Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

By Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

Preface: I’m summarizing this 20th Anniversary Edition similarly to other longer works I’ve posted where I’m using the language used in the book, so if it’s insulting or seen in a certain light, don’t read the book nor the rest of this review. Since these are firsthand accounts, the only big change is the first person into 3rd person point of view when people speak. Due to how well the story connects to each person interviewed, I’m only going to cherry pick lines. This book was well curated with interviews.

Author’s Note: The majority of material in this book is result of 100s of original interviews conducted by the authors. In certain cases interviews and text were excerpted from other sources, including anthologies, magazines, journals, published and unpublished interviews and other books, a list at the end of the book, which isn’t provided in this detailed enough review.

Prologue: 1965-1968 Lou Reed has a story about living in a $30 per month apartment with roommates and didn’t have much money, so would eat oatmeal all day and night, and give blood among other things or pose for nickel and fifteen cent tabloids they had weekly, and when he posed for them, his pic came out and it said he was a sex maniac killer who had killed 14 children and tape-recorded it and played it in a barn in KS at midnight, and when John Cale’s (The Velvet Underground) pic came out in the paper, it said he killed his lover because his lover was going to marry his sister and he didn’t want his sister to marry a fag.

Sterling Morrison (The Velvet Underground) was scared of Lou Reed’s parents, since they hated Lou was making music and hanging out with undesirables. The only dealings Morrison had with them was the constant threat of them having Lou thrown in a nuthouse, it always over the band’s heads. Every time Lou got hepatitis his parents were waiting to lock him up.

John Cale mentions how it’s where his best work came from. His mother was a kind of ex-beauty queen and thinks his pop was a wealthy accountant. Anyway they put him in a hospital, where he received shock treatment as a kid.

Lou Reed discusses how they put something down his throat so he didn’t swallow his tongue, and they put electrodes on his head, which was recommended by Rockland City then to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You can’t read a book since you’d get to page 17 and have to go back to page 1 again.

John Cale detail’s how he met Lou at a party and wasn’t paying attention to him because he didn’t care about folk music and Reed was playing an acoustic guitar. Lou insisted he read his lyrics and they weren’t like Dylan where every song’s a question, and at the time Cale was playing with La Monte Young in the Dream Syndicate where they would sustain notes for 2 hours at a time. Billy Name, unofficial manager of Andy Warhol’s Factory mentions La Monte being the best drug connection in NY.

He had the best drugs. When you went to his place you’d stay a minimum of 7 hours and end up being there for 2-3 days. The place was a Turkish-type scene with people coming and going and beads with droning music playing. La Monte would do a performance which would last 4 days and he’d have people droning with him. Droning is holding a single note for a long time and people would come in and be assigned to drone.

This was when John Cale was around. La Monte Young states of being ‘so to speak‘ the darling of the avant-garde. Yoko Ono was always saying to him, ‘If only I could be as famous as you.’ So he had an affair with Yoko and did a music series at her loft.

He was one of the first people to destroy an instrument onstage. He burned a violin and people were shouting things like, ‘Burn the composer!‘. John Cale started playing with his group, the Dream Syndicate, which literally rehearsed 7 days a week, 6 hours a day. John played specific drone pitches on the viola - until the end of 1965 when he started rehearsing with the Velvet Underground.

John Cale describes Lou’s songs fitting perfectly with his concept of music and how the characters in his songs was Method acting in song. Al Aronowitz mentions being the first to give the Velvet Underground a gig as an opening act at the Summit High school in NJ and stole his wallet-size tape recorder immediately. They were junkies, crooks, hustlers. While most musicians at this time came with high-minded ideals, the Velvets were full of shit. They were only hustlers and their music inaccessible. So he put them into the Cafe Bizarre and said they’ll work there and get some exposure, build their chops and get it together.

Ed Sanders, an artist of all kinds and author of a book on Charles Manson states how Cafe Bizarre had ‘weird drinks‘ which is why no one wanted to go there, it being for tourists, but Barbara Rubin film maker and early proponent of Velvet Underground (VU) kept saying he’s got to hear this band.

Paul Morrissey former collaborator with Warhol on multiple films and filmmaker mentions how Andy didn’t want to get into rock, he did it to make money. Andy didn’t want to do it and never would’ve thought of it. Even after Paul thought of it, he had to bludgeon him into doing it. If everyone knew the actual operation of what happened at the Factory you’d understand Andy did nothing and expected everybody to do everything for him. Somebody wanted to pay Andy to go to a nightclub in Queens, and Paul’s idea was there could be a lot of money in managing a rock group, which got it’s name in the papers, and this was one thing Andy was good for - getting his name in the papers.

So Barbara Rubin asked Gerard Malanga if he’d go to Cafe Bizarre and take pictures of the V.U. Due to many beatnik coffee shops in the West Village going out of business they were attempting to transition from beatniks and folk singing to some type of rock.

So Paul went to Cafe Bizarre and believes it was the Velvet’s first night, and they had the electric viola, which was what distinguished them the most, as well as a drummer who was totally androgynous where you couldn’t tell if Maureen Tucker was a boy or a girl. So those were the main attractions, and John Cale, the viola player looking wonderful with his Richard III hairstyle, and wearing a huge rhinestone necklace. It’s hard to believe, but this was really weird then.

Paul Morrissey knew he’d found the right group and when he spoke to the Velvets the same evening, asking if they were managed, Lou Reed replying cagily, sort of, maybe, not really, but yes, no. Paul answers with wanting to manage somebody and produce albums, stating they’d have a sure job at a nightclub and nominally managed by Andy Warhol.

The group said they don’t have amps, so Paul replies they’d have to get them and the reply was ok, but we don’t have a place to live…, so Paul states, ok, we’ll be back tomorrow to discuss this. So he then tells Andy he’d found the group they’d manage, and Andy’s reply was, Oh, uu-uu-uuuu ohouuuuuu! He always scared of doing anything, but once he felt somebody had confidence in what they are doing, especially in Paul’s case, he’d say, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh… okay.

Al Aronowitz says how he got the V.U. into the Cafe Bizarre, and the next thing he knew they were leaving with Andy Warhol. They never said a word to him, Warhol didn’t say a word to him, it was highly unethical, there’s a law against this really. It was a handshake deal, but what’s a handshake deal to Lou Reed - he was nothing but an opportunist fucking junkie. If he’d signed a contract with the Velvets he could’ve sued the shit out of Warhol.

Lou Reed talks of Andy Warhol telling him what he and the V.U. were doing with music was the same thing he was doing with painting and movies and writing - i.e. not kidding around. To Reed’s mind nobody in music was doing anything even approximating the real thing, with the exception of the V.U. They were doing a specific thing which was very real. It wasn’t slick or a lie in any conceivable way, which was the only way the band could work with him. Since the first thing Reed liked about Andy was he was very real.

Paul M. states of the first thing he realized about the V.U. was they had no lead singer, since Lou was such an uncomfortable performer. He thinks Lou forced himself to do it since he was so ambitious, but Lou wasn’t a natural performer. So Paul says to Andy, they need a singer, remember the girl who came up here, Nico? She left her little record, a cute little record she made in London with Andrew Loog Oldham?

Gerard Malanga says, Nico latched onto Andy and himself when they went to Paris. Malanga put 2 and 2 together, Nico had slept with Dylan, it kind of obvious. She got a song out of Bob, ‘I’ll keep it with Mine‘, so he probably got something in return, quid pro quo, but Nico was of an independent mind. She wasn’t your typical Hollywood starlet. She had her personal history going for her - Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, she had been in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and was the mother of Ari Alain, Delon’s illegitimate son. Yeah, so Nico already had a lifestyle when they’d met up with her.

Nico says, in Paris, Edie Sedgewick was too occupied with her lipstick to listen, but Gerard Malanga told her about the studio where they worked in NY. It was called the Factory. He said she’d be welcome to visit the next time she was in NY, but Edie interrupted with some stupid comment about Nico’s hair color, but Andy was interested she’d been in films and was working with the Rolling Stones (Brian Jones).

Billy Name says how all of them at the Factory were very taken with Nico. She was this fascinating creature who was totally nonflamboyant, nonpretentious, but absolutely magnetically controlling, and she didn’t wear all the hippie flowers, she just wore these black pantsuits - real Nordic beauty. She was too much really, anything they could think to have her play a role in their scene, it’s what they were going to do. They wanted her to have a starring role in what they were doing, and since she was a chanteuse (a female singer of pop songs, especially at a nightclub), Paul M thought it’d be great to have her sing with the Velvets - which of course was the most wrong thing to say to them at this part in their development.

Paul M states how Nico was spectacular. She had a definite charisma. She was interesting. She was distinctive. She had a magnificent deep voice. She was extraordinary looking. She was tall. She was somebody. Paul says, she’s wonderful and she’s looking for work. They’d put her in the band since the Velvets need somebody, who can sing or who can command attention when they stand in front of a mic, so she can be the lead singer, and the Velvets can still do their thing.

Al Aronowitz says Nico was using him, she was cock-teasing him since he knew everybody and had access to everybody. Al says everyone was kissing his ass and Nico was always coming on, promising him pussy, and never delivering. He admits being a dumb asshole. Everybody was getting laid, and he was being faithful to his wife (just barely, jeez).

Nico said to him, come on, take a ride. So they took a ride out to the Delaware Water Gap and she had a little bottle of LSD she’d smuggled in from Switzerland and kept dipping her pinkie into and doing it. She gave some to Al and they got pretty stoned and then she wanted to stop at a motel. He says sure. When a woman says let’s stop at a motel, what does this mean to a guy, but it didn’t mean anything to her - he doesn’t know why she wanted to stop at a motel.

They spent the night under the covers next to each other, but nothing happened since she said she liked her lovers half dead - like Lou Reed. Everybody had a piece of Nico except Al, he laughs (a married man, dumb asshole, indeed). Bob Dylan didn’t have an affair with Nico, just a piece. Al continues on how they all had a piece. They didn’t care, they just wanted to get rid of her, not be bothered by her.

Al brought Nico to see the V.U - Nico never had any taste and she had the immediate hots for Lou Reed - since she had visions of being a pop star herself, and then even Nico started hanging out with Warhol who had been collecting this freak show. It’s all he had - a freak show - and it’s what attracted everybody. He had this place called the Factory and it was like a sideshow - ‘Come look at the freaks!‘ and all the uptown jetsetters would come down and look but Al always got a bad feeling going over to the Factory, since all those arrogant freaks disgusted him, with their arrogance, and put-ons, the way they walked, strutting around. It was all a pose. Nico became one of them - she was doing the same thing, but she got away with it since she was so beautiful.

Paul M says of course Lou Reed gagged when Paul said they need a girl singing with the group so they could get some extra publicity. He didn’t say they needed somebody who had some sort of talent, but it’s what he meant. Lou was reluctant to go with Nico, but Paul thinks John Cale prevailed on Lou to accept this as part of the deal, and Nico hung out with Lou since she hoped he’d write another song for her, but he never did. He gave her 2-3 little songs and didn’t let her do anything else.

John Cale says Lou was very full of himself and faggy in those days. They called him Lulu, and John was Black Jack. Lou wanted to be the queen bitch and spit out the sharpest rebukes of anyone around. Lou always ran with the pack and the Factory was full of queens to run with, but Lou was dazzled by Andy and Nico. He was completely spooked by Andy since he didn’t believe someone could have so much goodwill and yet be so mischievous - in the same transvestite way Lou was, all this bubbling gay humor. Lou tried to compete. Unfortunately for him, Nico could do it better - Nico and Andy had a slightly different approach, but they outdid Lou time and time again. Andy was never less than considerate to them.

Lou couldn’t fully understand this, he couldn’t grasp this amity (friendly relationship) Andy had. What was worse was Lou would say something bitchy, but Andy would say something even bitchier - and nicer. This would irritate Lou, and Nico had the same effect. She’d say things so Lou couldn’t answer back. You see, Lou and Nico had some kind of affair, both consummated and constipated, during the time he wrote these psychological love songs for her like ‘I’ll Be You Mirror’ and ‘Femme Fatale‘. When it really fell apart, they really learned how Nico could be the mistress of the destructive one-liner.

John Cale remembers one morning they’d gathered at the Factory for a rehearsal. Nico came in late as usual. Lou said hello to her in a rather cold way. Nico simply stood there. You could see she was waiting to reply in her own time. Ages later, out of the blue, came her first words, ‘I cannot make love to Jews anymore.‘ Nico says, Lou liked to manipulate women, you know, like program them. He wanted to do this with her. He told her so. Like computerized her.

Danny Fields (former manager of the Stooges and more) says everybody was in love with everybody. They were all kids, and it was like high school. This one likes this one this week, and this one doesn’t like this one this week but likes this one and there were triangles and it wasn’t terribly serious. It only happened to be people who later on became very famous, since they were so sexy and beautiful, but they didn’t realize it at the time, they were all just falling in and out of love - who could even fucking keep track?

Everybody was in and out of love with Andy of course, and he was in and out of love with everybody, but people which were most ‘in-loved-with‘ were the people, he thinks, who fucked the least - like Andy. The people who you know really went to bed with Andy you could count on one hand. The people who really went to bed with Edie or Lou or Nico were very, very few. There really wasn’t much sex, there were more crushes than sex. Sex was so messy. It still is.

Jonas Mekas (filmmaker/artist) considered Warhol and the Factory in the 60s to be like Freud and Andy was Freud. He was the psychoanalyst, there was this big couch in the Factory and Andy was there, he didn’t say anything, you could project anything on him, unload yourself, give him this, and he wouldn’t put you down. Andy was your father and mother and brother, all of them. So this is why those people felt so good around him - they could be in those films, they could say and do whatever they wanted since they wouldn’t be disapproved, this was his genius. Andy admired all the stars, so to please all those sad, desperate souls who came into the Factory, Andy called them ‘superstars‘.

Susan Pile (Ari Deleon’s babysitter/former assistant to Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol at the Factory and worked extensively in the film industry) says people did strange things when they did speed. There was one guy who showed up at Max’s Kansas City with his arm in a sling. Everyone was like, ‘What happened to you?‘ He said, ‘Oh, I took a shot of speed and I couldn’t stop brushing my hair for 3 days.‘

Lou Reed says: The old sound was alcoholic. The tradition was finally broken. The music is sex and drugs and happy and happy is the joke the music understands best. Ultrasonic sounds on records to cause frontal lobotomies. Hey don’t be afraid. You’d better take drugs and learn to love PLASTIC. All different kinds of plastic - pliable, rigid, colored, colorful, nonattached plastic. (How funny Reed knew in a sense our brains would eventually have plastic in them.)

Ronnie Cutrone (Painter and former Warhol studio assistant) says the 60s had a reputation for being open and free and cool, but the reality was everybody was straight. Everybody was totally straight and then there was them, a pocketful of nuts. They had long hair, and they’d get chased down the block. People would chase you for 10 blocks, screaming, ‘Beatle!‘ They were out of their fucking minds which was the reality of the 60s. Nobody had long hair - you were a fucking freak, you were a fruit, you weren’t like the rest of the world. So for Ronnie, there was a strong pull toward the dark side.

Lou and Billy Name would go to this Vaseline bar called Ernie’s - there’d be jars of Vaseline on the bar and there was a back room where the guys would go to fuck each other.

While Ronnie was never gay, he was into sex, and when you’re 13 or 14, sex isn’t too available from women. So he figured, Gee, wouldn’t it be great to be gay? So he tried but was a miserable failure. He remembers he was actually sucking this guy off once and he said ‘Man, you’re not into this.‘ Ronnie went, ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’ Lou Reed says, ‘Honey, I’m a cocksucker. What are you?’

Billy Name says Lou, Mary Woronov, and he used to go to Max’s KS City, and also these gay dance clubs in the Village. It’d close at 4, so Lou and he’d still be up on methedrine, and still wanting to do something. So they’d go to after-hours places, where you could still dance. Then when it’d get to be daylight, Lou and he’d mosey over to the Factory and do a number. They weren’t having an affair or anything, they were only pals hanging around.

Billy doesn’t think they really did bj’s. He hates bj’s. They’re so awkward and he hates having his head so occupied - it’s too close and claustrophobic. Lou’d just jerk off, get off, and then get up to leave, so he had to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t come yet.‘ So Lou’d sit on his face while Billy jerked off. It was like smoking corn silk behind the barn, it was only kid stuff. There was no rapture or romance involved. It was only about getting your rocks off at the moment, since going out with girls was still about getting involved and all that shit. With guys it was just easier.

Mary Woronov (actress/artist) - they didn’t want to go to San Francisco. Cali was strange and they weren’t like Cali at all. California hated them. They were reading Jean Genet, and were S&M and in Cali they were free love. They really liked gay people, and the West coast was totally homophobic. So in Cali they thought NY were evil and NY thought Cali people were stupid. Plus they were really uptight (in a good way before the term changed) since they were all or at least Mary W. was on speed, and when they walked into the Fillmore, the Mothers of Invention weren’t only playing like they normally did, they had people dancing in front of them, like Gerard and she did with the Velvets. So they were pissed off about this and Lou was really fucking mad after the set the band left their instruments near the amp, creating feedback and walked off the stage. San Francisco, of course, didn’t even know the set was over.

Gerard Malanga says Jim Morrison came to see them at the Trip, since he was a film student in L.A. at the time. This is when as the theory goes, Jim Morrison adopted his look - the black leather pants - from seeing Gerard dancing onstage at the Trip.

1967–1971 Ch. 1, Danny Fields - When he wasn’t getting laid elsewhere he went to Max’s KS City every night. It was a bar and restaurant two blocks from where he lived and you could set there all night and bring yourself coffee. It was free, and you always signed the check and never paid the bill. He felt so guilty, he had an unpaid bill of about 2 or 3k dollars. He guesses it was about the 60s. He had friends who’d sign the check Donald Duck and Fatty Arbuckle.

It was so wonderful and all the waitresses were beautiful… and all the busboys… You could have sex with all the busboys, and anybody who walked into the room, you could fuck, since they all wanted to be in the back room, and you could say, ‘You’ll have to fuck me and I’ll let you sit at a good table’. So it was wide open, but it wasn’t gay, thank god.

Leee Childers (photographer, David Bowie’s management company) - Danny was the company freak at Elektra Records. His job was to keep the stupid record company execs somehow in touch with the street. It was an actual job title then, ‘company freak‘. The record companies were wise to actually admit they weren’t cool. In the 60s, they had to admit they didn’t have a clue. So they hired people whose job it was to be cool. It was a wonderful idea.

Danny Fields - They hired someone at a low level who wore bell bottoms and smoked dope and took LSD in the office - him, and he really would take LSD in the office. He’d sit around and just lick it. His hands would be all orange.

Steve Harris (former VP at Elektra Records) - he was working for Elektra and was in Cali with Jac Holzman, the president of Elektra, when he went to see the Doors at the Whisky for the first time. He came back and said he saw a really interesting group and thinks he’s gonna sign them. And he did. Then they came to NY to do a show at Ondine’s, on 58th street. Under the bridge.

Danny Fields - he remembers Morrison did ‘Light my Fire’ that night, since it was the only good song he did. The next day, Danny had to go to the record company, so he told them there was a song about fire, if you’re putting out a Doors single, put that one out. They said uh, uh, it’s too long. Then other people told them to do that. At first they thought it was impossible, but after DJs reported back to them they had a potential hit without the pretentious nonsense in the middle, they started to listen. It was a catchy tune. So they sent Paul Rothchild into the studio and said, Paul, cut it. And he did. You can hear the separation in the middle, and it worked. It went to #1.

We get to hear how Nico and Jim Morrison truly meet which wasn’t how Oliver Stone made it seem in his biopic. Mostly the people who hung out with him thought he acted like an asshole, especially toward women, with exception of his bandmate. After the Doors first album released, he had a good year of celebrity before getting fat and growing his beard and Danny Fields was ready for the next big catch, saying his thinking was, bring me another one. Bring me this one’s head on a plate. Bring me a new one.

Then we get into Iggy’s band members, humble high school beginnings. Ron Asheton into everything Nazi. Ron Asheton knew Iggy before he smoked or got high and at the time didn’t drink. He hung with the popular kids who wore chinos, cashmere sweaters, and penny loafers. He worked at the Discount Records. Iggy was suggested to go to Chicago when he was still a drummer in Ann Arbor, and when he does, he plays with and learns from a lot of black musicians. He thinks ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ was from mishearing, heard or twisted from Blues songs, like, ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’.

Ron Asheton recalls Iggy calling him to pick him up from Chicago, and this being the start of Iggy deciding they should start a band. By the end of the chapter, Iggy sees his first show of the Doors, and they sucked, Morrison antagonizing the band and audience by singing in falsetto, like Betty Boop, and Iggy thought it was great.

On Iggy’s 21st birthday, they opened for Cream and bombed, he thinking nothing was going well, but a band member’s mother gave him a burger with a birthday candle in the middle, and the idea was keep going and things will get better. Don’t give up.

Next chapter gives more background on MC5. When they play the Chicago DNC in 1968, Wayne Kramer says as they were getting high off hash cookies and playing, helicopters were buzzing above them and police agent provocateurs in the audience were starting fights and pushing people around wearing army fatigues, short hair and sunglasses. As they’re playing, they notice no other artists were there, like Janis Joplin was supposed to be there, and they could start to tell as soon as they stopped playing there’d be a riot. Especially when Abbie Hoffman grabbed a mic and started rapping about pigs, as cops surrounded Lincoln Park.

So, the band and roadies were gathering up their gear and throwing it in the van, and as predicted when they stopped playing, a riot started. They drove off toward the exit not bothering using a road and fortunately make it out of Chicago, so they could still play in teen clubs in Michigan. By the end of the chapter Iggy and the Stooges and MC5 were signed to Elektra for 5k and 20k respectably.

The chapter following focus on the MC5 losing their contract with Elektra for ignorant shenanigans, and getting picked up by Atlantic. The first mention from a Ramone was after Iggy got dropped from Elektra when they’d finished Raw Power and after Iggy’s started shooting heroin. Dee Dee Ramone first saw Iggy and the Stooges at the Electric Circus on Saint Marks Place June 1971. He remembers they started playing late, since Iggy couldn’t find any veins to shoot up and wouldn’t exit the bathroom, so they had to wait.

Following chapter goes back to more characters connected to Warhol. It tells of how glitter became more a part of performance art theater. Holly Woodlawn is then introduced (I read his autobio, but before I started reviewing, it’s worth it as an accompaniment).

When Jackie Curtis was fired by John Vaccaro from a play, since they butted heads due to the former being a speed freak and the latter drawing out performances by using anger. So Jackie moved in with Leee Childers to make everyone believe he’d committed suicide and Holly Woodlawn moved in since he was in mourning. During all the drag queen stage show drama which mostly centered around John Vaccaro’s temper, Patti Smith replaces a guy who became agoraphobic and a junkie, who was supposed to be in a play.

Duncan Hannah (painter, artist) retells a memory where meeting his hero Lou Reed left him depressed for Lou coming off shallow. Then more on Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, she before she started singing, and he while he was still straight, and how Patti helped Bebe Buell ruin her legitimate modeling career when encouraging she do Playboy, but saying to her directly it was the best way to get out of modeling since Bebe also had a dream of becoming a singer.

The 70s had everyone focusing more on poetry, Jim Carroll (poet, musician, The Basketball Diaries memoir) talks of how Patti Smith started talking to him and sleeping with him until she found someone else. Nico at one point asking him about his poetry since she’d been asked to speak at a club he’d been to, and how the poetry she’d recited to him wasn’t good, but she was a Teutonic beauty.

Joey Ramone talks of Patti Smith performing poetry and seeing her early on, and had thrown a chair across the room and thought it was great, but knew nothing about her and being impressed.

Then the intro to the NY Dolls, David Johanssen (actor, musician) talking about how they got their look, and it being a time when being gay was in, but he was straight. Then mention of when David Bowie was starting Ziggy Stardust and how Angela was pushing him to do it according to Wayne (Jayne) Country. When Bowie’s management was planning a U.S. tour for him, they were trying to have Warhol petition to being Bowie’s groupie, but Paul Morrissey didn’t see the value for how it could help them, so declined.

Before Bowie went with RCA, Elektra talks with him and he asks about Iggy when usually people ask about Morrison. After signing, Iggy gets a deal with CBS from Clive Davis. After this, Bowie wanted to work with Iggy and they do an album, Iggy and James Williams on going to London, and after trying different musicians to fill in for the Ashetons, Iggy eventually offers them the job, which they accept, since nothing’s happening for them, but Ron mentions how it didn’t make them feel very important. They all still have a wild time in London recording Raw Power and Angela Bowie makes an impression on Ron.

Next the NY Dolls first big show is opening for Rod Stewart, they’re not signed, don’t have an album or single, and the show opens them up to a bid war between record companies in UK and US. Iggy gets dropped after he makes some more missteps, taking all his clothes off at a radio station and trying to rape Cherry Vanilla in an elevator. Then more crazy stories about the Dolls. Then Nancy Spungen talks of sleeping with most of the members of the Dolls and they being the first band she’d hung out with all the time.

When Johnny Thunders wanted to start a band after seeing the Dolls they put an ad out and Dee Dee Ramone shows up, among a handful of other people, they pass on him because he couldn’t play well enough. Before CBGB was big, Television, with Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine, and Richard Lloyd was booked 3 Sundays in a row, since Lloyd and Verlaine were promoting the band and got Hilly Kristal to agree.

Patti Smith was late in seeing them, but when she did, she went after Tom, who was a fan of hers. So Patti found herself in 2 relationships, Allan Lanier (Blue Oyster Cult), who she lived with. Terry Ork who had got eyes for Richard Lloyd saw the potential with Patti Smith and her band, so talked Hilly into booking both of them for 6 weeks in a row, and this made CBGB’s start.

Jim Carroll talks about hustling on 53rd and 3rd and how he found out about it. Joey Ramone’s younger brother saw Dee Dee Ramone hustling there, a bit shocked.

Dee Dee then talks about how he bought enough dope to resell in Queens, but got high and went home and his mother got so mad she threw a pot at him, broke his records and chucked his guitar out the window, so he retaliated by telling her to get out and some expletives, he then getting kicked out, so he planned to hitch to Cali, but only makes it to Flint, Michigan when 2 crazy guys pick him up in a shitty car and rob a gas station, everyone going to jail, but Dee Dee the only one unable to make bail, so stays 3 months, then going back to his mother in NY where he meets Johnny Ramone living across the street from him and was nice to him the 2 bonding over their appreciation of the Stooges.

Joey was a hippie so didn’t interest Johnny at the time. Joey got kicked out by his mother. When he was 20 or 21 and his brother Mickey Leigh would let him stay over when she left for the weekend, she’d been seeing a psychologist, who had encouraged she kick him out because he wasn’t doing anything so he starts sleeping in his mother’s art gallery and working there during the day. After Joey had been put in a nuthouse he had girlfriends and friends from there and would set him up with places to stay.

Johnny got interested in Joey once he found out he’d been in a nuthouse which turned off his brother, since Johnny glorified Charles Manson similarly. Then Joey got into his first band, Sniper. It was Joey’s glitter days, but his persona and talent were there from the start. When Dee Dee and Johnny ended up working at a construction company together, they’d get lunch and one day they go next door from a gogo club to a music shop and both bought a guitar.

Joey started with them when they called him up to join them and played drums on the first rehearsal. Dee Dee asks Joey to take guitar and lead vocals, since he couldn’t play and sing at the same time, and Johnny was cool with the switch. Johnny was on guitar and Dee Dee took bass, and Tommy who was managing them took drums since no one volunteered. Beat on the Brat was a true story Joey saw a mother chasing her child in the lobby with a bat.

Then a return to Patti Smith getting big because of Horses, and NY Dolls getting politicized because Malcolm McLaren liked to dress them in red leather, but it felt awkward because he used a commie flag, which the band wasn’t at all into politics. The good Malcolm tried to do was get the members who needed it to go into clinics to sober up, but it didn’t stick. When they have a string of shows in FL, they break up since Johnny Thunders and Jerry couldn’t get dope (heroin), so they go back to NY when one of the kids in FL who was willing to score for them went to jail for a couple of days when he was 15. The two decide to start a new band with Richard Hell who was leaving Television.

Then before leaving back to London since Malcolm McLaren had beaten a guy called Fenchie he’d sublet his apartment to, so he could get 2 months of rent upfront, he then had the Sex Pistols write their own version of Blank Generation and came up with Pretty Vacant. Then the Ramones take a beat before becoming legends, since they started after Patti Smith and Television were getting big. When Danny Fields got wise though, he offered to manage them. Then Legs McNeil talks of how he and 2 high school friends started Punk magazine, and he became the resident punk, since he had no skills other than coming up with the name, and one of his buddies, John renames him Legs.

They hadn’t heard about CBGBs or the Ramones yet, but this soon changes when they bring on their first writer for Punk, Mary Harron. When Legs and John first meet Lou Reed at CBGBs, he acts like a snot, so they interview the Ramones after they see their quick show, and then try again with Lou Reed who by comparison was an old cranky drunken father. They gave Lou Reed the cover, and Legs and John were asking amateurish questions, but when Mary saw what John had done with it for the article, she saw how it’d been spun into an advantage.

Another few stories about Iggy and what had him quit the Stooges. Ron Asheton gets belittled by Patti Smith and Iggy after his new group and he had bought her group a bouquet of roses and champagne.

After this the Ramones recording their first album is covered and when they are booked in England and the Clash are hanging outside the club in the alley acting tough. Dee Dee mentions the story of Johnny Rotten drinking from an offered beer with one of the Ramones pissing in it as their known gag (there’s a video of Joey Ramone telling a tonight show host), and then Sid Vicious gets high with Dee Dee before he’s a part of the Sex Pistols. The Ramones, as well as MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges connected the swastika and being ironic by either studying or referring to Nazis in lyrics which was another part of why punk was offensive in its infancy.

Mary Harron discusses this when she had to instinctively decide how to view the use of swastikas. Then more stories of Iggy Pop fucking his life up, trying to get straight and David Bowie saving his ass by offering to do a single with him and bringing him on tour which taught Iggy how to take care of himself, Station to Station tour. Unfortunately, David Bowie and Iggy teaming up wasn’t good tidings for Angela Bowie, David doing a Nazi salute and some papers getting photos, she falling out of love with his ignorant streak, but this also marking when they had a son.

Next are stories about how the Sex Pistols tour became extremely shortened due to the sway of the media had over how people reacted. The differences between NY and UK punk is also noted as the former being focused on pain whilst the latter was born of rage. Many of the next chapter’s focus on Richard Hell and the Voidoids and their tour with the Clash being quite a shit experience with the audience spitting on them and throwing full cans of beer at them, Richard detoxing from heroin.

Then Legs McNeil is sent to interview Patti Smith for Punk mag and she’s as pissed as others had gotten when hearing Legs’ juvenile questions. When she’s interviewed by Jim Marshall (husband of one of the editors) when he was 16, he had a much better experience. They were in FL and Patti was doing a concert opening for Bob Seger where she has a terrible fall offstage because she’d get into a trance during songs and spin like a dervish, and this time misses when grabbing for the mic and falls over a black-painted monitor. This event seemed to change Patti’s view of where she was heading since she never played ‘Gloria’ after this. Jim Carroll had always seen Patti as very, very Christian.

Then some stories on the Ramones where Dee Dee is still having trouble with his crazy girlfriend Connie. One of the Dead Boys, Johnny Blitz had one helluva story where he survived a stabbing and was one of the punks wearing a swastika, a Jewish surgeon stopping working as soon as he saw it, and the Black surgeon stepping in and doing surgery for hours and saving his life, Michael Sticca recalls.

Next is Bob Gruen (photographer) following Sex Pistols first U.S. tour just by planning to only see their first show in Atlanta and Malcolm inviting him to join them, since there was room for one more on the tour bus, so he accepts, and while conduct on the bus was calm, when some of them interacted with people in whatever state, strange moments would occur.

By the end of this tour, Legs McNeil is made to go to their final show in San Francisco, he seeing how the word ‘punk‘ had been coopted in being an English thing with safety pins and the last show marked the breaking up of the band, which Bob Gruen felt he’d wasted some days afterward to develop the pictures he’d taken of the band and it was already done.

Meanwhile, Max’s KS City also got more commercial, attracting posers, and more violent characters, Jerry Nolan punching the wrong guy and going to the hospital after getting stabbed in the thigh, the guy who had done it being in the mafia, so the owner of Max’s opts to handle the guy himself rather than calling the cops.

Then a bit more crossover stories with Sid and Nancy and how she was a troublemaker and unbearable, but the 2 going well together. Then details of the night Nancy died are provided by a band member of the Demons, Eliot Kidd, who doesn’t stay long because Sid already passed out on the bed and it was a small hotel room. Eliot spoke with Neon Leon and he said the last person at this party was the Tuinal dealer. How long Sid stays alive is spoken about as he goes in and out of jail.

Sid’s mother, Ann’s last act of being a good mother was dumping Sid’s ashes on Nancy’s grave, they trying to be respectful of Nancy’s mother by clearing any bad blood, but she declined allowing them to purchase the plot next to Nancy for Sid’s ashes, he being a non-Jew and she having been buried in a Jewish cemetery, so after they’re shown where she’s buried, the workers don’t leave them, so they drive around, and Ann climbs a fence opposite the plot and spreads the ashes.

After this, back to the Ramones making Rock and Roll High School and Phil Specter doing their latest album, Dee Dee gets arrested at his hotel, but before making it to the jail, he passes out so they have to take him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped, then he married his girlfriend not long after.

Then back with Patti Smith and she’s wanting to stop playing and making records with her group so she could settle down with Fred Smith. Then Johnny Thunders tries to start a band with Wayne Kramer between 1980-92, but this doesn’t go well, Johnny’s still addicted to dope, Wayne gets married seemingly so he isn’t homeless, but isn’t getting along with her for long.

Dee Dee next tells of how he and the guys toured for 15 years and couldn’t stand each other to the point of not talking in the van, not checking into hotels together, etc, they couldn’t stand to look at each other. Dee Dee was always preparing to finally be finished playing a show. He also felt like he was a little boy with a bowl haircut, the arrested development getting to him. When Johnny Thunders dies of an OD and Dee Dee hears about it, he hoped he was next.

It’s been so long since I last read this, I forgot how it ended on a dark note with Jerry Nolan in hospital and the last thoughts are from him recalling seeing Elvis Presley in concert near the front row with his sister at 10 years old and how much of an impression it left. Then the new edition added afterward, which starts with where oral narrative history started with a book on Robert Kennedy, and then continues with a detailed overview of how oral narratives come together and what rules are followed (Oral histories like A People’s History of the United States and December’s Child, does bring an intriguing view to what usually is seen as a dull retelling, this and the above being relatively quicker reads than a history text with the added value of receiving it through direct quotes and interviews). Still a great historical text spanning a large part of the 20th century and well worth the dark ending, although the normal edition is just as functional since the only changes were an extra few pages of pictures, which show a few more minor characters of cast, and the afterward, the text remaining the same.