Inside the world’s most iconic clubs, cafes and bars for rock and metal music
Get ready to turn it up to 11 at some of the world's greatest rock and roll watering holes...
By Polly Allen
Looking for an essential rock and roll pilgrimage across the globe? Our list has got you covered. From Bob Dylan’s Café Wha? to Black Sabbath’s Crown pub and Springsteen’s Stone Pony, these unusual venues are forever tied to rock history. Each have played their own role in hosting some of the world’s biggest acts, so it’s high time for you to go and discover them yourself.
Café Wha?, New York
“There’s no backstage, just an old boiler room that’s been used as a green room for the past 2-3 years, where people can tune their guitars,” says Hap Pardo, humbly describing the layout of the world-famous folk club where he’s Director of Musical Operations. “As Dave Lee Roth put it, there’s nowhere to hide.”
Founded in 1959 Café Wha? was where Bob Dylan did his first New York gig (1961), as seen in the recent Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. The likes of Jimi Hendrix and Karen Dalton also played here. It was founded by Manny Roth, uncle of David Lee Roth; Pardo says Manny still calls up once a year to check on the place. The marble floor that Manny installed still remains in place (“that floor’s never gonna go anywhere, for sure,” Pardo insists).
“We experimented more with programming in those days – we had Beatnik poets, it was wild. We still get legends who graced us in the 60s coming in again, because we keep the bar high, but you have to be more established to play here than back then when Bob Dylan wandered in,” says Pardo. “We now have a house band, which is kinda the unofficial band of New York City, playing on late nights – people like John Mayer sit in with them. Some house band guys go onto be big, like Brockett Parsons, who’s played keyboards on tour for Lady Gaga.”
As for the earlier evening shows, Pardo says “we’re most excited about acts on the verge of breaking out. They can take their next steps here.”
While some local music venues fell by the wayside (Café Au Go Go, The Gaslight Café, CBGB’s), Café Wha? has stood the test of time, but for Pardo it’s not a competition: “Other venues didn’t fail, they just had a different mission. We’ve managed by everyone wanting to keep it going, being flexible, and changing how you present things with the times.”
As this place cannot physically expand beyond its walls, and there are far more willing acts than gig slots available, Café Wha’s owners opened a second venue, The Groove, with live funk, soul and R&B. In 6-9 months, a third venue will launch on Bleecker Street: the first in the Village for 20 years.
The Crown, Birmingham
Black Sabbath fans are gearing up for the band’s final Ozzy Osbourne-fronted performance this summer, but the site of their first ever gig deserves recognition here. For decades, The Crown pub was one of Birmingham’s live music hotspots, often compared to Liverpool’s Cavern Club; before being known as the Crown, it was Henry’s Blueshouse. Like the venue, Sabbath went through some name changes, but they were known as Earth when they gigged here in 1968.
“The Crown has staked its claim as the home of heavy metal, playing host to some of Black Sabbath’s earliest gigs,” says Chris Collett, from Historic England. “It also hosted some of music’s most influential acts at the time, such as Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Judas Priest, and UB40. For one Victorian pub to have such a musical legacy is remarkable.”
In 2014, the pub sadly closed, leaving it under threat of redevelopment. But there’s hope yet. In 2024 after a 15,000-strong public petition, it gained Grade II listed status: partially for its music legacy and also for its architecture.
“This was a real moment of pride for the people of Birmingham and heritage in the city, recognising the huge cultural significance of Black Sabbath and the birthplace of heavy metal music,” Collett says.
The future of The Crown remains undecided – if it can’t come back as a music venue, perhaps the best outcome for fans would be as a base for the Home of Metal: currently a fan project and one-time exhibition, hopefully a fully-fledged metal museum at some stage.
Café Baba, Tangier
This café may not have hosted gigs, but it’s welcomed rock royalty (and some genuine royalty and dignitaries from around the world, too). Four generations of the Aoufi family have served Turkish coffee and fresh mint tea to customers taking a drag from long pipes, smoking cigarettes of all kinds, or playing board games in the heat.
Tangier was already cool long before it had rock stars on its streets. First came the artists, like Henri Matisse and Joan Miro. Then the writers, like William S. Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Jean Genet, and Paul Bowles (who Patti Smith would later interview here in 1997 for Vogue Germany and write about her visit in M Train). Graham Nash, later of Crosby, Stills and Nash, arrived in Morocco inspired by the Beat poets and chasing an exotic escape, later captured on the Marrakesh Express; Jimi Hendrix followed in 1969.
The Rolling Stones’ 1967 visit to Café Baba is captured on the walls, with a copy of a Michael Cooper photograph showing Keith Richards inhaling the kind of intoxicating smoke that the British press and authorities had hounded him for. Richards and Mick Jagger were awaiting charges for a famous drugs bust incident, so this Morocco trip was a multi-faceted escape. Whereas they were photographed by Cecil Beaton beside a glamorous Tangier hotel pool, Cooper (considered the ‘court photographer’ of the Stones) showed the band off-duty, exploring the city in their own way.
Café Baba even had a visit from the most rock and roll man in the culinary world: chef, presenter and punk rock fan Anthony Bourdain (described by Marky Ramone as ‘a true punk’), who featured the café in an episode of Parts Unknown. The café was also a filming location for Only Lovers Left Alive, the Jim Jarmusch film where Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play vampires whose dress sense wouldn’t go amiss in a mosh pit.
Depeche Mode Baar, Tallinn
Dan Buinenko is the man behind a Baltic bar that only plays music by one artist: Depeche Mode. What started as sharing his music taste with his punters has evolved into a kind of temple for worldwide fans of the rock-adjacent electronic band, where you can buy themed merchandise, drink beer or cocktails named after songs, and be surrounded by memorabilia.
Buinenko counts Enjoy the Silence, Personal Jesus and Just Can’t Get Enough as the most-played tracks here. “Albums like Violator and Music for the Masses are perennial favorites among our guests,” he says.
This place isn’t just fascinating for Depeche Mode devotees craving industrial sounds; it gives a glimpse of the importance of music as expression in a country that survived decades of Soviet occupation and communist censorship, and that involved singing in its revolution.
As the USSR’s power began to wane in the late 1980s, some Western bands were finally able to play in Soviet territory: Depeche Mode tentatively gigged in Hungary and Poland in 1985, then Russia in 1988. But it wasn’t until 2001, two years after DM Bar was founded, that they finally gigged in Estonia; they followed this up in 2006 and, on both occasions, came to see the bar which has their namesake. “Having Depeche Mode visit was an incredible honour. Their visits created an electric atmosphere,” says Buinenko. Former member Alan Wilder also visited in 2013.
DM Bar also has its fair share of other famous punters – members of the bands Tiamat, Peer Günt and Asking Alexandria have dropped by, plus skating legend and Depeche Mode mega-fan Tony Hawk, who’s followed the band since 1981. As for fan demographics, Buinenko describes them as “a wonderful mix of long-time fans and newer generations”. Long may it continue.
Cherry Bar, Melbourne
Cherry Bar is a staple in the Aussie music scene that just celebrated its 25th birthday and, as owner James Young puts it, “Probably the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bar in the world”.
This dive bar turned “pumping live music venue” was founded in 1999 by Bill Walsh, the ex-drummer of Aussie band Cosmic Psychos; its loyal customers are known as the Cherry Massive. The location, in Melbourne’s Central Business District, is perfect: though it opened on AC/DC Lane, the narrow street art-lined strip renamed (thanks to Cherry Bar’s intervention) after the Aussie rockers, as of 2019 it’s a stone’s throw away on Little Collins Street. Like AC/DC, “we too have fans from three generations”, says Young.
Home-grown groups such as AC/DC, INXS, Wolfmother and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have shown the world that Australia knows how to rock, but international acts also flock here, and Noel Gallagher even tried to buy the venue. Ghost frontman Tobias Forge asked that the after-party for their 2022-2023 world tour should be at Cherry Bar, and gifted Young with a gold disc as a thank you.
“Unequivocally our rich and poor rock history is the most important factor in attracting new punters,” Young continues. “We love rock and never build a wall around it – that’s why we’ve focused on attracting a younger audience as well as our core following. We understand that, to save rock ‘n’ roll, you must make it relevant to younger people and continue to feed the monster.”
The Cavern Club, Liverpool
What began as a jazz club in 1957 soon became a hub for rock & roll and the emerging Merseybeat pop genre of the 1960s. The Cavern Club hosted nearly 300 performances by The Beatles from 1961-1963; later it also welcomed the Ronettes, Status Quo, Black Sabbath, Suzi Quatro and Queen.
Following a pattern of closing and reopening in the 70s to the early 90s, the club has been open again since 1991, albeit with a slightly different layout from its 60s heyday. Noel Gallagher, playing here with Oasis in 1991, was unimpressed by the décor and compared it to a wine bar.
Into the Noughties, the legacy continued: the Arctic Monkeys played here a week before their debut single was released. The Cavern went on to offer secret gigs by Jake Bugg and a certain Paul McCartney, plus appearances from Bo Diddley and Paul Rodgers. Just last month, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day visited and caught resident musician Callum McMorran playing Green Day’s Time of Your Life.
Rock Bar Bauhaus, Tokyo
Perhaps the ultimate covers bar for rock fans, the house band at Bauhaus plays a vast catalogue of guitar hits. This venue, in Roppongi, has been blasting out guitar riffs since 1981, with a live setlist runs from Audioslave through to Janis Joplin and ZZ Top.
Rock is a popular genre in Japan, with homegrown bands, such as X Japan and Dir En Grey, categorised as J-Rock. Western rock dominates at Bauhaus, but any tourist visiting Tokyo for their music fix should check out J-Rock at the same time.
Resident musicians at the bar are also stars in their own right – turn up here on Thursdays and you might see Sarina, who sings classic rock covers on this stage, but has over 200,000 Instagram followers addicted to the indie folk music she also makes.
The Stone Pony, New Jersey
The Stone Pony, in Asbury Park, is famous for hosting New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi as they started out; this venue has been gig-heavy since 1974. Today, its historic stage welcomes the likes of Joy Oladokun and Myles Kennedy, plus the action gets taken outside for the annual Summer Stage season, taking the crowds up to 4,500 people.
New York Times journalist and author Nick Corasaniti wrote I Don’t Want to Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony to capture the many voices and anecdotes connected to this club, with a foreword from Springsteen. Yet it hasn’t always been plain sailing, away from the stage lights; the Pony faced closure in the 90s and the early 00s, firstly due to bankruptcy and then developers. Naturally there was an outcry from the music community.
The Stone Pony will feature in a Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere, due out later this year. As with the Dylan-mania surrounding A Complete Unknown drawing tourists to Greenwich Village, it’s likely the Pony will welcome quite a few travellers following in The Boss’s footsteps.