The Downtown Pop Underground

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Father of Bibbe Hansen, Fluxus artist Al Hansen was an early Happenings innovator who was the first to publish a book about the subject, A Primer of Happenings and Time/Space Art, in 1965. [more]

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Best known for his Pop Art silkscreened work, Andy Warhol was a key connector figure who circulated not only through uptown art circles, but also within the underground film, poetry, theater, and music scenes. [more]

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Interview magazine contributor Anton Perich—who documented the scenes at Max’s Kansas City and the Mercer Art Center with his Super 8 film and Portapak video camera—also began making his own public access show, Anton Perich Presents, which debuted in January 1973. [more]

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After the young fashion designer Betsey Johnson met Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol, who needed silver outfits for a film they were shooting, she began designing clothes for the Velvet Underground and married group member John Cale in 1968. [more]

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Daughter of artist Al Hansen, Bibbe Hansen was a regular at the Factory in the mid-1960s—where she co-starred with Edie Sedgwick in the 1965 Warhol film Prison and also appeared onstage as a go-go dancer at an early Velvet Underground show. [more]

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Legendary speed freak Billy Name, who created the original Factory’s metallic installation art design, learned lighting design under Nick Cernovich, who was part of the Black Mountain College group that also included John Cage. [more]

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Born James Slattery, Candy Darling grew up in Massapequa Park, Long Island and moved to New York in the mid-1960s, where she became part of the street scene—eventually befriending Jackie Curtis, with whom she appeared in Warhol films. [more]

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Brooklyn native Chris Stein played in bands as a teenager (including a memorable opening gig for the Velvet Underground in 1967), before cofounding Blondie with Debbie Harry in 1974 and documenting the punk scene with his camera. [more]

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In the late 1960s, Debbie Harry sang backup vocals in a short-lived hippie band named Wind in the Willows, then quit the group and worked as a waitress at Max’s Kansas City before joining the Stilettoes and eventually cofounding Blondie with Chris Stein. [more]

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Edie Sedgwick was a Factory superstar who appeared in Horse, Vinyl, Poor Little Rich Girl, Kitchen, Prison, and several other Warhol films between 1965 and 1966 before splitting with Warhol. [more]

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Off-Off-Broadway actress Elda Gentile performed in the Stilettoes with Debbie Harry after the demise of her previous band, Pure Garbage (which also included fellow Warholite Holly Woodlawn), and also had a child with Eric Emerson. [more]

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Eric Emerson was discovered by Andy Warhol while dancing in the audience at a Velvet Underground show at the Dom and was promptly cast in several Warhol films; he was also Chris Stein’s roommate while he was in one of downtown’s first glam bands, the Magic Tramps. [more]

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Poet Gerard Malanga became part of the Factory scene after being hired as Andy Warhol’s screen-printing assistant; he could also be seen wielding a whip while dancing to the Velvet Underground in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia series, and costarring with Mary Woronov in Vinyl at Caffe Cino. [more]

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Actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein had his La MaMa debut in the 1971 Warhol play Pork well before winning two Tony Awards for writing and starring in Torch Song Trilogy. [more]

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Holly Woodlawn appeared with Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis in many Warhol films, on cabaret stages, and in underground theater productions, and was name-checked in the opening lines of Lou Reed’s classic song “Walk On the Wild Side” and appeared briefly in An American Family. [more]

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OK Harris, one of the first galleries to open in SoHo, was owned by Ivan Karp—an art dealer who played an early role in promoting Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg (in 1970, Karp booked one of Suicide's earliest performances at OK Harris). [more]

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Jack Smith’s underground film Flaming Creatures (1963) was hugely influential, erupting with sexually ambiguous images of gay and trans performers and shot DIY-style on shoplifted black-and-white film stock that was often overexposed to create a hazy white sheen. [more]

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Well before she became Lily Tomlin’s longtime collaborator and partner, Village resident Jane Wagner met Andy Warhol in 1965 and developed several Factory connections, including Jackie Curtis, who befriended Wagner. [more]

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Joey Freeman was embedded in the social networks that linked the downtown’s overlapping arts scenes; he was an assistant to Andy Warhol who was responsible for a teenaged Chris Stein opening for the Velvet Underground, and later collaborated with Stein and members of the Cockettes on a public access television show. [more]

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Born in South Wales, John Cale moved to New York as a young man and participated in an eighteen-hour performance organized by John Cage soon after arriving, then played with La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble and cofounded the Velvet Underground. [more]

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Poet John Giorno was the subject of Warhol’s infamous six-hour film Sleep, which he shot as his boyfriend slumbered at night and later shared a Bowery residence with William Burroughs known as “The Bunker,” a very short walk from the Blondie Loft. [more]

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An American Family introduced audiences to the first openly gay man on television, Lance Loud, who had forged links with the downtown underground in the mid-1960s after striking up a long-distance friendship with Andy Warhol via mail and telephone. [more]

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Long before forming the Velvet Underground and entering the Factory fold, Lou Reed began playing rock ’n’ roll in high school in the late 1950s and got his first post-college job as a songwriter for Pickwick Records, which he quit to form the Velvet Underground. [more]

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Before starring in several Warhol films and Off-Off-Broadway plays, Mario Montez first appeared in Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and was named after Smith’s favorite 1940s starlet, Maria Montez. [more]

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The Chelsea Girls actress Mary Woronov began hanging around the Factory around the time the Velvet Underground joined forces with Andy Warhol to produce the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured Woronov and Gerard Malanga as dancers. [more]

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Before opening Max’s Kansas City in 1965, Mickey Ruskin ran the East Village’s Tenth Street Coffeehouse and Les Deux Mégots, and Greenwich Village’s Ninth Circle (which in the 1970s and 1980s transformed into a well-known gay hustler bar). [more]

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After Tony Conrad left the Velvet Underground, its classic lineup was rounded out by drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker; Reed was a friend of Maureen’s brother, Jim Tucker, and they cofounded a mimeo poetry zine, Lonely Woman Quarterly, while the two attended Syracuse University. [more]

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Andy Warhol’s groundbreaking multiscreen film The Chelsea Girls, which featured Nico, became an underground hit in 1966, the same year she joined the Velvet Underground; she later enlisted Jackson Browne to help with her solo debut, Chelsea Girls. [more]

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Born Robert Olivo, Ondine acted in Play-House of the Ridiculous plays and appeared in more Warhol footage than anyone (because of his acid tongue and ability to talk for hours, days even, while taking speed), landing memorable roles in The Chelsea Girls and other Warhol films. [more]

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Playwright Robert Heide presented his plays at Caffe Cino and elsewhere downtown, where he eventually met Andy Warhol, who enlisted him to write dialogue for his films (footage Warhol shot of Heide’s Caffe Cino play The Bed was incorporated in The Chelsea Girls). [more]

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Playwright Ronald Tavel was a friend of Jack Smith who worked on Flaming Creatures and wrote scenarios for Warhol’s mid-1960s films, then collaborated with John Vaccaro to form the Play-House of the Ridiculous before working with the Judson Poets’ Theatre to do his play Gorilla Queen. [more]

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When he was part of the Warhol crowd, Soren Agenoux wrote a twisted version of A Christmas Carol that debuted at Caffe Cino in 1966 and later could be seen in the reality television series An American Family as Lance Loud’s roommate in the Chelsea Hotel. [more]

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Guitarist Sterling Morrison met Lou Reed at Syracuse University and later reconnected with the songwriter in New York City, where he joined the fledgling Velvet Underground. [more]

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Before becoming a Factory regular and appearing in a variety of Andy Warhol films, Taylor Mead was already a star of underground film after his appearance in The Flower Thief, a 1960 film by Ron Rice. [more]

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Tony Ingrassia was larger-than-life figure who directed several Off-Off-Broadway plays, including Andy Warhol’s Pork, Wayne County’s World: Birth of a Nation, Jackie Curtis’s Femme Fatale, and Island (the latter two featured Patti Smith in acting roles). [more]

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Off-Off-Broadway actor Tony Zanetta played the Andy Warhol character in Pork; when he and the cast performed in London, he befriended David Bowie and became president of his management company, Main Man, during the Ziggy Stardust era. [more]

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Valerie Solanas had previously been known around downtown as a hustling street urchin who wrote the satirical-but-serious SCUM Manifesto in 1967 before shooting Andy Warhol after he and others declined to producer her play Up Your Ass. [more]

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Warhol superstar Viva first met Shirley Clarke when they worked together on Agnès Varda’s film Lion’s Love, and Viva appeared in several of Andy’s films, including the controversial Blue Movie (she happened to be on the phone with him when Valerie Solanas shot him at the Factory). [more]