01 / Before we begin
We Weren’t Supposed to Be There
In 1981, five teenagers called East Van Halen walked into the Smilin’ Buddha with instruments in their hands—and took the stage.
Mike sang. Lev played drums. Nick played guitar. Eric played bass. Benny Doro, about fourteen or fifteen, played guitar and arrived with a look he remembers as part Ace Frehley, part Randy Rampage, and part himself.
They were underage, but this was no rehearsal room. They played for real audiences, night after night, opening for local bands and especially enjoying the nights they shared with D.O.A. The club was loud, dingy, and alive. Punk owned the room; East Van Halen brought rock and roll.
Across East Hastings Street stood Frank’s Cabaret, the club owned by Benny’s father. His father was friends with Lashman, the owner of the Smilin’ Buddha. The two venues faced one another across a single street. For a young musician, that street held an entire world.
East Van Halen played the Smilin’ Buddha while its members were still teenagers.
They were not pretending to be a band. They had a real stage, a real audience, and musicianship strong enough to belong there.
Benny’s narration and four photographs by Bev Davies preserve a Vancouver music scene that could easily have disappeared.
02 / First-person memory
Authoritative narration · 3:06In Benny’s own voice
Listen to Benny
This is Benny’s supplied recording, preserved unchanged. The narration is the authoritative first-person record; the transcript below remains a machine draft until Benny approves it.
03 / Verbatim record
Search the narration
Loading the timestamped draft transcript…
Generated locally. Draft only; not authoritative until Benny approves it.
04 / Photographs by Bev Davies
A Real Stage
Bev Davies documented the people and places that made Vancouver’s music scene. Benny remembers being lucky whenever her camera found you.
05 / Across the street
Two Clubs on East Hastings
The Smilin’ Buddha was part of Benny’s musical world before he was old enough to legally enter it.
Frank’s Cabaret—his father’s club—stood directly across East Hastings Street. His father’s friendship with Lashman connected the two rooms personally, but the stage still had to be earned. Once East Van Halen began playing, the band relied on what it could do: Lev’s force behind the drums, Nick’s steady guitar, Eric’s solid bass, Mike’s instinct for entertainment, and Benny chasing a sound of his own.
“We had real audiences in a real club,” Benny remembers. “Real dingy, real attitude, real loud.”
06 / Complete albumExplore all four archival scans Open album ＋
Every supplied scan appears below in its original sequence. The handwritten captions and borders have been preserved.