Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

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The fact that the authors end their collection of memories with a snide backhand at Nirvana ("Nevermind") just underscores their dismissal of everything beyond Patti Smith's initial retirement from the scene. Here we review the character of the last five decades and make some guesses about how the 2020s will be remembered.

Please Kill Me | Grove Atlantic Please Kill Me | Grove Atlantic

He talks about meeting his girlfriend from hell, Connie (I never thought I'd get to see a picture of the woman who inspired the Ramones song "Glad to See You Go"): "She was a hooker, I was a Ramone, and we were both junkies. Back when they were living in squats, playing backyard parties and spending more on guitar strings and booze than food. As Publisher’s Weekly said, “This compulsively readable book perfectly captures the pop culture zeitgeist. My earliest memories are of my childhood being soundtracked by Dad’s love of Elvis, Queen, and Steve Miller.Co-author Legs McNeil was a founding member of the seminal fanzine that helped give the nascent scene its name and identity. But of his land he thought no more what harvest it would bring or what seed would be planted or of anything except of the land itself, and he stooped sometimes and gathered some of the earth up in his hand and he sat thus and held it in his hand, and it seemed full of life between his fingers.

Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain | Waterstones

Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Nico, Patti Smith, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to this definitive account of that outrageous, explosive era. Thompson, high on hallucinogenic drugs and ether, and with his attorney in tow, takes the notion of “new journalism” into a hilarious new dimension. The book is catty and funny, and full of great freaks who are out of their mind, but in a way that makes you want to emulate them; in a way that made me want to throw my desk through the window and go start a band and go shoot dope, but then comes the end of the book, which is extremely sad, and switches gears, as we now follow a large chunk of the endlessly fascinating and destructive people spiral into death. McNeil and McCain chronicle punk rock history through hundreds of interviews with the people who really lived it, the streetwise ex-hippies disgusted with corporate/stadium rock and disco who reinvented rock and roll by making the old new again. No Devo, no B-52s, no Grace Jones, not even a breath about Motorhead, who combined punk and metal back before most "classic" punk bands even existed.Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Malcom McLaren, Jim Carroll, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to this definitive account of that outrageous, explosive era. It's one of those books that alternately horrifies you and makes you laugh out loud in surprising bursts that scare away pets. Everyone thought in the early days of punk, certainly once English punk got going, and even American punk, everyone thought it was a horrible right-wing Nazi thing—violent, racist, and against everything good in life. Readers must make note that this book covers primarily the development of 1970's-era New York punk, with a side detour to England to witness the birth of the Sex Pistols and British punk.

Books - PleaseKillMe

Please Kill Me might make you shed the kind of tears reserved for lost poets and fuckups, but it almost certainly will also make you laugh. This book is a who's who of the true spirit of American rock'n'roll--never mind that the average person on the street couldn't tell you who Johnny Thunders, Stiv Bators, Dee Dee Ramone or Richard Hell are. Constructed as an oral history, the book weaves together personal accounts by the crucial players in the scene, many of whom seem to have been so drugged out most of the time that their reliability is questionable. In this first oral history of the most nihilist of all pop movements, Legs McNeil, who first coined the term "punk," and Gillian McCain bring the sound of the punk generation chillingly to life. Eric Davidson, front man of the Ohio-based New Bomb Turks, is equally adept at rocking, rolling and writing.OUR BAND COULD BE YOUR LIFE is a sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing and faith that is already being recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right. The words and drawings of Mary Rose present a gritty, powerful, no-holds-barred true experience of a teen girl so desperate to be loved, so eager to fit in that she’ll go to extremes that could cost her her life. Real credit goes to Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, who had the daunting task of cutting and pasting pieces from thousands of hours of interviews and crafting it into a narrative. Pix are good too, I especially dig the one of Johnny Thunders, Richard Hell and Sid Vicious out on bail.