The Mudd Club with Richard Boch in conversation with David Eastaugh

The club featured a bar, gender-neutral bathrooms and a rotating gallery curated by Keith Haring on the fourth floor.[2] Live performances included new wave, experimental music, literary icons Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, and catwalk exhibitions for emerging fashion designers Anna Sui and Jasper Conran.

From the start it functioned as an "amazing antidote to the uptown glitz of Studio 54in the '70s". As it became more frequented by downtown celebrities, a door policy was established and it acquired a chic, often elitist reputation.

The Mudd Club was frequented by many of Manhattan's up-and-coming cult celebrities. Other individuals associated with the venue included musicians Lou Reed, Johnny Thunders, David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Arto Lindsay, John Lurie, Nicowith Jim Tisdall, Lydia Lunch, X, the Cramps, the B-52's, the Bongos and  artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his then-girlfriend Madonna; performers Klaus Nomi and John Sex; designers Betsey Johnson, Maripol and Marisol; and underground filmmakers Amos Poe; Vincent Gallo, Kathy Acker, and Glenn O'Brien.