Van Halen Played La Cañada and Montrose – The Lanterman Auditorium Show

Last week I detailed some local history involving one of the greatest rock bands, Van Halen. I had interviewed former La Cañada resident Dan Sullivan. Just out of high school in 1975, he promoted a handful of local concerts for Van Halen, just as they were on the cusp of their rise to fame. Dan put together a show at La Canada’s Lanterman Auditorium with Van Halen as the opening act for a local band. To build enthusiasm for this concert, Dan had put together a free half-hour lunchtime concert at La Cañada High. That small concert went very well and ticket sales for Dan’s Lanterman concert took off.

“I realized I had to sell a lot of tickets ’cause I agreed to pay Van Halen $250 to play. They were the opening act of this concert. The headliner band, Tales – I paid them $400. So Van Halen was the opening act.

“My tickets were $2.50. I sold them in record stores in La Cañada on Foothill Boulevard and one down by PCC, ’cause I figured kids that went to school there would buy these tickets. That’s what big promoters did. They sold through record stores so I figured this has got to work. And actually it did. The sales went pretty swiftly. I think it was $2.50 advance and $3 at the door.”

Dan also had to rent the Lanterman Auditorium.

“It was the La Cañada Flintridge School district that controlled it and so, when I wanted to rent that, they were like, ‘Sure you can do that, and you just have to pay for the janitor and security.’ I have the contract. It’s pretty funny ’cause in the terms, their big concerns were not about, ‘You’re having a rock concert, this place might get trashed.’ It was really about, ‘We don’t want any communist takeover, so you can use this auditorium but it can’t be for any type of communist gathering.’”

The actual words on the contract denied use to any “communist-action organization or communist front organization.” Obviously La Cañada was a much more conservative place back then.

Dan went on to explain the difficulty for opening acts, especially unknown bands like Van Halen. They were sometimes booed off the stage. But fortunately, the high school show had brought in some newly-minted Van Halen fans.

“In this show, (the audience) knew Tales (a local band); they didn’t know Van Halen. The ones who had seen the show at the high school did know what to expect so it was kind of interesting. You had people [who] were progressive rock fans and friends of the band (Tales) because they were popular in high school; probably half the audience were there to see them. And the others had come from seeing that lunchtime concert (at the high school). So it was a mixture of these people.

“No one booed off Van Halen. It’s just that when they stopped (the crowd) wanted them to keep playing. And so people left. It was really embarrassing for the headlining band that they had to go on after that. They had to follow with this electronic, new age, progressive Yes-sounding type music. It would have been great if it was just them. And there was actually a third band on my bill. They were called Wilbur Godsmile. They were also this kind of progressive rock band. They were the opening act, and Van Halen was sandwiched between the two bands. The first band – people were like, ‘Yeah let’s get you off stage. Let’s move on to the main course.’

“So that was that. We sold out. I had to pay some pretty steep bills – cleanup, security, a guy who ran the board.”

This was Dan’s first success as an 18-year-old novice rock concert promoter. Not bad for a first-timer. His next concert was to be just Van Halen and would be at Glendale High School’s auditorium. This one would be a disaster, which I’ll cover next week.