Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (4 page)

W.A.S.P.’s road manager in the spring of 2000 was Dan Biechele, who
would later manage Great White’s 2003 tour. In addition to handling all business with each venue, Biechele set up and operated pyrotechnics for W.A.S.P.’s show, the highlight of which was an electrically triggered sparkler known as a “gerb,” attached to Lawless’s codpiece. At the show’s climax, Biechele flipped a switch, causing Lawless’s crotch to erupt, showering pyrotechnic sparks over The Station’s stage and front-row patrons.

If it had not dawned on the Derderians earlier, they had to realize at that seminal moment that they were not purchasing a cultural mecca.

The Derderian brothers bore such physical similarity to each other that some patrons of The Station claimed not to be able to tell them apart. Both were short, with hair and clothes running more to L. L. Bean than Harley-Davidson, the preferred logo of their club’s clientele. Less similar, however, were their respective balance sheets. According to their accountant’s statements at the time of the Derderians’ club purchase, Jeff Derderian had a net worth of only $199,000, while his older brother, Mike, was doing much better at $1.39 million. Together, they agreed to pay Howard Julian $130,000 for his club ($60,000 in a note held by Julian) and signed an “as-is” lease with Raymond Villanova’s realty company to rent the Station building for $3,500 a month.

Jeff ’s day job was reporting for
WHDH
, a Boston
TV
station. Having cut his journalistic teeth as news director for Rhode Island College’s radio station in the 1980s, the younger Derderian advanced to working on-camera for
WLNE
Channel 6 in Providence, where he appeared on “You Paid for It,” a recurring feature dedicated to uncovering wasteful public spending. Jeff ’s regular appearances on
WLNE
made him “world famous in Rhode Island,” as they say. He later moved to
WHDH
in Boston, where, as is common in the industry, he simply read on-air stories written for him by the station’s producers.

One of Jeff Derderian’s stories for
WHDH
was a piece entitled “In Case of Emergency.” It opened with the reporter lying on a bed in a “smoke-filled room,” and featured him crawling along the floor to safety as he instructed viewers how to escape a building fire: “You won’t be able to breathe; you won’t be able to see; you may go unconscious. That’s why firefighters say it’s so important to go down low, where the air is.” Later in the segment, Derderian donned full firefighter’s gear with breathing apparatus and stood, eerily backlit like an astronaut, in the midst of a room fire at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy. He closed out his dramatic narration with a punchy admonition about smoke detectors: “They’re cheap. Buy them. Install them.
They work. We’re live in North Quincy tonight. I’m Jeff Derderian, 7 News Night Team.”

Older brother Mike was more of a highflier. He had sold insurance and then investments. Mike even owned and leased out a Cessna 172 airplane. The outward picture of success, Michael Derderian owned a twenty-six-foot powerboat, homes in Saunderstown and Narragansett, Rhode Island (both a far cry from West Warwick), and drove a
BMW
. One birthday, he gave his wife a Mercedes. He and his brother were far less generous, however, in their business dealings.

The heartbeat of a rock club is its sound system. When Howard Julian ran the club, its sound system was part-owned, and sometimes operated, by Dan Gauvin, who had previously run sound for Julian’s band. Gauvin charged Julian a rental fee for the system, and a “mixing fee” for the vital function of running the sound board. When the Derderians took over, they immediately clashed with Gauvin. The dispute resulted in Gauvin’s removing his equipment from The Station and never again working as its sound man. His departure was punctuated by a caustic note written to the Derderians on the back of a final invoice. It was a measure of the brothers’ hubris that they framed the diatribe for their office wall. Amazingly, it survived the fire completely unscathed. Uncovered from The Station’s ashes, it read:

Dear Mike,

I wish you all the luck with the club. When we had our meeting you said to me, “We want the same deal as Howard.[”] I said I couldn’t do that and you said, “When can you have the system out?[”] That’s when you pissed me off. Then you shorted me $55. . . . As you said, you know very little about this biz — I agree. It shows. Good luck. As you said, you know very little about this biz . . .

Dan

After the falling-out with Gauvin, the Derderians bought some sound equipment and hired Paul Vanner to operate the sound board. Vanner worked several nights each week. But the brothers paid him weekly by check for only one night’s work; the rest was in cash. As to why
any
of it was paid by check, they told Vanner, with no apparent irony, “If anything happens to you, you’ll be covered by workers’ compensation.”

The Derderians were tightfisted with all their employees. John Arpin, a bouncer, recalls being paid $50 in cash “only if there were at least seventy people in the club.” If there were fewer, he got a bar tab of up to $27, “but no cash.” This was for duties that sometimes included cooking in the club’s meager kitchen — a comforting thought for diners.

Arpin also worked for the Derderians at a nearby gas station, which they had recently purchased. His co-worker, Troy Costa, worked for the gas station’s prior owner, but lasted just two weeks after the brothers took over. Costa “didn’t like that they paid him cash under the table.” He asked, “How about
TDI
?” — referring to state-mandated temporary disability insurance. “What if I get hurt?”

Michael Derderian replied, “You’ll be all right.”

After the brothers shorted his pay two weeks running, Costa quit.

The Derderians knew that, while they had to negotiate with national acts to appear at The Station, local bands could be used — and abused — on the cheap. Musicians’ recollections of their gigs at The Station strike a consistent chord.

Thomas Walason, of the bands Rock Show and Catch-22, played at The Station “nine or ten times.” (Walason’s girlfriend, Kathleen Sullivan, would escape the ill-fated Great White concert in 2003 with serious burns.) As he later told the police, “Jeff usually shorted us.”

Geoffrey Read, a volunteer firefighter who would help fight the Station fire, managed a local band called What Matters. The last time Read’s band played at The Station, Jeff Derderian refused to pay him half the agreed price, claiming it was “a slow night.”

Justin Pomfret, who escaped from the fire with his wife, played with another local band, the Hype. He was shorted $100 “by one of the brothers” when his band played The Station.

Paul Dean, a carpet installer by day and musician by night, echoed the refrain that “Jeff Derderian shorted me $100 on our agreed-upon price.”

Even if a musician had other business relations with the club, he was equally likely to get stiffed by the Derderians. Richard Antonelli, who designed the club’s website, thestationrocks.com, appeared several times at The Station with his band, Sky High. They played the night of September 28, 2002, for their usual $200, which just about covered expenses. When Antonelli saw Mike Derderian in his office for payment at the end of the night, the club owner asked, “What are we gonna do about tonight?”

Antonelli was perplexed.

Derderian spelled it out: “About the money.”

“I guess the usual two hundred,” shrugged Antonelli.

“Two hundred? You want me to pay you two hundred dollars for 100 people in here?” sputtered Derderian.

“Yeah, that’s the agreement we had,” said Antonelli.

Derderian continued, “We don’t pay bands $200 to bring in 100 people.”

Dumbfounded, Antonelli said, “I don’t know what to tell you. That was our agreement.”

Then Derderian put it to him. “All right. Are you sure you want to do this? If you take this money, that’s it. You guys are done here. No more shows. Nothing.”

Antonelli took the $200, then went outside to talk to his band. After a short conversation, his drummer walked back inside, handed Derderian back the $200, and told him Sky High would not appear there again.

The Derderians’ business reputation became known to booking agents, as well. According to Richard Carr, who booked bands at The Station with prior owners Skip Shogren and Howard Julian, the brothers initially said they’d “honor the same deal Howard gave him,” then reneged. “Word quickly spread that the Derderians’ word meant nothing,” he said.

In the fall of 2002, Jeff Derderian hired nineteen-year-old Anthony Baldino to paint a rock-themed mural across the club’s façade. (Typical of Rhode Island’s interconnectedness, Anthony’s father’s girlfriend was the sister of Jeff Derderian’s wife.) At an agreed rate of $10 per hour, Baldino spent seventy-two hours painting likenesses of Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Steven Tyler, Jimi Hendrix, and Ozzy Osbourne on the club’s street-side wall. When it came time to pay for the work, Jeff Derderian gave Baldino only $600, claiming he wasn’t satisfied with it. However, Derderian dangled “the possibility of more mural work inside the club.” Baldino, incredulous, declined.

Not that the Derderians didn’t give aesthetics a high priority at The Station. Lewis Cook had the unenviable task of cleaning the club after each show. He recounts having to clear the floor of cups, bottles, and other detritus
with a snow shovel
before more conventional cleaning means could be employed. When the cheaply constructed men’s room door got punched through enough times (eventually creating a hole large enough to step through), the Derderians simply left it off.

If the brothers were to succeed as rock impresarios, they would have to book national acts. Negotiating with “name” bands involved a set of skills entirely different from simply stiffing the locals. Touring bands were booked months in advance, and their contracts commonly called for a minimum fee, paid half in advance, with the balance paid on the day of the band’s appearance; this, plus a percentage of the “gate.” Accordingly, the club’s capacity would be an important factor in attracting acts.

Howard Julian routinely told bands that The Station’s capacity was more than its then-permitted 317 in order to get them to sign contracts. He probably figured they’d discover the deception once they saw the club, so prior to the March 2000 W.A.S.P. concert, Julian faxed Jay Frey, W.A.S.P.’s booking agent, with the terse message, “
CAPACITY DOWNGRADED TO 350
. New Fire Marshal (Asshole Maximus!)” Of course, there had been no downgrade. And no new fire marshal.

The Derderians caught on to the capacity game quickly. Even though the club’s legal occupancy under their ownership could not exceed 404 (with all tables removed), the 2003 Talent Buyers’ Directory, a music industry guidebook used by agents to book acts, listed The Station’s capacity as 550. The guide, which relies upon owners for their clubs’ capacity information, listed Michael Derderian as the “owner and booking contact.”

The brothers’ contracts with national acts similarly overstated the potential gate. Great White’s contract for an April 2000 appearance at The Station represented a capacity of 500; Warrant’s, for later that month, the same. A contract for Poundhound in May 2001 stated that 550 patrons could fill the club; the agreement for Anthrax to appear that October also read 550. Eddie Money and the Dead Kennedys were each promised a club with room for 550 when they played The Station in 2002. So was Quiet Riot.

Apparently, the Derderians were no more candid with their patrons about permitted capacity. At 6 o’clock on the evening of Great White’s final appearance at The Station, Frank Canillas called the club to see if there were still tickets available. He was told that there would be 100 business cards (used as tickets) available for purchase at the door, that the last show there had drawn 480 fans, and that the club “fit about 600 people.” He would later recount this to the police from beneath bandages in his hospital bed.

Barry Warner’s house was the closest neighboring structure to The Station’s stage door. About one hundred feet distant and up a small rise, the house was separated from the club property by a thin stand of trees. On concert nights the bass speakers at the club would sometimes rattle pictures on Warner’s walls.