Kristal, who lost a bitter fight last year to stop the club\'s eviction from its home of 33 years, died at Cabrini Hospital after a battle with lung cancer.

Kristal started the club in 1973 with the hope of making it a mecca of country, bluegrass and blues:

\"CBGB stands for the kind of music I intended to have, but not the kind that we became famous for: Country, Bluegrass and Blues. I thought it would be a whole lot of fun to have my own club with all this kind of music playing there. But things didn\'t work out quite the way I \'d expected.\"

CBGB instead became the epicentre of the mid-1970s punk movement.

In the early 2000s, a feud broke out when the committee went to court to collect more than $300,000 in back rent from the club, then later successfully sought to evict it. By the time it closed, CBGB had become part museum and part barroom.

Other survivors include his wife, Karen, and daughter, Lisa.