Overview: Told by co-founder Allan Pepper and award-winning music journalist Billy Altman, as well as scores of on and offstage participants whose exploits helped create its lasting legacy, Positively Fourth and Mercer: The Inside Story of New York’s Iconic Music Club, The Bottom Line is certain to appeal to anyone interested in music, show business and the inner and outer workings of a legendary club that defined its time in the firmament of New York City nightlife.

Verdict: In 1974, when young music promoters Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky opened their night club the Bottom Line in an industrial area of Greenwich Village that was all but deserted after 6pm, no one could have foreseen either its long-term success or its impact on the musical and cultural landscape of New York City.

Over the next thirty years, while trends and tastes came and went, the Bottom Line throughout its fabled history remained true to its co-founders’ profoundly simple vision: that if you presented entertainers in an intimate setting where the focus would always be on what transpired onstage, both artists and audiences would treasure the experience.

That vision would ultimately translate to, literally, thousands of magical evenings and events featuring both icons and up-and-comers from across the music universe. As the performers, patrons and staffers who passed through its doors all agree, the Bottom Line realized its founder’s vision as no New York music club, before or after, ever would.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me tell you that Positively Fourth and Mercer: The Inside Story of New York’s Iconic Music Club, The Bottom Line is quite easily one of the best music scene books I have had the pleasure to engross myself within for the past five plus years or more.

Running at a lush 280 pages and containing 10 black and white photos together with 30 color photos, all encased within the tidy confines of a beautifully crafted hardback cover, and coming complete with an all-encompassing Introduction by Melanie Mintz, what we have here is a most wondrous, dutifully captivating recounting of what both Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky created, but moreover what it subsequently became to the thousands upon thousands of people that either played there or packed inside to watch.

I think we all knew going in that New York’s The Bottom Line was an iconic, intimate Greenwich Village music club (primarily between 1974 and 2004), but did you also know that it helped launch careers of worldwide musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, and hosted legends like Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, and The Ramones, amongst a plethora of others. [oh, and having recently removed himself from Genesis, Peter Gabriel introduced himself as a solo artist in 1978 with a Bottom Line appearance].

Known for its focus on pure music, a simple menu, and an ever-growing industry buzz, it actually only closed due to lease issues with the landlord New York University (NYU). Which is a darn shame, but after having been a fixture within the NY music scene for nearly 30 years, this book helps provide context to why its legacy still lives on today.

An intimate, 400-seat cabaret-style venue designed for serious music listening, with no food/drink minimums, just an admission fee, the guys prioritized music quality, creating a space for both icons and unknowns, fostering a unique scene, and luckily for all lovers of music, its history is preserved in live recordings (Bottom Line Archive series).

Perhaps most memorable among the Bottom Line’s plentiful legendary moments was the aforementioned Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s five-night stand in August 1975. Springsteen had played the club three nights in 1974, but his career as superstar was launched a year later, which the string of sold-out, press-garnering concerts. “Not since Elton John’s Troubadour appearances has an artist leapt so visibly and rapidly from cult fanaticism to mass acceptance as at Bruce Springsteen’s Bottom Line shows,” David Marsh wrote for Rolling Stone at the time.

The story of the Bottom Line is the tale of childhood friends who turned their shared dream into a reality – and, through determination, hard work, and, most of all, a belief in each other, made entertainment history, and memories, to last a lifetime.

Simply put, Positively Fourth and Mercer is about a time and place. It is a love story about friendship, romance, and following a dream.

About the Authors - Allan Pepper’s career as a music entrepreneur began in his early 20s when, in 1965, he and childhood friend Stanley Snadowsky founded a non-profit devoted to expanding awareness of jazz’s contributions to American culture. Thus began a partnership that by 1974 found the two young promoters realizing a lifelong dream by opening their own nightclub, The Bottom Line.

Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, their 400 seat cabaret would forever change the face of live music in New York City. Over its thirty year existence, more than three million music fans witnessed often career-defining performances by an unparalleled roster of iconic and up-and-coming artists from all points of the musical compass.

Along the way, Pepper and Snadowsky also produced such original shows as Leader of the Pack, which would go on to Broadway and help pioneer the “jukebox musical,” as well as the nationally touring songwriter’s series, In Their Own Words. While they took an amazing journey together, even more impressively the two remained best friends until Snadowsky’s death in 2013. Allan Pepper lives in Englewood, New Jersey.

Billy Altman is a Grammy-nominated journalist, critic, and historian whose work covering the worlds of music, popular culture and sports has appeared over the years in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Spin, Esquire, GQ, People, Entertainment Weekly and The Village Voice.

A former senior editor of Creem magazine, he was a founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and a consultant to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, and most recently he served as chief scriptwriter for both the National Blues Museum in St. Louis and the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville.

A recipient of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, he is a longstanding faculty member of the Humanities Department at New York City’s School of Visual Arts, where he teaches courses in rock, jazz and folk music as well as non-fiction writing. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley region of Westchester County, New York.

Peter Cunningham is an acclaimed photographer who documented countless performances at The Bottom Line and beyond.

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