R.I.P. RICHARD O'BRIEN (Bamboo Club)

[whiteymuseum]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071027.OBOBRIEN27/TPStory/?query=o%27brien

RICHARD O'BRIEN, 59: IMPRESARIO

His BamBoo club transformed the nightlife of

restrained Toronto

Onetime freelance writer and his business partner took

an abandoned laundry and turned it into the

cornerstone of Toronto's funky Queen Street West scene

through the 1980s and 1990s

RON CSILLAG

Special to The Globe and Mail

October 27, 2007

TORONTO -- Richard O'Brien was the arbiter of cool in

a city that never stops obsessing over its image. Only

he dared to pair plates of redolent Thai spicy noodles

and feverish jerk chicken, washed down with a Tusker

lager or two, with the throbbing beat of a Zairean

soukous band.

Maybe he was crazy like a fox, for the marriage

between exotic world music and Asian/Caribbean cuisine

kept Toronto's landmark BamBoo club pulsating for

nearly 20 years. As The Globe noted five years ago

this month, when the BamBoo finally shuttered its

fabled doors, "long before the Gap and Starbucks sent

Queen Street West spiralling into a retail frenzy,

stopping in at the BamBoo for a beer or a bite was a

rite of passage for city residents and out-of-towners

alike."

Indeed, the decidedly unslick 'Boo (once described,

though lovingly, as "a carefully crappy-looking dive")

was the cornerstone of Toronto's funky Queen Street

West scene through the 1980s and 1990s, showcasing

cutting-edge reggae, funk, R&B, Latin, jazz and soul

acts, and hosting some of the wildest private parties

staid Toronto had seen. The eclectic kitchen staff,

meantime, cranked out signature Caribbean, Indonesian

and Thai dishes that kept the joint at the top of

virtually every "best-place-to-eat" list in the city

since the day it opened.

The music was loud, the place usually packed (and

sweltering), the food piquant and the atmosphere

laid-back and aggressively Third World. It worked.

In the days before random club shootings and

refrigerator-sized bouncers, the BamBoo was more a

community centre for artists and musicians. "And it

was an awesome community," recalled Lorraine Segato,

lead singer for the long-defunct Parachute Club, which

played the BamBoo in July, 1983, to celebrate their

debut release, a month before the club officially

opened.

(As Patti Habib, Mr. O'Brien's friend and business

partner for some 30 years, recalled with some

satisfaction, the place that night "was jammed to the

rafters, and it was totally illegal. We had no liquor

license and no running water. You'd never get away

with that kind of stuff today.")

What fascinated Ms. Segato about the BamBoo was its

timing. Toronto "was just starting to bust out in

terms of a cultural product that was coming from all

the immigrants. So the music scene was really ripe."

"The timing was really extraordinary," she said

wistfully. "It was a confluence of energies. More

importantly, it was home to so many people who

considered themselves either artists or, you know,

different. The 'Boo was this safe haven."

That's precisely how Mr. O'Brien and Ms. Habib planned

it.

"Richard never turned down artists or musicians," Ms.

Habib said. "People felt the BamBoo was their home

because it was a very relaxed atmosphere. No women

ever had to feel scared. We never had fights. It was a

very warm place."

A bearish man who bore a striking resemblance to film

director Francis Ford Coppola and favoured retro

Hawaiian shirts, Mr. O'Brien could be sarcastic and

cantankerous (his favourite expressions were, "Is

everybody mental around here?" and "What's the big

deal?"). He was also gregarious and passionate, an

unabashed party animal and a lover of the arts. Even

as a child, he showed interest in art and theatre,

said his 97-year-old mother, Catherine O'Brien.

Adopted when he was four years old, he was a product

of Toronto's Catholic schools. At 17, he and a buddy

hopped on a motorcycle to see a girl in North

Carolina. Mr. O'Brien kept going, and wound up in

California in 1965. He bummed around, studied writing

and broadcast journalism, and played drums in a small

jazz club in San Francisco, where such giants as Miles

Davis and McCoy Tyner dropped in to record. Four years

after leaving, he returned to Toronto, sold some

drawings and freelanced articles to newspapers.

He went to work for TVOntario, then the CBC, where he

got to interview reggae icons Bob Marley and Peter

Tosh.

In the late 1970s, Mr. O'Brien started hosting a

popular Toronto booze can, the Dream Factory (where

his friend Marcus O'Hara launched the annual Martian

Awareness Ball to coincide with St. Patrick's Day.

Little green men - get it?)

With Ms. Habib, he also ran one the city's hippest

speakeasies, the legendary MBC. A lot of people joked

that it meant "My Booze Can," but the name was a

playful dig at the inability of Mr. O'Brien and some

friends to buy the nearby Embassy Tavern. MBC, open

only on Mondays and Thursdays, was a hit, featuring

live music until 6 a.m. with acts that included Rough

Trade with Carole Pope.

"We didn't just start a club with no background," Mr.

Habib pointed out. "We had been doing different events

around the city and compiling a mailing list."

The two also frequented a rooftop after-hours boîte

called the Paper Door, where Bruce Cockburn and Murray

McLaughlin were regular acts. Significantly, it looked

down onto a dumpy building that had had housed a

Chinese laundry for 80 years but was used to store

wicker furniture.

"It was the most derelict place," Ms. Habib recalls

with a laugh. "It was condemned, had no running water,

no heat and no floor to speak of. But we said,

'Wouldn't it be a fabulous place to throw a party?' "

To their surprise, the space was for rent, and in

1982, "Richard, not me, put a [$2,500] deposit down on

six-months' rent, thinking he could build a club." The

couple had three months to renovate about 1,500 square

metres of space.

Investors were brought in but money was short. The

couple set up a flea market of Christmas trees in an

event dubbed "Tree and Flea." Banks turned them down

for loans, so another group of investors came in with

the funds needed to finish the job, but charged a

mob-like interest rate of 100 per cent over two years

(successfully paid).

Meantime, nothing in the club was new. The lime-green

wrought-iron front gates came from a wrecking company,

and the banquette seating was from the Drake Hotel.

Toilets were bought for $50 from a pinball parlour

that was going under. The bar was salvaged from an

Irish social club in Buffalo.

After $85,000 in renovations, the place opened on Aug.

26, 1983, and was christened the BamBoo as a tribute

to its former incarnation. There were lineups almost

right away.

"It was always full," recalled Fergus Hambleton, lead

singer for Toronto's poster band for reggae, the

Sattalites, who became regulars. "It was partially

that we're fabulous," Mr. Hambleton said

half-jokingly, "but other than that, it was also a

time when that club was right and the whole Queen

Street thing was developing."

In Toronto, the 'Boo was to the eighties music scene

what the El Mocambo was in the seventies or the

Riverboat in the sixties. On any given night, one

could hear a Nigerian-style juju group, a West African

highlife act, ska, or a soca (soul calypso) band.

Sometimes, jazz greats Buddy Rich and Dizzy Gillespie

would follow reggae giants Bunny Wailer and Toots and

the Maytalls.

The club couldn't have a liquor license unless it

served food, so veteran chefs Vera Khan handled the

Caribbean fare, while Wandee Young did the Thai

cooking. Both put their stamp on a 1997 cookbook, The

BamBoo Cooks. And rumour had it that rocker David

Bowie simply had to have the BamBoo's ka kai soup

whenever he was in town.

It all made Mr. O'Brien, in the eyes of Ms. Habib,

"really, really brave. When you're in his circle of

people, 'no' doesn't come into your repertoire. I had

to be dragged into this circle of the BamBoo, but when

Richard was around, the possibilities were endless.

He'd think big, act big, and I think that takes a

fairly brave person."

Mr. Hambleton had a similar take. "Everybody at some

point had a screaming argument with Richard because he

just had a big personality. He brought an artistic

flair to everything he did. He had a prodigious

knowledge of all cultural things. He blustered. But at

the bottom was this creative personality that was

driven to share."

In 2000, Mr. O'Brien suffered a debilitating stroke

that caused paralysis on his left side and put him in

a wheelchair. The end of the BamBoo came in the summer

of 2002, when the building's landlord announced he'd

rented the space to another tenant, and gave the club

90 days to vacate. There was a final farewell bash,

"Boo Hoo" on Oct. 31 that year. Mr. O'Brien wasn't all

that upset. "He thought it was a good sign to get out

of Queen Street," Ms. Habib said.

Besides, she'd been thinking of selling the place. "It

was just too much running a club at night, especially

by myself."

Months later, Mr. O'Brien became restless, and in

March, 2003, he and some partners unveiled Bambu By

The Lake, an even larger club/restaurant on Toronto's

waterfront. "I really loved the old BamBoo," he

explained in an interview, "but this really makes me

forget it quick. We took the best of the old parts of

the old BamBoo and incorporated them."

His involvement in the new venture lasted six months.

According to Ms. Habib, he lost everything, save for

his Toronto Islands house, which he'd mortgaged to the

hilt.

His final contribution to the city was an attempt to

beautify the islands' grim concrete ferry terminal. He

re-learned to use a computer well enough to Photoshop

his colour-splashed ideas into the landscape, and

called it Terminal Art.

Mr. O'Brien suffered a second massive stroke earlier

this month. His last words were, "What's the big

deal?"

RICHARD O'BRIEN

Richard Kevin O'Brien was born in Montreal on July 28,

1948, and died in Toronto on Oct. 14, 2007, of

neurological complications. He was 59. He is survived

by his mother, Catherine O'Brien, and sisters Colleen

and Marylou. He also leaves his godson, Alexander

Habib. He was predeceased by his father, Joe O'Brien

and his brother Gregory.

[Jay Funk Dawg]

Thanks for posting this Brodie!

We paid homage to Richard at the Peter Tosh Tribute two weekends ago - he touched many people in Toronto's reggae scene - without him there may have not even been a reggae scene...

p.s. I have that Bamboo cookbook!!