Richard Hell
Ecco
2013
304 pages
Another punk memoir from a member of the NYC punk scene - the scene that the term punk emerged from, and the scene that gave punk its style, but also the scene that had the least lasting influence and had very little to do with punk in 1980.
I love Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine and Alan Vega. I like Talking Heads and Richard Hell - and the Dead Boys were okay. Who else was there? I'm not really a Ramones fan although its not surprising that they had the most immediate influence out of all the early NYC bands since their template was the easiest to work from. NYC punk was where the Beats were rediscovered, and that discovery meant more than fast aggression. It was also where bands started one way and got big another way, Blondie, Talking Heads. The Beastie Boys were the overall most successful of all NYC punk bands.
I'm probably not the best reader of Richard Hell's autobiography. I know he was in Television before Marquee Moon but after reading Hell's book I still don't know if he had much to do with the songs on that album. He wrote parts of I Don't Care. I love the songs Blank Generation and Walking on the Water, and writing two great songs is certainly a significant contribution, but I overall prefer Television and I pretty much love every song on their first album. I pretty much read Hell's book to gain insight into Television and what I mostly learned was that Tom Verlaine was a control freak with regards to writing songs and that their friendship, which began in high school, has been dead since Hell left their band. Hell's sense of style inspired the Sex Pistols look which pretty much launched the style associated with punk, and Hell never really got a lot of credit for that. That's a major contribution though. Hell's career dissolved into heroin addiction. After reading this one I have a feeling I would appreciate Hell more as a writer than as a songwriter.
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