Max's Kansas City

Now, the New York Dolls were developing a reputation by this point, but the old guard in New York City, such as it was, they were not always impressed.

Allegedly, Lou Reed derisively called the New York Dolls the Velveteens, while the Dolls' earlier attempts at breaking into the Max's Kansas City crowd, those attempts were rebuffed by a crowd who was actually gay instead of just pretending, like the New York Dolls were want to do.

Mm-hmm.

But there was one member of Andy Warhol's crew who got what the Dolls were doing, and when the band returned to the Hotel Diplomat for a second show in the summer of 1972, they shared the bill with one of the last Warhol superstars, legendary drag queen and playwright, Jackie Curtis.

They got popular really quick, which of course is gonna create some naysay- sayers and non-well-wishers, if you will.

[laughs]

Like, when, uh, at Max's Kansas City, the band had to fight their way to the back room and be recognized, like, to sit on the round table.

It, it, and hanging out with big names like Andy Warhol, you know, that helped too, but nothing helped more at the time than when they got a write-up in Andy's magazine he founded called Interview.

And it's, it's why these moments are interesting to talk about, because you never really get to talk about it.

Like for example, like one restaurant I wish I got to go to if I was young enough, if I was old enough back then, was Max's Kansas City.

Oh, yeah.

I would...

So you weren't really part of the CBGB crowd.

You were more of the Max's Kansas City crowd.

More, but I mean, we hung out at CBGB's and that was the first place we were playing, you know, a whole bunch of times with them.

We started getting better gigs at Max's.

Kansas City or CB's.

Probably Max's Kansas City.

Yeah.

They played drums for the Stimulators.

Hose, H-O-E, S or H-O-S-E? H-O-S-E, yeah.

That was Rick's band.

And Rick played in another band called The Pricks that played Max's Kansas City.

So there's some history that not many people talk about.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

There are a lot of books that exist about a particular time period, a particular nightclub you know the Moulin Rouge Studio 54 oral histories of different New York clubs from the 60s and 70s like Max's Kansas City and you know all of these great things but to provide a sort of story of where we began and where we are now yeah hadn't been done before.

I think it was The Guardian that said the book is a 500-year walk through the world's great nightlife experiences, and it treats going out as something historically significant rather than as a frivolous side effect of ordinary life.

That's what I found myself musing about as I read your book was not just, oh, look at this wild scene she's painting here from this era.

Very much the thrill of partying in this night garden, which is sort of 12 acre patch of forest on the outskirts of London that was partially illuminated by candlelight, which in pre-electricity looked kind of completely bewitching to people.

And the main draw was this idea of working class middle class and upper class even royalty all partying together in the same place which hadn't really happened before and the other thing is because exactly you're right the relationship to the night is really important here because under this semi-darkness this semi-illuminated night garden it was very difficult to tell what class people were from in the first place The sense of class ambiguity was very thrilling to people and it would have felt completely subversive.

And I think you also then get an echo of that once you get to 60s, 70s New York and places like Max's Kansas City and Studio 54.

It's all different segments of New York, art students and drag queens and celebrities and millionaires all coming together to party along with kind of random tourists from Florida.

I mean, ne- next week we're gonna be getting into so many different avenues of New York City.

We're gonna be getting into Jackie Curtis, gonna be getting in- back into Max's Kansas City, uh, one more time.

Yeah.

You know, we're gonna be getting into, you know, the fucking, the Mercer Arts Center.