CBGB was like a witch’s house with its stucco exterior, swinging wooden doors and opaque windows smeared with layers of fliers and wheat-paste residue. We walked in, and I was entering the dreams I envisioned from the pages of Rock Scene, which included the row of beer signs hanging from the ceiling leading to the stage. It was $3 to enter, which at that time was fairly steep, at least for teenagers from Connecticut with just enough coin from lawn-mowing jobs to pay for gas, cigs and a few Cokes. We were out of money and wondering how to get in when I noticed Richard Hell hanging around the door. I asked him if he could help. He had a stamp on his hand and licked it and pressed it on ours, and we slinked in.

We slowly moved toward the front, all new terrain for us, and suddenly a beer bottle came flying at high speed from across the room, whizzed right past my head and crashed into the wall behind the bar. And no one reacted! We found a seat and watched as a couple of cats and a dog named Jonathan moved through the audience and on and off the stage. People were eating hamburgers and smoking in the midst of the coolest place on Earth. The Mumps came on, and there was the lead singer Lance Loud dancing like a madman with the remarkable Kristian Hoffman on keyboards. And then Blondie played, and it was beyond great with Debbie Harry karate-kicking the audience and Gary Valentine bopping in dark shades.

Over time, I realized that not all the bands at CBGB were amazing. There were definitely some duds, a lot of faded stardust with yesterday’s shag haircut, but signals were changing. What struck me the most was the sheer bloody-mindedness of the artists, poets, filmmakers and musicians who were rubbing up against one another there. Whatever glamour there was on that stage, many of the artists were basically subsisting at poverty level. Fame had little to do with money, which the club infamously paid little of. But being there felt like you were at ground zero of the most critical listening room of the future.

CBGB was our university. We all met each other in 1976, and some of us — Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kathy Acker, Glenn Branca et al. — realized immediately that our devotion was decided. By the end of the year I’d be playing in the Coachmen, an art school band from the Rhode Island School of Design informed by the college mates Talking Heads, né the Artistics/Autistics. By springtime ’77 I had my $115-a-month pad on 13th Street between Avenues A and B. When Sonic Youth came together in late 1980, I asked Hilly Kristal, the proprietor of CBGB, if we could play there. He recognized me from being this kid who basically lived at his club since late ’76 and said, “Of course you can.” He became a champion to me, always letting me present the band there in any context. When people ask me how I tune my guitar, I always say CBGB.