by In 2003, The Rolling Stones decided to add a different kind of show to their run of Australian tour dates. The band had been playing stadiums around the country – two dates at the Sydney SuperDome, three at the Rod Laver Arena and two at the Brisbane Entertainment Center – but wanted to add one more intimate gig. Their booking agent only knew the place: the Enmore Theatre.
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Located in the middle of a shabby main street in Sydney’s inner west, still bearing an art deco facade from the 1930s, and with a maximum capacity of just 2,500, it was a change of pace for a band often found playing to crowds. in the thousands. As they toured the space, the Stones were amused: “They loved heritage buildings,” says Greg Khoury, a longtime employee of Century Venues, the company that handles the theater’s bookings – and booked the gig. . .
“We all know the stories of the thousands and thousands of people queuing on Insmore Road, who didn’t have tickets but wanted to hear as much as they could,” says Nick Stabback, who started as a user at the Centre. Inismore in the 2000s and is now head of booking at Century Venues.
The police had to close the Ennis Road to traffic and provide an escort for the band on their way to the gig. To be a good sport, the team opened the central doors of the venue so that people crowded outside could hear the show better. The people who lived in flats above the shops on the other side of the road were able to climb out on their wings and take a free seat to the hottest show in town. “Some people, from a particular point of view, could look through those doors and see part of the stage,” says Khoury.
The Stones are just one of many famous gigs from the Enmore Theatre. For others, it may be the place where Bob Dylan played such a hard-to-believe show in 2018. It will be remembered by some as the place where the then Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, there was newly elected, beer to wild applause at a Gang of Youths show, or the venue where Four Tet set up DJ decks in the middle of the floor and only charged punters $20 to dance. Maybe you were there the night in ’08 when Ween fans drank the venue completely clean of beer, or you had fond memories of teenagers camping out on the Inland Road for tickets to buy from the box office in the pre-internet age. You might have wandered around the back of the venue to give the Courtney Love and Melissa Auf Der Maur friendship bracelets you made after the Hole show in the 1990s.
Of course, it’s not just what happened within the walls of the Anise but the venue itself that makes it such a beloved Sydney venue.
“It has a certain gravitas,” says David James Young, a dedicated gigger who is currently in the official process of authenticating his Guinness World Record submission for most concerts attended in a single year. He has seen 365 gigs in 2023, and estimates that he has been to between 150 and 200 shows at the Enmore over the course of his adult life. “[There’s] To have dignitaries walking in that room – it really does feel like a hallowed hall because it’s largely unchanged over the last 100 years.”
It’s not the heritage that makes it a favorite venue for many Sydney music fans. Rather than being tucked away in Olympic Park or located within the sanitary confines of the CBD or Entertainment Quarter, it’s in a vibrant and accessible slice of inner Sydney. And then there’s the capacity that’s big enough to include significant actions, but not so big that it starts to feel like you’re up in the nosebleeds, which lends it the feeling that Young describes. described as “massive and personal at the same time”. (Hot tip: having seen gigs there from “everywhere possible”, he reckons being on the floor about 10-12 rows back is the best vantage point.)
Although the Enmore has been around for over 100 years, live music hasn’t always been the norm. Originally opened in 1908 as an open air cinema, closed four years later, it was later sold to Hoyts in 1935, who extensively renovated the venue and transformed it into an art deco marvel is today. It remained a theater until the 1980s – by which time it had gone from the best of Hoyts’ cinemas to a derelict conduit for foreign films – when the Eliades family in Sydney bought it in 1986 and turned it into a late-day concert space. today. By the mid-2000s, the center was starting to come into its own, but there was a lot of “blood, sweat and tears,” Khoury says, to get it there. “It was always a second choice – a grade B choice – for the drama [suburbs]. That started to backfire.”
Although the venue was already “busy” before Mick Jagger came to visit, that fateful gig in 2003 was a highlight for the Enmore. “The Rolling Stones were definitely a cornerstone event,” says Khoury. “It gave people the impression that … the theater was a vibrant, viable musical venue.”
The Rolling Stones gig started a trend of 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 down from playing to 200,000 people on their previous tour around the country. (They used the same ride to film the video for A Sky Full of Stars walking down nearby King’s Street, Newtown.) “I wasn’t asked anymore [free tickets] in my life as I was for the Coldplay show,” laughs Khira Holloway, head of event delivery at Century Venues.
Then in 2017, looking to establish himself as a rockstar, not pop star – a significant rebranding due to his One Direction past – Harry Styles was newly single in the theatre. Enthusiastic fans (and their devoted fathers) camped out for three nights beforehand to get as close to the stage as possible, BYO folding chairs, sleeping bags and portable phone chargers. Styles inspired a level of enthusiasm perhaps not matched again until 2023, when the Enmore hosted Fred Again’s first Sydney show. Eager fans tried anything and everything to get into the sold-out concert, amid the nationwide mania that followed the producer’s UK tour.
“Somebody walked up and gave our box office staff $1,000 in cash and said, ‘I’ve got to go in’ and [he] he turned away,” recalls Stabback. “It’s still working for us, as you can imagine.”
And then there are the acts that managed to snag the Enmore because they were right on the precipice of blowing up. In 2012, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar played the theater – each returning to Qudos Bank Arena on their next Australian tour. Katy Perry even had a show there in 2009. “I was taking advantage of that change,” recalls Stabback. “She did this amazing thing where she pulled out a giant inflatable cherry stick and rode it across the crowd.”
Of course, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. When Covid hit – “terrible timing,” says Stabback – the venue closed for a year. But that imperfect timing of implementation allowed Enmore to embark on long-planned reforms, reform works they originally planned to carry out “gradually, like keyhole surgery”. At first it was a rocky road after easing your locks, but then the bounce came back.
“From 2022, it’s a landslide of shows, it’s just non-stop. 2023 was probably one of our busiest years ever,” says Stabback. “It’s interesting, because we’re facing 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’ll sell your car, but you’re still going to a concert.”
And then there was the night Genesis Owusu’s gig broke the floor. Or, rather: “We are saying that it has declined. 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 very heavy rain created a puddle of water under the floor and when Owusu delivered his fierce, driven track Another Black Dog the crowd began to cut back. loose, part of the dance floor buckled.
Young was there the night of the show. “I noticed that a lot of people had dropped out and I assumed it was just … the pig’s wit,” he recalls. “It was only when they all stood up and were all shorter than they were before that I realized what had happened. The sea kind of parted beside me and I was able to look at the floor, and I saw the sink… But we were all just kind of looking at each other to be like, what just happened?”
Miraculously, no one was hurt. Perhaps even more miraculously, the venue was back open and running the following night, with a Genesis Owusu makeover gig scheduled for the following week.
“Twenty minutes after the show we had a crew of engineers and builders under that floor working on that to get that back,” says Stabback. “The program must continue.”
