Sometimes we think we were born too late — and the new book Max’s Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll only confirms that fear. In Steven Kasher’s tribute to the old, weird (that is, ’70s) New York artist haunt and music venue Max’s Kansas City, we see David Bowie snuggling up to David Johansen, Andy Warhol and Janis Joplin chatting over a dinner neither seems to be eating, Iggy Pop onstage in little more than glittery underpants and blood, and Willem de Kooning clutching a cigarette and staring solemnly into the middle distance.
But there’s more to the book than glamorous photos. We also learn the story behind Max’s, meeting its eccentric owner, Mickey Ruskin, and reading Danny Fields’ sprawling (albeit condensed) 1974 interview with him. In an evocative essay on its live music scene, critic and Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye calls Max’s “a place to learn who you could be.” Kasher even includes menus, a list of the bands that performed at Max’s each year, and a cocktail list with drinks named for the place’s famous clientele: Want to make a Patti Smith? Just mix champagne and stout. According to Max’s, “It’s been making poets horny for years.” The more dramatic Suicide entailed lighting Green Chartreuse and 151-proof rum on fire.
To those of us who never got to experience it firsthand, Max’s Kansas City is the next best thing. Because Ruskin only allowed photographers he knew and trusted to take photos of the debauchery at Max’s, their pictures offer a true insider’s glimpse of a world where world-renowned artists and award-winning film directors shared bowls of chickpeas with downtown drag queens and scuzzy rockers. The book’s release coincides with an exhibition by the same name, of photos from Max’s and artwork created by the joint’s famous regulars, opening September 15 at Kasher’s New York gallery.
Click through for a gallery of images from Max’s Kansas City — including one of our favorite Mick Jagger shots of all time.
Debbie Harry, 1978. Photo by Nicky L/Lower Third Enterprises.
Comments (9)
The girl standing in front of Max’s is Andrea “Whips” Feldman, AKA “Andrea Warhol,” a troubled actress/downtown doyenne who jumped to her death in 1972.
Thanks for the tip, TPL. Strangely, she’s mentioned in the book but wasn’t identified in the photo.
Yeah that’s Andrea Exactly, she was in Andy Warhol’s Flesh and Trash.
She had a very particular way of talking.
I used to date the manager of Max’s Faris Bouhafa- would love to know what happened to him. And they left out two biggies I met during that time there- Bruce Springsteen and Waylong Jennings both performed at Max’s!
The person who used to book all the punk & rock bands was
PETER CROWLEY who was most important in making Max’s what it became from the mid 70s till
it closed (a Korean deli is there now).
for max’s kansas city’s opening party, mickey flew in all his artist friends from all over the country, of course at his expense.
[...] already gushed over the new Max’s Kansas City book and the art show that coincides with it. But now, the folks behind both of those, Steven Kasher [...]
[...] We’ve already gushed over the new Max’s Kansas City book and the art show that coincides with it. But now, the folks behind both of those, Steven Kasher [...]
[...] lot about New York in the late ’60s and early ’70s lately, from Stephen Kasher’s Max’s Kansas City to Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and it’s all making us wistful for a time we never got to [...]
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