030 INTERVIEW John with instrumental friend and business partner, Isaac Tigrett.
John with Steve Tyler, whom he opened a club with in Boston and Dan Aykroyd, currently his partner at Avalon, Hollywood.
We’ve all heard that well-worn cliche about success being one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. For John Lyons, it’s an axiom that has always held true, though the percentages might be closer to a 50-50 split. Gifted with both an unstoppable work ethic and a passion for innovation, John has forged an infl uential path that has spanned the worlds of audio, video, lighting, design, and pretty much every other aspect of the entertainment experience. These days, John serves as founder and President of John Lyons Systems, which through its two divisions - Avalon Sound and Moon Lighting - have been the creative force behind the design of dozens of the world’s top nightclubs and entertainment venues. He’s also still heavily involved in several of his own venues, including the Avalon and Bardot clubs in Los Angeles. These clubs, as well as dozens more on several continents, are home to the signature Avalon sound systems he created in partnership with Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW). John’s embrace of hard work began with his fi rst job as a bar back aged 14 in Los Angeles. “After returning to upstate New York at age 16, I got a job working for a nightclub in Buffalo called Uncle Sam’s,” said John. “At that time, nightclub managers lived very complicated lives. It was not unusual for them to not show up, or show up drunk, or have their hand in the till. I didn’t drink, I showed up on time and worked hard, and it wasn’t long before I went from trainee assistant manger to having the keys to the place.” The inspiration aspect began to kick in early on as well, as John quickly learned the importance of creating an entertainment experience. “The club had a DJ with two turntables and a broadcast mixer, like you would fi nd in a radio studio, and they played rock and pop music of the day. The problem was, the sound reinforcement technology didn’t really have the fi delity to support it. There was no real sub bass as we know it now, and you couldn’t really dance to it. But they had a drummer who would sit on stage next to the DJ, and he would wear headphones and play along to the song. The DJ and the drummer made up the band, and it really pumped up the crowd. We’d have 1,500 to 2,000 people in there on a Saturday night.” The club was also John’s fi rst exposure to technology. “The speakers that existed at that time were PA based speakers. They were mainly for vocal reinforcement, meant to be placed on the right and left of a stage. Most of the sound really came from the band’s amplifi ers. But we took four Altec Voice of the Theater boxes - awesome at the time, but comical by today’s standards - and installed them at the four corners of the dance fl oor. It was so unexpected and unusual for the time, the idea of having loudspeakers pointed at the dance fl oor instead of standing in front of a stage.” Visuals were another aspect of the experience. “We had a light show, and projected video of the crowd on to the walls, all stuff no one was doing back then. And we had bubble machines, and makeshift pyrotechnics that, in retrospect, were pretty idiotic. But I could see the effect it had on the crowd.” John’s fi rst wake-up call came while managing Uncle Sam’s one packed Saturday night. “The place was jumping, we had around 1,500 or 1,600 people there, and all of a sudden the sound system shut off,” he said. “Nobody knew what to do, and they were all looking to me. I had no idea how the sound system worked, and we had to send everybody home and close the club. That was such a tense,
www.mondodr.com
“A lot of these MIT grad students
became customers of the club. We began taking new technology they
were developing and incorporating it into the entertainment and the décor, they enjoyed seeing the reactions of the customers.”
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