The founder of New York’s legendary punk club CBGB and OMFUG outlived his beloved garage-rock palace by one year. In the often mercenary milieu of NYC showbiz, Kristal was an accidental kingmaker. He’d opened his Bowery bar in 1973, expecting to book nice late-hippie fare (the name stood for “Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gourmandizers”). Instead, he booked the new raucous rock acts then congregating in lower Manhattan’s (at the time) low-rent districts. Many of them became worldwide legends (Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith). Others became cult idols (Richard Hell, Wayne County, Television).

While CBGB’s initial stars became too big for the place, and its subsequent regulars never quite hit it big (remember the Shirts?), the “Home of Underground Rock” remained a constant for more than three decades. The New Yorker once called it “the ultimate garage–the place to which garage bands everywhere aspire.”