Telling the story of New Haven’s mecca, Toad’s Place

It seems like another era: those exciting nights at Toad’s Place, the unpretentious New Haven club where so many legendary performers – the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and others – entertained those of us lucky enough to be there.

Twelve months ago, when I agreed to collaborate with longtime Toad’s owner and manager Brian Phelps on a book about the history of his club, we had never heard of COVID-19. He could not have then imagined that a fast-moving, invisible virus would force him to shut his doors six months later.

And now, six months after that, those doors are still sealed, the stage gone silent, the club empty. Like other club owners across the country, Phelps is waiting, waiting, waiting for some sign of improvement, a loosening of restrictions on indoor gatherings and, above all, a vaccine.

Recently I asked Phelps for his latest thinking on reopening.

His email reply began: “I’m not sure when I can reopen yet. To be open at full capacity, it will take a vaccine. Even if a vaccine can immunize 65 to 70 percent of the people, a ‘herd type of immunity’ for the balance of the people may get the country closer to normal and social activities like sporting events, concerts and the movies, so they can function at a profit. But I’ve heard that a bunch of people out there won’t even take the vaccine. I hear that all the time.”

“I think we have to try for the best possible narrative and make it work the best we can,” Phelps said. “That, as humans, is all that we can do.”

Meanwhile, all that Phelps and I can do is carry on with the book project; the final manuscript and photos are due at Globe Pequot Press on Dec. 1. The tentative date of publication is Aug. 1 of next year.

The Toad’s story is really about two people: Phelps and the man who got the enterprise started in 1975: Mike Spoerndle.

He and his two buddies, Chuck Metzger and Mike Korpas, all originally from