It’s not as though the Cow Palace is a stranger to live music: Before Chase Center, Oracle Park, and Levi’s Stadium ever existed, it was the Bay Area’s largest venue. Elvis Presley, Elton John, Paul McCartney, and Prince all played there. But by the 2000s, newer arenas like San Jose’s SAP Center eroded the Cow Palace’s primacy, while long-vacant venues like Oakland’s Fox Theater returned.
The programming took a sharp turn earlier this year through the efforts of the venue’s deputy director, 35-year industry veteran Eric Blockie. A Bay Area native who worked for promoter Bill Graham Presents and its eventual parent company, Live Nation, Blockie was also Santana’s production manager and an assistant tour manager for Huey Lewis & the News. He joined the Cow Palace team two years ago, he says, because they weren’t doing as many shows, and they could only go up. But nostalgia was a factor too.
“It was the house that held it all,” he said. “The Beatles played a couple times. Liberace in 1955. I remember AC/DC, Def Leppard, and the Nirvana-Red Hot Chili Peppers-Pearl Jam show on New Year’s Eve [1991]. That’s how I remember the Cow Palace.”