CBGB: the history of the Bowery club

CBGB was a narrow club at 315 Bowery in Lower Manhattan that became the birthplace of New York punk. Hilly Kristal opened it in December 1973. Within two years Television, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie and Talking Heads had all built their audiences there, and the club’s name had become shorthand for a whole movement. It stayed open for almost 33 years and closed on 15 October 2006 with a three and a half hour concert by Patti Smith.

This page follows the club from its unlikely start to its last night, with the dates that matter.

A bar on the Bowery

Hilly Kristal had run a bar called Hilly’s on the Bowery before he opened CBGB in the same building. The Bowery in 1973 was one of the poorest streets in Manhattan, lined with flophouses and men’s shelters. Rent was cheap and nobody else wanted the space.

Kristal planned to book country, bluegrass and blues, which gave the club its initials. Under them, on the awning, he added OMFUG: Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers. The country plan never really worked. What filled the room instead was a generation of young bands who had nowhere else to play after the Mercer Arts Center, home of the New York Dolls, had collapsed in August 1973.

1974: Television and the Ramones

The turning point came in early 1974. Television, with Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd and Richard Hell, persuaded Kristal to give them a regular night. Their manager Terry Ork did much of the persuading, and the band is said to have built the first stage itself. Television first played CBGB in March 1974. In August the Ramones followed, at first in front of a very small audience.

Kristal’s one firm rule was simple: bands had to play their own material. That rule is the most important single reason why CBGB mattered. Cover bands were the normal business of New York bars; CBGB offered a stage to anyone with original songs and the nerve to play them.

1975 and 1976: the scene takes shape

Patti Smith and her group played a long residency with Television in the spring of 1975. Talking Heads gave their first concert at CBGB in June 1975. In July 1975 the club held a festival of unsigned New York bands that drew the attention of the music press.

Blondie were part of that first circle. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein played CBGB from 1974, and the band developed its mix of girl group pop and punk speed in front of the same audience as the Ramones. Their debut album at the end of 1976 included Rip Her to Shreds, a song that captures the gossipy, sharp humour of that small world.

By 1976 the scene had its own magazine, Punk, launched in January, and its own compilation, Live at CBGB’s, released by Atlantic the same year. Record companies came looking. The Ramones signed with Sire, then Talking Heads; Blondie went to Private Stock and later Chrysalis; Television to Elektra. Read more about the scene as a whole on our page on New York punk.

What CBGB was like

The room was long and narrow, with the bar along one side and the stage at the far end. It held only a few hundred people. The bathrooms became famous for their filth and their graffiti, and the walls were covered with layers of stickers and flyers. Kristal invested in a strong sound system, and many musicians later said that the sound was the main reason they liked playing there.

The club was not glamorous, and that was part of its function. It was cheap to get in, cheap to drink and easy to reach for the artists and students living in the cheap apartments of the East Village.

The eighties: hardcore matinees

When the first generation left for bigger venues and record deals, CBGB found a second life. From the early eighties it held Sunday afternoon hardcore matinees, all ages shows that made it the centre of New York hardcore. Bands such as Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags and Gorilla Biscuits grew up there. Other nights stayed open to anyone with original songs, which meant thousands of unknown bands played the stage over the years.

Rent dispute and closure

In the 2000s the Bowery changed. Rents rose, hotels and galleries arrived, and the club’s landlord, the Bowery Residents’ Committee, a nonprofit organisation for homeless people, went to court over unpaid rent and the renewal of the lease. A campaign to save the club drew support from many musicians, but in 2006 Kristal lost. Patti Smith played the last show on 15 October 2006. Kristal died in August 2007.

The building at 315 Bowery has since been used for retail, and the CBGB name lives on mainly as a brand for merchandise.

Why CBGB still matters

CBGB showed that a scene does not need a beautiful venue, only a stage that is reliably open to new music. Many of the most influential records of the decade, from Horses to Marquee Moon and the first Ramones album, were written for and tested in that room. For the wider story see our history of punk rock, for the downtown reaction against it our page on no wave, and for the magazines that covered it our piece on punk fanzines.