The 40,000-square-foot establishment at 33rd Avenue and Indian School Road was first opened in 1981 by Graham Brothers Entertainment, a Texas-based company that operated more than 30 similar clubs across the Southwest.
The Phoenix location of Graham Central Station was Arizona’s largest nightclub at the time and its neon-lighted interior boasted enormous dance floors, two stages, multiple bars, a mechanical bull, an arcade and other amenities.
Dance nights and concerts occurred at Graham Central Station on the regular. While country music was largely the focus (including concerts by such names as Reba McEntire, George Jones and Ray Price), rock and New Wave artists like Adam Ant, Modern English and Oingo Boingo also gigs at the GCS. Comedy acts like Pee-wee Herman and “Weird” Al Yankovich also performed there in the early ‘80s.
“They brought in two different crowds: country music fans and rockers,” says former Scottsdale resident and onetime Graham Central Station patron Randy Krautter. “It was a special kind of place.”
Here’s a look back at memories and photos of Graham Central Station from the Valley residents who both performed at and patronized the spot back in the day.
‘Just a massive space’
Phoenix’s version of Graham Central Station opened in May 1981. It was the brainchild of Texas-based nightclub magnates Gary, Herb and Phillip Graham.Russ Knight, former DJ at Graham Central Station: I was working at the Graham’s club in Albuquerque when they were building their biggest club here in Phoenix and it came down between me and another DJ and they picked me. So I moved here on April 15, 1981, and they held the grand opening of Graham Central Station in May. They put me in charge of two things during the construction: buying records and hanging speakers.
Randy Krautter, former Graham Central Station patron: It was huge. Their whole marketing campaign, as I recall, was a five-second radio commercial: "Neon nights does country," and that's all they say. I was going to Arizona State University at the time and I remember there was this buzz on campus about what it meant. “What are neon nights?” Nobody got it but everybody was talking about it. Knight: It was built as the largest honky-tonk in Arizona, but they were running really last minute with getting it ready and were rolling the carpet out in the corner of the main bar when people were walking in. It definitely went down to the wire. When you entered, there was a long foyer into what was called the Orange Bar at the time. One side was live rock 'n' roll and the capacity was about 500 people, I believe, and the big side, which supposedly held 3,000 people, was for county and I spun records on three turntables. It was pretty kick-ass and a lot of fun. Great gig.
Lucy LaMode, lead singer of Killer Pussy: Oh my god, Graham Central Station. What a huge monstrosity of a club that was. I think that place was really popular after that cowboy movie with John Travolta, because that was a really big deal back then. Krautter: A buddy of mine went on opening night but I didn't go until later. We walked in and I was like, "This place is huge." And he said, "Randy, this is just the kitchen. Wait till you see the dance floor." And I was just in awe. It was this crazy huge dance floor in the middle of this grocery store-sized space with four bars around it. To give you idea of how big the dance floor was, twice a year they would have volleyball parties. They'd take that dance floor and have two complete volleyball courts with a dance floor in the middle. Just a massive space. They'd have 3,500 people each night on weekends and you'd just end up walking in a big circle around the place all night long. And if you were looking for somebody, it was impossible to find them unless you turned around and walk against traffic and hope to run into them.
LaMode: It was a cowboy bar and I went there to see what it was like but it wasn't a place I really wanted to hang out unless there were some really good shows going on there because we were punk rockers, we weren't cowgirls. I did see that movie but it did make me want to be a cowgirl.
A little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll
Krautter: They'd have 32-ounce pitchers of beer and quarter drafts on some nights and dollar pitchers of beer. They had different themes every night, like New Wave Wednesdays, Soft Rock Mondays and country music on the other nights. "Urban Cowboy" had been out for a bit so everyone was into country at the time. And they'd have concerts there from time to time. We saw Rick Springfield there once. So they'd have rock 'n' roll as well. It was this great mix, but primarily it was a country bar with a mechanical bull. There was neon everywhere. It was just so cool.
The KNIX staff during an event at Graham Central Station in 1982 promoting the Dolly Parton film "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."
Jim West
LaMode: And I remember in the '80s they would have other shows there, like I think The B-52's played there and all these other touring acts that weren't big yet came through there. I remember you could go there and they'd take your picture and you could make a button. I still have the button.
Musil: My memory of the place was that it was predominantly country shows and predominantly current artists. They started putting in some rock shows and some older acts started showing up. It always seemed like they had a culture clash in there because if you were going to a rock show there, the general public that was usually there for line-dancing or country. When I saw Badfinger there, we were crammed up near the stage and the rest of the place was full of people in their cowboy boots and Stetsons. If I remember it correctly, they played right before the wet T-shirt contest.
Danny Zelisko, concert promoter and former owner of Evening Star Presents: I liked doing shows at Graham Central Station even if I didn't do a lot of them there. I know I had the Neville Brothers, which was fabulous. And it was very odd for the Neville Brothers to be playing there back then because it was such a cowboy place. I know I did a show with Jerry Riopelle and Leon Russell, which as I recall, did OK.
Musil: Jerry Lee Lewis played there in 1983 and my memory of the show was he was in a really foul mood that night. He didn't get through too many songs, so he started a lot of them but didn't finish too many of them. He'd get a few bars into it and say something was wrong or somebody was playing the wrong note or something about three-quarters into a song, so he'd cut them off.
At one point, I remember him going, "That's a draggy-ass song. I don't want to play that. Let's play something else." So it was a "let's do something else" kind of show and the crowd was dwindling away to the point that when it got time to wrap up there was less than 50 of us left and I'd moved up to the front row. It was a fabulous thing to see if you were a fan of Jerry Lee and knew you had a 50/50 chance of it being spectacular or being a nightmare. That was definitely the nightmare show.
Pee-wee and Weird Al
Graham Central Station also hosted performances that were on the comedic side, including a 1983 stand-up show by the late Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman in November 1983 and a gig by "Weird" Al Yankovic and his backing band in June 1984. Musil: Graham Central Station, for some weird reason, booked Pee-wee Herman. That was an amazing show in a way. It was everything that you'd want to see at a Pee-wee show. That was when he was doing standup before his big TV series. He'd done an HBO special or something like that. So this was him being Pee-wee, playing with big underpants, passing out candy to the audience and giving us all secret names. Silly stuff.
Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, Valley native and drummer for "Weird" Al Yankovic: It was my first time playing (at Graham Central Station) or in Phoenix since moving from the west side to L.A. as a kid in the late '60s. It wasn't too far from my old neighborhood, so kind of a homecoming gig for me. I recall Al telling the audience that I was from Phoenix, which he also did at subsequent shows over the years. Don Fann of Fann Toyota was a family friend and my guest that night and probably drew as much attention as Al.
West: I also remember comedian Gallagher performing where he was smashing the watermelons on stage. The first five rows had plastic sheets to cover them for the ensuing fun of getting hit by watermelon debris. The Graham Central Station that was at 33rd Avenue and Indian School before they moved to the East Valley was a fun place.
Legendary local radio personality Dave Pratt, the morning host on KUPD in the '80s and '90s, regularly performed at Graham Central Station with his rock band, The Sex Machines, over the years.
Dave Pratt, former on-air personality for KUPD: Graham’s was an outlier club due to its sheer size and capacity. If the club was taking the bar and our band was taking the door, we could sell somewhere around 4,000 tickets. You can do the math. I recall one weekend we sold out the first show and then sold a second show. It was insane.
Our band shows were out of control. I once entered on a donkey from the back of the club that took me to the stage. Another time cartoonist Bob Boze Bell from the Phoenix New Times shaved my head and my long hair on stage with sheep shears! One night we found a chainsaw in the dressing area, so I took it on stage and to close the show I sawed everything around me into pieces. At another show, I rammed my head through Cheap Trick’s bass drum and ended up getting stitches at the hospital, for my second time. You would think after the first round of stitches, I would have learned my lesson from doing this little stunt on stage. Pratt: One of my favorite memories at Graham’s was crowd surfing. During our song “Arizona Rocks,” I would walk along the huge bars that went throughout the club. The spotlight would follow me, and then I would dive into the crowds. The goal was to deliver me back up on stage by the time the song ended. By the time the rowdy crowd was done, I usually lost my shirt, pants, socks and shoes.
After my band released the song “Whipped Cream,” we would perform the song at Graham’s and spray nearly a hundred of cans of Whipped Cream on the crowd. The fans would yell “Squirt Me Baby” and we did. The result looked like a giant snowstorm, and yes, we wrecked plenty of instruments, amps, mixer boards and sound systems. In fact, I purposely would set aside a budget every show just to pay for the damage. I literally didn’t give a shit, nor did the audience which made it wild. Sure, there were better bands but who cares? No band will ever match the energy and pure off-the-wall randomness at Graham Central Station.
Former KNIX on-air personality Jim West (left) backstage at Graham Central Station with country singer and station owner Buck Owens.
Jim West
West: When I was at KMLE Country we did a ton of concert nights where they would bring in major country acts such as Aaron Tippin and George Jones and others. I can recall when George Jones was scheduled to play in the early '90s where he was drunk on stage that night. Sang maybe three songs then stormed off the stage. The crowd was livid and demanded their money back which they received. He never did return to finish the show. This was in the era when Jones was known all over America as "No Show Jones." He was notorious for bowing out on shows. Concert promoters were always suing him.
Cash's comeback
The original Graham Central Station in Phoenix continued hosting concerts in the early to mid-'90s, ranging from alt-rock acts like Gin Blossoms and Weezer to the legendary Johnny Cash, who was on the cusp of a career resurgence.Zelisko: My favorite show I ever did there was Johnny Cash, which was around the time he did ("American Recordings"), his first comeback record with Rick Rubin. He was wearing a giant coat and it said "CASH" on the bottom. That was one of the greatest nights ever for me as a promoter and a human, because that was the only show I ever booked with Johnny. The sad thing was, here we are in the leading country bar in Phoenix and we could only get 400 people and change to see that show. I was so embarrassed. He was fabulous, he was one of the nicest people I've ever met. And his wife went to a friend's house in Mesa and made a cake for everyone backstage, which was very sweet of her.
Musil: It was after his first "American Recordings" album came out and it was interesting because I'd seen him fairly recently before that in Sun City where he'd done a predominately greatest hits plus patriotic and gospel show for the older folks. And then within months, he was at Graham's doing everything from that first "American Recordings" plus his hits. That was a unique time to see him, when he was doing a different deal than he had normally been doing.
LaMode: It was very intimate show, actually. And June Carter was there and at some point, Johnny introduced John Carter Cash and he came out and played a bunch of songs. It was heartwarming. Johnny just sat in this chair on the stage and watched his son perform all these songs. Obviously, he was very proud of his son.
An undated photo of Graham Central Station's original location at the Woolco Shopping Center in Phoenix.
Dann Frank
Knight: The (Graham Brothers) built a place called Rockin' Rodeo out at Elliot and Priest in Tempe and eventually changed that to Graham Central Station. It was a great place, but it wasn't as big as the original.
Krautter: Once upon a time, the original Graham Central Station was the biggest thing to do in town. It was just a crazy place and there will probably never be anywhere like it ever again.
