[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Daradon

And I'm not sure what that ending was all about. Is that some sort of symbolism? Metaphor?

It's based on a true story, although there was no show being played during the real collapse.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/vinyl...backstory.html#

And although the screenwriters of the pilot (including Martin Scorsese, who directed and co-wrote it) have bent a few details slightly to suit the story, it's no fiction. The Mercer Arts Center, and the eight-story building housing it, was a very real place at Broadway and West 3rd Street that collapsed, in a very real cloud of dust, on the evening of August 3, 1973.

At about 5 p.m., as the signs grew more ominous, Kaback himself bolted, then ran back in for his wallet, and got out just in time. The south section of the building came down at 5:10 p.m. (In Vinyl's CGI version, it happens late at night as the Dolls play, and the feeling is that sheer guitar power causes the collapse.) About 300 people got out in time. Four were killed.