Richard Hell
You don’t get a more punk history than Richard Hell.
Co-founder of the Neon Boys and Television with Tom Verlaine during those early formative punk years in the early 70’s. Member of the first incarnation of The Heartbreakers with Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders and co-writer of the classic ‘Chinese Rocks’ with Dee Dee Ramone.
Punk rock owes a massive debt to Richard hell – poet, writer & musician. His spiky haired and ripped clothes look was ‘borrowed’ by Malcolm McLaren. His tune Blank Generation was adopted by the punk generation and anglicised in the Sex Pistols song Pretty Vacant. And while never perhaps delivering the killer punch always promised Hell’s importance to punk and its aftermath should never be understated.
Modern Rock owes Richard Hell a sizeable dowry. Born in Kentucky, Hell, under his given name of Richard Myers, attended a private school with one Tom Miller, later to be known as Verlaine.
In 1972 the pair initially conceived of the prototype punk band Neon Boys and though only getting so far as rehearsal stage recorded four songs that only saw the light of day around 1980. From the start there was a poetry art angle with Miller naming himself after the French symbolist Verlaine and Hell basing his look and image on an old picture of Rimbaud.
The pair in later life conceived of Television in New York (The name was an ideas of Hells). In Television, Hell’s most famous songs Love Comes in Spurts and the epic Blank Generation (see Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant version) were unveiled. But ego friction between Verlaine and Hell over Hell’s onstage antics compared to Verlaine’s more static presence and the reduction of Hell’s songs to a big fat zero caused Hell to leave the band scarred and bitter by the whole affair.
Hells style of dress, prickly hair and torn clothes caught the eye of Malcolm McLaren in 1975 as manager of the New York Dolls as they imploded. McLaren wanted to take Hell to England but Hell had other things on his mind as he was leaving Television.
Instead McLaren took the look and ideas and amalgamated them with his own more confrontational clothing helping define an aggressive visual image that matched the emerging visceral UK punk scene.
Malcolm McLaren Richard Hell was a definite 100% inspiration… torn and ripped t-shirt…this look, this image of the guy, this spiky hair…By being inspired by it I was going to imitate it and transform it into something more English.” Malcolm McLaren
Richard Hell But ideas are free property. I stole shit too.
Please Kill Me – McNeil & McCain
A short liaison with ex Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan in The Heartbreakers kept Hell busy through to 1976 but sheer incompatibility meant that Hell was on the move again after just 9 months leaving behind one song Chinese Rocks that became a permanent fixture in their set.
Richard Hell …it was just that the music was too brutish for me. It was clear that it wasn’t gonna have any kinda musical ambition except to stomp out rock’n’roll, which I like, but I wanted to be able to extend it more.” Please Kill Me – McNeil & McCain
Richard Hell was probably one of the great geniuses of his generation, but he was just too smart for his own good. He couldn’t get along in a band. He couldn’t get along with Tom Verlaine when he was in Television, and he couldn’t get along with Johnny Thunders. Punk – Colgrave & Sullivan
This time it was to form the Voidoids with just one front man. Hell explains the band selection…
Bob Quine – Guitar
Bob was a guy I’d known for years. I used to go over to his house…where he had a fantastic record collection and listen to records.Mark Bell – Drums
He’d just left Wayne County…and asked if we should get together and immediately I said yes.Ivan Julian – Guitar
Richard Hell Sounds, 23.4.77
Picked randomly from a list of guitarists seeking bands to play for one night. “..it was right immediately that night.
At last you are the undisputed leader of your band. So how do you fancy to have been in two seminal punk rock bands, defined a generation with a look and song and then find yourself cramped in a little car touring with The Clash starting their set with I’m so Bored With The USA and getting covered with spit. To top it all your record company doesn’t even release your album to coincide with the tour.
“I was strung out and not knowing how to cop…I’d been where the Clash and the Sex Pistols were 4 years before…the British audiences were just horrific.”
Of course it wasn’t helped by the de rigeur heroin habit Hell was enduring. Returning to New York Hell extricated the Voidoids from their Sire deal and waited for a big label to come and claim their prize in. Sadly it never happened. Hell moved to just singing. Marc Bell departed for The Ramones. By October 1978 they recorded Kid With The Replaceable Head for Radar Records as a taster to an album and supported Elvis Costello. The Radar Records deal fell through and that was that for the band returning to New York
There is an argument to say that Hell era Television and Heartbreakers both hit their peak with him in the band and that The Voidoids never really hit those peaks. For Hell, some 5 years after originally writing the tunes, that first album was a catharsis and following it he questioned himself whether he even wanted to be in rock’n’roll giving up the bass. In the end he recorded infrequently throughout the eighties with different personnel several times.
I’d say part of the problem for Richard Hell, apart from his songs going through too many bands before he recorded them, was quite simply lack of output which I’m sure wasn’t for want of trying. Record labels wern’t exactly falling over themselves to sign him or Punk to be fair at the time and it was Sire that stepped in like they did with the Dead Boys and Ramones. The below is disproportionate to the influence Hell had on punk both in look and music
Love Comes In Spurts / That’s All I Know (Right Now) / Don’t Die (Shake Records 1980)
Looks like punk…sounds punkish…this is the real McCoy from way back in 1974. Check out Hell on the cover with leathers and spiky hair.
The sound of something different & new gestating that crosses from 13th Floor Elevators/Velvets to a harder more urgent music. ‘Love comes in spurts… Sometimes it hurts’ he intoned and yes it does.
Blank Generation – Sire 1977
Originally conceived back in 1975 The sublime Blank Generation is one of the classic punk singles of all time and influenced the Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant. The connection is obvious but the differences are vast.
While the Pistols lyrics & music offer anger, no ideals and no sense of a future, Hell offers us the blank to fill in as we choose. Instead of ‘I Belong To The Blank Generation’, Hell intended there to be a space where ‘Blank’ should be. Regardless of the semantics Hell’s toon, delivery and look is pure punk. Originally released on the independent Ork Records, it was re-released on Sire in the US and on Stiff in the UK.
Another World / Blank Generation / You Gotta Lose
(Stiff Records November 1976)
Released by Stiff Records this was an EP reissue of the first Ork records release. Fantastic new cover with the usual Hell as a sexy punk, with undone zip by Roberta Bayley. Why Another World was chosen as the lead is a mystery to me when Blank Generation and You Gotta Lose is the obvious pick.
Love the razor blade lettering!
The Kid With The Replaceable Head / |I’M Your Man
(Radar Records January 1979)
Fine uptempo single with fantastic (autobiographical?) lyrics. Supposed to be the lead or an album that never happened as Radar were too concerned with Elvis Costello who was having chart success.
He used to beat himself up till he was sick and confused
Dead tired and throbbing, half crazy and bruised
Till he’d be too worn out to keep being himself
Now he can pick them at will from the heads on his shelf
Blank Generation – Sire 1977
So the big one! 3 bands, countless demos and versions of songs. How do you manage to keep going, to want to leave your mark with a recording? To have the pressure of providing the definitive recording. To be there at the start and others have already released stuff who came after you.
The Voidoids music ? “…edgy and spiky. Taut neurotic, perverse and relentless, in its mood of testy despair, his first album was nonetheless a riveting look into the world of a figure who’d mated poetry and left field rock action, honing the songs with razorblades.” NME, 1978
Yeah, that just about sums it up!
Richard Hell I think once my album comes out, Television will just be fuckin’ forgotten…Television will just be fuckin’ demolished. Because we have everything they have and two hundred percent more. We’re a rock’n’roll group, we can do everything they can but we can also play rock’n’roll. Sounds, 23.4.77
It’s a mean sounding Hell above, but the truth of the matter was the album didn’t quite live up to the billing he gave it. Recordings for it were tortuous and reworkings of old songs are always problematic as an artist because you’ve heard them so often. Both patchy and brilliant in places.
Great cover by one of the best punk photographers, Roberta Bayley, featuring a wasted looking Hell/Arthur Rimbaud as a sexy come to bed punk pin up!
TalkPunk
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