People once lined up on a long stretch of sidewalk along Bryant Avenue, in the old historic Village of Roslyn, and waited for Richie Havens or Bruce Springsteen or the Talking Heads.
They’d stop by on Mondays to get a glimpse of Mick Jagger or Keith Richards or Ronnie Wood, who themselves would drop in occasionally for Reggae Night, or to catch young comedians John Belushi and Bill Murray, partying in the early days of Saturday Night Live, before they reached their larger-than-life status.
They came to My Father’s Place, just up the street from Diane’s Bakery and Cafe, often filling the club past capacity, and they rocked their faces off.
“Everybody on the way up or the way down had to pass through there,” said Village of Roslyn Mayor John Durkin, himself a guitar player and music lover. “I saw everybody there.”
The club, located at 19 Bryant Avenue, closed in 1987 due to a series of lengthy legal problems and today the building is used for offices.
But My Father’s Place, and all the bands that made their mark on the Long Island music scene there, was immortalized with the 2010 book “Fun and Dangerous: Untold Tales, Unseen Photos, Unearthed Music from My Father’s Place 1975-1980,” written by Steve Rosenfield and Michael “Eppy” Epstein, who owned the club at the height of its popularity.
“My Father’s Place had everything a good club needs, from great sound to pretty good beer, and Eppy turned it into a Long Island institution – one that musicians would go out of their way to play,” wrote music journalist Kurt Loder, who penned the book’s forward. “There was nothing like it in those wild days.”
Epstein was born in Brooklyn and moved to Rockville Centre as a boy, but went to college in Boston where he studied the radio and music industries and filled his rolodex with bands as a budding concert promoter.
When Epstein later moved back to New York, he managed a head shop in Roslyn that he said was among the very first to sell “alternative culture retail items,” and had a coffee shop on the second floor that would occasionally play host to folk acts.
Just across the way from the shop stood the Roslyn Bowl, which in the wake of the AMF Bowling boom of the early 1960s was nearly out of business.
To compete, the Roslyn Bowl’s owner, Jay Linehan, began booking country music acts to turn the bowling alley into a music venue and promoting the new venture as the largest dance floor on Long Island. At the suggestion of Linehan’s son, the Roslyn Bowl changed its name to My Father’s Place.
In early 1971, Epstein approached Linehan about doing shows on holidays and parts of the year when business was expected to be slow. If the venture was successful, Epstein was promised 49 percent on the dollar to continue.
The first show was held on Memorial Day 1971. The artist: Richie Havens, a longtime friend of Epstein’s from their early days in the music industry whose career had taken off a few years prior after his memorable performance to kick off the famous Woodstock Festival.
Just like that, seemingly overnight, My Father’s Place was truly born.
Epstein and Linehan became partners at the venue, with Epstein’s cousin Richie taking over half of the head shop.
“Jay was more my father than my own father was,” Epstein said. “He taught me all about the bar business.”
According to Epstein, business was good. The venue had enough room for 570 seats and standing room space for 100-plus people, Epstein said, and he regularly packed the hall with more than 1,000 people even though My Father’s Place was issued a maximum occupancy of 690 from the state and 300 from the Village of Roslyn.
“We went with what the state told us, obviously,” Epstein said. “We packed the place out on a nightly basis.”
Linehan left My Father’s Place in 1976, leaving Epstein with full control of the venue.
Epstein booked bands of all kinds, from the Ramones to the Police to Bob Marley and seemingly everyone in between.
“It was a time of drugs, free love, free sex and good music,” Epstein said
In 1979, at the height of the venue’s popularity, Epstein said the music hall made $2 million and “it seemed like nothing could change the course of history.”
“Until, of course,” Epstein said, “video killed the radio star.”
The music industry was changing, Epstein said, as record labels offered artists the opportunity to either tour the Northeast or make a music video that could potentially reach the newly launched MTV network.
Nine times out of 10, Epstein said, the band would make a video and get on television, and My Father’s Place began to struggle booking top acts and paying its rent.
The music hall quickly started falling into debt throughout the early 1980s, and the venue went through ownership changes.
By 1985, Epstein returned to My Father’s Place to save the music hall from bankruptcy and an ugly sales tax dispute.
“We made $50,000 on Memorial Day of ’85,” Epstein said. “It was as if nothing had changed.”
But in early 1986, My Father’s Place began receiving bills from the Village of Roslyn, which cited insufficient parking.
Epstein, still in the thick of legal troubles, was unable to pay, and the village court demanded he close the venue even though he had booked future acts.
The village threatened to have him arrested if he continued putting on shows, Epstein said, but on May 3, 1987, Tower of Power played to a packed house at My Father’s Place, and Epstein could hear the band playing as police escorted him out the doors.
“The court told me I couldn’t fun the club anymore, something about parking,” Epstein said. “They just didn’t want us there anymore. The neighborhood was changing. But it’s funny, the people on the boards in the village, they were the same guys coming to the club telling us how much they loved it, how they grew up going to My Father’s Place. And just like that, we were closed.”
Epstein continued to appear in court even after the venue closed, eventually sorting out the club’s financial problems.
But Epstein said since My Father’s Place closed, he got out of the bar business for good, instead serving the music industry by booking local acts all over Long Island and working with local radio affiliates to resurrect rock radio.
“I love it in Roslyn,” Epstein said. “I’ve always said that if they wouldn’t let me operate in Roslyn, I wasn’t going to operate at all, and I’ve kept my word on that.”
