Product Description

A star-studded cast of characters, artists, underground reporters, and entrepreneurial groupies give first-hand backstage accounts of the drugs, sex, and power struggles that permeate the punk community to chronicle the emergence of punk music in New York's underground. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66297 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.com Review
Though Britain's notorious Sex Pistols shoved punk rock into the face of mainstream America, the movement was already brewing in the U.S. in the 1960s with bands like the Velvet Underground and Iggy and the Stooges. Through hundreds of interviews with forgotten bands as well as the ones that made names for themselves--including Blondie and the Ramones--Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain chronicle punk rock history through the people who really lived it. Please Kill Me is a thrash down memory lane for those hip to punk's early years and an enlightening history lesson for youngsters interested in the origins of modern "alternative" music.

From Publishers Weekly
As its sensationalist title suggests, this stresses the sex, drugs, morbidity and celebrity culture of punk at the expense of the music. Starting out with the electroshock therapy Lou Reed received as a teenager, working through such watersheds as the untimely deaths by overdose or mishap of Sid Vicious, Johnny Thunders and Nico, as well as the complicated sexual escapades of the likes of Dee Dee Ramone, the portrayal here of the birth of an alternative culture is intermittently entertaining and often depressing. McNeil, one of the founding writers of the original 'zine, Punk, in 1975 , is certainly qualified to tell this tale. But the book's take on punk rock as "doing anything that's gonna offend a grown-up" overemphasizes the self-destructive side of the movement. Details of Iggy Pop's drug abuse and seedy sex with groupies receive more attention than important bands such as Television and Blondie, which had comparatively puritan lifestyles. 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. McNeil and McCain (Tilt) provide a vivid look at the volatile and needy personalities who created punk, if they do not offer perceptive musical or cultural analysis. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Imagine one of those on-line "chat rooms" filled with the aging movers and shakers of American punk rock?former members of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, the Ramones, and others?as well as assorted hangers-on, all reminiscing about the glory days of punk. Denizens remember when downtown Manhattan was the epicenter of a musical and cultural earthquake whose aftershocks are still felt long after its initial impact. The stories told by these musicians and scenesters trace the history of punk from its earliest incarnations in the late Sixties, through its appropriation by British imitators in the Seventies, and ending just before its stylistic balkanization and quick decline in the early Eighties. Unfortunately, this oral history depends almost entirely on voices from Detroit and a small core of New York bands, ignoring the important scenes in Los Angeles, Boston, and Cleveland. Numerous behind-the-scenes anecdotes make this book undeniably fun reading. But the lack of any index, bibliography, discography, or overarching narrative context keeps it from being much more than that. Not an essential purchase, but worth considering for larger collections. (Photos not seen.)?Rick Anderson, Penacook, N.H.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

First Book On Punk I Ever Read.
This is going to be short and sweet...like me.
I read this book at the ripe age of 12. I was just getting into The Ramones and this book is just fantastic. I was just getting into Punk back then but I beleive that this is a good book for even people that know a lot about good Punk music and the history of it. I reread this book just a few months ago. Its defenently worth a read, or reread!

THE definitive primer on NY punk
Sometime in the late 1960's, a bad mojo was beginning to well up within the ranks of the flower power movement. There were quite a few disaffected outsiders that seemed to have figured out that the revolution was not destined to last, that it was in fact quickly becoming a sham. As corporate America began to swallow and repackage the 60's, some of the folks left behind by the peace and love generation began to vent their anger and shape a new vision. Proto-punk bands like the MC5 and The Stooges started to build upon the foundation that had been laid by the Velvet Underground. Their music was raw and violent in it's presentation, sonically threadbare and unpretentious. By the mid-1970's, a true scene began to happen in New York City that would serve to galvanize and give a true voice to this disaffected generation, a scene that would take it's cues directly from the violent and sleazy underground that it dwelled in.

Co-author Legs McNeil was a founding member of the seminal fanzine that helped give the nascent scene it's name and identity. "Punk" magazine was truly a groundbreaker, giving vital press to bands who would have otherwise gotten precious little exposure in the mainstream rock fanzines. Punk, of course, was much more than just a musical movement. In fact, the original punks were much more about living the lifestyle, living the nihilism that permeated their everyday lives. The music was just a conduit through which they expressed their dissatisfaction and aggression, it reflected what they were actually experiencing on the street.

"Please Kill Me" covers New York punk from it's birth in the mid-60's at Andy Warhol's Factory all the way to it's eventual death in the late-70's, as corporate America once again begins to catch the wave and numerous members of the original first wave of punk begin to burn out from the excessive and dangerous lifestyles that they embraced. McNeil and co-author Gillian McCain present their material in the form of interviews with a vast number of the people who were there on the front lines, experiencing and inventing the punk scene as it developed. Johnny Thunders, Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, The Ramones, Richard Hell, Danny Fields....they are all heard from here along with a host of groupies, drug dealers, hookers, agents and managers, club owners, and other scene hangers-on.

Overall, it's a great book, and the interview format really works well. The book is worth it's price just on the strength of the Iggy stories alone, but there's a ton of great source material here covering a lot of ground. it's a weighty tome at 500+ pages, but it reads fast and the stories never drag. I might have wished for a slightly larger photo section, but that's a minor gripe at best.

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. (Though the Stooges and the MC5 are profiled extensively, giving voice to the seminal Detriot scene.)

Punk did indeed die at the end of the 70's, and it has of course been resurrected and reinvented by succeeding generations. But if you want to know where the whole thing began, you have to get this book.

HIGHLY recommended!

Punk Rock 101
If you want to know where punk all started read this book. I first read it in high school, I had seen it at the library and thought it might be interesting. It's way more thatn interesting, I was a total novice when it came to punk music, and after reading it I became the know-it-all of punk rock history. I was calling out all the punks in my school who worshipped The Sex Pistols and the Clash. I did a research paper on Punk rock and this book was my major source. My only criticisim is it's mostly east coast or N.Y. punk. And there's no mention of the no-wave movement that came afterwards with bands like James Chance and the Contortions, and Teenage Jesus. Suicide isn't mentioned either. However there are other books that cover the different waves of punk, like American Hardcore for the hardcore/nazi punk, I've got the Neutron Bomb, I believe is the title that covers the L.A. scene, which is allright but a little shortsided, I think Lexicon Devil: the Rise and Fall of Darby Crash and the Germs, is a more indepth look at L.A. punk. Besides all that if you haven't read this book it's a must if you're a fan of punk rock, not only a read you must own it.