In the mid- to late ’70s, the B-Girls were just certainly one of the many bands that found their punk people at CBGB — the iconic Recent York rock club that began a music movement five many years ago.
The truth is, the all-female act made themselves so at home at the East Village institution that they once played of their pajamas at a profit gig — with a loaded lineup including Patti Smith, Elvis Costello and CBGB house band Mink DeVille — after club owner Hilly Kristal kept pushing their set time back.
“We used to make use of the Ramones’ loft around the corner [at 6 East 2nd St., now known as Joey Ramone Place] as our dressing room since it was horrible at CBGB,” Ross told The Post.
“So we went over to the Ramones loft, and we became our pajamas. And we wore these pink flannel pajamas and cowboy boots back over to CBGB’s, and we brought pillows. We went on right after Allen Ginsberg — you recognize, the serious beat poet — and then we’re up there in pajamas singing ‘Fun at the Beach.’ ”
And the B-Girls would make connections with other legendary CBGB bands similar to Blondie, who broke the scene out of the club underground and to the top of the pop charts with “Heart of Glass” in 1979.
And from Television to Talking Heads, the club that the late Kristal opened on Dec. 10, 1973 became something totally different than what he originally envisioned with those initials standing for Country, Bluegrass, Blues.
“It started off with, you recognize, a couple of drunks and a couple of friends,” Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry told The Post. “It was just, like, the local bar [with] some bikers, some Bowery guys.
“After which it became the place to go. It gave everyone kind of a way of community, a way of purpose.”
Photographer Bob Gruen — who shot everyone from the Ramones to Patti Smith on the club’s closing night on Oct 15, 2006 — said that, in its boom years, CBGB captured the carefree spirit of the local scene, fostering creativity without industrial expectation.
“It was a really free, open form of place,” he said. “The bands were having fun. I feel the biggest goal was that possibly you’d meet a lady and then possibly you’d get a free drink. But no person was expecting world domination.”
Indeed, CBGB was born out of low-rent revolt as Recent York City was on the verge of going bankrupt.
“It was just about a dump,” said photographer Roberta Bayley, who went from working the door to shooting the cover of the Ramones’ 1976 self-titled debut album and becoming chief shutterbug of Punk magazine. “It was only a drinking bar — you recognize, for skilled drinkers that just drink.
“It wasn’t a happening club,” she continued. “The band asked Hilly in the event that they could play there, and he said, ‘Sure.’ That was his biggest skill: He said, ‘Yes.’ And he form of saw some spark of originality and determination in those early people.”
One in every of those early bands was Television, which had a residency at CBGB’s in the mid-’70s. And Bayley’s romance with guitarist Richard Lloyd led to her doorwoman duties in 1974.
“Their manager asked me if I’d take the money at the door,” she said. “It was at a time when there have been possibly 20 people in the crowd. So if any individual got here in we didn’t know, we desired to charge them.
“But you didn’t should be wealthy. Should you had $2, you possibly can go there.”
Gruen first went to CBGB to see Television — with the Stilettos, featuring a pre-Blondie Harry and Chris Stein, opening for them — in 1974 .
“David Johansen [of the New York Dolls] mentioned to me that there was a bar opening on the Bowery, and so we went down there,” said Gruen. “And we began taking pictures of the bands at CBGB because we liked them — not because that they had a record contract. The truth is, most of them didn’t have a record contract.”
Gruen could see, feel and smell the true grit that well earned CBGB’s grungy rep symbolized by its famously filthy bathroom.
“Hilly had a few dogs that he left in there at night to form of keep the place secure,” he said. “But no person walked the dogs. So that you needed to be careful whenever you walked around the club because you would possibly step into something.”
But out of the depths of dinginess arose something special.
“It was just so original and authentic, and had nothing to do with the music business,” said Ross. “We were rebelling against what was being played on the radio. And, you recognize, things in the city were falling apart at that time. And when there’s cracks in the system, that’s when creativity happens. It’s a gap for brand new creativity.”
And 50 years later, at the same time as the location at 315 Bowery is now a John Varvatos store, the CBGB legacy lives on: Jonathan Wells’ recent novel, “The Sterns Are Listening,” is ready against the club’s ’70s backdrop, while in 2024 the CBGB estate — which continues to roll in the dough on those trademark t-shirts — is on the lookout for a recent Lower East Side space to hold on its tradition.
“Some form of mythological energy still exists,” said Harry. “We were lucky we were there.”