Richard Hell

From Free net encyclopedia

Richard Hell (born October 2, 1949) is the stage name of Richard Meyers, an American singer, songwriter and writer, probably best-known as frontman for the early 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 1959 spoken-word song Beat Generation) to the frantic energy of the anti-romantic anthem, "Love Comes in Spurts".

Hell is often regarded as the original source of much punk fashion, including spiked hair (inspired, Hell says, by 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud), with torn and cut shirts often held together with safety pins (a testament more to his inability to afford replacements than to any avant-garde deconstructionist fashion sense). It's commonly believed that Malcolm McLaren had the Sex Pistols imitate Hell's look and used it as the basis for safety-pin accessorized clothing he sold in his London shop. Hell articulated the notion that punk fashion should be cheap and easily accessible to anyone, in contrast to disco's expensive, flashy styles.

McLaren said he told the "Pistols" to write their own version of "Blank Generation" and they came up with "Pretty Vacant".

[edit]

Biography

Hell grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, but went to a boarding school in Maryland for high school. There he befriended Tom Miller. They ran off together and after stopping off in Lexington they were arrested in Alabama while hitch-hiking to Florida. Hell dropped out and traveled to New York to become a poet. Miller returned to the boarding school and graduated. Hell eventually wound up in the tight social vortex that became the New York downtown punk scene of the mid-1970s.

In the early 70's, Miller (who took the name Tom Verlaine) joined his friend in New York, and they formed the Neon Boys. Their 1973 self-titled single is arguably the first punk song. Not long after, they 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, notably Patti Smith who wrote the first press review of Television for the Soho Weekly News in June of 1974; started an affair with Tom Verlaine; and formed a band of her own that began performing on double-bills with Television, and later with The Voidoids. Television was the band that convinced CBGB owner Hilly Kristal to book rock bands at his club, and they built its first stage.

In 1975 Richard Hell split (or was fired from) Television after a dispute over creative control. Hell reports that he and Verlaine had originally divided the songwriting evenly before Verlaine later insisted on favoring his own songs. Verlaine remains relatively silent on the subject. Hell started playing his two most famous songs ""Blank Generation" and "Love Comes in Spurts" during his stint in Television.

Hell left Television the same week that Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders quit the New York Dolls and they formed a band called The Heartbreakers (not to be confused with the later Tom Petty band). After few shows they added Walter Lure as a second guitar player. A few months later, after another fight over creative control, Hell left the Heartbreakers and started the Voidoids.

Hell was married to Patty Smyth, formerly of the band Scandal, and the two had a daughter, Ruby. The marriage did not last, and Smyth (who is not to be confused with Patti Smith) married tennis star John McEnroe in 1997. Ruby lives with Smyth and McEnroe.

Hell, Dee Dee Ramone (of the Ramones), Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan were a clique of heroin users, according to Marky Ramone (who was originally a member of the Voidoids under his birth name, Marc Bell).

In recent years, Hell has returned to literature. He published a quasi-autobiographical novel Go Now in 1996, 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.

[edit]