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Highway 401 Revisited
Feb. 23rd, 2009 12:20 amI just re-found Highway 401 Revisited, and apparently unpublished article that I was interviewed for, talking about a club, Larry’s Hideaway, that I used to play at, and hang out at. I like how someone says “I’ve been to other dives in other cities, provinces and states but there was no other bar that could match the raunch of Larry’s Hideaway. Truly the filthiest, most degrading bar I’ve ever ventured into. It was a legend back then, it’s even more of a cult legend now.” True. But some of my best memories came from there.
NAME: Larry’s Hideaway
LOCATION: 121 Carlton Street
ESTIMATED TENURE: 1980-1986
ESTIMATED CAPACITY: 300-400
CURRENT STATUS: The building that housed Larry’s Hideaway was torn down in the late 1980s as part of an urban gentrification project. The plot of land where it once stood is now part of the northern region of Allen Gardens.Situated in an area otherwise known for an active flesh trade and a colourful array of street drugs, the infamous Larry’s Hideaway did its part to add to the neighbourhood’s excess and during its heyday of the early to mid-1980s. In many ways, it became as well known for being a potential biohazard as it did for being one of Toronto’s preeminent spots to see live heavy metal and hardcore punk shows. “If it was still standing, they would need to drop a large napalm bomb on it to vaporize all disease,” jokes Aaron Hoffman, a frequent visitor to Larry’s during it’s salad days. “The bar was in the basement and always reeked from no ventilation. The carpet was buckled in many, many places with holes from where people dropped cigarettes and black spots from gum and spilled drinks. The stage was very low, the smell of pot smoke filled the stale air — but it was great!” Larry’s was definite not a place to take Grandma on a Sunday afternoon for a crumpet and spot of tea. However, if you were a music fan in search of the latest sounds from way out, Larry’s was your Xanadu.
The building itself had undergone several incarnations by the time the punks and metal heads moved in during the late 1970s. Reportedly a gay club during the “baby boom” of two decades prior, the building enjoyed a fairly successful run as the Prince Carlton Hotel in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was during these years that the hotel would often host the fledgling stadium rockers Rush. However, it wasn’t until the late 1970s when it was rechristened Larry’s Hideaway that things really started to get weird. When the aforementioned Crash ‘n’ Burn was forced to close in August of 1977, many of the local punk acts decided to migrate east and take up residency at Larry’s. Most prominent of these transient types were The Viletones, who made up what they lacked in musical chops with attitude and the self-destructive behaviour of lead shouter Stevie “Nazi Dog” Leckie. Other local upstarts like The Guvernment and The Mods soon followed and eventually out-of-town favourites like Hamilton’s Forgotten Rebels and London’s Demics were on their way to Carlton Street for the opportunity to prove themselves on Larry’s stage. Jason Nolan was in the audience for one of those early Demics gigs and years later, took to on Larry’s stage himself as a member of popular alt-punk outfit Heart of Darkness. “This was around the time that [the Demics' signature song] ‘New York City’ come out and we’d heard it on CFNY back when it was a cool station. Me and my buddy somehow snuck in to see the show,” Nolan remembers before offering some “spirituous” advice. “We had just enough money to buy each of us a pitcher of beer and a shot of bourbon for one big boilermaker. But they didn’t have bourbon, so we used scotch. Never ever make a boilermaker with scotch. It was gross!”
Before long, Larry’s Hideaway had gained a well-soiled reputation for hosting the most outrageous new acts, and they soon began adding well-known international touring bands to their concert itinerary. For example, the club began booking ex-members of the cross-dressing glam outfit, The New York Dolls. Most notably, the band’s well-lubricated guitarist Johnny Thunders appeared for a rare local gig in the fall of 1980. In the midst of a heroin addiction, Thunders was basically a punk version of the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards (less the millions of dollars and doo rags) and was said to have been somewhat enamoured with some of the prostitutes that he encountered in the building’s upper reaches. Other New York bands soon followed including the angular no-wave of James Chance & the Contortions and “psychobilly” icons The Cramps, who paid an offhand tribute to the club by recording their live album Fetishism at Larry’s in July of 1983. A year later, the club booked a then unknown four-piece from Athens, GA, who were making their first Toronto appearance. The band was REM, and their set that night borrowed heavily from their recently released full-length debut Murmur, which would go on to become one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the 1980s. Other well known acts to play at Larry’s included the coma-inducing sludge rock of San Francisco’s Flipper, the fury of Minnesota-based speed freaks Husker Du and a virtual of British post-punk groups: Bauhaus, Killing Joke, The Fall, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. In later years, goth-cum-psychedelic rockers The Cult played Larry’s right before their Love album hit the masses in mid-1985.
Despite all of the underground favourites that passed through Larry’s doors over the years, it’s the intangible aspects of the bar that truly stand out in the minds of Torontonians. “Larry’s was an ideal venue in many ways,” asserts Nolan without so much as a hint of irony. “Low, dark, dirty and smoky. Just off the main street. No bull from the people running the place. No attitude from the bouncers. And, of course, no one went there for any reason other than the music. It was too much of a hole to dance or to pick up chicks or drink. If you didn’t want to hear the music, you’d go someplace else.” Hoffman further supports this contention by continuing to point out some of Larry’s other unique features. “Used condoms and dirty syringes were scattered amongst the urine puddles upstairs at the run-down hotel. [There were] always lots of hookers around and rooms without doors led to these dirty, rotten, stained mattresses on the floor without supports. The upper rooms all had busted windows and when it would rain, water would pour in all over.” Yet in spite of it all, Hoffman still holds the bar on something of a pedestal, albeit one likely caked with cigarette smoke and various bodily fluids. “I’ve been to other dives in other cities, provinces and states but there was no other bar that could match the raunch of Larry’s Hideaway. Truly the filthiest, most degrading bar I’ve ever ventured into. It was a legend back then, it’s even more of a cult legend now.”
