Max's Kansas City lives on in new book, forthcoming documentary

            Its heyday was decades ago, but Manhattan's fabled but long defunct Max's Kansas City continues, not only virtually but in a recently published book of photographs and in an upcoming documentary.

            On the virtual side, The Max's Kansas City Company web site/blog safeguards the legacy of the venue, which was founded by the late Mickey Ruskin in 1965 and quickly became a home-away-from-home for artists and celebrities--Andy Warhol being a prime example of both. It eventually attracted New York's late '60s and early '70s rock scenesters like the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls, as well as music acts like Bruce Springsteen and Aerosmith, who were on the road to superstardom, and everyone else from Bonnie Raitt to Bob Marley.

            The club was located at Park Avenue South between East 17th and 18th Streets and  closed in 1974, but re-opened under new ownership in 1975 and again became a bastion for the avant-garde--this time the punk rock era of The Ramones, Sid Vicious and Devo.

            "I was lucky to be at Max's--my neighborhood bar--when all these wonderful and remarkable people were there," recalls Danny Fields, one of New York's most important cultural icons, who co-managed The Ramones. "I lived a five-minute walk away, and I was there a lot!"

            Fields is well-represented in words and photos in the new book Max's Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll (Abrams Image). The book was edited by Steven Kasher, owner of the Steven Kasher Gallery, where photographs from the book--including Fields'--were recently exhibited.

            "I really didn't have a photography career at all--it was a hobby," says Fields, who also contributed an unpublished interview he conducted with Ruskin at Max's in 1974. "Mickey didn't encourage people taking pictures of his customers in whatever action they were in, but was kind enough to allow me and a couple other photographers to shoot our friends there--and they trusted us. And we never, of course, got a bad picture--and would not have shown it to anyone if we had!"

            Running simultaneously with the Kasher Max's Kansas City exhibit was a group exhibition at the nearby Loretta Howard Gallery, Artist's At Max's Kansas City, 1965-1974: Hetero-holics And Some Women Too.

            Max's Kansas City closed again in 1981; it re-opened a second time at a different location in 1998 but closed shortly afterwards.

            Besides The Max's Kansas City Company, which also creates festivals and shows dedicated to art, music and fashion and advises like-minded companies, there's The Max's Kansas City Project, which was established in Ruskin's memory to further his philosophy by providing emergency funding and resources to financially distressed individuals in the creative and performing arts.

            Still forthcoming is a Max's Kansas City documentary featuring the likes of Fields, Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Tommy Hilfiger, Alan Vega, Cherry Vanilla, Betsey Johnson and Danny Goldberg. And vintage T-shirt company Worn Free recently recreated the Max's logo shirt famously worn by Joey Ramone.

(The Examiner wrote the first book on The Ramones, Ramones--An American Band, and worked for Danny Fields when he edited the magazines Country Song Roundup and Rock Video.)

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