IT’S time to say gabba gabba goodbye to CBGB.
The seedy Bowery club, which opened more than 30 years ago, will shut its doors forever after a performance tomorrow by Patti Smith, who was part of the mid-’70s punk-rock scene that started there.
On Monday, founder Hilly Kristal, who’s 75 and battling cancer, will ship the famous urinals, bars, stage and walls to Las Vegas, where he plans to open up a club in 2008.
The Dictators, who played alongside groups such as the Ramones, Blondie and Television, will perform tonight. The final show will be broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio at 9 p.m.
Musicians talked to The Post to remember the club – and the man who made it all possible.
Andy Shernoff, the Dictators: In the mid’70s, the city was falling apart, the music business was boring and overblown.
Richard Lloyd, Television:
In early 1974, [Television’s] Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell and I went to the Bowery and saw Hilly Kristal on a stepladder putting up a sign. We told him we play original rock ‘n’ roll. Hilly said, “I’m not having anything to do with rock.” Shernoff: The Bowery . . . was seriously dangerous – full of flop houses, bums and addicts.
Lloyd: A few days later our manager, Terry Ork, asked Hilly, “Let us have a Sunday, your worst night, and I’ll guarantee your bar receipts will be better than your best nights, because everyone I’ll invite is an alcoholic.” We made our nut, so he invited us back.
Shernoff: There was a musical vacuum and CBGB’s filled it because it was the only club where you could play original music rather than covers.
Lloyd: It was difficult to get people to come to the club. It was under a flophouse. One night, wine and urine were dripping onto my microphone, which began shooting sparks.
Patti Smith: The first time I was there, it was Easter 1974. I went with Lenny Kaye to see Television, and eight or nine people were there. It was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. They were obviously kin.
Hilly Kristal: When Patti Smith played seven weeks in 1974, that was exciting. I was a little fatigued, but it was very gratifying. I worked around the clock. I was never bored during the ’70s.
Smith: It was a sh – – hole. The sound was really bad. Hilly made it great because he loved us all. He used to sleep on a cot in the back.
Lenny Kaye, the Patti Smith Group: The crowd that first year was all the other bands and their friends. It was nice to find a home base for music we loved. I remember seeing everybody there their first time.
Bob Gruen, photographer: To get to the bathroom, you had to walk by the dressing room, you didn’t need a backstage pass.
People would have all-access.
Kaye: You can’t be a haughty superstar there when people are walking past your dressing room on the way to the bathroom.
Kristal:We took the doors off the stalls back then [in the ’70s] because people were doing drugs in the ladies room.
Dean Wareham, Luna: The first band I saw at CBGB’s was Richard Hell and the Voidoids circa 1980, when I was 16. I was nervous – it was my first time in a rock club.
I was a little frightened when I went downstairs to pee.
Pat Ivers, video documentarian: One snowy night, Johnny Rotten showed up after the Pistols had imploded and everyone treated him like just another Joe at the bar. Really, it was the ordinariness of it that was so great.
Hamilton Leithauser, the Walkmen: There was some pretty nasty stuff. The toilet was like a throne on a raised concrete block in the middle of the room, and no door. And there was a two-by-four across the door and someone had written “don’t sh – – here on the board” – and someone took a sh – – on the two-by-four.
Walter Schreifels, Gorilla Biscuits: I went to high school at CBGB’s. The first time I went there, in 1985, when I was 16, I was scared, so I stayed in the back by the pool table with all the other posers. Adrenaline O.D. was headlining . . . They played a punk version of the “Masterpiece Theater” theme. I played there with Gorilla Biscuits the next year.
Kaye: CBGB’s represents the great sense of possibility. When there are four or five bands onstage every night, I know I’ll see something really unusual. Maybe after that the bands will break up.
Or maybe a song becomes a classic, like “Psycho Killer” or “Sonic Reducer.” Snooky, Sic F*cks: They should be celebrating Hilly and the whole thing, not tearing it down.
Handsome Dick Manitoba, the Dictators: Being in business for 30 years is a good thing, not a bad thing. It’s like having a full, rich, wonderful life and dying.
Kristal: I was fighting [the closing] since the winter of 2004. It was a brutal time.
Smith: It did what it was supposed to do – give people a venue to present new ideas.
Manitoba: When I’m onstage playing CBGB’s [tonight], I won’t be sad because I’m gonna be onstage playing CBGB’s!
Next week – when I push my kid’s stroller by and I see a boarded-up place that used to be CBGB’s – that’s when my true tears will come out.
Snooky: It’s gonna be like the last episode of Mary Tyler Moore.
Smith: I’ll salute the future and remember the past – salute Blondie, the Ramones, Television, the Dead Boys, Johnny Thunders, Hilly – all those people.
We were the first band to fill the place, so I guess we’ll be the last band to fill the place. It’s not sad.
It’s life.
Kristal: I don’t know where I’ll be on Nov. 1, but I won’t be here.
