Stanley Snadowsky, Music Impresario
Stanley Snadowsky, a co-founder of the Bottom Line nightclub in New York’s Greenwich Village and longtime music business impresario, died on Feb. 25 in Las Vegas of diabetic complications. He was 70 and had been ill for 11 months.
Mr. Snadowsky, who had a house on Spread Oak Lane in East Hampton for many years, died holding the hands of his wife and two daughters, “Bat Out of Hell,” a favorite album by Meatloaf, playing continuously, said his family.
A lover of nature and a decorated Boy Scout, he spent many summer days walking through the woods on his properties in East Hampton and, later, upstate New York. He caught bluefish off Montauk and treated his family to many delicious meals at Gosman’s Dock, they wrote.
Stanley Errol Snadowsky was born on May 28, 1942, in Brooklyn to Jacob Snadowsky and the former Florence Drucker. He grew up in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood and graduated from Stuyvesant High School and Hunter College, both in Manhattan, in 1960 and 1964, respectively, and from Brooklyn Law School in 1967. While still in law school, he and Allan Pepper, his longtime business partner and lifelong friend, began promoting concerts at New York venues including Gerde’s Folk City, Steve Paul’s the Scene, the Village Gate, and the Electric Circus.
Mr. Snadowsky married Michelle Galpern on Aug. 5, 1968. Ms. Snadowsky, who survives, lives in Las Vegas.
In 1967, the partners successfully lobbied John Lindsey, the mayor of New York City, to declare a Jazz Day, and in the same year were responsible for the first jazz performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. Mr. Snadowsky was also the first manager and lawyer of Kiss, the theatrical rock ’n’ roll group that later found worldwide fame. In 1971, he produced “Dance of Death,” a Broadway play that starred Rip Torn and Viveca Lindfors.
In 1974, Mr. Snadowsky and Mr. Pepper took over the building at the corner of West Fourth and Mercer Streets, which had previously been occupied by a jazz club, and opened the 400-seat Bottom Line. Over the course of the venue’s 30-year run, Mr. Snadowsky and Mr. Pepper presented innumerable legendary artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Van Morrison, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, Dizzy Gillespie, Lou Reed, Prince, the Police, and Suzanne Vega. On the club’s opening night, Dr. John, Stevie Wonder, and Johnny Winter jammed in front of a capacity audience that included Mick Jagger and Carly Simon.
In the club’s later years, it hosted a popular annual concert, “Downtown Messiah,” in the weeks before Christmas. But the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack and an economic recession caused a decline in business, and New York University, which owned the building, evicted the venue as part of a significant expansion of its footprint in Greenwich Village. The club closed in 2004.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Snadowsky is survived by his daughters Leslie, of New Orleans, and Daria, of Las Vegas. He is also survived by a brother, Alvin Snadowsky, of New York City.
Mr. Snadowsky was buried on Feb. 27 following a service at Palm Mortuary-Northwest in Las Vegas, Cantor Philip Goldstein of Congregation Ner Tamid officiating. His family has established the Stanley E. Snadowsky Wound Care Memorial Fund to promote research and provide specialized doctors, nurses, and treatments for diabetes. Donations can be made at the Web site main.diabetes.org/goto/snadowsky.