out quite that way.

I think we were more of a nuisance.

- Again, we were just throwing everything, to see what works.

We know what we're doing presently is not working.

Let's see what works.

- [Narrator] With the transition from disco well underway, it was time for a new name.

And on New Years Eve, 1981, the club was renamed First Avenue.

- Well I was looking for something very generic, not trendy, because the way bars are, trendy names go away.

I think First Avenue ended up, because we'd been trying to figure out what to call it, and finally, (...) it it's First Avenue.

- You walk in, all the people, and everybody waiting with their baited breath, to see their heroes.

They paid their money and they want to see these people.

I saw Ray Charles there, I saw Tina Turner there.

- [Narrator] Even though the club was booking some of the biggest names in music, the money was still not rolling in.

- I definitely didn't to the right, 'buy low, sell high' attitude with bands.

I always kind of blew it with the band cost.

Even though, if you talk to the bands only making 25 dollars in the Entry, I stiffed them too.

We were never comfortable, it was a stressful time period with the finance.

- It was always kind of rough.

Maybe next year, maybe next year.

- I remember warning employees sometime, don't cash your check.

If I bomb this week on this show, we're in trouble.

- We were desperate to find something, and then finally here comes Prince.

- When they filmed "Purple Rain," I'd say that would probably be the reason that we're all still sitting here.

- [Narrator] Toward the end of 1983, the club was closed to the public for a month.

Prince had a movie to make.

- The best part of "Purple Rain" was the first actual week of filming, all of the California tech people, sound, lights, cameras, trucks outside.

- And Prince had us on the set at five a.m. And some days you might film, some days you might not.

It was packed, it was total chaos.

- People were talking about it in school.

Did you hear Prince is making a movie at First Avenue?

I'm like, what's First Avenue?

They said, "Are you a dancer?"

I said, "Yes, because I used to pop-lock."

So I was like, "Yeah, I'm a dancer."

they were asking for professional dancers.

All right well, I'm here now, so I'm a make it work.

I'm just looking at the person next to me like, oh I can do that, okay, you know.

And then look down and see Morris Day and The Time perform.

- It's just like you see in the movie.

It was like one big party, every time we played.

- It was like, you're at a free concert, and you got great seats.

- "Purple Rain" starring Prince, the rock phenomenon from Minneapolis, and for me, this is one of the big surprises of the year.

The best rock and roll debut film since the Beatles made "A Hard Day's Night."

- I love Prince, I love Prince.

- [Kevin] When "Purple Rain" exploded, that's what people thought of as First Avenue, that's how they identified the club.

The phones just wouldn't stop ringing, the office phone.

- I get a lot of calls for Prince.

- You wouldn't believe the people from out of state that thought that Prince owned the club.

- [Woman] Hi, I just wanted Prince to give me a call when he gets back in town.

Area code is 3-1-2, 2-6-4.

- I remember watching MTV.

All of a sudden they show the scene of the motorcycle going right up to the facade of the building, I was like.

Oh (...).

(laughing) This is no longer cool.

This is no longer cool.

- All of a sudden then, the secret, this thing that was being created that everybody was involved in, was out in the open.

We've already lost it.

After "Purple Rain," you could tell by the audiences coming in now.

They didn't want to see Jaw Wobble, they wanted to see if Prince was walking around.

We were now accepted by the mainstream, which kind of ended the spirit of doing something new.

- The punk rock thing was so gritty, and so dirty, and so filthy.

Prince was the opposite, you know.

He always clean and tight and fancy, and all that.

We'd be playing in the Entry, and he'd walk through the crowd with his entourage and Chick, and I'd just be like, I'm trying to work here, fella.

What the hell?

At the time I was just like, man this guy thinks he owns this place.

Which he kinda did.

(laughing) - [Narrator] Although there were rumors, Prince never actually owned the club, but he could play there whenever he wanted.

- Yeah, he'd call down here like, say three or four hours ahead of time, and say, "I want to play tonight."

It was almost like sending the bat signal out, because it would be jam packed down here in a number of hours.

And First Avenue was down for it.

- Then the club was a destination for hardcore fans, that maybe traveled all over the world to see this sacred space where Prince had made "Purple Rain."

- Prince only played there twice a year.

We had other stuff to do 365 days a year.

- It took a long time to get over that, honestly.

I would say, four years maybe, before it started to finally settle back, and we became the club that we were.

- [Narrator] And that meant relying on dance nights to keep the doors open.

- Just playing records is a lot cheaper than paying a fortune for bands.

- There isn't a single bar where anybody can go to and feel comfortable with a mix.

We're talking everything from gay, straight, black, whatever mix of people listening to the best mix of music.

- Us DJ's were always responsible for coming up with dance nights.

Sex-o-Rama was mine because I figured sex sells and it did.

- I started a night called Club Degenerate, that was leaning a little more on the industrial, noisy, avant garde side of things.

It just provided more of an opportunity to explore different types of music, and different sounds, that could attract kind of a subset of music lovers.

- We had a request sheet outside the booth.

We tried to elicit comments from the customer.

"You macho ****-face, "why don't you play some real music instead of, "cry baby I'm an artist who can't tell if I'm an artist, "dark side of punk bull(...)."

- I'd DJ 20 minutes dance music, I'd go into rock, and every single person would leave the floor.

Everybody.

- "Please stop playing this funk music."

"My God, I thought Minneapolis was cool."

"Are you trying to drive us all to Chicago?"

"Please play some recent Ministry."

- What we were trying to do is get the audience to just trust the DJ.

- [Interviewer] What brings you out to First Avenue tonight?

- MF.

- MF meant More Funk.

But it meant more fun, it meant, we had a whole line of things we had made up for MF.

- Funk night was the time you'd see the most black people in here.

I won't say they wasn't here other nights, but Thursday night it was a great abundance of us in here.

- Only on Thursday night.

Funk night is funky, honestly.

- Every Thursday is the best night to be here.

- [Interviewer] Well, what you doin' down here tonight?

- Funk night, I go upstairs and help Roy Freedom DJ, holler at the crowd, make 'em get wild out there and party.

- [Roy] We were already playing R and B music here already.

It was part of our program.

I went up to Steve and I said, "We have an opportunity here to take something "and really make it happen here."

- How long have you been comin' down here?

- I've been comin' down here since I was about 16 years old, 10 years.

- [Interviewer] 16?

- Sneakin' in.

- [Narrator] Another wildly successful night was Sunday Night Dance Party, started by DJ PD Spinlove.

No ID, no alcohol served, kids welcome.

- They'd have lines out the door, around the block, on Sunday nights.

Maybe at the time, maybe it was the most important night because all it was doing was bringing new people in, that when the became of age, this is where they were gonna come.

- [Narrator] By the mid-80's, the club regularly held all-ages concerts, often having bands play two shows, one for the drunks, one for the kids.

- I think about the economics, at these all-ages shows, where they sold dollar sodas to 150 16-year-olds.

Couldn't have been super-lucrative.

Maybe they were doing it to create another generation of rock fans.

Whatever the reason was, it was really good for me.

They had and three and four-band bills often, so even if I didn't know all the bands I would go there for all four, stand up close and see what guitars they played.

- Good Lord, the greatest music I've ever seen in my life.

I mean, Motorhead, Metallica, so many great Husker Du shows, so many great Replacements shows.

- First Avenue became an important part of the tour plans for lots of bands, and because of its willingness to book all kinds of stuff, bands that maybe wouldn't have had a chance to get a toehold in the upper Midwest, a lot of them went on to do quite well here.

- And don't forget, Red Hot Chili Peppers, on the 9th and 10th of October.

I get excited like that.

- First Avenue put Minneapolis on the map, this is a destination for pretty much every musician that has ever gone on tour, because of First Avenue.

Without First Avenue, we'd have have to go to Chicago, we have to go to, maybe even Iowa.

(rock music) - Have you ever been First Avenue in Minneapolis, the nightclub, the thing has been around for 20 years.

- Can't believe it.

- And to celebrate they decided to have well, something special, and Gary was there, Gary?

- The reason for all the people and all the noise, it's the 20th anniversary of the First Avenue.

Yes, First Avenue prides itself on keeping up with the music scene.

It's also a place where you can keep up with fashion.

Today's look has leather, interesting hats, interesting hair styles.

It's like a living fashion show.

Oh yes, the fashion and music of today are very much unlike the disco days, but one thing hasn't changed.

First Avenue still has one of the largest dance floors around, and although they're dancing to pre-recorded music right here, First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry, are best-known for their live band performances.

And so that's the story from First Avenue, as the acts continue.

The band right now on stage it's The Gear Daddies, from Austin, Minnesota.

A group that has played here for a number of years.

- I have saved every single ticket stub to every show I've ever been to here, and the first 10 years are mostly indie rock and punk rock shows.

Like from '86 to about '96, I could count all the rap shows on four hands.

- [Narrator] Steve had learned early on that the city of Minneapolis wasn't comfortable with clubs that catered to an African American audience.

- I didn't know that it was informally understood that you don't do black artists downtown.

I didn't know that.

I think when it really dawned on me, was not those early bookings, not Run-DMC that only did 500 people.

It was when we started getting into that certain time period when Ice-T's first show at the club, Ice Cube's first show at the club, it was those shows that all of a sudden the police were telling us, Steve, we're not gonna help you.

- [Narrator] It would take years, and a strong local scene, before hip-hop found a home at the club.

- The summer of '98, when the kids are out of school, they started letting us do Wednesday night dance parties in here, and we called them Soundset Wednesdays.

- [Narrator] Soundset would later become one of the biggest hip-hop festivals in the country.

- You know prior to this, all of rappers, we used to little things in different little cafes but, once we got here, the whole city saw it.

And that's when all the rap groups were like, that's the new goalpost, period.

Like if you don't play the main room, are you even really doing this?

The Entry was exciting, it was a foot in the door, but this was still the goalpost.

- It's like, what do they call that?

The minor leagues, then you move up to the majors.

- I've seen bands over there, that end up here as headliners, as big bands all of a sudden.

But they started over there.

- It was always a goal at first to just play the Entry, and then you're like, well what if we could play not first on the bill in the Entry.

You know, what if you're second?

And then, what if we ever got to play the main room?

- That's the uniqueness about First Avenue, for you to have a 7th Street Entry attached to you.

I don't know too many clubs that have that.

You don't have like a side club attached to 'em that's iconic too.

- It's funny, when I think back about how many other places there were to play here.

First Avenue's always the premier gig.

No one else could take that.

- I'm playing in a band now, and I get to play here now too.

We're playing here tomorrow night.

Babes in Toyland.

(rock music) - The deterioration of downtown in the last 15 years has just been incredible.

There used to be just a ton of places to hang out and have fun downtown, small bars, Moby's, Brady's, just to name a few that given downtown quite an identity.

- You gotta remember back then, we were a blight, not just the club, but the street.

People were warned about going that far onto First Avenue.

- [Narrator] But that was about to change.

Minneapolis was getting rid of the blight.

- We will be converting First Avenue, which by the way had never been completely cleaned, we'll be converting it into the new Slam Dunk Sports Bar, to cater to the tens of thousands of fans coming out of the new Target Center.

- Oh, we like the Target Center, we like it.

They're our neighbors.

- We have streetlights that work now.

- [Narrator] Money pouring into the neighborhood didn't necessarily mean success for the club.

- Well that's what you had here was 1936 plumbing, 1936 electrical, and everything since it opened, was bandaid-ed.

I always wanted them to fix the electrical behind stage, that was always seemed to be a fire hazard.

But all we could do was put duct tape on it, because we had no money.

You don't think I asked for somebody to fix the roof?

In the 30 years it leaked on me and the DJs, and the customers.

- Three people were hurt at legendary rock club, First Avenue, after part of the ceiling collapsed.

- As far as the building itself, there were times it didn't look great in here.

- [Narrator] This is Conrad, he's one of the thousands of staff members who have kept this place from falling apart.

- One of the guys that worked here, Micah, called this place a pirate ship that goes nowhere.

Everything has to be scrubbed and painted, and swabbed.

And then just the people that work here, the employees, just make up this incredible pirate crew.

- When we got our paychecks and they said, "Don't cash it this week."

Well why didn't we cash it this week?

Because we're all in this together.

Steve made us think that we're all in this together.

- What happened was there was 200 people that got together with a cause, that all believed in something that nobody else did.

- [Narrator] In the year 2000, once again the club was in trouble.

Allan Fingerhut had never owned the building, and his landlord came to him with a proposition.

- He said, we want to sell now.

And unless you buy it from us, we're going to double your rent.

So, Allan was forced then to buy the building.

Or have his rent doubled.

- [Interviewer] And he bought it, or did?

- That's a long story.

- [Narrator] It is a long story.

But in the end Byron Frank owned most of the building, and became First Avenue's landlord.

But that feeling of stability didn't last.

- In 2004, everything went to heck.

- Bam bam bam bam lawsuits.

- [Narrator] After a lifetime of working together, Allan and Byron had a falling out.

- It involved a lot more than the club.

Allan and Byron were boyhood friends since the age of nine.

They were dealing with elements that had nothing to do with the club, and it's like a really bad divorce between two friends, and you don't know what's going on, but you kinda wanna stay on good sides with both of 'em.

Byron controlled the property, and Allan had the liquor license venue, and for three years we were like, it became no fun working there.

- Business was bad, and next thing I know, I was out of a job, Steve was out of a job.

- I fired 'em.

- [Interviewer] Yeah, and why did you do that?

- 'Cause they just weren't producing, they weren't doing what I asked them to do.

That was tough.

That was very tough.

And I didn't want to do that with Steve.

(rock music) - Allan came in and suddenly showed great interest, he put a couple of new people into place, as like the new General Manager.

I think I got to be in charge of booking at that point, that might have been the first time.

- [Narrator] This is Nate Kranz, and Sonia Grover, on staff since 1998.

They had seen the club struggle in the past, but this time felt different.

- We packed up some of the calendars, some of the booking documents, 'cause we knew, at least we were pretty (...) sure that the end was coming.

- [Narrator] Behind on rent, and facing eviction, Fingerhut filed for bankruptcy.

- [Man] Get out!

- [Narrator] First Avenue was closed.

- We need you to get out, and get out now.

(muffled speaking) - They called me up and said you gotta get your stuff out of your office.

They really gave us no warning.

- We're gonna go have a beer with the rest of these guys first, and then pick up the pieces from there.

(banjo music) - I went to Jack and Steve, and said, "If you guys want to go back in business, "I'll back you.

"If you don't, tell me, "and I'll go find a tenant."

- Now we just happened to have a liquor license application all prepared.

- [Narrator] Byron bought the club's assets and name out of bankruptcy.

- I think we knew that the club was gonna reopen.

We didn't know though if it was gonna be a month, a year.

- The whole city kind of came together, and Mayor Rybak really leading the charge to make sure that we weren't out of business longer than we were.

- Would you like to be the mayor who had First Avenue close on your watch.

I did call the licensing people and asked them to streamline the process.

So sue me, but the fact of the matter is, that's one of those times, rarely, when a mayor should step in and say we just have to break down the walls to make sure we can open the doors.

- The next thing you now, we had our offices back, and we sat in the same chairs, and just started doing-- - It was like it never happened.

(laughing) - [Narrator] But it wasn't the same for everyone.

Although Steve McClellan came back to the club for a short time, within a year he was gone.

- The boat had already left the dock.

The mechanism had already taken place on how it was gonna be rehabbed.

And I just didn't have a role there.

- [Narrator] Steve still works at a live music venue, the Schooner Tavern in Minneapolis.

He also leads a non-profit dedicated to supporting musicians.

- [Interviewer] Were you saddened when Steve wasn't here anymore?

- Oh totally.

It was a total drag.

I love working here, and I love the people I worked with, but the club itself is bigger than one person, it's bigger than me, it's bigger than, yeah.

(pop music) - We might have been able to keep treading water and doing the same things the way we always did them, but certainly being successful, long-term, and to grow and to challenge ourselves, we weren't set up for that, previously.

- Look at this, established 1970, reborn 2005.

There was a definite change though, pre-2004, and post-2004.

- When I took over, the men's bathroom had a stench to it.

So you know what I did?

I called a meeting.

Everybody met with me one-on-one.

You know where we met?

In the men's bathroom.

They cleaned it up.

- For the first time in the history of the club, the real estate and the business were under the same control, so that finally if we made some money we could reinvest in the building, and start improving things, and it's really allowed us to succeed and grow the business, in a way that we want to.

- [Narrator] And they have grown.

First Avenue has opened a restaurant next door, acquired the Turf Club, the Fine Line Music Cafe, and the Fitzgerald Theater.

- I can tell you almost anything would be easier than running a rock club.

- [Narrator] This is Dayna Frank.

When her father Byron had a stroke in 2009, she took over as President and CEO.

- I can see how from the outside one would think that like, working here was all rock and roll, that it's all fun and it's all like oh you just call a band and they show up, and stagehands happen to be there to load them in, and oh look at that, they happen to have my favorite beer, what a coincidence.

It's definitely not as rock and roll as one might think.

- More power to 'em, they figured out a way to make money, something Steve McClellan could never do.

That doesn't make me love Steve McClellan any less, it makes me love this whole institution more.

- Even if this were to suddenly rise into the sky and fly back to the planet it came from, I don't think it'll ever be replaced.

(punk music) - If they take my star down I don't know what I'm gonna do.

I guess that means it's finally over, when they paint over my star.

- I'll always want to be a part of it, every bit of it.

I don't ever want to leave, actually.

If I could die here I'd be just happy.

- No, we fought like hell to keep it, whether Byron Frank owns it or I own it, somebody has to keep it alive.

(rock music) - You know there are so few clubs in America that could do what First Avenue has done.

We gave Minneapolis a face, and that's, maybe the whole state, besides Paul Bunyan.

- Exactly.

(rock music) Every time you move your lips Let me give you a few tips Yesterday you were too young Tomorrow you will be too old To regret all the things you've done Who're you trying to hustle Somebody you wanna show your muscle Second hand excuses never went too far What's this scene you're making Your ideas have been taken We'll seek when you awaken alone in someone's car You just stood there shaking, stood there shaking They said you were faking You said you want to be want to be want to be want to be Closer to the stars Closer to the stars The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and ...