Calling the tune: nightclub impresario John Lyons, who came to town in the 1960s as an 'errant youth,' has returned to revive the flagging Hollywood Palace.

AMID the light fog of construction dust at his Avalon Hollywood (formerly Hollywood Palace) nightclub, John Lyons cuts an imposing figure. Dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, and big enough to double as a bouncer at one of his two dozen clubs, the 47-year-old Buffalo, N.Y. native and House of Blues co-founder got into the business when he was a teenager working as a doorman. He now leads a group that includes fellow club operator Steve Adelman and actor Dan Aykroyd in the renovation of the 76-year-old Vine Street institution. The building, whose main hall holds 1,450 people, includes a restaurant and dance club. Since opening as the Hollywood Playhouse in 1927--it was renamed the Hollywood Palace in 1964--it has been home to "The Merv Griffin Show," as well as concerts by the Beatles and Prince.

Question: What are the challenges of taking over a place with history?

Answer: There's a lot of important heritage associated with this location, and it would be bad business to ignore that, so the challenge is to retain that heritage but erase the negative image in some people's minds. From what I've heard, during the last decade or so there were lots of people who simply would not come here for a nightclub experience because it had a reputation for being very young and just not very cool.

Q: What are you doing to change that?

A: It's all about the people--about how a band is treated at 10 in the morning by the person who is opening the gate. Are they dealing with nincompoops or professional people who make their experience a good one from the minute they show up to the minute they leave? Are customers made to wait an excessively long time because the door system is not organized? Once you get in, are you treated like some sort Of criminal going through a gauntlet of stone-faced bouncers? That's all stuff that makes a huge difference in the overall experience. And it's the same thing with a dance club. You've got to have a great sound system. You have to have good flow to be able to get a drink. You have to have a door staff that's friendly.

Q: Have these operational tenets changed since you've been in the business?

A: Those are things that early on I may have been guilty of doing. But if you watch anything long enough, you figure out better ways of doing it. When I go to another city or club and see things being done in what I perceive to be the wrong way, it's painfully apparent, and if it's painfully apparent to me, it's got to be painfully apparent to any intelligent customer. So if you're waiting in line with a ticket in your hand and you're behind people that are tying to get their will call tickets, you want to grab somebody by the neck and say, "Hey, form a second line here for the people with tickets." Or when 45-year-old comes in and security asks him for an ID. There are certain things done robotically by staff that trickles down from management that's just dumb stuff.

Q: What brought you to the Palace?

A: I thought there was a void in the marketplace for a good nightclub, a nightclub that does many things. There weren't really any venues with this range in Los Angeles. We were going to rent a warehouse around the corner by the Cinerama Dome. During that process, I came to a tavern owners' meeting, which was held in this building, and I just walked in and looked at it and thought, "What a great place. How come it's not famous? How come there's nobody here?" The place was not on the market so I approached them.

Q: You grew up in Buffalo but worked in Hollywood as a teenager. How did that happen?

A: When I was 13, I came out here as an errant youth. I had a relative that I stayed with and went to University High School. I needed a job, so I walked into the Hamburger Hamlet and applied for a busser position. But that wasn't even my first job. I was a short order cook at the Cable Car on Wilshire.

Q: How did you get into the nightclub business?

A: After I returned to Buffalo, I went to a Tommy James and the Shondells show with Canned Heat in 1971, and the manager of the club asked me if I wanted a job doing security for a chain of clubs called Uncle Sam's because I was a big guy. It's kind of funny because you had to be 18 to go there and I was 17 checking IDs. I tried to work really hard so that if they found out that I was a minor, they might cut me some slack and not fire me. In trying to hang onto the job, I got good at it and just never quit.

Q: What was the first club you owned?

A: I worked my way up into the management training program of the company (that owned Uncle Sam's) and worked in a number of cities in various jobs and managerial positions, including Detroit, Minneapolis, Des Moines and eventually, just outside of Boston. My brother Patrick, who was also working for Uncle Sam's, was transferred to Boston because the company had purchased a nightclub owned by (Studio 54 founders) Steve Rubel and Ian Schrager. The company sent us there to operate it. Eventually, we put a group of investors together and purchased it from Uncle Sam's.

Q: How did you get involved with House of Blues?

A: (Hard Rock Cafe co-founder) Isaac Tigrett was a very close friend. He came to me and said he wanted to start another restaurant chain. It was very important to him that the restaurant have actual music. He wanted to do this thing called Blues Brothers Blues Bar, and somewhere along the way, he brought Dan (Aykroyd) into it. I thought calling it that would be pigeonholing it. The location we selected was this funky old house in Harvard Square, so I started lobbying to have it called the House of Blues.

Q: How did the West Hollywood House of Blues come about?

A: We looked at an old funky house that had been owned by John Barrymore. The club was designed as a whole bunch of additions onto the existing house but on the first day of construction, the whole house collapsed. We stayed true to the design, only we were no longer adding to the existing house.

Q: Why are you no longer involved with House of Blues?

A: It was a project being done by two of my closest friends and I wanted to build something really cool and different. As the company grew and matured, it became less of the grass roots project it had been and more of a corporate behemoth. Once it got to a certain place, the joy was no longer there for me. I had my own businesses in Boston that needed my attention, so when Isaac left the company, I did too.

Q: You've been bi-coastal since beginning work on Avalon Hollywood last year. What kind of work week do you put in?

A: I stopped counting years ago. I'm here when I feel like being at work and I'm not when I don't. That usually translates into lots of hours, but there are very, very few hours in my life when I'm at a place I don't want to be. Once a place is up and running and ticking like a watch, that's when I start to get bored and don't want to be there. When I left the House of Blues, the fun part was over as far as solving all the problems and dealing with all the lunacy. Once everything's working smoothly, it's not as much fun.

INTERVIEW

John Lyons

Title: Principal

Organization: Hollywood Entertainment Partners, Lyons Group

Born: Buffalo, N.Y., 1955

Education: University High School, Los Angeles

Career Turning Point: Going to a Tommy James and the Shondells concert at a Buffalo nightclub as a 16-year-old and being offered a security job by the club manager

Personal: Single, no children

Hobbies: Building the light shows and sound systems at his clubs