Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An Evergreen book)

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Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An Evergreen book)

4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 · rating details · 10,422 ratings · 580 reviews

A Time Out and Daily News Top Ten Book of the Year upon its initial release, Please Kill Me is the first oral history of the most nihilist of all pop movements. Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Malcom McLaren, Jim Carroll, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to this definitive account of that outrageous, explosive era. Fro...more

Paperback, 488 pages

Published April 13th 2006 by Grove Press (first published May 13th 1996)

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Dec 31, 2012 matt rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people taking tallys on the amount of STD's the MC5 acrewed

As an avid reader (and subsequent loather) of "punk rock" history, I was excited to get into this. And although I didn't get exactly what I was looking for, it's certainly worth a read for those who can stomach it.

I can't claim to not like oral histories having only previously read the "People's Oral History" by Zinn which is a blood orange compared to Wayne Kramers' red delicious. That being said, I found this book far too gossipy and "sceney" making me think that cliques in music existed long...more As an avid reader (and subsequent loather) of "punk rock" history, I was excited to get into this. And although I didn't get exactly what I was looking for, it's certainly worth a read for those who can stomach it.

I can't claim to not like oral histories having only previously read the "People's Oral History" by Zinn which is a blood orange compared to Wayne Kramers' red delicious. That being said, I found this book far too gossipy and "sceney" making me think that cliques in music existed long before the internet came and quantified it for the world to see/read. You fucked Johnny thunders? Great! He vomited on your couch!!? NO WAY!

For those who want the shortened version, I'll sum it up. Patti Smith was a delusional bitch. Lou Reed had tons of gay sex and was mean to everyone. Dee Dee Ramone was a prostitute and hated the rest of his band. The Dead Boys and The Heartbreakers did a lot of drugs. Iggy Pop manipulated people for smack. The New York Dolls were popular for a year, tops. MC5 were sexist and full of shit. A few people OD'ed, and the Sex Pistols came along and ruined the fun for everyone.

Sound good? Kind of. But a few major gripes here. This book, first and foremost should be about the history of NEW YORK punk. Or "people Legs McNeil was friends with." It is embarrassing that the Talking Heads were completely excluded from this because the writers thought that they were "yuppies." How you can talk about Blondie, Television and Patti Smith and completely leave out David Byrne (for better or worse) to me seems ludicrous. It's the same with the British movement. Malcolm Mclaran is of course given his due here but the raging prejudice put against the UK bands ("The Damned were posers! The Clash didn't know what they were talking about!") seems more like territorial squabbling than actual criticism.

Perhaps this book serves as an interesting antidote to the idea that it was "better in the old days" although I'm sure that the author (and the few that survived) probably believes otherwise. It certainly doesn't seem that way. Too many knife fights and junkies shooting up in the bathroom, thanks. Yes, Iggy might have been electrifying rolling around in glass but nihilism, as it turns out, isn't all its cracked up to be.(less)

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Sep 29, 2007 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: little punks

Shelves: here-is-new-york, wee-ones-and-bored-teenagers, substance-related-disorders, groups-of-people

I read most of this one night while working the graveyard shift at a very institutional group home in the real methy part of SE Portland. I was the only person awake and not severely mentally-ill in the whole building, except for the parole guys, who I was pretty sure were faking it, or at least greatly exaggerating. There were these big sliding glass doors where of course the methhead psychos lurking in the dark could watch me mopping, all lit up, but I couldn't see out, and most nights I'd be...more I read most of this one night while working the graveyard shift at a very institutional group home in the real methy part of SE Portland. I was the only person awake and not severely mentally-ill in the whole building, except for the parole guys, who I was pretty sure were faking it, or at least greatly exaggerating. There were these big sliding glass doors where of course the methhead psychos lurking in the dark could watch me mopping, all lit up, but I couldn't see out, and most nights I'd be really on edge and ready to run for the parole guys' room if any of the scary noises I heard outside turned out to be some twisted someone smashing through the glass and grabbing my spleen as an ingredient to use in his basement meth lab.

Anyway, that one night I didn't have time to worry about getting chopped into pieces by violent, spun-out hicks, because I was too busy drinking Vanilla Coke after Vanilla Coke in the office, not mopping the place and absorbing (naturally) this very absorbing oral history of the seminal New York City punk scene. The best part by far -- and I wish I had my copy still, so I could quote directly -- was this desciption of Richard Hell, who'd rip all those holes in his shirt and then go around all moony-eyed and moaning, "Oh, poor me, my life is so hard, here I am, with all these holes in my shirt!" You'll have to find the book to get the actual verbatim, which is better phrased, but if you don't have time for the whole book (though you should make the time), that's the passage that brilliantly sums up the gist of that whole glorious punk rock movement.

From an educational standpoint, this book really made me appreciate the ladies who intervened in the years after the era it described. Not that things ever got great, but reading this paints a pretty horrifying picture, from a female perspective. With the exception of Patti Smith, and to some extent Debbie Harry, the early punk scene was pretty damn limiting if you were a woman. Basically if you were amazingly gorgeous you were Bebe Buell, and you were considered a "muse," which meant you'd pick some hot rock star and be a highly coveted, specialized, and respected version of what most of the other girls around seem to have been considered during this time, which was interchangeable fuck-hole groupies. It might've been worth it to see these bands live in their heyday at CBGB's, but I don't think being a lady hanging around that scene sounds very fulfilling. This book makes for an interesting contrast with his newer porn oral history, from a feminist perspective. I mean, I'd rather be Marilyn Chambers any day of the week than most of these punk chicks. This is not to say it was bad for all of them, but that's one of the impressions this book left me with.

In any case, it's a great read, and anyone who cares at all about classic punk has doubtless read it already, or should have.(less)

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Sep 02, 2007 Mike DaRonco rated it 5 of 5 stars

Man, Lou Reed is such a dick.

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Nov 30, 2008 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Laura by: Jessica Gutteridge

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 completely talentless Jim Morrison was, and Ray Manzarek comes along saying, "Jim was a shaman." Hahahahahaha what an ass. I'll let Danny F...more

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May 09, 2013 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars

As any decent music fan will testify, punk was not an English invention. It started in the suburbs or Detroit and New York in the 60's. Bands like The Velvet Underground, The Stooges and The MC5 fired up a generation that included The New York Dolls and The Ramones. The fact that the movement was named Punk long before the Sex Pistols and the Clash came on the scene should give punk fans a decent history lesson.

Nevertheless, this is an oral history so the history is told through quotes from such...more

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Mar 08, 2010 Erik rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction-for-a-fiction-guy

At times I can't help but think that Legs McNeil gives himself a little too much credit in terms of defining what came to be known as "punk" or "punk rock." However, one thing you could never take away from Legs is this amazing book. Out of all the same old rehashed books on the history of rock music, "Please Kill Me" is not only refreshing, but it may be the definitive source on the underground rock and roll culture from the '60s onward. It was wise for the stories to be told in an oral history...more

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Jan 11, 2008 Noel rated it 5 of 5 stars

I absolutely inhaled this. Legs' view is that punk was a strictly American phenomenon with its roots in The Doors, The Velvet Underground, The MC5, & The Stooges, and that the British got it completely wrong and basically killed the movement. And he presents that argument well.

Pretty much everyone in the book appears to be exactly what I already thought:
* Jim Morrison was often drunk and frequently terrible live, and wrote really bad high school-grade poetry.
* David Bowie was a rather uptigh...more

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May 15, 2007 Meredith rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

i loved this book. i picked it up on a whim, thinking "hm, i don't really know enough about punk," and i couldn't put it down. (which became amusing: what's LESS punk than opting out of a crazy fun party on a friday night to stay in and read a book about punk?)

the book is compiled entirely of excerpts from interviews with all the people who were involved in the New York punk scene. Leggs McNeil, the author, was one of the founders of Punk! magazine, and was actually the person who came up with t...more

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Dec 26, 2008 Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

when i was a kid and i would whine about not getting new shoes or some stupid shit my mom would sing that old Rolling Stones song, "You can't always get what you want" only she wouldn't sing it she would talk it like it was some ancient wisdom from the lips of Plato inserting pauses to let the complicated cadence of his words sink in, "but if you try some time...you just might find... you get what you need." It always pissed me off and made me embarrassed that my mom thought she was being cool q...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

It is an inside look into the New York punk scene during the late seventies. It's foul so don't read it!

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Aug 08, 2007 Matt rated it 2 of 5 stars

The explicit redundancy of the punk scene is offensive. While some of the stories are interesting and the first hand account of it all is better than most, it's just boring. Listening to how f'd up people get has become tiresome. It isn't awesome anymore.

That said, some of the stories are pretty ok. If you're a disillusioned person looking for something to hang on to look no further. Your rebellious ways are all documented and ... shockingly enough ... they happened more than 30 years ago. It's...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Jess rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jess by: Jared Wynne

must love music. this book is massive.

Danny Fields on Andy Warhol and The Factory scene:

"Everybody was in love with everybody. We were all kids, and it was like high school. I mean it was like when I was sixteen, this one likes this one this week, and this one doesn't like that one this week, but likes this one, and there are all these triangles. I mean it wasn't terribly serious. It just happened to be people who later on became very famous because they were so sexy and beautiful, but we didn'...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: research

I waited for what seemed like months for this book to become available at the library. I’m happy to report that it was, in fact, worth the anticipation. Like many (many!) books on the history of punk rock, Please Kill Me conveys its information through interviews with prominent individuals directly or indirectly involved with the scene. Unlike other histories, however, Please Kill Me focuses much, much more heavily on the history of protopunk -- The Velvet Underground, The New York Dolls, Lou Re...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Tuck rated it 5 of 5 stars

i've read quite a few books on this topic, the best being about 80's and 90's underground music like Rites of Spring, Minor Threat, mission of burma, Big Black etc, azerrad's book is superlative in its history and writing
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53...

and then the more typical punkwriting of bangs et al
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/91...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...
http://www.goodreads.com/bo ...more

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Feb 17, 2011 Rod rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, rock-n-roll

Goodreads defines the five-star rating as "It was amazing." I've given books five-star ratings before, then asked myself, "Was it amazing?", and then had to admit to myself that the answer was "no" and changed my rating accordingly. In the case of Please Kill Me I don't even have to think about it. It was amazing. I've read it three times and I'm sure before long I'll probably make it four. Greatest rock 'n' roll book ever and one of the greatest oral histories ever.

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Jan 17, 2010 Stephen Gilbert rated it 3 of 5 stars

From Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Rock:

Dee Dee Ramone: "Sid Vicious followed me all over the place. This was before he was in the Sex Pistols. He was very nice and very innocent. I saw him all the time. The worst time was one night when we had a big party. It was the summer, and in London there's no air conditioning. It was at a place called Country Cousin or Country Club, where everybody had their parties. They were serving beer and wine, and everybody was bombed. The who...more From Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Rock:

Dee Dee Ramone: "Sid Vicious followed me all over the place. This was before he was in the Sex Pistols. He was very nice and very innocent. I saw him all the time. The worst time was one night when we had a big party. It was the summer, and in London there's no air conditioning. It was at a place called Country Cousin or Country Club, where everybody had their parties. They were serving beer and wine, and everybody was bombed. The whole bathroom was filled with puke - in the sink, in the toilets, on the floor. It was really disgusting. And somebody said, 'Dee Dee, do you need anything?' I said, 'Yeah, I want some speed.' All of a sudden I had a huge amount of speed in my hand. I started sniffing it like crazy. I was so high. And then I saw Sid and he said, 'Do you have anything to get high?' I said, 'Yeah, I got some speed.' So Sid pulled out a set of works and put a whole bunch of speed in the syringe and then stuck the needle in the toilet with all the puke and piss in there and loaded it. He didn't cook it up. He just shook it, stuck it in his arm, and got off. I'd seen it all by then. He just looked at me kind of dazed and said, 'Man, where did you get this stuff?'"

Now, out of all of the questions that could be asked about that British bathroom, and the conclusions that could be drawn (drawn badly, and not drawn by me, but drawn nevertheless) from what Sid and Dee Dee did in it - in there - I want to know ...

Where was Sid's tailor when all of this was going on?

I suppose he was busy in Paris, on his hands and knees, on the stage of l'Olympia de Bruno Coquatrix music hall, helping Anthony Kiedis keep his pants up, the top of the leather seat was starting to split, before the Red Hot Chili Peppers covered The Stooges' Search & Destroy for the last song of their encore.

At the 0:15 second mark of a clip of the performance, pre-recorded live for MTV in 2002, Anthony refutes any assumptions the audience may have had that something lewd was going on:

"That's my tailor. That's ... that's George my tailor."

Since when were the Chili Peppers ... was rock 'n' roll ever this prim?

This prissy?

Concerned with coin slots and cleavage?

Being able to watch Iggy Pop on the same YouTube page - naked, covered in peanut butter, rolling around on broken beer bottles, getting blood all over everywhere, doing the things he was famous for doing when he performed the song himself in the 1970s - makes me wonder whatever happened to punk rock.

It grew up and put on a pair of pants ... expensive, fragile pants.(less)

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Sep 08, 2009 Cynthia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Punk rockers would make terrible dinner party guests. They will break your good china and roll around in the shards. They will defacate on the dessert. They will shoot up in your bathroom. They will hit on your grandmother. They also should make for interesting reading and, for the most part, the book delivered. I learned:
*Nico drank good wine.
*Phil Spector drank bad wine.
*Nancy Spungen was advised to go to England to clean up and kick her serious drug habit. That's where she met Sid Vicious.
*Ev...more

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May 10, 2009 Erica rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Erica by: Rafa

A few years ago I went to one of the last punk-ish parties I've been to, with many of my scene friends who, like me, are no longer scene. We're out on a porch smoking, and see a pack of teenage punks come by - dressed like we used to (we can't be bothered any more) - posing and disdainful. And my ex-boyfriend, a drummer in a punk band, said one of the most insightful things he's ever said to me: "You know what the best part of not being punk anymore is?" he asked, rhetorically. "Not being punk a...more

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Apr 28, 2009 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: art-and-music

Please Kill Me puts stories to the music of 70's American Punk. A lot of this is just party stories--albeit good ones—and they do a great job of illustrating the scene as well as the society at large it was counter to. I sometimes forget that society at large was still shaping the scene, not least of all, the ghetto of hard drugs. Today's punk scenes are so different, so much more positive, and healthier, in fact. You know, when art kids and punks slum it today, it's just not the same. Kids toda...more Please Kill Me puts stories to the music of 70's American Punk. A lot of this is just party stories--albeit good ones—and they do a great job of illustrating the scene as well as the society at large it was counter to. I sometimes forget that society at large was still shaping the scene, not least of all, the ghetto of hard drugs. Today's punk scenes are so different, so much more positive, and healthier, in fact. You know, when art kids and punks slum it today, it's just not the same. Kids today are vegan. Back then, everyone was doing effing heroin. The 70s were an ugly time indeed. Nixon and hard drugs...

The funny part about reading this is thinking of the shitty bands hobnobbing with international superstars—like the roadies of the Dead Boys hanging out with Debbie Harry. Debbie Harry, who was really freaked out about becoming popular—she “just wanted to sing,” but found herself on “the front cover of every magazine in Europe.” The Dead Boys' singer freaking out at the prospect of meeting his idol, Iggy Pop, who he's going to open up for, and takes so many drugs he passes out into his food at the restaurant they're meeting Iggy at.... Iggy freaking out that Miles Davis dug his set at his first NYC show...just a whole lot of freaking out in general. I forget that Punk was still part of the music industry, so the surreality of Miles Davis being in the same room as Iggy Pop, let alone behind stage together, is made possible. Like in “We Got the Neutron Bomb,” a good case is made for why the Doors were an important band leading to the Punk movement. That the Doors got Elektra to sign Iggy Pop, then MC5.... But it's still weird to imagine Nico hanging out with Jim Morrison....

Speaking of Iggy, check out Alan Vega (of Suicide)'s recounting of said Stooges show in NYC: “This guy with blond bangs—who looked like Brian Jones—came out onstage and at first I thought he was a chick. He had on torn dungarees and these ridiculous-looking loafers. He was just wild looking—staring t the crowd and going, 'Fuck you! Fuck you!' .. Iggy's set ended in twenty minutes, and somebody had the fucking genius to play Bach's Brandenburg Concerto through the speaker system. The audience was throwing bottles and roses at him. I swear it was beautiful. You know what I'm saying, man? It changed my life because it made me realize everything I was doing was bullshit.” (63).

After reading that Iggy was rolling in broken glass in NYC way back in '69 (holy shit!), with guys like Alan Vega in the audience, I finally get why people call Iggy the “grandfather of punk” : none of the New York bands had formed yet when Iggy was playing...

Reading this again, it striking how complicated the punk years were. I think the complication comes from the tensions between artists or being entertainers, being part of a scene or being a superstar, having fun or making serious cash. American Punk music is just so diverse, too, that it can be really rocknrolly like the New York Dolls or real far out like Pere Ubu...You should read this book. And you should listen to every punk record from 1967 to 1977. And you should really stay away from hard drugs. Yeah, I think those are the important things from this book.(less)

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Jan 01, 2013 Nestor Rychtyckyj rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is really the definitive history of punk (at least in the USA) and covers the pre-history (VU, Stoohes, New York Dolls) as well as the birth of the New York scene with the Ramones, Talkking Heads, Blondie etc. The book is a great read - almost everybody that was part of the scene and was around is in the book and the stories they tell are incredibly hilarious and fascinating. If you're interested in the music (as I most certainly am) it's impossible to put this book down. This actually came...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Jim Leckband rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Not idolalizers of Patti Smith or Lou Reed. Anyone intested in honest music.

Thirty years ago I played a lot of Ultimate frisbee. If you don't know much about it, let's just say that the game started out as a kind of anti-sport for free spirits. Sure there is scoring, but the "goal", so to speak, was to be in the moment - making the perfect pass, the perfect catch, the perfect run. There are no referees, not much arguing and if there is you just do a do-over - at the heart is the "spirit of the game" ethos which is all inclusive. There were no "plays" or organized defens...more Thirty years ago I played a lot of Ultimate frisbee. If you don't know much about it, let's just say that the game started out as a kind of anti-sport for free spirits. Sure there is scoring, but the "goal", so to speak, was to be in the moment - making the perfect pass, the perfect catch, the perfect run. There are no referees, not much arguing and if there is you just do a do-over - at the heart is the "spirit of the game" ethos which is all inclusive. There were no "plays" or organized defenses - none of the crap you get in basketball, football and soccer. It was heaven to me.

But like everything human, it becomes corrupted. Ten years after I started, I played in England and the team I was on had drills (!) and defenses and whatever, but not much joy. There were moments, but nothing like it was. The game had been co-opted by people who wanted it to be something else, something like basketball/football.

It's obvious why I'm telling this story. The same thing happened to punk. But the difference is that in this book you hear the people who started it, who wrote about it, who changed it, and to some extent, who ruined it. Punk at its heart has a pure romanticism to it. Some of it is calculated because you do have to be somewhat organized to play music, but some of the punks such as Iggy, even in his drug-addled way, embodied the anti-establishment f*ck you that was so much needed in a pop landscape dominated by the Eagles, James Taylor and disco (I like the Eagles and James Taylor, but every sweetness needs it salt.) (There is no excuse for disco.)

What I got from reading the book that was punk was mainly an attitude of getting out and doing what you can without any pretensions, living in the moment. The people who made punk what it was just wanted to get up and play straightforward rock'n'roll (and then get massively stoned/drunk/high). The heroes (in this book at least) are those that went out and made it happen and helped others make it happen. It was amazing how much the community helped each other. Unless you were on the make and an obvious climber (cough...Patti Smith...cough).

Punk got co-opted into New Wave, which did sell records, unlike punk. Then punk was kinda underground until grunge came around as the second coming. Until *that* got co-opted. And so it goes.

And yes, Lou Reed is a dick.(less)

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Feb 02, 2009 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was ok. Good window into some of the minds of the major players of punk, but it seems to be the history of punk according to what Legs McNeil thinks is important rather than a more encompassing portrait. It's basically the history of the NY punk scene with some side bits about the Sex Pistols. It seems to begin like all punk histories with a brief story of the Velvet Underground. I love them too, but let's broaden our horizons a little. The VU was not solely responsible for punk. I guess I...more

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Aug 12, 2010 Spiros rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone looking for an exhaustive history of the birth of Punk

Shelves: freebox, punk, cantbelieveineverread, i-fought-the-law, niew-amsterdam

A decidedly parochial, insular, and completely invaluable account of the birth and death of Punk. McNeil traces the movement from its inception, with the Velvet Underground, its fertilization by the the Detroit strain (the MC5 and the Stooges), through the glitter phase (the New York Dolls), to its full flowering with Patti Smith, Television, and the Ramones. Then he reveals the collapse which set in immediately afterwards. We follow, in both the first and third person, the trajectories of such...more A decidedly parochial, insular, and completely invaluable account of the birth and death of Punk. McNeil traces the movement from its inception, with the Velvet Underground, its fertilization by the the Detroit strain (the MC5 and the Stooges), through the glitter phase (the New York Dolls), to its full flowering with Patti Smith, Television, and the Ramones. Then he reveals the collapse which set in immediately afterwards. We follow, in both the first and third person, the trajectories of such seminal figures as Wayne Kramer, Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, Dee Dee Ramone, and Johnny Thunders. Of all people, Nancy Spungen supplies the best description of the music: "Punk started in the sixties with garage bands like the Seeds and ? and the Mysterians. Punk is just real good basic rock'n'roll, with really good riffs - it's not like boogie rock. It's not very embellished, intricate music - it's not with the synthesizers, it's just real basic fifties and early sixties rock." Can't argue with that.
Legs McNeil, as the "house punk", sets no store in anything that happened outside of Manhattan, which I guess is fair enough, since that is the history he is describing. His total disregard for anything which came after the opening of CBGB's, in such obscure locales as London, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Dayton, and San Francisco, is understandable, and those developments have been chronicled in other, equally valuable books. The amount of finger-pointing amogst the cast of this book, blaming the demise of Punk on the Sex Pistols, the media, and the tourists, misses the point a bit: any movement spearheaded by Richard Hell, Dee Dee Ramone, and Johnny Thunders was not apt to have a very long half-life to begin with.
Inevitably, everytime Malcolm McLaren opens his mouth he comes across as an utter shit-weasel, but my favorite quote from the book, delivered by the presiding genius who weaves through the whole history, record exec Danny Fields: "Jim Morrison was a callous asshole, an abusive, mean person. I took Morrison to Max's and he was a monster, a prick. And his poetry sucked. He demeaned rock & roll as literature. Sophomoric bullshit babble." (less)

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Aug 06, 2011 Ron rated it 5 of 5 stars

A harrowing account of the most powerful art movement of the last 50 years. The scope of the tale is Shakespearean, as just about everybody dies in the end. The great irony for me was that I've always felt that most of the bands from America in this movement were terrible (The New York Dolls; Richard Hell; The Dead Boys) because they were doing nothing more than a new take on rockabilly with loads of vile tales of their own degrading drug use. It was the British bands and the movement toward soc...more

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Nov 03, 2009 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, music, non-fiction

people who dislike the format of this book obviously ignored the title. beyond that i dont know how one can ignore Legs' gift for editing. sometimes it seems like he's setting these snippets up just to knock them all down with the summarizing paragraph of another first-hand witness that comes off like a punchline to end the chapter. reads like a documentary at times.

people who complain that the book doesnt address the west coast scene, more of the UK variety, or "punk" as a genre into the 80s an...more

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Oct 06, 2009 Meg Powers rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crazy-peop-le-who-actually-exist-ed

It's nice to know that Patti Smith can be as much as a fan-girl as me. I guess this is a sort of "kill your idols" book (especially after you read about Lou Reed-YIKES!), but what can I say, I still think Iggy Pop is pretty awesome. What's great about this book is it's purely anecdotal, and the egotistical rock critic romanticism is completely stripped away.
Please Kill Me lost me towards the end, however. The editing could have been better-I mean, I only need to read so many accounts about the...more

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Jan 23, 2010 Nycdreamin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Considered by many to be the authoratative history of the rise of the U.S. Punk music movement of the 1970's, beginning with it's early origins, centering heavily on the New York scene(touching briefly on the U.K. scene as well), this is an exhaustively researched "oral history," as told by those who lived within the punk scene and created the music. It was compiled by Legs McNeil (along with Gillian McCain) who, as co-founder of "Punk Magazine," was there to witness it all as it took place. Ess...more

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May 01, 2008 Hannah Messler rated it 4 of 5 stars

My lord, on and on and on. I felt like I did during Anna Freaken Goddamn Karenina. But a lot more excited! Coz yaar!! Blood and drugs and booze!! And who doesn't love reading about fucked up bastards who love music. ONLY people who aren't fucked up bastards who love music. And you people suck.

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May 15, 2012 Jordan rated it 5 of 5 stars

A spectacular recounting of Punk's origins through quotes and interview excerpts. I particularly dig that the author started with Warhol's Factory crew and the Velvet Underground before proceeding to the more commonly mentioned progenitors the MC5. Indeed, the book spends plenty of time setting up the emergence of punk in the late 70s.

The toll of the era's hard-living decadence is clearly illustrated by the number of people that died during or after the events recounted in the book. There are pl...more

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Apr 10, 2009 Caitlin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love this book & have read & re-read it many times since it came home with me from Half-Price Books in the U-District in Seattle. I was out of stuff to read last night & headed to the library today so I pulled this out to tide me over.

First, this is an oral history & I love good oral history. Studs Terkel has always been a huge hero of mine & Legs McNeil is way on up there with this book.

Next, this is a wonderful collection of words & musing about the American punk scen...more

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About Legs McNeil

Roderick Edward "Legs" McNeil (b. 1956 in Cheshire, Connecticut), is the co-founder and a writer for Punk Magazine. He is also a former senior editor at Spin Magazine, and the founder and editor of Nerve magazine (print only; 1992).

At the age of 18, disgusted with the hippie movement that seemed to be going nowhere, McNeil gathered with two high school friends, John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn, and dec...more

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Books by Legs McNeil

The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry

Pop Culture: 100 Stories From Pepsi Cola's First 100 Years

Cheetah Chrome: A Dead Boy's Tale: From the Front Lines of Punk Rock

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Quotes from Please Kill Me: The Un...

“The old sound was alcoholic. The tradition was finally broken. The music is sex and drugs and happy. And happy is the joke the music understands best. Ultra sonic sounds on records to cause frontal lobotomies. Hey, don't be afraid. You'd better take drugs and learn to love PLASTIC. All diffrent kinds of plastic- pliable, rigid, colored, colorful, nonattached plastic. - Lou Reed (1965-1968)” — 4 people liked it

“Rock & Roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back the beat so you could dream. A whole generation running with a Fender bass...

The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?

Perhaps I should die. After all, all the great blues singers did die. But life is getting better now.

I don't want to die. Do I? - Lou Reed (1965-1968)” — 3 people liked it

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Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An Evergreen book)

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