A Look Back at the “Anti-Studio 54” with Debbie Harry, Grace Jones, and More of the Mudd Club’s Famous Regulars

On Halloween in 1978, the Mudd Club opened in lower Manhattan, and instantly became a hit with Andy Warhol and pretty much all of his star-studded Studio 54 cohorts uptown, who used the downtown club like a community center for the Factory set. The Mudd Club, after all, was large enough to have a little of everything, from gender-neutral bathrooms to readings by Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs to a fourth-floor gallery curated by Keith Haring—and a who’s who of regulars like Nico, Lydia Lunch, Lou Reed, Maripol, Madonna, Glenn O’Brien, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the latter of whom would sometimes show up with the suitcase he was living out of and even perform with his little-known noise band. Of course, many of those famous regulars are now long gone—along with the club itself, which only stayed open till ’83—but the glorious nights live on in many of the photos that are part of a Paddle8 auction open through the weekend to benefit the Bowery Mission. From Debbie Harry and Joey Ramone cozied up in bed to an ever shirtless Iggy Pop, take a look inside, here.