Tom Deignan reminisces about the Lion’s Head, a legendary New York City bar that was a haven for Irish writers, musicians and artists
It’s been years now since the famous Lion’s Head bar in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, closed. Long known as the watering hole for drinkers with writing problems, the Head also became a second home for a veritable “greatest generation” of Irish-American writers and raconteurs, not to mention poets, politicians and musicians.
As Pete Hamill writes in his memoir A Drinking Life: “I don’t think many New York bars ever had such a glorious mixture of newspapermen, painters, musicians, seamen, ex-communists, priests and nuns, athletes, stockbrokers, politicians and folksingers, bound together in the leveling democracy of drink.”
Novelist Fred Exley called it “America’s last great saloon.” The Head was “Greenwich Village’s most lionized literary bar,” as The New York Times put in the paper’s obituary for jocular Irish-American co-owner John Wesley Joice, who died just eight months after the Head closed in the fall of 1996.
Many still speak with awe of the Head’s famous wall of book covers, posted by regulars who’d gotten their works published.
The Head may or may not have been an “Irish pub,” but it counted Hamill, Frank McCourt, the Clancy Brothers and Newsday columnist Dennis Duggan among its colorful cast of regulars. It’s even said that Bobby Kennedy decided to run for the Senate while at the Head.
Like Elaine’s or the Stork Club or “21,” the Head was a quintessential New York joint. It was unique, however, because it managed to be blue-collar and ethnic, as well as artistic and intellectual, a vibrant combination which may never be seen again.
Ten years after the Head closed, here are some Irish memories, based on interviews or privately published recollections:
FRANK McCOURT: Paddy Clancy lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn Heights. He called me up one day and said there was a new bar opening up on Christopher Street. The Head became my home away from home. If I was troubled, if I was lonely, if I didn’t know what to do with myself, I’d head to the Lion’s Head.
DENNIS DUGGAN: I know what I liked about the Head. Its cut and shape, its lighting, the size of the bar, the whiskey-soaked color of the wood, its bartenders and, finally, its owners, starting first with Leon Seidel and then later with the unlikely duo: ex-cop barman Wes Joice and Al Koblin, the Irishman and the Jew. Maybe that’s how the story got around that the Head (no one ever refers to it as the Lion’s Head, that would be like saying the Protestant Reformation) was a place where the Irish came to think like Jews and the Jews came to drink like the Irish.
PETE HAMILL: The Head was so seductive because the people who were in there were brilliant and so was the conversation. It was not a bunch of guys just exchanging clichés. The arguments were pushed in ways that made you think on a level you ordinarily would not. And you learned a lot from people who were not writers, about the kind of lives they led. You got to know something about the way people lived lives [which] were totally different from your own. There was a cop named Bobby Adams I’d talk to. A smart guy, came from my neighborhood. That could have been me. I could have taken the cops test and become a cop instead of what I am now. It was terrific to learn from those guys, the density of their jobs. Their jobs were not just a civil service paycheck. They had interesting, complicated visions of what it was they were doing. This was important especially at that time [the late 1960s], when cops were being painted [negatively]. We knew from the evidence all cops weren’t like that.
McCOURT: When Bobby Kennedy came, it was frenzy. They scrubbed all the graffiti off the bathroom walls. He was revered. His political journey meant a lot to people.
HAMILL: You wanted to be in a place where all sins were forgiven. If you got drunk and fell on your nose it didn’t matter. You came back the next day, what the hell was the disgrace? And I think that’s true of any place in which friendship is at the heart of the matter. I never thought of it as an Irish bar. There were a lot of Irish guys, but I could name a whole bunch of Jews who hung out there! When it became an Irish bar was when the Clancy Brothers would sing. And even they were not singing exclusively Irish songs. But you could end up with Larry Merchant sitting with the Clancys, and everybody was singing “The Leaving the Liverpool” or “Isn’t It Grand, Boys.” They would come in late at night, they all had places there in the Village, or after a gig at Carnegie Hall they’d come down. They loved to sing. They had all been shaped, particularly Tom and Paddy Clancy, by the Village of the 1950s –the revival of O’Casey and things like that.
McCOURT: One of the main attractions was the Clancys. There was a big round table in the back and they’d just start singing. And they’d sing until the early hours of the morning. Which for them was fine but for me was disastrous. I had to get up the next day and go to Staten Island and teach. If the Clancys were there it was an Irish bar. No one sat back there singing Yiddish songs. There was also the transient Irish crowd. Poets like Seamus Heaney, Jon Montague and Ben Kiley would come . . . they were not regulars but they’d be considered among the faithful. They’d always head to the Lion’s Head when they were around.
GEORGE KIMBALL: I had been in Ireland for a few weeks . . . when the McCourt brothers arrived in Limerick to open their road company version of A Couple of Blaggards. So the morning Frank got to town I dropped by the Belletable Arts Center, where the play was performing, to welcome him back to his home city, and had a cup of tea with him and the theater manager before I had to rush off for some errands. We agreed to meet later that night after Malachy arrived, and Frank, who wished concomitantly to look up some old friends, suggested that he might be found in a pub further down O’Connell Street called South’s. “Ah, I don’t know, Frank,” protested the theater manager, whose name was Jerry. “A lot of the lads won’t go into South’s any more ever since they put in a ladies toilet.” Just as the arcane qualities that comprise a good pub defy definition, so do the subtle alterations “beyond the installation of a ladies john” that can cause a good pub to go bad. But the Lion’s Head survived enough attacks from within . . . Either nailing the dartboard shut or installing a jukebox could have ruined a lesser saloon. Taken together they were . . . almost intolerable, but the 1969 record of 23 consecutive 301 [dart game] victories posted by Finbar Furey and myself remains intact. The most remarkable aspect of this milestone is the corollary accomplishment that in order to achieve it we had to consume the 22 drinks we won in the process.
McCOURT: I think generally there was a kindness in the Head. I lived in Dublin in the early 70s. I used to go to places in Dublin and there was a bitchiness there, parochialism. It could be very witty and cutting, but I was relieved to get back to the geniality of the Lion’s Head. And remember, a lot of people at the Head, like myself and Hamill, came up with the working classes. Here we’re able to buy all the drinks we want and pay for it and so on. If you’re middle class or upper middle class, maybe you’ve learned to handle it. But not when you come from blue collar, where drink is generally done on Friday or Saturday night as a big treat . . . We were untutored in the sophistication of the cocktail world. Many of us couldn’t believe our good luck. Here we were in New York City, in the Village, drinking, surrounded by two-fisted journalists.
COLUM McCANN: When I was 17 years old I had a four-month leave from college in Dublin. I was studying journalism. So I packed my bags for the United States. I did not know what to expect, except I remember thinking of New York as a place where all stories congregated and became real. [An editor told me] if I really wanted to see what the life of a writer was like I should go down and hang out in the Lion’s Head in the Village. When I first visited the Head it was early evening – far too early, in retrospect. The five or six people along the bar were either hammered or stone cold sober, or in that strange hovering state of being both at once. So I bought a bottle of Heineken and sat in the corner and watched and watched and watched. In the end, the people at the Lion’s Head seemed no more nor less magnificent than in any other place. The bartender didn’t look like he might develop into an old-style seanchai [Irish storyteller] before the night unfolded. But then again there was always The Wall. The Wall was magnificent. I wandered around and looked at all of those wonderful book covers, some old and dusty, some brand spanking new. They were a novel in themselves. Therein lay a sense of literary creation. The walls were the things that were alive. I wandered around them for at least an hour or two. That night I left early but I do remember thinking that one day I’d return to the Lion’s Head and have a right to be there, not only on a barstool but behind a dusty glass frame as well. But in the end it was all too late. By the time I returned with a book in hand the Lion’s Head wasn’t the Lion’s Head anymore.
TOM KELLY: My first book jacket [1996’s Payback] would have been next to go up on The Wall before the Head closed.
DERMOT McEVOY: The first jacket I remember on the wall was Fred Exley’s A Fan’s Notes. It was stuck to the wall with scotch tape. Pretty soon there were so many book jackets that Al Koblin [one of the owners] started putting them in frames and screwing them to the wall. So they wouldn’t be stolen. And then the wall became the thing to see. I couldn’t make the wall because by the time my book got published the wall was gone.
McCOURT: Every time you’d sit there at the end of the bar your eye would wander over to the wall. You’d see Mailer, Pete Hamill, Dennis Smith, Joel Oppenheimer. I was not writing at the time. I was scribbling. But I was always looking at the wall. My great ambition was to have my book jacket on the wall. [Just before the Head closed, bartender] Mike Reardon called me. I was flying off to Germany [to promote Angela’s Ashes]. Mike called me and said, “Why don’t you come down and have a drink?” I really had to go, but Mike said, “Come on, have one drink.” So I went down. Mainly because Mike had cancer. I sat at the bar and he poured me a double shot of whiskey. And he said, “Turn around.” And I saw the [Angela’s Ashes] book jacket on the wall. For me that was better than a Nobel Prize. I’m just sorry now I didn’t take a picture. ♦
Love your article.
I’m wrapping up a book primarily about Liam Clancy of The Clancy Brothers.
I knew him for 40 + years.
Naturally there’s a portion about The Lion’s Head. Is any small part of your article quotable for a book such as mine?
I love the one from Frank McCourt about his dust cover
I have a small one from Al Koblin about Tom Clancy and some others.
Thank You for your consideration.
Ron Leonard
More about me upon request.
Hi,
I realize this article was posted 15 years ago, but I thought you might want to know that Alan Koblin, the owner of the Lion’s Head, passed away this morning. He was 91 (and a half) and I am thinking about trying to get an obit printed in the NYT. He was my dear, funny, sagacious, audacious uncle.
Betsy Hutchings
Clyde Haberman should be able to help out with the NYT obit. RIP, Al. One of a kind.
Al , an old friend was not owner but bar tender.
Ronald, I remember in 64, the Lion’s head was in the village on the west side does anyone know the old address before it moved to Christopher?
Thanks, Jim
It was on the southwest corner of Charles & Hudson where the Sazerac was for many years.
Thanks, RK Dillon. Now i know I am not losing my mind.
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7344234,-74.0064316,18z
And owned by poor Leon Seidel who died just as the move was made to Christopher St. It had a terrific Sunday dinner menu for $5 – roast beef & all the fixin’s.
I wish I would have spent time there. I subleased an apt a few blocks South of there on the East side of Hudson from Vernon Bundy in Early 64 after the JFK assassination. He knew I knew about the plot and I caught him searching our stuff and kicked him out. Years later he became a poor witness in Jim Garrison’s trial.
Does anyone remember Ellen Behnke singing at The Lion’s Head? This would be around the middle 1960s to say middle 1970s, and maybe later. Ellen worked days at Tyffany Co. during the day, and would then run to Greenwich Village after work to sing. Ellen shared the stage with many contemporary folk singers of the time, and though her success was not as great as those stars, she had a following. I would like to hear from anyone who remembers Ellen. Thanks.
i used to go into 55, another bar beside the head on Cristopher st–i think that (55) was the address also–they usrd to say (@ 55) ” the head is for writers who drink–this place is for drinkers eho write…”
Bradley Cunningham owned the 55. It was a great bar w/ one of the world’s best bartenders: Malcolm Rayfield (sp?) Raphael?
I will always remember Malcolm Raphael behind the stick in the daytime shift with his elegant cigarette holder dangling from his mouth while pouring g drinks and making well educated conversation. I remember in 1974 I was going off to England with The Platters and Sallie Blaire was going with us as the opening act and he told me he loved her when she played the Bon Soir
he also gave me a great tip where to get fresh Oysters at a street stand in Paris that I visited . Last I knew of Malcom he was living in Hoboken, I hope he is still with us I would love to talk to him again, so many of my old Bar friends from the Village are gone Bradley Cunningham < Dave Sharpe, Bill O'Donnell from the Bistro , those were great days in the Village, Remember Chumley's?
Also Nick Pinto, Stefan Schwartzi (where David’s Pot Belly was for a while), Sam, Barry Cullen. I’ve looked for Malcolm & Davy Lee, his wife, on line to no avail.
OMG, David’s Pot Belly! And of course The Bistro (“go cook your own burger-you’ve got two legs don’t you?!”) and Chumley’s!. The manager of “The Front”, Steve Sussman had a studio above it, across the courtyard. Anybody reminiscing about Ted at Arturo’s (other side of town).? Fun times!!!
Another meaningful coincidence, after Hudson Jim and Jean moved to 55 Leroy St. The manager of the Hollywood Hootenanny tour was Ken Raphael.
Another meaningful coincidence….?
Our particular Lion’s Head is up on 109th/Amsterdam. It opened in 2002 and can’t imagine the name was ever intended as a riff-on or replacement-of the ‘old’ Lion’s Head. As I understand from my bosses, naming this bar Lion’s Head was more of a subtly obvious encouragement to the Lions of Columbia University to come and partake (ergo Lions) and the Head part was just kinda better than ‘Tail’ or ‘Mane’ or ‘Roar’. They just wanted to use Lion.
But check this out- seems this old joint was a big hangout for sportswriters, artists, and colorful locals of the neighborhood. We too have had our own following with them of the like and have ended up in printed press multiple times- most notably Marvel Comics; panels of which featured famous press members of the ‘Marvel universe’. Strikes me as a coincidence worth commending.
We’d love to hear old stories about how the two Lion’s Head compare. Again, I don’t think our Lion’s Head was ever intended to replace or copy Wes and Al’s old place, based on what I’m reading here. I’m also a bit sauced. But I do think it’s cool that the impression is the same. You’re officially invited to come up and show how we’ve (inadvertantly?) been carrying the torch for the name ‘Lion’s Head’. I think seeing this post from 2007 is special. I personally never knew there was ‘another’ Lion’s Head that havened others for years, yet closed in 1996 (the year I personally moved to NYC). I’ve worked at ‘this one’ for just about 3 years, but have known the owners since well before then. Very cool to learn about it via this medium, however untraditional we ever think this medium may be. Pardon my long wind and enthusiasm. I’ve been hanging #handturkeys all night.
I think Eric Darling of the Weavers and the Rooftop Singers hung out there at the old one, or what I recall.
Old Jim
The Weavers, Clancys, Odetta, Logan English, Theo Bikel, – almost all the folk singers were there at one time or another & also The White Horse & The Limelight (the one at 91 7th Av. S., not the more infamous one.)
Wow! all my heros! Thank you Kathleen.
My old Actor buddy Otis Young worked at the Limelight before he hit Hollywood to co star in the TV series “The Outcast, I worked next door as a waiter at Mother Hubbards 63 or 64
Otis was such a terrific guy!
Jean Shepherd used to close it out as well, after he finished his Limelight broadcasts. It was from there and McSorely’s that sprang his odes to “The Night People.”
Yeah. I worked the cash register when he was doing his broadcasts. It was on one of them that he first told his Christmas Story.
I was a regular at the Head from 1992 to 95, and loved it. Best pub in the city. A bartender named Dennis ran the place so well, and Tommy slung it his best, hoisting his arm up to the taps. He passed in 1994, and I read an article about it in the International Herald Tribune while in Australia. I’d say Dennis opened up a place in Soho also in 1994. That final 1995 year wasn’t the same for me, and I moved out west in 1996, so missed the end. Wonderful memories, though, of that unique pub. Several years later I returned to see a place not completely unlike the Head (I think it was a comedy club for a short while before returning to pub roots). I bumped into an old regular from the early 90’s days, Rex, and we had a great evening just talking about older times. Hell, I did a search for the place which closed nearly 20 years ago…. that’s the impact the Head had.
During the 60s, I was a runaway living on the streets in the East Village. I met Tom Weatherly, who took me in and gave me shelter. We became great friends. He used to take me to the Lions Head all the time. I never hung out at the bar as I was only 14. I did however get to hang out in the kitchen with Tom and Frank Wooten, cuz they were the main cooks in the kitchen. Best burgers ever. Sonny
Hi did anyone know a Judith a O’Brien or any O’Shea’s that hung out at the head or worked there in the 60’s
These are older posts so I don’t know who will see them, but I worked, lived and played in many places in the West Village, especially 7th Avenue South. I worked up the street at Montana Eve in the early-mid eighties. I also waitressed at The Front and hung out at the Lion’s Head after work. I also hung out at Formerly Joe’s (with producer Burtt Harris), among others, of course. Years before that, I had worked at Bradley’s on University Place and that is where the real understanding of folks at the “Head” begins for me. I knew Wes and Judy Joice. I knew Bradley and Wendy Cunningham, Tommy the Greek, Tom Athens, Tom Butler and so many others (Sha!!!). I was also a frequent patron of the Village Vanguard Jazz Club and occasionally, the “55”.for Jazz, etc. Bradleys shared a few newspaper cronies with the Lion’s Head (esp. at lunch) and there were frequent quiet celebrities present. One thing that made me search this is a question I had about actor Robert Davi…Did he hang there in the late 80’s? There was a man who was said to be his twin, but now I wonder if that was a joke…not important…it has been fun to reminisce and this is like a tip of an iceberg, so to speak…Happy 2023. Some of us never thought we would come this far!
Nick Tosches introduced me to the Lion’s Head. Tommy Butler made tapes for me of his favorite singers. There were once three bartenders named Tom. Great jukebox. Remember those days. The actor who sat on the steps of his house across the street who had given up drinking. Bob Thomas called for a story about Joice for NYT obituary, which he didn’t use.
Two of the other TOMs: Tommy the Greek (worked at Bradleys when I knew him but they were all the same community) and Tom Athens. All sweet, funny, great guys!
I dated one of the Chefs, Kevin Johnson, an art student.
The 55 was crazier sometimes; that is where I learned the term “ratskellar”, but I saw some impressive Jazz there!