Max’s Kansas City, an all-in-one restaurant-bar-nightclub, opened its doors in December 1965 at 213 Park Avenue South, near Union Square, in Manhattan, just as American popular culture was poised on the brink of a seismic shift whose aftershocks continue to reverberate.
Max’s became a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists, and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s. It was opened by Mickey Ruskin in December 1965 and closed in 1981.
Max’s quickly became the place to be in the nexus of underground life where art, sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Superstars ignited a cultural conflagration that will never be extinguished. Artist’s would trade their work for credit which kept many of them fed. Musicians got their first taste of New York there.
Max’s Kansas City became the place to be in the nexus of underground life where art, sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Superstars ignited a cultural conflagration that will never be extinguished. Everyone who was anyone was there: Mick Jagger, Faye Dunaway, Larry Rivers, Jim Morrison, Julie Christie, Richard Avedon, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, Robert Mapplethorpe, John Waters, Halston, Bianca Jagger, Philip Glass, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Fran Lebowitz, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Tuesday Weld, Twiggy, Frank Zappa, Peter Max, Joan Baez, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Velvet Underground – and the list goes on and on.
Mickey Ruskin, owner of Max’s Kansas City
The big names hung out at Max’s. An employee tells how Mickey told Janis Joplin to leave because she looked dirty and unkempt. That was the same reason Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were not allowed in. Mickey allowed a lot of things but being physically dirty was not one on them.
Unfortunately, many of the big names are no longer alive. Andy Warhol, Candy Darling, Jim Morrison and many others have not survived and they live as memories.
There was also two personalities of Max’s Kansas City. In the daytime, it was a nice restaurant with monied clients. One story is about a lunch customer that happens to enter Max’s at night. The next day she returns and asks Mickey if he had any idea what went on in this place at night. Night brought out the artists, poets, and musicians and with them came the drugs, drunken debauchery, and wild times. There were many times of chaos.
Max’s was also a favorite hangout of Andy Warhol and his entourage, who dominated the back room. The Velvet Underground played there regularly, including their last shows with Lou Reed before he quit the band, in the summer of 1970.
Max Kansas City was a home base for the glam rock scene, which included Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, the New York Dolls, Jayne County (then Wayne County), Dorian Zero and the Magic Tramps.
While her band did not play there until the second incarnation of the club, Patti Smith and her boyfriend, artist Robert Mapplethorpe, visited Max’s almost nightly from 1969 through the early 1970s, before it began booking punk rock bands.
By 1970 Cooper, the Stooges and the Velvet Underground were all playing there, with the Velvets doing an epic two-month residency.
The Stooges
The Velvet Underground
By 1970,Alice Cooper, the Stooges and the Velvet Underground were all playing there and the Velvets went wild with an epic two-month residency.
New York Dolls
By 1972, the New York Dolls were pretty much the house band, and everyone from Tom Waits to Big Star to Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons performed there.
“There’s David Bowie and David Johansen (of the New York Dolls) putting their heads together in the back room, then upstairs there’s Iggy smashing a bottle of gouging at his chest to open and bleed,” recalls Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, who also remembers catching Bob Marley and the Wailers opening for Bruce Springsteen. The upstairs room was a restaurant that held 50 or more people.
Lenny Kaye, who also remembers catching Bob Marley and the Wailers opening for Bruce Springsteen. Not bad for the shabby upstairs room of a restaurant that held 50 or so people
Many bands made early appearances there. Bruce Springsteen played a solo acoustic set in the summer of 1973. Bob Marley & the Wailers opened for Bruce Springsteen at Max’s, commencing Marley’s career on the international circuit. Not bad for the shabby upstairs room of a restaurant that held 50 or so people.
Arrowsmith
It was the site of Aerosmith‘s first New York City gig. Columbia Records president Clive Davis later signed Aerosmith to his record label.
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Iggy and the Stooges performed a string of shows in July and August 1973.
Big Star performed two shows in December 1973. Tim Buckley, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Odetta, Eddie Mottau, Dave Van Ronk, John Herald, Garland Jeffreys, Sylvia Tyson, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Elliott Murphy and Country Joe McDonald were some of the other musicians that also played there.
Lenny Kaye & Patti Smith
Patti Smith and guitarist Lenny Kaye also performed there as a duo on New Year’s Day 1974, opening for Phil Ochs.
Fashion designer Halston dubbed it “Max’s a constant happening” while to William S Burroughs it was “the intersection of everything.” Patti Smith labelled the venue “a social hub of the subterranean universe”, while Lou Reed also called it “the home of many a career-to-be and life-to-end, and drug casualties in the extreme.”
The extras for the famous party scene in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy were recruited from the hip yet debauched Max’s crowd.
Max’s Kansas City could also be something of a free for all, with naked performance art shows, people openly injecting speed, and Jim Morrison urinating into wine bottles.
Max’s was never intended to be such a place. When Mickey Ruskin, a Cornell-educated attorney, opened the nightspot on 213 Park Avenue South, he happened to have some artists follow him from a previous coffee bar he owned.
Danny Fields recalls of the likes of Willem de Kooning, John Chamberlain, and Dan Flavin who would prop up the bar in the main restaurant and rack up staggering tabs that Fields claims could reach $70,000. The artists would use their artworks to barter for payment and so Ruskin’s collection became gallery-like.
Janis Joplin
An employee tells how Mickey told Janis Joplin to leave because she looked dirty and unkempt. That was the same reason Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were not allowed in.
Mickey allowed a lot of things but being physically dirty was not one on them. Unfortunately, many of the big names are no longer alive. Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Candy Darling, Jim Morrison and many others have not survived and live on as memories.
When Mickey Ruskin, a Cornell-educated attorney, opened the nightspot on 213 Park Avenue South, he happened to have some artists follow him from a previous coffee bar he owned. “We called them the abstract expressionist heterosexual alcoholics,” Danny Fields recalls of the likes of Willem de Kooning, John Chamberlain, and Dan Flavin who would prop up the bar in the main restaurant and rack up staggering tabs that Fields claims could reach $70,000. The artists would use their artworks to barter for payment and so Ruskin’s collection became gallery-like.
By the time of the 1970’s, Alice Cooper, the Stooges and the Velvet Underground were all playing there, with the Velvets doing an epic two-month residency.
By the end of 1974, Max’s had lost popularity among the art crowd and the glam era was in decline. It closed in December of that year.
Tommy Dean Mills and Laura Dean took over in 1975 after Ruskin could no longer keep up with his huge debts. For some people this was the end of an era, but for others it was the start of a new one. Crowley was brought in as promoter and Max’s, along with CBGB, became a destination for the burgeoning punk movement.
Bowie introduced Devo on stage as the band of the future, and the likes of Suicide, Television, the Cramps, Blondie and the Ramones all performed. “When Peter started booking, they had the weirdest shit you’ve ever heard,” says Lydia Lunch, who at the time was playing in the no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. “Stuff that was just so out there – it was pretty special.”
Peter Crowley, who had been booking the same early punk bands that played at CBGB and Mothers, a gay bar on West 23rd Street, was hired to book bands at Max’s.
SUICIDE
As Max’s became one of the birthplaces of punk, regularly featuring bands including Cherry Vanilla, Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Ruby and the Rednecks, The Offs, The Fast, Suicide (who all appeared on the compilation album 1976 Max’s Kansas City), the New York Dolls, Patti Smith Group, the Ramones, the Mumps, the Heartbreakers, Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, Sniper, the Dictators, the Cramps, Mink DeVille, Misfits, Little Annie, the Fleshtones, the B-52’s, the Stimulators, the Bongos and Klaus Nomi, as well as out-of-town bands such as the Runaways and the Damned.
After the breakup of the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious played all of his US solo gigs at Max’s.
How did Max’s Kansas City fall apart?
Andy Warhol said “Max’s was the exact spot where pop art and pop life came together.” Somewhere along the way Max’s Kansas City became legendary.
Danny Fields
The coveted back room was a VIP hothouse with an anything goes policy. Danny Fields, the manager of Iggy Pop and the Ramones, was one of the earliest to frequent it, describing it as “the most desirable place to sit in New York City”. He was not alone in his praise.
“A million ideas were launched in that back room,” said Alice Cooper…
…while Jimi Hendrix called it a place where “you could let your freak flag fly.”
There was some overlap between Max’s and CBGB, although many held firm allegiances.
Max’s Kansas City could also be something of a free for all, with naked performance art shows, people openly injecting speed, and Jim Morrison urinating into wine bottles. The writer Steven Gaines described the vibe of the back room in those days as: “Kinetic and rubbery, people bouncing off the walls, skittering table to table, drink to drink, drug to drug, ashtrays filled with endless smokes, an occasional handjob under a napkin, a blowjob under a red tablecloth.”
There was some overlap over Max’s and CBGB’s, although many held firm allegiances.
Aside from being a party mecca, Max’s was also a place where artists could push their limits. “It allowed you to experiment with your music, take chances, screw up and figure it out,” says Kaye. “It was like a laboratory.”
LYDIA LUNCH
“Max’s was a classier place than the dog shit-ridden Bowery bar that CBGB was, with the most foul bathrooms you’ve ever seen,” says Lydia Lunch.
Max’s Kansas City was in decline and debts were rocketing. “The last year in Max’s was tragic,” says Crowley. “It was dying of neglect – 1981 felt like a long illness, and then finally it died.” The final show was a clear indicator of where music and culture were heading next: the hardcore band Bad Brains, supported by the Beastie Boys, gave the last performance.
The original spirit of Ruskin’s era lives on though, through the Max’s Kansas City Project, established by his wife Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin to provide grants and funding for struggling artists. Max’s Kansas City remains a deeply special place to those who were at the core of its scuzzy charm.
Patti Smith & Lenny Kaye
Max’s clearly remains a deeply special place to those who were at the core of its scuzzy charm. “I still feel a sense of loss and nostalgia,” says Kaye. “I sometimes go into the deli that’s there now and walk into where the back room would have been to buy a beer and celebrate a holy site of New York’s artistic creativity. It was a beautiful run.”
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