Virginia Pilot - August 2022

‘It was loud, hot and fun’: Atlantis Beach Club in Nags Head rocked a generation.

By Coast OBX and Contributed Content

UPDATED: August 23, 2022 at 1:24 PM EDT

In 1979, folks on the Outer Banks were, to paraphrase the B-52’s, looking for a little old place where we can get together, as well as bust some moves and listen to live rock and roll bands.

After all, disco was starting to lose its grip on popular culture.

It arrived just in time for the summer season in the form of the Atlantis Beach Club, which sat two lots south of the Nags Head Fishing Pier.

Next to it was the Footsball Palace, where young people gathered to play pinball machines and video games.

A tribute to the Atlantis, a beach dive that helped launch music careers. Courtesy photo

The strip of land near milepost 12 on the beach road in Nags Head quickly became entertainment central, and locals and visitors started partying like it was, well, 1979.

A carefree and casual vibe was in the salty air.

And while the Outer Banks was not the Wild West, Nags Head and the other beach towns certainly had flexible rules and regulations in those days.

“It was loud, hot and fun,” said Dan Banks, 67, of Kill Devil Hills, who was a regular customer and part-time DJ that first year. “The great thing was you could walk in the front door and grab a beer and then walk out the back door to the beach and look at the moon.”

But beyond that the Atlantis became recognized as a preeminent music venue, joining a circuit that included, among others, the Pass in Richmond, Virginia, the Attic in Greenville, North Carolina, and Town Hall in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

“All the top regional bands wanted to play there,” said Keith Duke, 69, the club’s first DJ and second year manager who’s retired and travels the country in an R.V. with his wife.

“It was a level of entertainment the beach hadn’t seen.”

Before it was christened the Atlantis, the flat, blue-and-white oceanfront building had housed two other nightclubs: the Wind Dancer and the Oz, which closed in 1978.

The nightspot (the working name had been the “Paragon”) operated from 1979-1995; it closed after a coastal storm heavily damaged the building.

Houses now occupy the land where the iconic Atlantis and Footsball Palace once stood.

For a few years, there was a “new” Atlantis, which occupied a building that is now Mahi Mahi Island Grill in Nags Head.

This story is about the original (Full Disclosure: I worked as the house DJ in the summers of 1981 and 1982, so I had a bird’s-eye-view of the proceedings).

Its history is rich with stories (and, maybe, a few fables) about wild summer nights, flowing beer (in cans and bottles, only) and top-tier bands pumping out punk, rock, alternative, rap, reggae, country-rock and blues jams.

Atlantis would have been an ideal setting for a reality TV series if the genre had been a thing during the club’s 16-year run, especially the early days.

Hearts were opened, broken and mended on any given night.

Mike McQuillis, a former Navy SEAL and onetime manager of Peabody’s Nightclub in Virginia Beach, was the club’s first owner-operator.

He left the building in the late’80s and it was later run at separate times by Doug Kibler and Jerry Dowless.

It was only a rock ‘n’ roll joint and we liked it.

But the Taj Mahal it was not. Walls were covered with red shag-carpet, bathrooms were functional at best and the stage was small. In the big hair days of the’80s, band members’ coifs almost touched the low ceiling. There were bars at the back and front of the building and a dance floor (a section of an old skating rink) occupied a space in the front of the stage. It was often sandy and sticky (from spilled beer). Capacity was about 300, but numbers often exceeded that. The air-conditioning system, which consisted of four ceiling units, struggled nightly to keep the hundreds of club-hoppers cool on hot summer nights. “Hotlantis,” man it was hot in there,” said Robyn Dozier, a nurse who lives in Duck. “Fun times, though.”

The club-hoppers were not in the nightspot to admire the decor, but rather to mingle, drink, dance and enjoy the jumbled groove of sounds.

“I just loved hanging out there with high-school friends,” said Wendy D. Daniels, 61, of Statesville, North Carolina. “It was the best music ever.” The club also thrived because of the high level of security led by the legendary bouncer Collis Gallup (who died in 2010) of Manteo. “It was impressive,” remembers Duke. “Mike (McQuillis, the club’s owner) wanted things stopped before they started.” “Collis always looked out after us kids,” said Daniels, whose photograph of the Atlantis is on the cover. “He was the best guy.”

Part of the club’s allure in the early days, according to Duke, was the community spirit.

To that end, Sundays were “locals nights.”

Monday nights, also catering to locals, were devoted to punk-rock and new wave music, a nod to the blossoming trends.

“That was a collective hangout for locals,” remembers Bryan Murray, 58, a filmmaker who lives in Wheeling, West Virginia. “Locals would wear old T-shirts and rip them to pieces on the dance floor.”

“Drunk tourists would do the same with much nicer shirts. We used to laugh about that.”

Murray remembers Johnny Quest, the Nerve and the Boneshakers as popular New Wave bands that made the scene.

Music was always the driving force at the nightclub through its entire run.

The Jacksonville-based Southern Rock band Nantucket, who released four albums on major labels, played the Atlantis many times during the golden years, as did, among others, Good Humor Band, Snuff, Sidewinder, the Connells, Widespread Panic, Waxing Poetics, Brice Street and Sutter’s Gold Streak.

Dance floor at the Atlantis Beach Club in Nags Head. Courtesy photo

“We loved it there,” remembers Nantucket’s lead singer Larry Uzzel.

“The stage was kind of small, but the sound was good and the crowd loved us.”

Through the ’80s and into the ’90s, the Atlantis was still the place to be with its hands-in-the-air-like-you-don’t-care spirit and high-quality entertainment.

“The party never stopped,” said Laurin Walker, 53, of Kill Devil Hills, who served as a bartender at the club from 1988-1994. “I saw some insane music.”

It was both a launch pad for up-and-coming artists and a stop for classic-rock groups on the East Coast circuit.

And what can you say, the Charlottesville, Virginia-based Dave Matthews Band played their first out-of-state gig in 1992 at Atlantis, and the next year performed back-to-back shows.

“I believe I have a cassette tape somewhere of Dave begging for floor space and complaining about the leaky ceiling,” said musician, sound engineer and record producer Scott Franson of Kill Devil Hills.

Derek Trucks, who played with the Allman Brothers Band and now tours and records with his wife Susan Tedeshi, also was in the club in the early ’90s.

Other bands that rocked the house during Walker’s tenure included, among others, Widespread Panic, 311, the Awareness Art Ensemble, Edwyn Collins, Hootie and the Blowfish, Everything, All Mighty Senators, Too Skinny J’s. and Burning Spear.

Beth Pennington, 57, of Kill Devil Hills, was a frequent flier from 1989-1995.

“The after-parties on the beach were always a blast,” she remembers.

Legendary artists such as Atlanta Rhythm Section, Blue Oyster Cult, Edgar Winter, Dickey Betts (of the Allman Brothers Band), the Outlaws, Firefall, Molly Hatchet, Little River Band, Rare Earth and Pat Travers also gave memorable performances at the Atlantis.

“It was the perfect dive bar for live music on OBX,” said keyboardist Eric Lawson of the popular bands Fighting Gravity and Boy O Boy, who were regulars in the ’90s. “And there hasn’t been anything like that since then.”

Almost 27 years after the original Atlantis closed, people still fondly recall those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer at the gathering spot.

When asked about the memories, some smile, some blush.

But most said they can still hear the nightly, poetic closing-time (2 a.m.) words of security-man extraordinaire Collis Gallup:

“Walk out or roll out, it’s all the same to me.”

Editor’s note: A portion of this story appeared in the June 5, 2020 edition of Coast.