NEW YORK: The legendary rock club CBGB closed its doors finally after 33 years of being an icon for the punk in downtown New York with a farewell show Sunday night by rock poet Patti Smith.
All efforts to settle a rent dispute and retain its rights to stay ended in futility for the club's activist-members as a homeless advocacy group, which owns the property, the Bowery Residents Committee, decided not to renew the lease, which expired in August 2005. The club will close down 31 October.
Along with her longtime band members, Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty and Tony Shanahan, Smith sang band favorites and cover songs from the Rolling Stones, The Who, Blondie, Lou Reed and the Yardbirds. The 350-capacity hall was packed with more than 500 fans.
Smith said the club may end its activities in Manhattan, but it will continue in other ways.
She described CBGB as a state of mind at a pre-show press meet. "The new kids have to have their own places."
The closure has brought in protests, tributes and vigils, but the club's owner Hilly Kristal decided he is giving up the legal fight.
The club, the full name of which is CBGB & OMFUG, or Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers, had been the launching pad for several punk-rock music groups. As new bands found no outlets to perform publicly, it had allowed them to experiment and reach out to audiences for the high-energy rock 'n' roll that eventually became "punk." It has helped many careers to bloom, including those of the Ramones, Blondie, the Talking Heads, the Patti Smith Group and Television. All along, it has been icon in Manhattan's music scene.
Saturday, the club witnessed Blondie singer Deborah Harry setting her tunes as part of a weeklong farewell.
Kristal, 74, and a cancer patient, has plans to move the club to Las Vegas. Its CBGB Fashions is expected to move on 1 November to a nearby location at Broadway and Bond Street.
The Bowery Residents Committee, which has a 45-year lease on the building, houses 250 homeless people, who stay in apartments above the club.
