When Andy Warhol Discovered the Velvet Underground at Café Bizarre: 'A Dump'
- edgarstreetbooks
- Mar 2
- 1 min read
‘New York Rock & Roll History: The 1960s’ Book Excerpt
Frank Mastropolo
Rick Allmen opened the Café Bizarre in 1957, one of the first Beat Generation clubs in Greenwich Village. Odetta was the opening night headliner. Jazz acts followed and Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg had readings there. Larry Love, the Singing Canary, landed his first paid engagement at the Bizarre in 1962. Love later changed his name to Tiny Tim.
“That was a tourist trap,” Zale Kessler, a former waiter, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“It was decorated like the spooky rides at a funhouse. It was full of tourists pointing fingers at each other and saying, ‘There’s a beatnik.’ Nothing good ever happened at the Café Bizarre, not even free meals.”
In December 1965, Andy Warhol discovered the Velvet Underground at the Café Bizarre, which Lou Reed called “a dump.”
“One night at the Café Bizarre,” guitarist Sterling Morrison recalled in The Downtown Pop Underground, “we played ‘The Black Angel’s Death Song’ and the owner came up and said, ‘If you play that song one more time, you’re fired!’” Of course, the Velvets began the next set with the song and were canned.
The Café Bizarre survived until 1984 when the building was demolished to build a New York University law school dormitory.
Frank Mastropolo is the author of New York Rock & Roll History: The 1960s, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street
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