IRT Magazine

HILLY KRISTAL 1930-2007

It is with great sadness that I bring to you the news of Hilly Kristal’s death, which I had just read about after being away from the computer for about a day or so.

When I met Hilly for IRT’s cover story on CBGB in the summer of 2005, he was sitting behind his famous desk right near the door of the club. Weekday afternoon TV was playing from an ancient color TV above his head and in a playpen behind his assistant’s desk was his granddaughter, laughing and smiling away as infants do in spite of the scary looking beasts of men lugging equipment into the club and the cacophonous sound of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion soundchecking behind the thick curtain separating the office from the stage and bar area.

That afternoon, he didn’t look like the man who could keep a few hundred skinhead punks in check on a Sunday afternoon with the deep, authoritative bellow of his baritone voice, but a loving grandfather waving and goofing around with his grandchild, even though he worked the phones trying to set up a festival to help save CBGB that never happened like a man a third his age.

I am truly grateful for the time I got to spend with this genuine New York rock legend, and had the chance to hear the stories he had told me for the article. Writing that piece was one of the highlights of my 10 year career as a rock journalist, and to have him shake my hand and thank me for it the next time I saw him at CBGB a few weeks after that issue was published, will be a memory I shall never soon forget.

I lost both of my own grandparents to lung cancer, and have seen firsthand the horrors of this most disgusting disease. It breaks my heart to know that Hilly went through the same thing they did, but I can tell you firsthand that cancer might be able to take away the physical form of those who we love, but it can never extinguish their legacies.

I extend my deepest condolences to the Kristal family, and want to let them know what an honor it was to have been able to spend just a little slice of face time with Hilly, one of the truly great men this city has ever known.

Anyway, Heaven seems like a much better location to re-open CBGB than Vegas anyway.

Respect,

Ron Hart

Editor and Publisher

Interboro Rock Tribune

Last Modified : August 30th, 2007
Filed under : THE RECORD BIN
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