t was the exact spot where pop art and pop life came together,” said Andy Warhol of Max’s Kansas City. “Everybody went there.” Indeed they did – from painters to poets, musicians to movie stars, and politicians to drag queens. A baby elephant was even photographed in there once.
Almost 60 years since it first opened its doors as a restaurant in New York in 1965 – “steak lobster chick peas,” read the sign – Max’s Kansas City has become legendary.
“It was just where we hung out with friends,” says Peter Crowley, who booked bands for the watering hole and eatery. Crowley has now written his memoirs, Down at Max’s, with a focus on what many consider to have been New York’s wildest nightclub. “But looking back, it was responsible for the cultural future of America. It was a place where anything could happen.”
Or more specifically, it had a room where anything could happen.
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”. Fashion designer Halston dubbed it “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 judged it “the most democratic meeting ground imaginable”.
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.
There was huge cross pollination in terms of creativity, ideas and people. Jane Fonda might be nestled next to a drug-dealer, drag artist Jackie Curtis could be sat chatting with a member of the Kennedy family, while John Lennon might be chewing Alice Cooper’s ear off about politics. But it wasn’t always convivial. “Me, Iggy and Lou Reed were at one table with absolutely nothing to say to each other,” David Bowie once said. “[We were] just looking at each other’s makeup.”
