'Someone came up to us and handed our box office staff $1,000 in cash'...Nick Stabback, the manager of Sydney's Enmore Theatre. Photo: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
In 2003, The Rolling Stones decided to add a different kind of show to their string of Australian tour dates. The band played stadiums across the country - two dates at the Sydney SuperDome, three at Rod Laver Arena and two at the Brisbane Entertainment Center - but wanted to add one intimate performance. Their booking agent knew exactly the place: the Enmore Theatre.
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Located in the middle of a then shabby high street in Sydney's west, still sporting a 1930s art deco facade, and with a maximum capacity of just 2,500 people, it was a change of pace for a band that often played in front of audiences played. in the tens of thousands. On a tour of the space, the Stones were smitten: "They loved historic buildings," says Greg Khoury, a longtime employee of Century Venues, the company that handles the theater's bookings - and captured the performance. It would be a legendary evening. .
"We all know the stories of the thousands and thousands of people queuing on Enmore Road, who didn't have tickets but just wanted to hear as much as they could," says Nick Stabback, who started as an usher at the Enmore in the 2000s and is now head of booking at Century Venues.
Police had to close Enmore Road to traffic and escort the band on their way to the gig. Being a good sport, the staff opened the venue's central doors so those crowded outside could hear the show better. Those who lived in flats above the shops on the other side of the road could climb onto their awnings and get a free seat for the city's most popular show. "Some people could actually look through those doors and see part of the stage from a certain vantage point," Khoury says.
The Stones is just one of many memorable performances at the Enmore Theatre. For others, it might be the place where Bob Dylan played an equally hard-to-believe show in 2018. Some will remember it as the place where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, newly elected at the time, drank a beer to loud applause. a Gang of Youths show, or the venue where Four Tet set up DJ decks in the middle of the floor and charged punters just $20 to come and dance. Maybe you were there the night in '08 when Ween fans drank the venue completely out of beer, or you have fond teenage memories of camping out on Enmore Road to buy tickets at the box office in the pre-internet era. Maybe you hung around the back of the room giving Courtney Love and Melissa Auf Der Maur friendship bracelets you made after a Hole show in the 1990s.
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Of course, it's not just what happened within the walls of Enmore, but the location itself that makes it a beloved location in Sydney.
"There's a certain seriousness to it," says David James Young, a dedicated giggoer who is currently in the official process of authenticating his Guinness World Record entry for most concerts in one year. He saw 365 performances in 2023 and estimates he attended between 150 and 200 shows at the Enmore during his adult life. "[There's] it is a majesty to walk into that room - it really feels like a sacred hall because it has remained largely unchanged over the past hundred years."
Its heritage isn't the only thing that makes it a favorite venue for many Sydney music fans. Rather than being cooped up in the Olympic Park or the washrooms of the CBD or Entertainment Quarter, it's in a vibrant, accessible part of central Sydney. And then there's the capacity that's big enough to accommodate notable acts, but not so big that you feel like you're sitting in the middle of nosebleeds, giving it a feeling Young describes as "massive and intimate at the same time." (A good tip: After seeing performances there from "every possible position," he considers being on the floor about 10-12 rows of people behind him to be the best vantage point.)
Although the Enmore has been around for more than 100 years, live music hasn't always been on the lineup. It originally opened in 1908 as an open-air cinema, closed four years later and later sold in 1935 to Hoyts, who extensively renovated the venue and transformed it into the Art Deco marvel it is today. It remained a theater until the 1980s - when it had gone from Hoyts' top-performing cinemas to an abandoned purveyor of foreign films - when Sydney's Eliades family bought it in 1986 and slowly built it into the concert venue it is today. The location started to come into its own in the mid-2000s, but it took a lot of "blood, sweat and tears" to get there, Khoury says. "In the past it was always a second option - a B-grade option - for playing in the [suburbs]. That started to change."
Although the venue was already busy before Mick Jagger's visit, that fateful performance in 2003 marked a turning point for the Enmore. "The Rolling Stones were definitely a cornerstone event," says Khoury. "It made people realize that the theater was ... a vibrant, viable music venue."
That Rolling Stones performance also started a trend with other stadium-filling bands choosing to play the Enmore instead. In 2014, Coldplay followed suit, choosing the venue as the venue for their only Australian show while promoting their album Ghost Stories - a big step back after playing to 200,000 people on their previous tour of the country. (They used the same trip to film the video for A Sky Full of Stars, walking along the adjacent King Street, Newtown.) 'No more was ever asked [free tickets] in my life as I was before the Coldplay show," laughs Khira Holloway, head of event delivery at Century Venues.
Then in 2017 he wanted to establish himself as one stone star, not a pop star - a major rebranding considering his past in One Direction - a new solo Harry Styles played in the theater. Avid fans (and their dutiful dads) camped out for three nights beforehand to snag a spot as close to the stage as possible, BYO-ing fold-out seats, sleeping bags and portable phone chargers. Styles inspired a level of passion that might not be matched again until 2023, when the Enmore caught Fred Again's first Sydney show. Enthusiastic fans tried everything and anything to get in on the very sold-out performance, amid the national mania that accompanied the British producer's tour.
"Someone came up to us and handed our cashier $1,000 in cash and said, 'I gotta get in' and [he] sent him away," Stabback recalls. "He still works for us, as you can imagine."
And then there are the acts that managed to get the Enmore because they were about to explode. In 2012, both Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar played the theater - both returning to play Qudos Bank Arena on their subsequent Australian tours. Even Katy Perry had a show there in 2009. "I ushered in that change," Stabback recalls. "She did this amazing thing where she took out an inflatable giant cherry wood chapstick and rode it through the crowd."
Of course, it wasn't all plain sailing. When Covid hit - "a terrible time," Stabback says - the venue closed for a year. But that forced shutdown gave the Enmore a chance to begin long-planned renovations, rapid restoration work that they had initially planned "piecemeal, like a keyhole operation." It was a tough path initially after lockdowns were eased, but then the recovery came.
"It's been a landslide of shows since 2022, it's just non-stop. 2023 was probably one of the busiest years ever," says Stabbaback. "It's interesting, because we're entering a cost of living crisis, but we're still waiting for that tipping point... I think it says something about the value of live entertainment to people - you sell your car, but you go still going to a concert."
And then there was the night a Genesis Owusu performance broke the floor. Or rather: "We say it has decreased. It didn't break," says Stabback.
The show took place in the middle of a particularly soggy stretch of La Niña in 2022. A period of heavy downpours had created a waterlog under the floor and when Owusu broke out his fiery, propulsive track The Other Black Dog and the crowd started cutting loose, some from the dance floor shrunk.
Young was there the night of the show. "I noticed some people had fallen over and I assumed it was just... the hustle and bustle of the mosh," he recalls. "It wasn't until they all stood up and were all suddenly shorter than before that I realized what had happened. A kind of sea had parted next to me and I could see the floor, and I saw the sink... But we all looked at each other and thought: what just happened?
Miraculously, no one was injured. Perhaps even more miraculous, the venue was open again the following evening, with a catch-up performance by Genesis Owusu scheduled for the following week.
"Twenty minutes into the show, we had a team of engineers and builders below that floor working to get that back up," Stabback says. "The show must go on."