THE OLD KNIT

Last fall, standing in the Philadelphia construction site that would soon be transformed into the latest of his City Winery franchises, Michael Dorf reflected on the distance he’d traveled since cobbling together his first music venue more than three decades earlier. When he arrived in New York City in the mid-1980s, Dorf was a law-school dropout from Wisconsin who’d never heard of John Zorn, the Jazz Passengers, the M-Base collective, or any of the converging strands that made up the eclectic, stream-crossing downtown scene.

By the end of the ’80s the Knitting Factory had become synonymous with that scene, which needed a laboratory for its experiments to flourish. Over the seven years that the Knit remained in its tiny space on Houston Street before decamping for Tribeca, Dorf built the club into an avant-scaled empire, complete with a major-label record deal and a European touring arm. None of it came without contention, as those who were there recall.

FIRST ROW

Michael Dorf (owner): I did one year of law school at the University of Wisconsin, 1985-86. [At the same time] I was managing my friend Bob Appel’s band, Swamp Thing. I started the Flaming Pie record label for them and made a compilation called The Mad Scene with bands from Madison like Phil Gnarly and the Tough Guys and Honor Among Thieves. I decided I would have to move to New York if I wanted to become a record mogul, so I borrowed some money from my grandparents and used some bar mitzvah savings. I was not successful at all.

Bob Appel (co-owner/manager): Michael and I met in Milwaukee when we were eight, but we didn’t become close friends until we went to summer camp and high school together. Even at a young age, Michael had a very entrepreneurial spirit. His father owned a food distributorship, and Mike would take the damaged cookie boxes to this fair and sell them. When he decided he didn’t want to finish law school he said, “You should let me manage your band.” That’s how the music-biz relationship started.

After three or four months in New York, I was defeated. I was very close to moving back to Wisconsin when I stumbled on a [former] Avon Products office at 47 East Houston Street. I knew I had to sell stuff and I wasn’t selling records, so I thought maybe I could open a café/art space and eventually get a liquor license. I convinced my friend Louis Spitzer, who’d always wanted to have an art gallery, to help me build the space. Swamp Thing was going to call their second album , after a sweatshop in Wisconsin, so [when they changed it] I asked if