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Seeing Stars: Live on Stage
Concerts at

3900 W. Manchester
Boulevard (at Prairie Avenue),
Inglewood, CA. / (310) 673-1300

It was once called the "Fabulous"
Forum. New owners renamed it "The Great Western Forum,"
and the current owners just call it "The Forum", but except
for a new blue trim, it's the same grand arena. By whatever name, the Forum
is a dramatic, round, indoor stadium, a modern interpretation of a Roman
coliseum.
Located just north of (now-closed) Hollywood
Park race track in Inglewood, the huge Forum seats over 17,500, far
more than the Greek Theatre and the Universal
Amphitheatre combined.
Over the years, it has been home to some of the biggest events in Los
Angeles, including Lakers basketball and Kings hockey, as well as special
sporting events such as boxing and wrestling matches, and big-arena entertainment
like the Ringling Bros circus, major rodeos, and the Ice Capades.
But most star-gazers were more
interested in the Forum's major rock concerts. In its glory days, you could
see some of your favorite musical performers live on stage here:

Janet Jackson,
Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Celine
Dion, Elton John, R.E.M.,
Paul McCartney, Barbra
Streisand, Bob Seger, Madonna, Prince, the Jackson 5,
the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam,
the Spice Girls, Bon
Jovi, Billy Joel, the
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty,
Neil Diamond, Queen, Phil Collins,
Yes, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie,
Duran Duran, Meat
Loaf, AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne,
Luther Vandross... even
Elvis Presley did a concert here. If a performer could fill
the (then) 19,000 seats, the odds are that their concert tours would bring them
to the Forum.
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The Los Angeles Times
quoted Elton John as
saying: "The Forum is one of my favorite places to play in America.
Along with Madison Square Garden in New York, it has always represented
something special to me, something prestigious. It's a big venue, but people
are very close to you. I always look forward to going back." And sure
enough, he performed to sell-out crowds there again in early 1998. |
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According to Mel Gibson,
actress Rene Russo ("Lethal
Weapon 4," "Ransom") was discovered by a Hollywood
agent in the parking lot of the Forum, when she was coming out of a Rolling
Stones concert, daydreaming about marrying Mick Jagger. |
Many stars also turned out
as spectators to watch the Lakers and Kings play here.
But the Forum faced a significant
challenge when the new Staples Center
opened in downtown L.A. in 1999. Both the Lakers and the Kings soon moved
to the Staples Center, and most industry people believed that the Forum
would also lose concerts to the new venue (as it had to the Arrowhead Pond).
Forum
officials hoped that by offering a wider choice of dates (without the scheduling
conflicts caused by the sports teams) and lower costs, they'd be able to
continue to book major concerts on a regular basis. And they did at first:
N*Sync
played a concert at the forum in late November, they booked a big concert
by Bon Jovi
for December, and Elton John
& Billy Joel performed
together in concert on February 6, 2000.
Meanwhile, Hollywood continued
to come to the Forum. In 2000, filmmakers used the arena to film the basketball
scenes from the devilish Brendan Fraser/Elizabeth
Hurley comedy "Bedazzled."
However, at the end of 2000,
the Faithful Central Bible Church announced that they bought the
Forum for $22.5 million. The 10,000-member church planned to use the arena
for Sunday services and also keep booking sports and entertainment events.
But things didn't work out
as planned.
Apparently, some people got
the idea that the Forum was now strictly a church, and concert bookings
fell off.
There were a few notable concerts
in the following years, but by 2010, the Forum was mostly sitting unused.
Fortunately, in December of
2010, New Yorks' Madison Square Garden bought the Forum from
the church for a reported $23 million, and spent $100 million restoring
it, and transforming it into a full-time concert venue. .
Because the Staples Center
is home to so many sporting events, it is often unavailable for
concerts. And with the close of the Universal (Gibson) Amphitheatre,
there is certainly room in L.A. for another concert venue. The
newly refurbed Forum also puts the audience closer to the performers
than Staples, and it has cushy theatre-style seats, rather than the
usual baseball-style hard seats.
The restored
Forum reopened in January of 2014 with an Eagles concert, and had
already scheduled future concerts for the likes of Justin Timberlake,
Paul Simon & Sting.
So, the Forum was back.
But things were in for a major change yet again after the city of
Inglewood tore down the historic Hollywood Park racetrack, and replaced
it with a brand-new entertainment complexs that featured not one
but two new stadiums, built within easy walking distance of the Forum:
- SoFi stadium, a
massive new arena for the NFL's L.A. Rams and Chargers, and a major
concert venue in its own right, which opened with a huge concert series
by Taylor Swift.
and if that wasn't enough, they then built
- The Intuit Dome,
which will be the new home to the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team,
which used to call the Forum home, and is yet another concert
venue; it soon played host to concerts by the likes of Usher and
Billy Joel.
In fact, to reconcile the dispute, the owner of the Clippers bought the Forum.
Where that leaves the Forum now Is anyone's guess.
So far, they seem committed to preserve the historic venue, and it
continued to host concerts in 2024. But without the Clippers, and
competing with two brand-new stadiums right next door, the future of
the Forum is once again up in the air.
[For more
information about Hollywood stars who came to the Forum
to watch Basketball & Hockey games, see this separate
page.]
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Getting
there: The Forum
is located at the southeast corner of Prairie Avenue and Manchester Boulevard,
in Inglewood. / From the San Diego
(405) Freeway, take the Manchester Boulevard offramp. Go east on Manchester
(about a mile) to Prairie Avenue. You can't miss it.
[For more information
on this subject, you can access a seating chart of the Forum online at:
http://www.tixx.com/SeatingCharts/GWF.htm.]
[Or you can access
the Forum's official website at: http://www.gwforum.com.]
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