
Photos of the event were instantly everywhere, and suddenly, it was the place to be, with crowds thronging outside. As Vanity Fair reports, this included having a naked man covered in gold glitter leading Jagger around on the back of a white horse. Then fashion designer Halston booked the club to throw a birthday party for Bianca Jagger, Mick Jagger's wife. The owners did everything they could think of, but for the first five weeks or so, they barely got by. It was a huge space and needed about 1,000 people inside every single night - not just on the weekends - if it was going to make a dime. After a splashy and well-attended launch, attendance fell off immediately, and the club struggled to get enough people inside to make a profit. The crew tried unsuccessfully to bandage him up with some gaffer tape, and Pop's blood-soaked performance became the stuff of legend.īut as Vice notes, the nightclub almost failed completely.
#Super health club scenes code
As Flashbak reports, he had a puncture wound in his chest and discovered that if he pulled his arm a certain way, blood would spurt out - so Pop started doing it on purpose, spraying his audience with his own blood, which seems like it might have been a health code violation. That's a pretty baller move for a singer, and it was going great until one of the tables tipped over, sending Pop crashing down onto another table covered in glasses. So one night, the unpredictable performer decided to start walking out onto the tables as if they were an extension of the stage. The Stooges were a big draw at the time, so the place was packed and Iggy Pop had grown frustrated with the tiny stage. As Far Out Magazine recounts, Max's had a very small stage with tables right up against it. In 1973, Iggy Pop and the Stooges played at Max's. Here are some of the amazing moments from the wild history of the 1970s club scene. It was one big party, and some crazy things happened before people began to realize how much money could be made. Celebrities mingled with the non-famous, and people of all genders, persuasions, and ethnicities danced the night away, usually under the influence of a lot of legal and illegal substances. Despite the iconic image of the velvet rope, clubs worked hard to get a diverse group of people inside.

The end result was the unique chemistry of the classic 1970s club. The wealthier, straighter, and (let's face it) whiter folks from uptown wanted that energy, and so they would show up for the human scenery. Most big cities at the time had affordable downtown areas where artists and musicians could actually find apartments, and they congregated at the seedy bars and clubs that sprang up. Spurred on the by the nascent LGBTQ rights movement, the club scene of 1970s New York had its roots in the 1960s, but the specific economics of the 1970s were the special sauce.
