Kennedy Pavilion: more than athletics

It's easy to forget, in the midst of all the activity on campus and the changes to Gonzaga, that the school has offered students a place to learn, live, and grow for decades. Some things — like every student's desire to lay out in the sun at the first sign of summer — have not changed (old yearbooks, in fact, are filled with pictures of these vitamin D deficient students); on the other hand, certain aspects of Gonzaga have certainly transformed with the times.

A prime example of this fact is the Charlotte Y. Martin Centre: Initially constructed in 1965, the building was christened the "John F. Kennedy Memorial Pavilion" in response to Kennedy's assassination two years earlier.

Although Gonzaga was certainly not the only institution to dedicate property to Kennedy — it actually became quite the trend to do, in the aftershock of the assassination — the pavilion's dedication is emblematic of Gonzaga's presence in the 1960s.

The pavilion was an important feature of Gonzaga in the 1960s in another way: As regularly as it housed the basketball team, it also hosted innumerable rock 'n roll concerts. Probably the most famous of these events is the Vanilla Fudge concert in 1968, because Led Zeppelin — so new in popularity that fliers incorrectly advertised the band as "Len Zeffelin" — was the opening act (Those interested in this specific concert can visit www.gonzagabulletin.com for an article on Zeppelin).Understandably, the crowd at the Zeppelin concert was astounded and impressed, but Zeppelin was not the only burgeoning music act to take the stage at Kennedy Pavilion.

Other popular concerts included: Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Iron Butterfly, Harpers Bizarre, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Cold Blood, Chicago, and The Doobie Brothers.

Many of these "psychedelic rock" bands did not come to the Kennedy Pavilion exclusively for Gonzaga students.

According to Bob Gallagher, the owner of 4,000 Holes Record Store, bands were filing through Kennedy by the herds.

"There were so many bands, sometimes as regularly as two or three times a week," he said.

Gallagher attributes this partially to the popularity of on-campus concerts at the time (especially for younger crowds), but also because Spokane was a regular place to visit as part of the touring gambit.

"The coast, over the years, has become the place to play — just straight along the coast. It used to be Portland, Seattle and Spokane. We got everybody," Gallagher said.

Of course, the pavilion also witnessed the growth of "local" bands like Paul Revere and the Raiders, which began in Boise, Idaho, and gained the most popularity in the Northwest.

Paul Revere and the Raiders, riding on the coattails of recently-acquired renown, came to campus in 1969 with the Beach Boys.

Even into the 1970s, however, the Kennedy Pavilion remained a popular locale, and the school used it increasingly to host a variety of entertainers — everyone from TheYoungbloods to Mason Proffit, Paul Butterfield to Cheech and Chong.

John Denver, who performed in October 1972, had a backstage interview with the Bulletin where he addressed the Rolling Stone's less-than-stellar reviews of his music.

"I pay about as much attention to their reviews as anybody else's. I like to read them and the good ones I believe, the bad ones I don't believe," he said.

Yet, Denver's "no harm, no foul" approach to music critiques also allowed him to talk with the Gonzaga student freely about other popular musicians at the time.

"David Bowie does a thing now, he comes on kinda like a screaming bowl of fruit — I don't mean that as a put down at all — but he does," he said.

Ultimately, what Denver wanted from his audience was a genuine response to the music, which is something the variety of talent at Kennedy Pavilion certainly provided.

"The problem was the floor," Gallagher said. "It was because of basketball. They had tarps everywhere and they never heated it. It was a great place for shows."

The pavilion generated enough energy in the crowd to maintain excitement in even the coldest of months.

Gallagher, who took full advantage of all the bands that visited Spokane and specifically the Kennedy Pavilion, could not say exactly which one was his favorite — so many of them were so good. He clearly remembered, however, the nice college-campus location that Kennedy Pavilion provided throughout its heyday in the '60s and '70s
"Kennedy was just a great place for everybody, whether it was buying joints out in the football field before shows, or just hanging out afterwards," he said.

Since that time, the Kennedy Pavilion has been christened the Charlotte Y. Martin Centre (after a generous donation made possible renovations that doubled its size), and although it still offers the enhanced recreational facilities for which it was originally constructed, it hosts far fewer bands.

Yet, as Gallagher pointed out, "We each have our day when we became aware of music, and that era is always priceless. But there's always a lot of good music in Spokane — good local bands and places to play. You think ‘doesn't anyone good ever come here?' but then you realize in hindsight that they were good, especially because there's a lot of sentimentality there, too."

And, even if the Martin Centre is no longer a major point on a band's touring map, the history of the Kennedy Pavilion contributes to the Gonzaga campus and the music scene in Spokane. In the end, it's like John Denver said 20 years ago: "The music that we're doing is getting better and so it's still growing."