Times Square’s hidden music mecca is still hitting all the right notes.
Long before soulless glass towers and blinding LED billboards reshaped one of NYC’s most notorious neighborhoods, some of pop culture’s biggest names strutted, sang and even slept in the halls of The Music Building — one in scores of recording studios around the Crossroads of The World responsible for pleasuring the world aurally over a period of decades.
This one not only survived decades of gentrification — it’s still thriving.
Hidden behind a nondescript gray metal door at 584 Eighth Ave. between 38th and 39th streets, amps are still cranked, drums pound, and the spirit of rock and roll never dies.
Today, young musicians and up-and-coming bands continue to fight for space at the legendary stronghold.
“It’s an essential piece of NYC music history,” longtime tenant Chris “Tomato” Harfenist, lead singer and drummer of early aughts alt-rock group Sound of Urchin, told The Post. “This building is the last bit of real rock that is still functioning in Manhattan.”
Madonna once lived and rehearsed there in room 604 — without hot water.
Billy Idol wrote what became “Rebel Yell” and “White Wedding” in studios 1001 and 1006, and The Strokes cut their teeth in cramped spaces like 404.
Just steps from the scuzz of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the graffiti-splashed Music Building has sheltered generations of dreamers since 1979 — outlasting one-time area icons like the Record Plant (321 W. 44th St.) and Brill Building (1619 Broadway), now bland office blocks commuters hurry past daily, rarely if ever appreciating the importance to rock history.
The lobby is plastered with glossy band stickers and tabloid-esque flyers. Its lone, nonworking pay phone — also decked out in colorful stickers — stands as a shrine to the past.
“Every musician from the ’80s and ’90s remembers this famous phone,” Roget Lerner, the building’s president and chief catalyst, told The Post.
“We’ll never get rid of it — Madonna used it, and recently her drummer Stephen Bray and [Oscar-nominated] composer Carter Burwell stopped by and said, ‘The phone booth is still here!’ Back then, everyone used it to plan their gigs.”
A 12-story maze of 69 rehearsal studios, the building is packed with musicians who often bunk together to keep rent cheap — and once they move their gear in, they stick around, only leaving after three to five years on average.
“We get inquiries every week, and we generally run 95% to 99% occupied,” Lerner said of the high demand for space.
A sister site in Jamaica, Queens, home to Metallica, Anthrax, Run-DMC and LL Cool J, burned down in 1996.
He’s now expanding to Chicago with a 115-studio spot he scooped up last year.
Live and Lerner
Roget’s late landlord father, Jack Lerner, passed in 2024. He was known for his big smile, cowboy hat and supportive, music-loving spirit.
“The tenants all loved him — I always joke he was probably the only NYC landlord whose tenants came to pay their respects after he passed,” Roget said.
Jack acquired the building in 1979 to create a 24/7 space where musicians could rehearse, store gear, and make noise without restrictions.
Since then, Patti Smith, Joey Ramone, Carlos Santana, Cyndi Lauper, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Lenny Kravitz, and members of Interpol and The Fleshtones have walked the halls, heading to their own studios or dropping by a friend’s jam.
Spaces rent for $1,800to $2,500 a month, with many tenants sharing or subletting rooms as mini-studios, sometimes cycling five bands through a single space.
“Bring as many people as you want, as long as everyone’s making music,” Lerner said of the flexibility that has helped launch careers.
While Lerner has kept his father’s legacy alive, he has one particular rule.
Don’t live like Madonna.
“There’s no hot water here. This place is for making music, not moving in,” he joked.
“Once you walk in, you’re just here to jam, and that safe space keeps many alumni coming back,” he said.
Maintaining the CBGB spirit
Veterans share floors with newcomers, indie bands with jazz players, and the halls still buzz around the clock with every genre — but the rebel spirit endures.
“This building reminds me so much of CBGB, but you can’t go there anymore,” rocker Harfenist said of the legendary club that closed nearly 20 years ago.
Few understand that better than John Conte, the bassist, guitarist and half of the Conte Brothers, who, with his brother Steve — a six-year member of the legendary New York Dolls — spent decades shaping NYC rock.
As tenants for over 30 years, they watched the building “unapologetically holding its ground,” John said, even as Midtown “gentrified around it.”
It’s a crucial hub, he said, for composers, songwriters, producers, recording studios and music teachers.
“The Music Building has been the only place to bang out a loud rock rehearsal in the city for as long as I can remember,” Steve Conte shared.
“I would bet that without this place, many of the struggling bands to come out of NYC might’ve never happened.”
Even an elevator ride from the lobby to floor 12 can sound like an “old FM dial,” John said, “with each floor pumping out a different musical genre.”
And while veterans like the Contes gave the building its backbone, it was the next generation — scrappy upstarts like The Strokes — who gave it its edge.
“They were always causing trouble. I had to yell at them sometimes, but I loved them,” said Aziz Ahmed, the building’s super since 1994, of The Strokes, the rambunctious garage rockers who started in room 404.
Lerner added that “every musician who’s ever been in the building” knows Ahmed — the Strokes’ favorite sparring partner.
A must for serious musicians
The building “allows you 24-hour access to your creative space and gear in midtown Manhattan, which is not easy to find,” John Conte said of the “magical place to work and create.”
In the decades he and his brother have utilized the building, “it has retained the same no-frills charm it had when I first encountered it,” John said.
“With the attempts at gentrification in that neighborhood that began over 30 years ago and still continue, many of us feel that The Music Building is sort of the last bastion of ‘Down & Dirty New York,’” he continued.
Lerner said the city has changed “a lot over 50 years,” recalling how Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral era noise regulations (1994 to 2001) targeted nightlife venues.
While there was some pressure on the building, he said officials ultimately decided to “let The Music Building be” since it was a well-known hub where “musicians have to make music.”
How the next generations keep punk alive
John Conte has heard fellow tenants creating “rock n’ roll, reggae, jazz, soul, hardcore, metal, punk, rap, hip-hop, ambient experimental music” — and “even wedding bands practicing.”
But the place oozes what it “means to be punk,” no matter the sound, Ziarra, a “poetic punk” singer who moved her gear into the building in 2022, told The Post.
“Punk isn’t dead. It’s not just a genre of music — it’s a lifestyle and mentality,” said the millennial, who recorded her 2025 album, “Human Form,” on the 10th floor.
“I love knowing that Madonna started out in this building. She’s especially inspiring to me because of her origins as a punk artist before she evolved into pop,” Ziarra continued.
With many iconic NYC music spots gone, her generation and younger ones now “have to help create new venues — and celebrate this building,” she said.
Her inspiration, the “Queen of Pop,” signed the building’s 12th-floor wall in 1998 to mark her early ’80s days in short-lived bands like Breakfast Club and Emmy & the Emmys, a legacy “etched in NYC history.”
“Punk artists like her helped shape the city’s sound — and by playing here, we’re part of it too.”
Ziarra’s keyboardist and saxophonist, Mario Castro, called writing music there a crash course in inspiration — from Eighth Avenue’s many honks to heavy metal upstairs and classical piano below.
“Being able to hear other musicians playing around you and absorb that energy really shapes how we approach our recordings.”
He’s also struck by the building’s history.
“It’s amazing that Billy Idol made music on the same floor we play on now. We were so lucky to get a room here. We love Manhattan, its noise and this incredible history,” Castro told The Post.
Tenants often talk about the building’s magic — and how you never know which musicians, famous or under-the-radar, might pop in.
Case in point: to Castro’s surprise, Billy Idol showed up on the 10th floor on a random Tuesday while The Post was there.
He signed the wall by the rooms he and guitarist Steve Stevens once rehearsed in — 1001 and 1006 —leaving Castro and Ziarra starstruck as he reminisced about his early days in the building and met the next generation of punk rockers.
“There’s a mix of different timelines all crossing paths,” Ziarra told The Post. “You never know what’s happening in each studio, and that’s what makes it so cool.”
