Richard Hell (1949 - ) born Richard Myers, was the
frontman for the early American punk band Richard Hell
and the Voidoids. Their 1977 album,
Blank Generation, contained many elements that would become
identified with punk, from the nihilism of the title
track (a play off of Rod McKuen[?]'s Beat Generation) to
the frantic energy of the anti-romantic anthem, "Love Comes
in Spurts".
Richard Hell was a high school dropout from Lexington,
Kentucky who traveled to New York to become a poet, and
eventually wound up in a tight social vortex that became the
New York downtown punk scene of the mid-70s. In his early
twenties he formed a band with high school friend Tom Miller
(who took the name Tom Verlaine), which became known as
Television. The performances of
Television at CBGB[?]'s -- a bar on the Bowery, in what was
then a very seedy neighborhood -- was a force that helped kick
loose the first wave of punk bands, inspiring a number of
different artists, notably Patti Smith who (1) wrote the
first press review of Television for the Soho Weekly News in
June of 1974; (2) started an affair with Tom Verlaine; and
(3) formed a band of her own that began performing on
double-bills with Television, and later with The Voidoids.
Richard Hell split from Television over what appears to
be a fairly typical band dispute over creative control:
originally Hell and Verlaine evenly divided the
song-writing, but later Verlaine was insisting on
favoring his own songs. It should be noted that this is
Hell's side of the story, Verlaine seems relatively silent
on the subject.
Then with some former members of the New York Dolls --
Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders -- he formed a band
called the Heartbreakers[?] (not to be confused with the
later Tom Petty band) and later moved on to form a
group of his own the Voidoids.
The influence of heroin addiction on the lives and art of
muscians during this period can be a difficult subject to
get a handle on. For what it's worth, Richard Hell, Dee Dee
Ramone (of the Ramones), Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan
were a clique of heroin users, according to Marky Ramone[?]
-- who himself was originally a member of the Voidoids under
the name of Marc Bell. Marky Ramone, Joey Ramone, Tom
Verlaine and Patti Smith, do not seem to have been members
of this club, despite occasional rumors to the contrary.
Richard Hell is often regarded as the inventor of punk
fashion: spiked hair with torn and cut shirts. It's
commonly believed that Malcolm McLaren had the
Sex Pistols imitate Richard Hell's look. Richard Hell
articulated the notion that punk fashion should be
cheap and easily accessible to anyone, in contrast to
disco's expensive, flashy styles.
In recent years, Hell has returned to his first love,
literature. He published a quasi-autobiographical novel Go
Now in 1996, and has released a collection of short pieces
(poems, essays and drawings) called Hot and Cold in 2001.
External links