His Studio Is in Disrepair, but His Passion for Music Is Intact

David Gonzalez/The New York Times

The first time Raul Gonzalez and his bandmates in Barra Libre sat down to discuss recording with Giorgio Gomelsky, they spent hours talking - about everything but music. He told them - as he has everyone from the Rolling Stones to Jeff Buckley - that they had to be sure they were doing it for the music, not the money.

“He makes you work a lot,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “He’s tough about that. He always told us if you give to music, music will give back to you. But you have to put a lot of work into that.”

One look at Mr. Gomelsky’s studio can tell you just how much work. Known as the Red Door, the three-story industrial brick town house turned performance and rehearsal space has fallen into disrepair over the last decade. First the roof was damaged when the vacant building next door partially collapsed. Then the basement was flooded when a water main burst. And if that was not enough, Mr. Gomelsky - who lives there - had health problems that put him in a hospital for half a year.

None of this has dimmed his vision nor his energy for music, musicians and art. Over a career spanning more than a half century, Mr. Gomelsky, a onetime filmmaker, has gone from opening London’s Crawdaddy Club - where the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds got their starts - to nurturing avant-garde European bands like Gong and Magma. After coming to New York City in 1978 - for a weeklong trip that never ended - he turned a Chelsea loft into a welcoming place where the likes of John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Richard Hell and Bad Brains practiced or performed.

“This was my way of working for music without being in the music business,” said Mr. Gomelsky, 79, sitting at a makeshift console cluttered with computer monitors, cables, books, cassettes and papers. “I don’t have to ask anyone if a band can rehearse here. We hold forth here. It’s the pure thing that makes people love music.”

Mr. Gonzalez first went to the Red Door in 2006 when his Latin-mariachi-punk band played a Halloween show. He had no idea what to make of the joint or its owner, whose name sounded familiar. It was only later, when Mr. Gomelsky mentioned he had worked with Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and the Yardbirds, that the jolt of recognition hit him. Mr. Gomelsky offered to let the band rehearse for free in exchange for help with odd jobs.

Over time, the place came to mean a lot to him.

“You open the door to this little building in Chelsea and you find yourself transported to old New York,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “There’s a big mural on one wall that reminds me of CBGB. It’s like a 1980s New York vibe, where you see a lot of art, a band playing, people dancing and a lot of interesting people in there.”

The building’s structural woes have cut back on shows and left most of the rehearsal space unusable. Alarmed, a group of artists and friends have formed the Red Door Collective to raise $25,000 for repairs through a Kickstarter campaign. The idea is to make the place sustainable over the long run, and give Mr. Gomelsky some breathing room to write his oft-postponed book.

Worrying about “money, money, money” instead of music is probably the worst way to spend time with Mr. Gomelsky. His disgust with that part of the business led him to flee London in 1969.

“By then the Brits had blown it,” he said. “They had been seduced by the American dream of making a lot of money playing music in incredibly bad conditions like stadiums.”

It really is a lot easier to fix a bum roof than twisted values. When he talks about music, he’ll touch on everything from improving the planet, touching the soul and having something to say. Not too far from his desk, past the blues books and hundreds of music cassettes, hangs a portrait of Thomas Paine.

“I like his totally radical positions and his hatred of the British aristocracy,” he said. “He lived in Lewes, you know, like Charlie Watts.”

He gets animated the more he talks, his arms sweeping through the air like a conductor, then swooping down suddenly like a drummer. He puffs on an electronic cigarette, tosses his head back and laughs. It is impossible not to join him, like a conspirator.

And the kicker is this: he insists he does not do any of this for the glory. No, there’s something more vital at stake - the paradox between using music or serving music. Every artist has to make a choice.

“Music is a journey, not something mapped out by a lawyer,” he said. “Human expression is when you make real what you feel. It’s about the discovery of reality behind appearances.”

Like when you push open the Red Door.