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Patti and punks say farewell to CBGB
By Valentine Low, Evening Standard 16.10.06
Patti Smith performed the final set at the New York club CBGB.
Birthplace: the iconic Television play CBGB in 1977
She was there at the beginning, and she was there at the end. Patti Smith, the high priestess of punk poetry, brought down the curtain on the punkiest, most celebrated, grungiest and most mythologised piece of rock history when she performed the final set at the New York club CBGB.
Birthplace of iconic acts the Ramones, Blondie, Television and Talking Heads, CBGB has since 1973 been home to bands too challenging - or incompetent - to get a gig elsewhere. Although the club's glory days are long gone, it remained for years a symbolic fixture on the Manhattan music scene.
But this year the club finally lost the battle with its landlord over unpaid rent and agreed to close with a fanfare from some of the names which made it a legend. Half the punks who carved a name for themselves at the famously dingy club are dead now, but the ones who are still around and still playing turned up.
"CBGB is a state of mind," said Smith, 59. "There's new kids with new ideas all over the world. They'll make their own places - it doesn't matter wherever it is." Hilly Kristal, the owner of CBGB - it stands for Country, Bluegrass and Blues - plans to move the club to Las Vegas.
