Death of a Palace 2
Since posting photos of the sad state of the Michigan palace, I received these shotsof the building in its prime from Robert Matheu.
The main photo is David Bowie at the Palace in October 1974, halfway through the tour which started out as an extravaganza based on Diamond Dogs, and ended up with his reinvention as a soulster. Bowie was apparently losing his grip on reality just a few months after Iggy, who’d played his last show with the Stooges at the Palace that February, had finally lost his grip and checked himself into LA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute.
The lower photo was taken by Lester Bangs, who apparently fancied himself as a photographer and captured Robert Matheu (centre), with friends Lenny Gupta (right) and Mark McHenry. “I wasn’t there with [Lester]”, says Robert, “but I would hound him at shows trying to get photos published in Creem, he took my camera and wanted to take photos himself, wanted to run off with it.
“The staircase we are sitting on was the one at the far end of your photo with the two red cars - that was the main entrance lobby. Even though I noticed it in 8 Mile, it’s still hard to look at those photos - especially when I got to the Hammersmith Apollo, which is much the same era.”
Friday, 1 August 2008
David Bowie at Detroit’s famed Michigan Palace - a once lavish 1920s movie palace which is now a multistorey parking lot. Click the main picture for more photos of the Palace as it is today, plus the Grande ballroom; click the lower photo for photographer Robert Matheu’s site.
