Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

"This book tells it like it was," reads the cover blurb fromWilliam S. Burroughs on Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. "It is the very first book to do so." This seems to be true. Unlike many such histories of musical movements (Can't Stop Won't Stop, for example), Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, the editors of Please Kill Me, have no agenda, no thesis to support. They do not attempt to draw lines of connections, or present a unified field theory of punk, and they certainly don't try to whitewash or romanticize their subjects. What you get is a pure oral history, a first-hand account of what it must have been like to be there, from musicians, groupies and other scenesters.

This is both refreshing and a bit frustrating. I'm a music geek, so I want dates. I want connections drawn. I want insight on how one band influenced another. I want to know the exact date that Television played their first gig at CBGB's or recorded "Little Johnny Jewel." This book doesn't give me that, but it does give something otherwise unavailable: an idea of what it must have been like to be there at CBGB's, and a chance to hear what the music meant to the people who were actually there, rather than what it means to other music geeks like me. And apparantly, what it meant to people who were there was gay sex, heroin and swastikas.

The book begins with a chapter (too short, I thought) on The Velvet Underground and the Warhol Factory scene, with a brief digression into Jim Morrison at the end, then progresses through The MC5, The Stooges, Ridiculous Theater (a gay, underground NYC theater movement that may have been the precursor to glitter rock), Patti Smith (and to a lesser extent Jim Carroll) in her early career as a poet, and The New York Dolls, with David Bowie as a background character, before ending up at CBGB's. From there, Patti Smith, Television, The Ramones, The Heartbreakers, Richard Hell and the Voi Oids, Punk magazine, The Dead Boys, and eventually The Sex Pistols (in as much as they interracted with the New York bands) are all covered. Blondie is in the background, Suicide and The Talking Heads are barely mentioned (one of the few references to the T-Heads is a derogatory complaint about them attracting "yuppies" to the scene).

Reading this actually cemented many of my ideas about the hardcore punk of the early 80's. I've always said that hardcore was the point at which punk completely broke away from mainstream rock. I mean, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones were out of step with the mainstream, but if you listen to their music, it was recognizably rock, in contrast to Bad Brains or Black Flag, who sound much more removed from, say, AC/DC. But I'm realizing how much of the attitudes associated with punk actually emerged in the 80's.

For instance, 70's punk always espoused a DIY ethic, but it was hardcore that really put that ethic into practice (out of necessity). If you read that list of bands covered in the book, every single one of them had a major label contract. But by 1980, when all those bands had proven themselves not to be profitable, punk became invisible to the majors. Hardcore bands had to do it themselves--independent labels, self-promotion, booking shows in American Legion halls. I'm not saying hardcore invented this stuff, but the 70's bands didn't have to do it to nearly the same extent.

This is also reflected in the attitudes toward fame. The 70's bands were certainly setting out to be a different kind of rock star, but none of them ever expressed any discomfort with the idea of being a rock star. They wanted all the trappings: fame, adoring fans, groupies, drugs. The anti-rockstar attitude that we associate with punk really starts in the 80's.

It's kind of funny. I've always been into 70's punk, and I went through a period in my late teens, around 85-87, where I was totally obsessed with the CBGB's scene. Part of it, of course, was the incredible music. I mean, in just 3 years (1975-77) this small, insular group of musicians centered around a shitty dive bar in an obscure neighborhood of lower Manhattan produced Patti Smith's Horses and Radio Ethiopia, Television's Marquee Moon, Richard Hell's Blank Generation, Talking Heads '77 (to be followed by 3 more increasingly great albums), the first 3 Ramones albums (to be followed by at least 2 more classics), and the Suicide album, not to mention the first couple Blondie albums (not quite on the same level, but a great pop band) and The Heartbreakers' L.A.M.F. (which I think sucks, but whatever), and if you include some of the fringe bands, The Dictators' Go Girl Crazy, the first Modern Lovers album, The Dead Boys' Young, Loud and Snotty and Pere Ubu's early singles on the Harpin Label. That's just mind-boggling. But part of it was also that I hated the hardcore scene so much, and CBGB's just seemed like a much better place and time. I hated the purity and homogenity of the hardcore scene, the way people constantly judged whether a band was "punk" or not, the way they narrowly defined punk as this very boring music with no room for innovation. I hated the seriousness, all the political shit, and the violent, testosterone-driven nature of the scene.

By contrast, none of the CBGB's bands sounded alike. Every band was practically a genre unto themselves. None of the bands were political, and bands like The Ramones, The Cramps, The Dictators and The Dead Boys were a hell of a lot more fun and less serious than most of the stiff hardcore bands. And there was a strong woman right at the head of the scene. It just seemed like a more fun time.

My feelings about punk at the time actually lined up pretty well with Legs McNeil talking about the idea for Punk magazine and being a fan of The Dictators:

Holmstrom wanted the magazine to be a combination of everything we were into - television reruns, drinking beer, getting laid, cheeseburgers, comics, grade-B movies, and this weird rock & roll that nobody but us seemed to like: the Velvets, the Stooges, the New York Dolls and now the Dictators.

I saw the magazine Holmstrom wanted to start as a Dictators album come to life. On the inside sleeve of the record was a picture of the Dictators hanging out in a White Castle hamburger stand and they were dressed in black leather jackets. Even though we didn't have black leather jackets, the picture seemed to describe us perfectly - wise guys. So I thought the magazine should be for other fuck-ups like us. Kids who grew up believing only in the Three Stooges. Kids that had parties when their parents were away and destroyed the house. You know, kids that stole cars and had fun.

So I said, "Why don't we call it Punk?"

It's funny, because that's in no way "what punk means to me" now, but that's pretty much where I was coming from in my teens.

The other thing I hated about the hardcore scene was that whole "straightedge" bullshit, kids thinking it was cool to not do drugs (can you imagine?). But reading this book even gives me some perspective on that. I mean, my idea of being not straightedge was smoking pot, drinking a few beers, maybe getting rip-roaring drunk once a week, and taking an acid trip every couple months. But you read these accounts...man, everyone, EVERYONE in this book was on heroin. How the fuck Bill Burroughs and Charlie Parker ever managed to convince people that doing that shit would make you cool, I have no idea. It's the same story again and again. I actually doubt the punk scene would have survived if that straight edge shit hadn't taken hold. (I'm trying to find this one passage, but I can't find it, where this girl talks about going to get heroin, and there would be junkies lined up in the morning, and a guy going through the line saying "we open in 5 minutes, have your money ready, 5's, 10's and 20's, no 1's. On the menu today we have white junk, brown junk and coke.")

My favorite chapter of the book involves two of the more obscure, fringe bands of the scene, Wayne County and the Electric Chairs and The Dictators. First of all, because they're pretty much the most likeable people in the book. When Wayne County (now Jayne County) talks about being a drag queen in rural Georgia in the early 70's, when it could literally get you killed, and how he hated going to drag shows and hearing prissy drag queens do The Supremes, so he started rocking out as Janis Joplin, that's just some awesome shit. And The Dictators are basically rowdy, good ol' boys, frat boy types. It might seem weird to use that as a compliment, but compared to the rest of these junkie assholes, they seem like alright guys (to be fair, The Stooges' Ron Asheton, MC5's Wayne Kramer, and especially the Dead Boys' bassist Jeff Magnum, all come off as pretty down-to-earth guys). Then Dictators singer Handsome Dick Manitoba starts heckling at a Wayne County show, and gets his shoulder bashed by a mic stand. What follows is a fascinating soap opera and culture clash that takes over the whole scene. I should also mention that the episode ends with the guys from Punk magazine completely mischaracterizing Lester Bangs' piece "The White Noise Supremecists," which they take to be calling them out as racists, but to me reads more like Lester trying to come to grips with his own racism, and hoping others will follow (it's collected in Psychotic Reactions and Carbeurator Dung). There's also a hilarious, short episode wherein Duncan Hannah recounts his experience being in shitty movies directed by Amos Poe.

I am a little disapointed that The Cramps weren't in the book. I know they weren't quite of the same vintage, but they were around in the later part of that scene (their recent box set includes live recordings from Max's in 77 and CBGB's in 78). And Jonathan Richman must have been around somewhere. I wish he would have shown up in the book.

Since this has long ceased to be any kind of serious review, I'll just list a couple interesting facts:

The girl dancing with a whip with the Velvet Underground and Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable lightshow (I think there's a picture of her on the back of Velvet Underground and Nico) is Mary Woronov.

Most of the people that knew Sid Vicious at the time don't believe he killed Nancy, and have a plausible explanation that involves her being killed by a drug dealer. I think I believe them.

And now I'm reading This Band Could Be Your Life. I really should have read England's Dreaming and We Got The Neutron Bomb (and maybe Rip It Up And Start Again) in between, but there you are.