Legs McNeil

Totally engrossing, disgusting, harrowing, you name it. Also great pictures. This oral history of punk is mostly focused on the scene in New York City, but also works in the Sex Pistols. Depending on who is doing the recollecting, you may get various views. The surprising thing is that anyone can remember anything, given how many drugs they took. This is the only book where I have ever gone through the cast of characters at the end to mark off the additional ones who have died since the book show more was published in 1997. But of course, Iggy is still alive--which would seem to defy the odds. But perhaps it stems from the fact that as crazy as he was, he seemed to be enjoying himself and not having a death wish. Of course, by 2019, some of the folks have lived a normal lifespan. In any case, enough with the death obsession. This book provides fascinating stories about some of my favorite performers such as Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine, and it introduced me to some other performers I knew nothing or very little about. The book traces punk back to The Velvet Underground, the MC5, and the Stooges. I can't argue with that. Some sort of sequel is really warranted. show less

If you love gossipy oral histories, this is the book for you. It's probably better if you're familiar with the music, but that's not a prerequisite. And it's often hysterically funny, depending on who's being interviewed -- Richard Lloyd and Richard Hell both made me laugh out loud a number of times.

One of the best parts: several people are talking about how Jim Morrison was an 18-carat prick, and Ray Manzarek comes along saying, "Jim was a shaman." I'll let Danny Fields have the last word show more on Mr. Mojo Risin', as he said it far better than I ever could:

"Patti Smith was a poet. I think she elevated rock & roll to literature. Bob Dylan elevated it. Morrison's wasn't poetry. It was garbage disguised as teenybopper. It was good rock & roll for thirteen-year-olds. Or eleven-year-olds . . . . There has got to be a reason why women like Nico and Gloria Stavers, the editor of 16 Magazine, fell so deeply in love with him, because he was essentially an abusive man to women. But it sure wasn't his poetry. I've got to tell you, it wasn't his poetry. He had a big dick. That was probably it." show less

Lots of sex, some drugs, not much rock 'n' roll. (If you read the ecstatic blurbs for the hardcover edition and encountered Jim Marshall's contention that this is the "best rock & roll book ever, and not a word about music", you probably got the same sinking feeling that I did even before you arrived at page one of the actual text.) Here and there you'll find a worthwhile fragment of information about the music itself, such as Dee Dee Ramone's recollection of writing "Chinese Rocks", but show more they're few and far between. Essentially, Please Kill Me is 446 pages of dreary scenester memories: the first time Iggy Pop got the clap, the cute shapes that the Dead Boys shaved into the pubic hair of a groupie, blah blah blah ad nauseam. Yeah, I get it--my friends were a bunch of drunk, horny pus bags too--and it's just not that interesting. Few of the participants are as forthcoming about their lack of depth as Malcolm McLaren: "(The prospect of managing the Stooges) didn't sound trendy-nice, there was no lipstick there. It didn't have that fashion element that the New York Dolls had, that fashion twist...It's kind of pathetic when I think about it now, all that tartiness, but that's what I liked. I always thought the parties were gonna be better, I always thought the scene was gonna be better. The Dolls just looked more attractive."

Hats off to the late Mr. McLaren for his honesty.

If you wanted to argue that the concept of subcultures is total nonsense--that there's no such thing as alternative values and that no matter where you go or what you do, the people you meet will be the same cruel, selfish, shortsighted assholes you knew in high school--then you could make one hell of a case with this book. Personally, I recommend that you bypass the disappointment and head straight for a volume of Arthur Schopenhauer's essays and aphorisms. One and a half stars. show less

In Please Kill Me, interviews with over 100 musicians, promoters, artists, and groupies overlap each other to paint a graphic picture of the punk movement in the U.S., from the rise of The Velvet Underground at Andy Warhol’s Factory in the early ‘70s to the fall of Dee Dee Ramone from The Ramones in the late ‘80s. Along the way, inhuman amounts of drugs are ingested, everyone has sex with everyone else, and some amazing music gets created and played—and largely ignored by the general show more public.

It was hard to find anyone likeable in the pages of Please Kill Me—most of them came off as sexist, racist, self-absorbed, self-destructive asses—and I was often flat-out horrified at what these people did to themselves and each other. If even a tenth of what they said is true (and I think everything related in the book needs to be taken with a grain of salt), it’s not the high number of early deaths that come as any surprise, but that people like Iggy Pop and Richard Hell are still alive.

Please Kill Me is fascinating and disturbing. It’s hard to look away. While I would recommend it to anyone interested in the punk movement and the ‘70s underground scene in New York, be prepared to see your idols shattered. In a warts-and-all portrait, this book is mostly warts. show less