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All Music Guide:
Richard Hell was one of the original punk rockers to emerge from New York City in the early to mid-'70s, and is often pointed to as a major influence by other subsequent punk bands -- whether it be with his music, poetry, or even fashion sense (he was one of the first punks to wear ripped clothing). Born Richard Meyers in October 2, 1949, and raised in Lexington, KY, Meyers discovered rock & roll via the usual suspects (Rolling Stones, etc.), and befriended another local music fan, Tom Miller. Miller and Meyers embarked on an unsuccessful hitchhiking journey down south before being picked up by police and sent back to their families, but the taste of life on the road was enough for Meyers to realize that he wanted to relocate to New York. During the late '60s/early '70s, Meyers worked on original poetry and picked up the bass guitar, as he was soon joined in New York by his old pal Miller (who had become quite an accomplished guitarist by this time).
The pair promptly changed their names (Miller -- Verlaine, Meyers -- Hell) and formed the Neon Boys in 1974, changing their name shortly thereafter to Television. Influenced by such proto-punks as the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls, the new group (which also includes second guitarist Richard Lloyd and drummer Billy Ficca) began playing regularly in the downtown Bowery area of N.Y.C., and slowly built a following playing regularly at places like CBGB's. Along with Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, and Ramones, Television lent a major hand in putting New York's punk scene on the map, but Hell grew frustrated with his role in the group (the group's leader was unmistakably Verlaine, while few of Hell's compositions were used) and left in 1975. Hell wasn't band-less for long -- it was right at this time that Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan left the New York Dolls, and immediately asked Hell if he was interested in playing bass for their new outfit, the Heartbreakers.
But, like his previous band, it quickly became established that Hell would not be the leader (Thunders was), and despite rave reviews, Hell jumped ship just a few months later. Undeterred, Hell decided to form his own band, Richard Hell & the Voidoids. Putting together a stellar lineup (including one of the genre's finest guitarists, Robert Quine, as well as second guitarist Ivan Julian and drummer Marc Bell). The quartet was an immediate hit with the CBGB's crowd, as Hell was finally able to utilize the backlog of compositions that he had compiled over the past few years. After a self-titled, three-track EP was issued independently in 1976, the group inked a recording contract with Sire.
Their 1977 debut, Blank Generation, has gone on to become one of punk's all-time classics, spawning such standards as the title track and "Love Comes in Spurts," as the band toured the world, including a tumultuous stint opening for the Clash in England. Despite a promising career ahead of them, little was heard from the group subsequently (Hell's substance use around this time may have had something to do with the delay, as well as his dissatisfaction with touring). With most assuming that the group had broken up, Hell decided to revive the Voidoids in 1982, although Hell and Quine were the only members remaining from their previous incarnation. The resulting album, Destiny Street, was another exceptional set of punk-pop, spawning another quirky classic with "The Kid With the Replaceable Head." Yet once again, the group failed to follow the record-tour-record-tour pattern, as the Voidoids sunk from sight (although Quine around this time was doing double duty -- lending his six-string talents to Lou Reed's solo band, including the albums The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, and New Sensations).
Hell kept himself busy in the '80s with his poetry and bit parts in movies, his best-known role being Madonna's boyfriend in 1985's Desperately Seeking Susan, while a 14-track collection of Voidoids outtakes and live material, R.I.P., was issued on the ROIR label (another collection, this one a set of live tracks, followed a few years later, titled Funhunt). Just as it appeared as though Hell had turned his back on music for good, he reappeared in 1992 as part of the group Dim Stars (which featured Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley, as well as Gumball's Don Fleming, and, once again, Robert Quine on guitar), issuing a self-titled release the same year. The group proved to be a nonpermanent project, however, as the '90s saw several archival releases that featured Hell circa the '70s -- the Heartbreakers' What Goes Around and Live at Mothers, plus a CD single on the U.K. label Overground which featured a few rare tracks from the Neon Boys.
Hell has authored several books over the years, including such titles as Wanna Go Out? (a collection of poems collaborated on with Verlaine), I Was a Spiral on the Floor, Artifact, and Across the Years, plus the short novel The Voidoid. Hell has also served as editor for New York literary magazine CUZ for the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, and, in 1996, issued his first full-length novel, Go Now (which was also released as a spoken word CD under the same name, with Robert Quine laying down some splendid noisy licks under the text). Hell and the former Voidoids were interviewed around this time for the excellent book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, which offered interesting insight into Hell's early years. In the late '90s, Hell began doing readings at clubs, universities, bookstores, plus other venues across the U.S. and also Europe, and also found the time to put together a gallery show of his drawings at the Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery in New York. In 2000, Hell reunited the original lineup of the Voidoids to record a new composition, "Oh," which initially appeared as a free download on a website, before being included on the 2001 compilation Beyond Cyberpunk.
Wikipedia:
Richard Hell (born Richard Lester Meyers) is a singer, songwriter, bass guitarist, and writer.
Richard Hell was an innovator of punk music and fashion. He was one of the first to spike his hair and wear torn, cut and drawn-on shirts, often held together with safety pins. Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, has credited Hell as a source of inspiration for the Sex Pistols' look and attitude, as well as the safety-pin and graphics accessorized clothing that McLaren sold in his London shop, Sex. Hell was in several important, early punk bands, including Neon Boys, Television, and The Heartbreakers, after which he formed Richard Hell & The Voidoids. Their 1977 album, Blank Generation, influenced many other punk bands. Its title song was named "One of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock" by music writers in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listing and is ranked as one of the all-time top-ten punk songs by a 2006 poll of original British punk figures, as reported in the Rough Guide to Punk.
Since the late 1980s Hell has devoted himself primarily to writing, publishing two novels and several other books. He was the film critic for BlackBook magazine from 2004 to 2006.
Biography [edit]
Early life and career [edit]
Richard Hell grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, in the 1950s. His father, a secular Jew, was an experimental psychologist, researching animal behavior. He died when Hell was seven years old. Hell was then raised by his mother, who came from Methodists of Welsh and English ancestry. After her husband's death, she returned to school and eventually became a professor.
Hell attended the Sanford School in Delaware for one year, where he became friends with Tom Miller, who later changed his name to Tom Verlaine). They ran away from school together and were arrested in Alabama for arson and vandalism a short time later.
Hell never finished high school, instead moving to New York City to make his way as a poet. In New York he met fellow young poet, David Giannini, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico for several months, where Giannini and Meyers co-founded "Genesis:Grasp". They used an AM VariTyper with changeable fonts to publish the magazine. They began publishing books and magazines but decided to go their separate ways in 1971, after which Hell created and published Dot Books. Before he was twenty-one his own poems were published in numerous periodicals, ranging from Rolling Stone to the New Directions Annuals. Along with Tom Verlaine, in 1971 Hell also published under the pseudonym Theresa Stern, a fictional poet whose photo was actually a combination of both his and Verlaine's faces, in drag, superimposed over one another to create a new identity.
The Neon Boys, Television, and the Heartbreakers [edit]
In 1969, Verlaine joined Hell in New York and formed the Neon Boys. In 1974 the band added a second guitarist, Richard Lloyd, and changed their name to Television.
Television's performances at CBGB helped kick-start the first wave of punk bands, inspiring a number of different artists including Patti Smith, who wrote the first press review of Television for the Soho Weekly News in June 1974. She had an affair with Tom Verlaine, and formed a highly successful band of her own, The Patti Smith Group. Television was one of the early bands to play at CBGB, and persuaded owner Hilly Kristal to book rock bands there on a regular basis. They also built the club's first stage.
Hell started playing his song "Blank Generation" during his stint in Television. In 1975, Hell parted ways with Television after a dispute over creative control. Hell claimed that he and Verlaine had originally divided the songwriting evenly but that later Verlaine refused to play Hell's songs. Verlaine remains characteristically silent on the subject.
Hell left Television the same week that Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders quit the New York Dolls. In May 1975 the three of them formed The Heartbreakers; not to be confused with Tom Petty's band, which adopted the same name the following year. After one show Walter Lure joined The Heartbreakers as a second guitarist.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids [edit]
A year later, in early 1976, Hell quit The Heartbreakers and started Richard Hell and the Voidoids with Robert Quine, Ivan Julian and Marc Bell. The band released two albums, though the second, Destiny Street, retained only Quine from the original group, with Naux (Juan Maciel) on guitar and Fred Maher on drums, and suffered from Hell's distractions, narcotics especially, during recording. Hell's best known songs with the Voidoids were "Blank Generation", "Love Comes in Spurts", "The Kid With the Replaceable Head" and "Time". In 2009, the guitar tracks on Destiny Street were re-recorded and released as Destiny Street Repaired, with guitarists Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, and Ivan Julian playing with the original rhythm tracks. Also in 2009, Richard Hell gave his blessing to the public access program Pancake Mountain to create an animated music video for "The Kid With The Replaceable Head". It would be the Voidoids first, and only, official music video. The cut used for the animation appears on Hell's 2005 retrospective album, Spurts, The Richard Hell Story.
Dim Stars and Hell's books, further life [edit]
Hell's only other album set to date was in the band Dim Stars, for which he came out of retirement for a month in the early 1990s. Dim Stars featured guitarist Thurston Moore and drummer Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth, Gumball's guitarist Don Fleming, and Robert Quine. They formed only to record the one album and one EP, both titled Dim Stars, and played one show in public, a WFMU benefit at the The Ritz, in Manhattan. Hell played bass, sang lead vocals and wrote the lyrics for the album.
Hell also co-wrote and sang lead vocals on the song "Never Mind" by The Heads, a 1996 collaborative effort between three former members of Talking Heads.
In 1996 Hell wrote a novel, Go Now, that was drawn largely from his own experience, and released a collection of short pieces (poems, essays and drawings) called Hot and Cold in 2001. His second novel, Godlike, was published in 2005 on Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series on Akashic Books. All three books have been highly praised. Also published in 2005 was a book of thirteen poems, written in collaboration with David Shapiro, Rabbit Duck. Hell's non-fiction has been widely anthologized as well, including a number of appearances in "best music writing" collections.
Hell's archive of his manuscripts, tapes, correspondence (written and email), journals, and other documents of his life was purchased for $50,000 by New York University's Fales library in 2003.
Hell has appeared in several low-budget films, most notably Susan Seidelman's Smithereens. (Other acting appearances include Uli Lommell's Blank Generation, Nick Zedd's Geek Maggot Bingo, Rachel Amadeo's What About Me?, and Rachid Kerdouche's Final Reward. Hell had a non-speaking cameo role as Madonna's murdered boyfriend in Susan Seidelman's 1985 Desperately Seeking Susan.) In 2007 he began making a movie which he wrote and acts in as well as directs.
Hell was married to Scandal's Patty Smyth for two years, 1985–86, and they have a daughter, Ruby. Hell married Sheelagh Bevan in 2002 and lives with her in the East Village, New York City.
