The tapes that would later become Live at Max's Kansas City were recorded on August 23, 1970, by Andy Warhol associate Brigid Polk on a portable cassette recorder. At the same time the band were recording Loaded, the Velvet Underground held a nine-week engagement (June 24 – August 28, 1970) at New York nightclub Max's Kansas City, playing two sets a night. Polk recorded almost everything happening around her at the time, and this happened to include her attendance of the last concert that Lou Reed played with The Velvet Underground. She recorded both the early and the late set. Later that year, Atlantic A&R employee Danny Fields heard the tapes and submitted them to his superiors, who accepted the recordings and in 1972 decided to make an album out of them. Originally, Live at Max's Kansas City was a single album distillation of both sets re-sequenced and edited by Lou Reed and Atlantic staff producer Geoff Haslam to reflect the band's loud and quiet sides, respectively.