Bruce Springsteen’s career could be said to have been launched at the Bottom Line Club after a five night ten show run in 1975, which helped break him and “Born to Run” into the big time.

From Rock to Punk to Jazz for three decades two childhood friends, club owners Alan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky, created a music venue in the Greenwich Village in New York City for small scale music performances.

Opening night February 11th 1974, became the stuff of legends and was a harbinger of the club’s long run. Performing that night was New Orleans musician Dr John, Stevie Wonder and Johnny Winter,  while in the audience was Mick Jagger and Carly Simon.

Oddly for a venue that drew some of the biggest names in music,  the Bottom Line seated just 400 and had a “postage stamp sized staged” but it was that intimacy that made the club such a fixture among music royalty,  a place where both established stars and rising artists could play in an intimate setting for record company executives, the media and the everyday fans.

The Bottom Line hosted an extremely wide variety of music and musicians. Among the thousands who performed on its stage were Eric Clapton, Carl Perkins, Linda Ronstadt, Manhattan Transfer,  Ringo Starr, the Police, Prince, Neil Young, George Benson, Peter Tosh, John Hiatt, Devo,  Spirit, Tower of Power, Taj Mahal, Procol Harum, Pat Benatar, Hall and Oates, Miles Davis, Lauro Nyro, Cheap Trick, Chuck Mangione, Leo Kottke, Barry Manilow, Dire Straits ,The Pointer Sisters, Ravi Shankar, Billy Joel, Brian Ferry, Burton Cummings, Miles Davis and Joan Baez.

Due to rent increases and back rent due, the club closed and the last Bottom Line show was on January 22nd 2004, just shy if it’s 30th Anniversary.  The building now houses NYU classrooms.

The Bottom Line has started  releasing over 1,000 live recordings at bottomline archives.com.