Soon after Lance Sterling opened The Canyon Club in Agoura Hills he bought a limo. Not so much to show off his new stature as perhaps the only impresario in the West San Fernando Valley but because he was pretty much the only one. Visitors to his new club sometimes left after having one too many, and, with so sparse a nightlife landscape, there wasn’t a cab to be found in Agoura Hills. So Sterling offered to drive them home in the limo. Today, partygoers will find a little caravan of cabs lined up following the live shows that play every Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights acts from Wayne Newton to REO Speedwagon and Willie Nelson just as they can a number of other nightspots and eateries that have sprung up in the years since the club opened. But The Canyon Club, which Sterling owns with investors Billy Richardson, Melissa Richardson and Jeff Lapin, remains the center of nightlife in the area, largely because of Sterling’s pioneering efforts seven years ago. You might say Sterling was meant for rock and roll. He grew up in Kingston, N.Y., where his first job was on a farm not far from Max Yasgur’s Woodstock venue. He’s still got a wayward Woodstock Music Festival flyer he found when he was just a boy. He began working in hospitality while still in high school, and, in college, joined up with a chain that ran the kinds of frat-house clubs that pass for culture in college towns. A little too cocky, Sterling managed to get fired from his first post-college job after about six weeks. But he learned from his mistakes and landed at hotel operator Loews, where he immersed himself in the training offered. By the early ’90s, Sterling met up with Isaac Tigrett, who had by then co-founded and sold the Hard Rock Caf & #233; chain for $107 million, most of which he gave to charity. Fresh from a stint with a guru in a remote Indian city, Tigrett was building a chain of House of Blues clubs throughout the country, and Sterling signed on, eventually taking charge of re-building the Tabernacle in Atlanta in time for the 1996 Olympics. The Canyon Club, with about 200 shows a year, continues Sterling’s long love affair with music and the musicians who make it. Sterling pays the bands well and keeps ticket prices low, leaving the job of building profits to the food and beverage area and, mostly, a large business hosting corporate events on weekday nights. The strategy has served Sterling well enough so that he is opening a second location, in downtown Las Vegas, in coming months. Question: What made you think a rock and roll club would fly in a city like Agoura Hills? Answer: When I was at House of Blues and I booked the Doobie Brothers and it didn’t sell out, I realized the demographic I was trying to get lived in Agoura Hills. I saw there was an entire community of 40,000 or 50,000 people that were all demographically the same. And driving into Hollywood is a miserable experience. And most of the people who live out here work there and they don’t want to drive back there. And I was trying to drag these people out of their homes on a Tuesday night to drive to Hollywood and spend two hours on the road there and two hours back, and I always believed that if House of Blues was located in the Valley it would be a huge success. Q: Did you have trouble working with the city of Agoura Hills when you applied to open The Canyon Club? A: No. I think they looked at me like I was full of it. Here’s this guy saying he’s going to get Pat Benatar, REO Speedwagon and Cheap Trick. They probably figured, they’re not coming here. But I really did. Q: Did you have trouble convincing the bands to come to Agoura Hills to perform? A: When I first opened up this place there were people who showed Pat Benatar the venue and she loved it. Then I could go to the Doobie Brothers and say Pat Benatar liked it. And they all know each other. Kevin Cronin from REO Speedwagon is probably one of the greatest fans of the venue, so because the manager of Styx is friends with Kevin, Kevin talked Styx into coming. If you look at our roster and the Hollywood Bowl roster, we share a lot but I like to believe the bands love this place because it’s built by somebody who cares about music as opposed to somebody who wants to make money. There are a lot of bands that play Canyon Club that deserve and can play at bigger venues. Q: Obviously though, you have to make money to stay open. How do you do that? A: The majority of our bands, we have a rule. We don’t make money off the bands. Our job is to make money off food and drinks. The majority of my business is private events. The majority of profit comes from corporate events. We do Guitar Center and THQ’s meetings. We’ve been doing that for seven years. Q: How do you decide what bands would be successful here? A: I always like to say I want bands that we don’t deserve. We demographically go 30 to 50. Your area dictates the draw. If your fan base isn’t here you can’t do it. Linkin Park wanted to do a benefit here and we were just terrified. Hoobastank, which is a 17-year-old demographic, did a benefit here and we were surprised. There were at least 3,000 people who showed up for a concert that could only accommodate 1,300. When we have Pink Floyd or those bands, it’s all a bunch of 18 year olds (who have rediscovered 60s and 70s rock bands), and the whole family comes in. The only thing I can’t make work is R & B; and rap and hip hop is not huge here. We’re known for large concerts, so bands that track don’t do well here. When people come here, they want to see the whole band. Q: Why do you think The Canyon Club has been so successful at attracting and keeping its audience? A: When you hear a Styx song it brings you back to the times when you are sitting in the basement with your stereo blaring at 100 watts and you’re listening to your vinyl record, “The Grand Illusion.” I know every word to the J. Geils Band’s “Blow Your Face Out.” And when I do concerts now I sit on stage and I look back at the audience and I get more joy from people’s faces. They’re having the time of their lives. The Tubes are a great example. When you look out there, there are 700 males that are 45 years old all singing the words to “White Punks on Dope,” and all the women are looking at their husbands going, ‘I never heard this song in my entire life. And yet I can tell for every male exactly how old they are and that they went to college because that was a huge college band in 1981. And when you see Cheap Trick, the fans all look the same. Q: The club regularly features Boogie Knights and Spasmatics in addition to the name acts that appear. Why have two shows a night? A: They’re here because I guarantee that you’ll have entertainment every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We book them permanently. On Thursday its Spasmatics, on Friday it’s Boogie Knights and on Saturday there’s a tribute band. So if I don’t have anything, at least they will be there. And a lot of people who live in Agoura, let’s say they have friends in town and they want to show them the place. And their friend is 24, and they don’t want to see Wayne Newton, so they can come to the second show. Q: Why did you decide to open the second venue and why did you decide on Las Vegas? A: If things had gone the way they were going when we first opened we would have opened Las Vegas much sooner. But when 9/11 happened, that freaked a lot of people out. It took us two years to recover. Las Vegas is where my partners are from. And the last House of Blues I built was in Las Vegas. Everybody is partying every night. Tuesday is a slow Friday. In Las Vegas, you’re open seven days a week and the clubs don’t shut down until six or seven in the morning. So my opportunity to make money is 10 times what it is anywhere else. SNAPSHOT – Lance C. Sterling Title: Managing Partner, The Canyon Club Age: 44; Born in Kingston, N.Y. Most Admired Person: Wife, Caryn (“She puts up with all of my bizarre behavior.”) Career Turning Point: “Being fired. Do you realize I could be running a Mexican restaurant right now?” Personal: Married, five children, ages 6 to 20.
