WAIT…THEY PLAYED VEGAS? Entertainers Who You Never Knew Performed There

Posted on: January 7, 2025, 03:14h. 

Last updated on: January 8, 2025, 10:39h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

Many musicians and comedians placed their stamp on pop culture without Las Vegas’ help. Others performed here in their early years, but some of their acts weren’t even remembered by the audiences who caught them, since they were opening acts.

Of the entertainers mentioned below, how many did you know had a Vegas past?

WAIT… Bob Marley & the Wailers?

The Ice Palace was a rickety insult of a concert venue with horrible acoustics. An ice rink built by future Imperial Palace founder Ralph Engelstad to showcase the Ice Capades and a semi-pro hockey team, it was converted it into an occasional rock hall by placing plywood over the ice, then squeezing as many freezing kids inside as the fire code permitted.

For touring music acts with sizeable followings who — for various reasons including their youth appeal and drug associations — were unwanted by casino showrooms or the biggest venue in town, the 8,000-seat Las Vegas Convention Center, it had to do.

That reggae’s crowned prince — the subject of an immersive experience opening later this year at Mandalay Bay — ever performed on any Las Vegas stage is a fact known mostly to Marley scholars and the 3K-4K young people who witnessed what transpired at the Ice Palace on Oct. 21, 1973.

It was a complete surprise to them. This was a Sly & The Family Stone show, period. The hit funk band’s two opening acts (the other was the Atlee Yeager Band) weren’t named on the ads, the marquee or the $6 tickets.

The late rock writer Timothy White recalled the night’s events in his 2000 book, “Bob Marley: Catch a Fire” …

“The jaws of those well-scrubbed Nevada teens dropped down below the bleachers when Bob and the boys came out and tore into ‘Concrete Jungle,’ drums and bass riding on the one-drop, while the chicka-chicka rhythm guitar fed the Slinky-toy tempo, slipping down for the upstroke, and this skinny black Medusa stepped up to the mike and whooped about how the tables were being turned on the modern slavedrivers of the world — they were going to catch Jah’s revenge!”

“After this date, the Wailers were thrown off the tour,” according to White. “They had made far too big an impression on the crowd for a warm-up act.

“’Sly don’t dig that,’ said the Family Stone’s manager.”

WAIT… Richard Pryor?

The groundbreaking comic made his Vegas debut on Aug. 16, 1966 as the opening act for ’50s rocker Bobby Darin at the Flamingo.

At the time, though, Pryor wasn’t groundbreaking … or even very memorable. He performed squeaky-clean, Cosby-esque routines for white audiences about adjusting to life in New York City as a Midwesterner and other threadbare topics.

But it was one Vegas date, in September 1967, that the late comic recalled as the most transformative in his career. By then a headliner, he stopped in the middle of his act, looked at the crowd — which included Dean Martin himself — and had an epiphany.

“What the fuck am I doing here!?” he yelled before walking off stage and ending the show early. In that moment, he resolved to start offending people with his real take on life, a take that would inspire Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle to follow his lead.

“For the first time in my life I had a sense of Richard Pryor the person,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I understood myself… I knew what I stood for… knew what I had to do… I had to go back and tell the truth.”

Pryor never performed in Las Vegas again.

WAIT… Nirvana?

On Aug. 16, 1990, the grassroots Seattle sensation, which built its reputation on authenticity and rejecting mainstream entertainment, performed in the heart of enemy territory.

Nirvana hadn’t released the game-changing album “Nevermind” yet, so they weren’t N-I-R-V-A-N-A yet. In fact, they couldn’t even top the bill at Calamity Jayne’s Nashville on Fremont Street. That honor went to equally mainstream-averse alt-rockers Sonic Youth.

Nirvana performed songs from its only album, 1989’s independently released “Bleach,” for about 30 minutes for about 300 people who had never heard them before.

No photos were taken of them — and why would they have been?

Also on the bill were fellow Seattleites the Melvins, which was a necessity because Melvins drummer Dale Crover was also playing with Nirvana at the time. (Reportedly, Crover issued an edict to singer Kurt Cobain to stop crashing into his drums to end every set because he could no longer afford to replace them.)

Opening the show was a little-known San Diego band two years away from signing their first record deal: Stone Temple Pilots.

Nirvana was supposed to return to Vegas to headline 1994’s Lollapalooza, but Cobain committed suicide before the tour began.

WAIT… Woody Allen?

Before the Oscar-winning movies or the infamous allegations, Allen was known as a standup comic with a very funny moose story.

The former Allan Konigsberg made his Las Vegas debut on the Circus Maximus stage on November 23, 1966, during a two-week stint opened by singer Petula Clark. Caesars Palace inked Allen to a contract a year before it opened.

Allen introduced himself to the crowd by joking: “This is the first time I’m appearing live.”

He returned to Caesars, and Vegas, only once more — in October 1967 to headline over the Xavier Cugat band, whose featured singer (and wife) jiggled into her own place in Vegas history.

That’s right, Woody Allen and Charo shared a bill.

WAIT… Led Zeppelin?

The biggest hard rock act of all time also had a largely forgotten one-night Vegas stand at the Ice Palace. The date was Aug. 7, 1969, a couple of months before the release of “Led Zeppelin II,” and, like Bob Marley, they also would never return to Las Vegas.

Two days before, the Las Vegas Sun announced that Clark County had extended its 10 p.m. curfew until midnight “for all youngsters under 18 years old and attending the Lead (sic) Zeppelin rock-and-roll concert.”

“It was scary because you could feel what people who lived there thought about long-haired people,” Carlos Santana recalled in his autobiography.

Santana also made his Las Vegas debut at the Ice Palace, when his band opened two shows for the Grateful Dead (which was also making its Las Vegas debut) on March 29, 1969.

“They weren’t letting hippies get anywhere near the casinos back then,” Santana recalled.

The highlight of Led Zep’s set was when Robert Plant belted “Dazed and Confused” over the ungodly din of his bombastic bandmates without a microphone — and somehow managed to still be heard. (Conflicting reports had either his microphone failing or the crappy sound system feeding back too much.)

Led Zeppelin actually was scheduled to return to Las Vegas on April 19, 1970, this time to the Convention Center, but that show was cancelled when Plant collapsed on stage the night before at the Arizona Coliseum.

WAIT… Steve Martin?

OK, this one’s a bit of a cheat. Lots of folks realize that the wild and crazy guy played Vegas in 1978, 1991 and then with Martin Short throughout the 2000s.

What most don’t realize is that one of the smartest comedians who ever lived debuted in Las Vegas with one of its dumbest acts ever.

It was mostly a magic show that Martin performed at the International Hotel from June 12-25, 1970, with uncomfortable jokes inserted in between the tricks.

He bombed. And what’s worse, he was opening for Ann-Margret on Elvis Presley’s stage, which meant that her “good friend” was in the building.

Elvis watched him bomb.

According to Martin, the King introduced himself backstage by stating, rather charitably, “Son, you have an oblique sense of humor” before asking if the struggling comic wanted to see his gun collection.

Elvis showed him several firearms backstage, and Martin pretended to be as impressed by them as Elvis hoped he would be.