The rooftop is the opposite of the corner. The corner is down here with the people and the traffic and the garbage. The rooftop is up there with the pigeons and the water towers and the sky. The corner is democracy. The rooftop is a kingdom. When you play on a rooftop the whole city is your audience whether it wants to be or not.

The Beatles played the rooftop of Apple Records on January thirtieth nineteen sixty-nine and it was the last time the four of them played together in public. They did not ask permission. They just went up to the roof and started playing. The police came. The neighbors complained. The traffic stopped. And for forty-two minutes the greatest band in history played for a city that did not know it was listening. That is the rooftop. You do not need a ticket. You need ears.

I played rooftops in the Village. Not the fancy ones. The ones with tar paper and clotheslines and the super yelling at you to get down. The rooftop show is the most honest show because there is no stage and there is no door charge and there is no bouncer. The only thing between you and the audience is five stories of air. The sound goes up and out and it lands wherever the wind takes it. You cannot control a rooftop show. The rooftop show controls you.

Every kid in New York has a rooftop memory. Sitting up there in the summer with a radio and a six-pack watching the sun go down behind New Jersey. The rooftop is where the city lets you breathe. Down on the street the city is pushing and shoving and honking. Up on the roof the city shuts up for a minute. The Drifters knew. Up on the Roof. When this old world starts getting me down. That song is the most accurate description of New York ever written. Up on the roof is the only place the city does not follow you.

Every revolution starts in a basement or on a rooftop. The basement is where you plan it. The rooftop is where you announce it. The Beatles announced the end of the Beatles on a rooftop. I announced the beginning of street rock on a rooftop in the East Village. The rooftop is a stage that nobody built. God built it and then a landlord put a building under it and then a musician climbed up there and said this is mine for the next thirty minutes. The rooftop does not belong to the landlord. The rooftop belongs to whoever has the nerve to play on it.