Cafe Wha?

... waiting till I got home.

So I went into the Cafe Wha? next door to the Cellar-

Yeah

... which is a funk soul club, and I went in their bathroom.

It, everything went hay- It was, like, so awkward.

I was, like, so happy my dad was, like, leaving, and I'm like, "Okay, that awkward's over, but I gotta go to the bathroom, and I'm gonna have to do it in public.

This is crazy." But they have private individual stalls at the Cafe Wha? So I went in there and looked at a mu- The walls were also papier-mâchéd with, like, old porn, which is, like, what is the point here? Are you trying to jerk off?

Jay's trying to fucking tear it off the wall.

Okay, so it was around 1967 when a teenage David Johansen started going out to shows on his own.

So he'd go to downtown Manhattan to check out the folk scene at Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street, shout out to Forte-

[laughs]

... to see the hippie psychedelic bands like the Blue Magoos, which is really cool, but nothing compared to the time David went to a Murray the K live music s- showcase.

And the reason for the Bitter End was they basically came up on Bleecker Street.

The Cafe Wha? was in that area, and, uh, they have that album live at the Cafe Wha?.

So, most of the places are gone now, so we were talking and I said, I said to Roy, "Why don't we play the Bitter End just for the nostalgia of it?" And, and we did.

It was great.

But Van Empson knew his way around, as did his dog.

The two took this same stroll, same route, every night, just after the last folk singer had plied his or her trade at Cafe Wha?, the coffee house Van Empson owned.

Cafe Wha? was a hipster hangout, though admittedly not as hip as Gerde's or The Gaslight or Cafe Wha?, where the Midwestern import, Bob Dylan, was turning the whole scene on its head.

Van Empson didn't care much for Bob Dylan.

If Van Empson was being honest, what with that nasal, whiny voice of his.

I'd go to catch from catch.

I'd go to Cafe Wah.

From Cafe Wah, I would do The Cellar, back to Cafe Wah, back to Dangerfields, back to Catch, back to Comic Strip, and then Catcher, not the Improv, you Catch.

And I would do that two nights in a row.

So I did almost 20 shows before I did a TV show.

In terms of, like, did we ever work together, no.

But I saw Richard Pryor when I was, like, 18 or 20 at the Cafe Wha? in New York- Mm ...

down on Bleecker Street.

Or on MacDougal and Bleecker.

But he did get noticed.

by Chaz Chandler of the band The Animals while he was playing Hey Joe at the Cafe Wah in Greenwich Village.

Chandler brought him back to London with him in 1966, got Jimmy signed to a production and management deal.

Hendrix met his bassist Noel Redding via an audition.