This first oral history of the most nihilistic of all pop movements brings the sound of the punk generation chillingly to life. Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Johansen, Dee Dee Ramone, Nico, Patti Smith, Malcolm McLaren, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to tell the outrageous that bring the punk era to life. From its origins in the twilight years of Andy Warhol's New York reign to its last gasps as eighties mainstream metalmania, the phenomenon that was known as punk is analyzed, criticized, eulogized, and idealized by the people who were there, and who made it happen. Please Kill Me reads like a fast-paced novel, but the energy it celebrates and the tragedies it contains are all too achingly human, and all too real.

Reviews

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.

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. (July)

"Ranks up there with the great rock & roll books of all time." -"Time Out New York"

"This book tells it like it was. It is the very first book to do so." -William S. Burroughs

"Does for the Ramones what the disciples did for Jesus." --"LA Weekly"

"Dishes the crud on everyone . . . candid, inside, and detailed." --"The New Yorker"

"Lurid, insolent, disorderly, funny, sometimes gross, sometimes mean and occasionally touching." --"The New York Times"

"The riotously funny story of New York punk told by those who were there." --"Daily News"