Customer Reviews

High on Rebellion: Inside the Underground at Max's Kansas City

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Anyone interested in the NYC rock'n'roll scene of the 1960's-'70's should get this book. Warhol's Superstars, the Velvets, Nico, Patti Smith, and so many more all have their place in here! Mickey Ruskin, the owner of Max's, pretty much kept alive 99% of the cities "starving artists" during those times! A lot of popular musicians got their start at Max's, from Bruce Springsteen to Debbie Harry (a former Max's waitress!). If you want to learn more about the "back room" at Max's and all the characters who hung out there, get this book! Lots of entertaining anecdotes from so many different scenesters! Most of these people lived on the edge! Other books I would recommend are "Man Enough To Be a Woman" by Jayne County and "Rebel Heart" by Bebe Buell (they were regulars at Max's as well)!!!

Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin's "High on Rebellion" is a wonderful recreation of Max's era (1965 thru 1981). Filled with hundreds of photographs (by Leee Black Childers, Anton Perich, Billy Name and others) and hundreds of interview quotes, reading it is like a multimedia experience - as exciting as a night in Max's infamous backroom! For those of us lucky enough to have been there, it is a trip back to the center of the maelstrom... Max's was New York's high energy intersection of the art and music world, where up and coming young ones could brush elbows with Warhol, Patti Smith, Bowie, the NY Dolls, et al. Beautifully designed, this book will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the artists, musicians and popular culture of the late sixties and the 1970's. It really is shocking to realize how many young talents succumbed to the excesses of that time, still the book created in me a longing to go back there again! Thanks for a wonderful tribute, Yvonne!

People I haven't thought about in decades! This book documents a time before New York became a city of yuppies and bankers. The bohemian, the artistic, the experimental and the truly outrageous ruled the night and you could still find a cheap, downtown apartment to permit this kind of lifestyle. Mickey and his red socks (to match the tablecloths?) provided a venue for both the talented and the brain-damaged. A real "coffee table" book for those of us who survived. Thanks Yvonne!

This book was great, excellent pictures and a great tell all of the time. Nothing was held back from this oral history, very detailed and fun. Yvonne Ruskin did a great job, I felt like I knew these people and since I have never been to Max's and now that it is gone it was alot of fun to see what it was like and sad at the same time because I wish I could of been there.

I often walk past the site where Max's once stood. Even though I only came to New York about three years ago, I already knew the look of that building from photos. Patti Smith said that when she saw the deli that has taken over there, she cried. I found it sad myself and never even went to Max's. Thanks to this fascinating, touching, and sometimes terrifying book, I feel that I got a small taste of what it must have been like. I do realize, however, that "you really had to be there". Of course, if I had been, I might not be here now. Max's was probably way too fast for a guy like me to handle. I might look back fondly like some of the people in this book or I might have jumped off a building like Andrea Feldman. Pick this book up for a heartfelt examination of what was truly a crossroads for pop culture--a place where the only poeple who felt like freaks were the ones who weren't.

HIGH ON REBELLION is many things.

We are at a seance of NYC, 1960s underground ground-zero - people, time, and place long gone.

We gain a greater understanding of the minds of many of our era's great artists - performing, literary, and graphic. HIGH ON REBELLION seats us at a table with Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Robert Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain, Warren Finnerty, Dennis Hopper, Andy Hoffman, Ed Koch, William Burroughs, Diane Arbus, Tom Baker, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, Divine, Eric Emerson, Brian Epstein, Andrea Feldman, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Al Grossman, Jimi Hendrix, Freddy Herko, Eva Hesse, Peter HuJar, Jacob Javits, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Bill King, John Lennon, Charles Ludlam, Bob Marley, Jim Morrison, Tiger Morse, Barnett Newman, Nico, Lillion Roxon, Robert Scull, Edie Sedgwick, Robert Smithson, Tinkerbelle, Nell Williams, Tennessee Williams and on and on andon.

Even if with nothing more than this, HIGH ON REBELLION stands as an important historical and literary work in the tradition of Hemingway's A MOVEABLE FEAST. Clearly Mickey Ruskin, the late proprietor of the Rock Club, MAX'S KANSAS CITY, was the Gertrude Stein of New York City.

But we get a lot more. Here we've got the tale of those who sowed the wind - from which we are now reaping the whirlwind. Yvonne-Sewall Ruskin's HIGH ON REBELLION shows how MAX'S KANSAS CITY was the cauldron where the artists-witches called up today's society from the void.

That you are reading this is the underline. Yes, with the Internet, we DO all have "fifteen minutes of fame" available. The election of Jesse "The Body" as Governor of Minnesota shows that even politics is now strictly governed by the laws of celebrity - as defined by Warhol.

Buy a couple of copies! This book makes a great gift.

I first read "Please Kill Me" and developed a fascination for this era of American social history. This book describes, through stories and pictures, the various stages of Max's and all the celebrity goings on. Very entertaining, also a high quality edition, of a period of decadence.