Rainbow Theatre

The Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, north London, is today the United Kingdom headquarters of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Brazilian Pentecostal church — surely the most extraordinary journey of any place of worship in Britain, for this Grade II* listed "Hispano-Moresque fantasy" was built in 1930 as one of the largest cinemas in the world and became, in the 1970s, perhaps the most legendary rock venue in London, where Jimi Hendrix first burned his guitar and Bob Marley, Queen, Pink Floyd and David Bowie made history before the building found its third life in faith.

The building opened on 29 September 1930 as the Finsbury Park Astoria, the last of five "atmospheric" theatres built for Arthur Segal, designed to evoke a Mediterranean village at twilight, with stars in the sky and moving clouds. Behind Edward A. Stone's plain faience exterior on its island site at the junction of Isledon Road and Seven Sisters Road, the interior by Somerford and Barr, decorated by Marc-Henri and Laverdet, led through a Moorish foyer with a goldfish-filled fountain, which survives today, into an auditorium recalling an Andalusian village at night, with 4,000 seats, a 35-foot stage behind a 64-foot proscenium, a twin-console Compton theatre organ and twelve dressing rooms. Patrons could spend a whole evening among cafés, bars, organ recitals, orchestral concerts and a full variety show as well as the film. Paramount took over the chain within months, and in 1939 Odeon Theatres bought the building and ran it principally as a cinema. So remarkable was the interior that the building was listed Grade II* in 1974, an unusually short time after construction.

Music slowly claimed the building. In December 1956 the nineteen-year-old Tommy Steele, discovered in the 2i's coffee bar weeks earlier and billed as "Britain's answer to Elvis", topped a variety bill here; Duke Ellington played in 1959; the Beatles' Christmas Show ran from 24 December 1963 to 11 January 1964; and on 31 March 1967, on the opening night of the Walker Brothers tour, Jimi Hendrix set fire to his Fender Stratocaster on this stage for the first time, burning his fingers badly enough to need hospital treatment. The Rank Organisation closed the Odeon in September 1971, and that November the building reopened as the Rainbow Theatre, with the Who playing the first concert; they later celebrated the venue in "Long Live Rock". The roll-call of the Rainbow years reads like the history of rock itself: Frank Zappa was pushed from the stage into the pit in December 1971, breaking a leg; Deep Purple's 1972 concert put them in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's loudest band; Bowie's Ziggy Stardust shows of August 1972 cemented his stardom; Pink Floyd played four nights in 1972 and benefit concerts for Robert Wyatt in 1973; Van Morrison's July 1973 concerts became It's Too Late to Stop Now; Eric Clapton's January 1973 comeback with Pete Townshend became the Rainbow Concert; Queen recorded Live at the Rainbow '74; Stevie Wonder returned to the stage here after his near-fatal accident before an audience including McCartney, Starr, Clapton and Bowie; Bob Marley and the Wailers' Exodus shows of June 1977 were filmed for the celebrated Live! at the Rainbow; the Ramones' New Year's Eve 1977 concert became It's Alive; Thin Lizzy filmed Live and Dangerous; Iron Maiden shot their first video here; and the Grateful Dead played ten nights in 1981. The climax of the 1980 film Breaking Glass was shot in the building. Unable to maintain the listed building to the required standard, the operators closed it after a final concert on 24 December 1981, and for fourteen years the Rainbow lay largely empty, used occasionally for unlicensed boxing, most famously Lenny McLean's first-round knockout of Roy Shaw in April 1986.

The third act began in 1988, when the building was used as a church by the Rainbow Christian Fellowship, then briefly by the Elim Pentecostal Church, before the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, the Pentecostal denomination founded in Rio de Janeiro by Edir Macedo, took it over in 1995 and made it their main base in the United Kingdom. The new owners undertook a painstaking restoration of the fantastical interior: the auditorium was completed by 1999 and the foyer, with its Moorish fountain, by 2001, and when the building opened to the public for one night in 2004 in partnership with the Cinema Theatre Association, the Guardian described it as "jaw-dropping" and the CTA's chairman called it "one of the greatest cinemas of its kind in Europe", its restoration "astonishingly" good. Today the great Andalusian village under its painted twilight sky, where Hendrix burned his Stratocaster and Marley sang Exodus, resounds instead with Pentecostal worship, prayer meetings and the great gatherings of the UCKG — the atmospheric theatre of 1930 serving, at last, as a genuine house of wonder.