Places We Miss: The Lubbock Coliseum

The Lubbock Coliseum was both a terrible and a terrific place to see a concert.

I remember my first show there. I hadn’t lived in Texas very long, and my favorite band was coming to town to give me a little hope. It was May 4, 1979, and Bad Company brought the Desolation Angels tour to Lubbock. It was their third visit to town, but my first chance to see them live.

I walked right up to the front and stood less than 10 feet from my idols. I still have crystal-clear memories of that night—and of what a sh---hole the Coliseum was.

You probably didn’t expect that turn at the end, did you?

Hot, Smoky and Completely Unforgettable

The Lubbock Coliseum had horrible air conditioning, assuming you could even tell that it had air conditioning. A 1993 bond package finally provided money for major improvements, and a $1.5 million air-conditioning project was completed in 1996.

That did absolutely nothing for those of us packed into the place during the 1970s and 1980s.

Even though Bad Company played in May, thousands of people screaming “YAAAAA!” with little or no cool air moving through the building made for a hot, stagnant mess. Let’s also remember that nearly everybody smoked at concerts back then. The entire room became a sweaty, smoky, toxic science experiment with a world-class rock band playing in the middle of it.

We suffered like that until 1996, and I’ll go ahead and say the new air conditioning still struggled to keep up on hot summer nights.

Everybody Played the Lubbock Coliseum

So, who did we see there?

How about everybody?

Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Dio, Iron Maiden, Huey Lewis and the News, Heart, Rush, KISS, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Bon Jovi and many more played the Coliseum. There was a time when no band seemed “too big for Lubbock.” Major tours came through town regularly, and many of those artists returned again and again.

Even Elvis Presley played the Municipal Coliseum, appearing there in 1972 and again before a sellout crowd in 1976.

The building was uncomfortable, outdated and sometimes miserable—but when the lights went down, it could become the center of the universe.

Lubbock Lost More Than an Old Building

It feels as though the Coliseum has been gone forever, but it was demolished only seven years ago, during the spring of 2019.

I still believe losing it was one of the most terrible and shortsighted decisions this city ever made. I’ll say it plainly: United Supermarkets Arena is superior in every single way. Still, keeping the Coliseum available for smaller concerts—or nights when the arena was already booked—would have given Lubbock another valuable option.

Instead, it became another shortsighted decision, like canceling the Tornado Jam or neglecting the city pools.

Places We Miss: J. Patrick O’Malleys

The Lubbock Coliseum was hot, smoky, ugly and frequently uncomfortable. It was also the place where generations of Lubbock music fans saw their heroes standing just a few feet away.

That is why, no matter how terrible the building could be, the concerts were terrific—and why the Lubbock Coliseum will always be one of those places we miss.