City Cites Toad’s Place — For Making History

Decades after an aborted attempt by local officials to deliver an honorary certificate at Toad’s Place, New Haven’s mayor joined an alder onstage to officially express the city’s pride in the 50-year-old legendary York Street rock club.

Mayor Justin Elicker and Alder Jeanette Morrison delivered the appreciation Wednesday in the form of two official proclamations presented at the club as part of a series of events to mark the launch of its second half-century in business as one of the nation’s landmark intimate rock clubs.

“Everybody’s got their Toad’s Place memory, right?” Elicker noted as portraits of Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, U2, Cardi B, Snoop Dog, Billy Joel, David Bowie, Kanye West, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash, among other Toad’s‑performing musical legends (including 75 rock ​’n’ roll hall of famers) stared down from the surrounding walls.

Elicker described the Toad’s night he’d never forget, seeing a then-unknown band called the Gin Blossoms open for Toad the Wet Sprocket and let loose, dive into the crowd, giving an up-close thrill to fans before graduating to larger venues. Morrison recalled seeing Slick Rick and Method Man in her youth. Then they presented official city and Board of Alders (celebratory) citations to club owner Brian Phelps, who has steered the Toad’s ship for 49 of its years. (Click on the above video to watch their remarks. Click here to read a previous Independent story about the club’s history as told in a book Phelps wrote with journalist Randall Beach, and here for a club history published in Billboard.)

Another alder sought to deliver both a board citation and the key to the city at a more packed evening at Toad’s 35 years ago, on Jan. 12, 1990.

Bob Dylan played the (objectively) greatest club concert in history that night. He and the GE Smith Band spent four hours feverishly running through the new songs on the Oh Mercy! album and reimagined classics before setting off on a national tour at larger venues, mixing in surprises like a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ​“Dancing in the Dark” and still banging through ​“Like Rolling A Stone” for the 2:20 a.m. finale.

Pretty much every Baby Boomer elected official in town was in the crowd, of course. Including then-Alder Steve Mednick. Dylan was one of Mednick’s heroes. So he brought with him to the concert a copy of a Board of Alders congratulatory citation along with the key to the city. Then-Toad’s owner Mike Spoerndle agreed to shepherd Mednick to Dylan’s dressing room between sets to make the presentation.

“Dylan’s gonna think you’re a real asshole,” another elected official, former U.S. Congressman Sam Gejdenson, taunted Mednick before the allotted delivery, Mednick recalled. That got Mednick nervous, so he handed the citation and the key to a roadie instead, a decision he regrets to this day.

Other politicians in the house at Wednesday’s 50th anniversary ceremony included Gov. Ned Lamont. 

It was hardly the first time politicians have taken to the Toad’s stage, especially Baby Boomer pols: Toad’s place’s rise in the 1970s and 1980s coincided with the aboveground emergence of ​“hip capitalistic” cultural ventures (like then-nearby WPLR FM and the New Haven Advocate) that offered Boomers the hedonistic and countercultural trappings of the earlier underground era. Politicians sought to tap that Boomer cred by showing up at the mic: Democratic politicians from U.S. Rep. Bruce Morrison to Mayor John Daniels held election victory parties there. One night Republican Gov. John Rowland donned a Yale sweatshirt and Blues Brothers-ish shades to join another state party leader (harmonica player Chris DePino) in a version of ​“Mustang Sally.”

Since then a younger generation of pols have booked different venues more reflective of their bases for campaign election events: Cafe Nine, Jazzy’s, Trinity, Next Door.

Meanwhile Toad’s has swung with the times, giving younger adults first up-close tastes of rising acts from Cardi B to Waxahatchee.

In the process, Toad’s has continued to strengthen community and enrich New Haven, Jeanette Morrison told Phelps as she presented her citation.

“Rock on.”