have quietly vanished from the face of the earth. 

Why, it's almost as if they never existed.... 

but the stories about them live on.

In 1966, Nightbeat, an entertainment magazine,

promoted several Freak Out shows at the club.

Lenny Kaye (rock & roll wordsmith & guitarist for the Patti Smith Band) wrote in his essay New York In The Sixties: "...the real home of the Long Island sound, as it came to be known, was a large club outside the city in Island Park called the Action House, where groups like the Vagrants (featuring Leslie West), the Rich Kids, the Hassles (with a young Billy Joe behind the Hammond) and the Vanilla Fudge indulged in all manner of baroque showmanship, complete with drummers twirling sticks, heavily-vibrato voices, ornamental starts and melodramatic stops."

From the Every Picture Tells A Story website: "Pictured clockwise from top left, Leslie Weinstein (guitar), Larry Weinstein (bass), Jerry Storch (Hammond organ), Peter Sabatino (vocals), and Roger Mansour (drums). Of course, Leslie Weinstein would go on to become Leslie West and perform in Mountain and West, Bruce and Laing, but in the mid-sixties The Vagrants and The Rascals were tearing up the New York-Long Island rock club scene with soulful, electric, and wild performances."

From The Long Island Press: "The mob-connected Action House was paying The Vagrants an exorbitant $1,500-a-night fee for a grueling 28-day-a-month schedule. This led the garage rockers to get creative with their performances. They incorporated pyrotechnics into their act, having fireworks explode as one of their songs reached its peak. One night after a performance, however, a leftover explosive wound up torching the stage along with all of the band’s instruments. This somehow did not throw them off schedule; the booking agency had them equipped with new instruments and ready to play the very next day."

Besides the pool of readily available local musical talent, the Action House also promoted shows featuring some of the era's biggest rock & roll acts. Concerts featuring bands like The Who, Mitch Ryder & The Detoit Wheels, Cream, Procol Harum, Moby Grape, Sly & The Family Stone and The Yardbirds garnered widespread attention for the club.

One event that has been well documented took place on June 16 and 17, 1967 when the Doors, who had been working at Steve Paul's The Scene club for an extended period, played a gig at The Action House when Steve Paul closed his club for three days in order to attend the Monterey Pop Festival in California. According to several sources, before the first show, Jim Morrison had the bartender line up no less than 15 shots of Jack Daniels whiskey across the bar and then proceeded to down the shots one after another before taking the stage. Mid-set, Morrison stops the show and demands that the bartender set up 15 more shots of whiskey. Soon enough, the Lizard King is well out of it and at one point of the show, begins to shed his clothing. The band hastily ends the show. The next night brings forth the shortest Doors concert ever as an extremely hung over Morrison lurches around the stage, jamming the microphone inside of his mouth and emitting long moaning and groaning sounds for an extended period of time before the remaining band members, taking pity on the audience, grab Jim's arms and drag him off the stage.

Blue Cheer Action House Ad May 1968

Rich Arfin, in Beaches Bars & B-3's, an excellent history of the Long Island rock & roll scene, sets the mood: "Throughout the 60's, the party would hang a left up Long Beach Boulevard to The Action House, so aptly dubbed. Mike Ricciardella, drummer for The Illusion, described it, "The Action House was a wild place back then. The bouncers were nuts and very wild... the parking lot was the place where the crowd hung out and got high. Inside was rock n' roll, outside was Fantasyland."

The Action House was owned by Phil Basile, who was described in a New York magazine article as "the all-time classic Island club owner." During this era, many bands and clubs were "handled" by folks who had (ahem) mob "affiliations" and it appears such was the case with Basile. After The Action House had run its course, Basile went on to open such Long Island music emporiums as Rockpile, Speaks, Channel 80 and Industry. He was also reputedly involved with managing some of the artists who appeared at The Action House, such as Vanilla Fudge and the Soul Survivors.

While searching around the web for details about Basile, I came across a page on a forum site called Topix which featured a former concert promoter speaking about his experiences with Phil Basile: "Phil owned the club. He was affiliated with some people from Brooklyn, Queens and LI who put together a consortium to buy the club. It was originally called the Shell House. It was a big catering hall. They converted it into a rock club and started having rock bands. Phil managed Vanilla Fudge and from there, he got contacts with other bands. He got a few dates with Cream and made about $20,000 in one weekend so he realized that besides managing, he should go into promotions. He trusted me since I was running all the bars and we formed Concerts East, which promoted all of the East Coast shows of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin."

Basile's backround gets even more interesting. An article on the Wikibin site reveals the following: "Phillip... was a Lucchese crime family controlled rock and roll music promoter... who was an associate of the Lucchese crime family figures Paul Vario and Henry Hill.  The brother of Senator Alphonse D'Amato was partners with Basile and Paul Vario. When Basile was arrested for getting Henry Hill a no-show job at his disco, Alphonse testified on Phillip's behalf. His wife donated enormous contributions to D'Amato during election year." Sounds like an episode right out of The Sopranos, don't it? Yes indeed, one of the least discussed topics in most rock & roll history books and documentaries is exactly how much involvement organized crime has had in the workings of the popular music business throughout the sixties and seventies.  One of the few rock memoirs I've read that touches on this subject in detail is Tommy James' excellent biography, Me, The Mob & The Music. 

Keith Relf & Jimmy Page of the Yardbirds @ The Action House circa 1968

The Illusion @ The Action House circa 1971

In 1970, The Action House changed its name to The Rock Pile

but this club seems to have lasted only for a short period of time. 

Basile quickly changed the Rock Pile’s name to Speaks which met with much more success than the Rockpile venue .  Midway into the 1980's, Basile, who attempted to stay current with the youth culture in Long Island, began to lose his ability to connect with the new trends in popular music as he opened two more venues Channel 80 and Industry.

Zebra @ Speaks

The Action House marked the beginning of a vibrant music scene here in these parts but by the mid-80's, due to the advent of dance clubs featuring DJ's, many venues had closed down, thus bringing an end to what is now considered to be the golden age of live rock venues in Long Island. 

A recent visitor to this blog provided new information as to the current situation of the site of the Action House: “…the former Action House building was torn down well over ten years ago. A developer owns the property and had it re-zoned residential for a small condo development. Plans were filed with the Town, but so far nothing has happened. The former parking lot across the street is now a self-storage facility.”

Legend has it that on certain summer nights... 

with the wind coming off the ocean in a particular direction... 

you can hear the strains of a Hammond B-3 organ 

softly whistling in the darkness

This post is dedicated with much love to my buddy Les

who used to tend bar at The Action House back in the day

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

18 Times Rock History Was Made on Long Island

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