In the ’80s, an iconic NYC heavy metal club called L’Amour started as a disco and reinvented itself as “The Rock Capital of Brooklyn," after swapping Saturday Night Fever vibes for spikes and big hair. L’Amour was dank and smelled like cigarettes, old beer, and armpits, but it drew thousands of heavy metal hood rats who hiked there every weekend. Shows spanned the metal spectrum—on any given weekend you could see big-hair pretty-boy acts like Poison and RATT or harder fare like Metallica and Anthrax. Despite being ratchet and tucked into the boonies of South Brooklyn, it was the East Coast’s heavy metal mecca. L’Amour was perceived as so important to a band’s success that arena acts like Iron Maiden and Motörhead played there when touring through the area to up their grassroots cred. Throughout that time there was one man who made a night at L’Amour feel like a tribal experience. That man was Chuck Kaye.