Richard Hell & The Voidoids - The prophet of the blank generation

Fascinating and impossible, disoriented and alien, Richard Hell is the first (and the best!) name among the legends of punk rock. His introspective imprint on the bands he founded - some of the most significant groups on the New York City scene, as well as at the Cbgb, that magical club on the Bowery - is steeped in poetry, love, sex. The romanticism inherent in leaving, fleeing toward the mystery of that distance heard among the noisy grooves of a dirty record. And it's always the same, every time: take it or leave it

(Thurston Moore)

Chapter one: Flee, far away

Lexington, a city in the United States, the sole and only seat of Fayette County, in the state of Kentucky. It spans over 700 square kilometers at an altitude of roughly 300 meters above sea level. It was founded in 1775 as a frontier outpost — nothing more fascinating for a short-haired dark-haired boy who devours episode after episode of his favorite TV series, "Hopalong Cassidy." With his battered cowboy hat, little Richard Lester is about to start elementary school at Maxwell, but his earliest dreams point elsewhere. The journey, the frontier, running away. His parents arrived in Lexington in 1948, after meeting at Columbia University, both scholars and devotees of psychology. Ernest Meyers had recently found work at the University of Kentucky, known chiefly for its basketball team, the Wildcats. When little Richard Lester Meyers is born, his mother Carolyn decides to put her academic career on hold to devote herself to the family, which about a year and a half later also welcomes a daughter, Babette. While his mother's side of the family has Methodist roots, Ernest's is Jewish. Roots that are immediately a muddle for young Richard, who doesn't spend much time with his family, preferring instead his favorite western series, which sends him off into daydreams. Running away, as far as possible.

At six years old, tiny Richard Meyers doesn't have much to do in Lexington. Sometimes there are long cartoon marathons at the local cinema, certainly better than spending time with his father Ernest, busy studying the psychological behavior of animals. Sometimes the whole family goes to Joyland, to ride the roller coaster or play that game where you have to whack a rodent popping out of its burrow. In the winter of 1956 the Meyers family moves to the outlying neighborhood of Gardenside, into one of those houses that could have been drawn by a child Richard's own age. Far from downtown Lexington, the boy is lonelier, adrift in the suburbs with his only friend Roy, still daydreaming: running away, far off. That's why only cinema and TV can offer any relief, from John Ford westerns to "Flash Gordon."

Then comes the first escape — or rather, the first attempt. Richard is eight years old in 1957 when he tries to reach his best friends at midnight, heading for a cave in the Gardenside suburbs. His father catches him, but decides to drive him there anyway, looking for the friends who aren't around, or maybe have already left. Without even knowing it, Richard is living through one of his last moments with his father, who dies suddenly in his sleep that summer, of a heart attack. With not even a funeral, Ernest vanishes from the scene, leaving Richard to carry on through the rest of his childhood, growing ever more allergic to the school system.

Until he's ten or eleven, the dark-haired boy racks up worse and worse grades, unable to sleep from exam anxiety, so he makes a promise to his future adult self: he will never be a slave to rules, he will never live by the dictates of a world that isn't his, one that sorts people by their grades.

The early years pass unusually fast. At the dawn of fifteen, in 1964, come his first sexual experiences, his first suspensions from school for chemistry-lab experiments gone too far. Despite his hot temper, young Richard somehow lands a scholarship to the local private school Sayre, attended mostly by wealthy kids. It doesn't take him long to get into trouble again, borrowing other people's cars to make his getaways, chased down by the police. He's temporarily expelled from Sayre, forced by his mother to paint the fence at home. His one and only concession: being allowed to listen, meanwhile, to the only three records he owns, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and The Kinks. In 1965, obsessively listening to "Bringing It All Back Home," Richard Meyers reflects that he has no intention whatsoever of learning to play an instrument, but that this music is charged with hope, poetry, fury.

It's 1965. Carolyn, having set aside her studies to raise the family, goes back and completes her PhD. She quickly finds a job teaching American literature at Old Dominion, a state college in Norfolk, Virginia. Richard packs his things and is forced to move to the residential neighborhood of Larchmont. Public high school isn't an option, so he's enrolled at Sanford Preparatory School, where the sexes are segregated and uniforms are mandatory. His grades in math and languages stay low, amid wisecracks, outbursts and illicit escapes. At the Sanford dormitory, someone is listening to the new Rolling Stones record, "Aftermath," released in the States on July 1st. The psychedelic gust blowing in from the UK is fierce, as are his first experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. After yet another suspension, Richard has made up his mind: school no longer interests him, it isn't the right path. At seventeen, his new best friend is Tom Miller, also enrolled at Sanford but above all a kindred spirit in his outlook on reality: anti-conventional, ironic, a lover of music and the written word. Tom is finally the right person with whom to put the big dream into practice: running away, far off, hitchhiking if need be. South, like the great Beat poets.

Chapter Two: On the Road

The two new friends set off for Florida, drawn by the heat, the exotic fruit and the tanned girls. They'll see themselves as the great writers of the Beat Generation, dashing because finally free of old identities, relationships, the past. They stop in Lexington, put up by friends, in search of food. They push on to the Alabama border, where they're picked up by the police after accidentally starting a fire. Their parents have reported them "missing," so the trip is cut short, in a jail cell. When they get home, Sanford shows no mercy: Richard and Tom are expelled for good. While his friend decides to continue his studies at a public school, Richard really can't turn back now, not now. He wants to move to New York City, but his mother is against it, since he hasn't even turned eighteen yet. She threatens to call the police if he runs off again, so the boy takes the diplomatic route, proposing a deal. He'll get a job after school, to earn the money needed to support himself. In mid-1966 he begins his personal fundraising campaign at a newsstand specializing in pornographic magazines. While studying (badly) and working (a lot), Richard becomes fascinated by the writings of Dylan Thomas and the American poet and physician William Carlos Williams.

Christmas 1966. The money is there, he can finally leave. Richard boards a bus bound for New York City, his first great escape. Arriving in the Big Apple, he shares a hotel room near Washington Square Park with some friends from Sanford, smoking weed and drinking lager. Then the friends leave, and the boy is left alone, not even of legal age yet. He rolls up his sleeves and finds a job as a stockroom worker at Macy's, befriending a Puerto Rican coworker who invites him to split the rent on his small apartment on 14th Street. His new roommate drinks heavily, and living together isn't sustainable. Once he manages to save up enough money, he moves to a new apartment, until he can no longer afford the rent. It's the same story every time, an endless cycle: a temp job, a new apartment, a new firing, then a new eviction. Door-to-door magazine salesman; shelver at the New York Public Library; produce unloader. His scheme is brilliant. Get hired and work hard for a few weeks, maybe a month, proving himself a valuable asset. Then complain of personal problems and stretch it out for at least five months, the minimum requirement to collect unemployment benefits.

Richard hasn't come to New York to work, but to pursue his ambitions as a poet and writer in the mold of Dylan Thomas. He enrolls in a nighttime poetry workshop at the New School, taught by an obscure Filipino poet. One of the students in the course, David Giannini, catches his attention for his obsession with poetry. The two become friends and put out six issues of the amateur magazine Genesis: Grasp, typeset on an IBM machine but closer to a high school zine than a genuine collection of mature poetry. A first fleeting moment of glory arrives soon after, when Richard sends some of his writing to James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions Books, which had grown since the 1930s into a proud distributor of authors like Dylan Thomas himself, Nabokov, Rimbaud. Laughlin likes Richard's work, and decides to publish some of his poems in the Annuals collection. There's clearly room to grow — the kid has talent.

Spring 1967. At the end of March, thousands of young people gather in Central Park for the first "Human Be-In," celebrating hippie philosophy amid peace, love and marijuana cigarettes. We're on the eve of the famous Summer of Love, a few months before the release in the States of the Beatles' psychedelic masterpiece. Richard isn't particularly impressed, aside from one of his successful attempts at picking up pretty girls. His main focus is his new job at the Gotham Book Mart, a bookshop open since the 1920s. The elderly owner has recently decided to sell up, entrusting him with the delicate and delightful task of sorting through old poetry magazines. The new owner of the Gotham suggests one day that he try moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to get the Genesis magazine off the ground together with David Giannini. Richard thinks: why not? So he moves there for a few months, leaving his beloved New York behind. The experiment is short-lived, the magazine fails to attract attention, and above all life in Santa Fe is thoroughly depressing. He's back within a few months, hitchhiking all the way to the heart of the East Coast, his place in the world, one he'll never leave again.

Chapter Three: Tom and Me

It's 1968. Having reached legal age, Richard's prospects don't seem to change much. Jobs come and go with no stability whatsoever; now he's packing books at the Strand Book Store. Sex remains casual, the Genesis magazine never takes off. But the winds of the war in Vietnam are raging: the boy is called up for the draft by the Selective Service. Richard shows up for the written tests, bored to death by the banality of the questions. So, without thinking twice, he gets up from his chair and walks out of the room, immediately stopped by a soldier who asks if he needs a psychiatrist. As far as the army is concerned, there's no other option for someone who has just declared himself bored by the stupidity of certain questions.

In a parallel life, his old friend Thomas Miller has managed to finish high school in Wilmington, moving on to college in North Carolina. Richard and Tom have stayed in touch since the move to New York, sporadically exchanging letters with updates. Their reunion comes at the end of 1968, when Thomas leaves his college for a new life in the East Village. The two become inseparable again, sharing several apartments and — when not otherwise occupied in pleasant company — spending their time reading, wandering the city and getting drunk in trendy bars, including Max's Kansas City and the St. Adrian. During one of their boozy escapades, Richard meets Patty, a woman of Polish descent and muse to pop artist Claes Oldenburg. Patty is a beautiful thirty-seven-year-old blonde, long estranged from her husband. A working-class woman from Milwaukee, who nonetheless has a huge network of contacts in the New York art world, from De Kooning to Rauschenberg. The affair with Richard is intense, and lasts about a year and a half.

At the dawn of 1969, nothing in Richard Meyers's life seems stable. From his time with Patty to his time with Anni, assistant to the sculptor Marisol. Having moved near Little Italy, the two throw themselves into frequent drug use, from simple marijuana to hallucinogenic mushrooms. Between hookups and bad trips, Richard takes an interest in national politics, in the absurd war in Vietnam and in the Nixon administration. He doesn't, however, commit himself to activism, caught up instead in the upcoming release of the last two issues of Genesis magazine, which he works on in his new apartment on Elizabeth Street, where he's holed up after yet another breakup.

His lifelong friend Tom Miller is working at a bakery in the West Village. Their days are steeped in bad pizza, booze, drugs, and above all poetry books. As the months race toward the start of the new decade, Richard realizes that the run of Genesis magazine has come to its end. He's thinking about his next venture, another magazine called The Philosophical Review, but a towering wave is about to sweep him away. A wave made of sound and sweat on musical instruments.

It's 1971. Tom moves into a new apartment in the East Village, which effectively becomes Richard's second home. Preparations begin for a new poetry book, "Wanna Go Out?", but above all the first songs are written. At Cinemabilia, a bookstore specializing in cinema, the odd jobs are destined to fade away - music is waiting for them. While Tom works on his first tracks on his acoustic Gibson, Richard spends entire nights working on his new collection, which tells the imaginary life of a transvestite born to a Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother, Theresa Stern. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Theresa lives through the none-too-skillfully made-up faces of Tom and Richard, ending up in a series of pamphlets that Meyers himself will publish two years later under the title "Dot Books".

Chapter Four: Neon Boys

While he keeps up his poetic escapades - his latest hub being Telegraph Books, founded by Andrew Wylie - Richard Meyers is drawn ever closer to music. In 1971 he hears for the first time about a name, Patti Smith, who has written a set of lyrics titled "Merde", strikingly compelling. Backed by her guitarist Lenny Kaye, Patti gives herself to New York audiences with an uncommon lyrical intensity, naturally paired with a sexual ferocity in her auteur rock'n'roll. That's the first piece of the puzzle clicking into place in the minds of Richard and Tom: music can be made starting from substantial lyrics. The second piece comes courtesy of the deafening guitars of the New York Dolls, witnessed live at a couple of shows at the Mercer Arts Center. New York's music scene is changing radically at the start of the Seventies, and Richard wants to be part of it. The only problem: he has no idea how to play any typical rock instrument, so Tom suggests he try bass, since it's much easier to handle for the kind of music he has in mind.

After choosing his stage name, a tribute to the French poet Paul Verlaine, Tom had started hanging around the folk scene, armed with an acoustic guitar and his first Dylan-esque lyrics. Richard, determined to get his revenge on the elitist New York poets, believes the right direction lies in electrifying the sound. The two team up and start writing songs, with Verlaine mainly focused on the music while Richard works on lyrics, practicing on his new $50 Danelectro bass. The duo's official name is Neon Boys. Both in love with the noisiest riffs to emerge from bands like the early Stones and the Kingsmen, later followed by Iggy Pop, T-Rex and the New York Dolls, Richard and Tom nonetheless want a different sound for Neon Boys. Certainly not that theatrical, glittery posture running rampant in the early '70s with glam, but something that moves radically away from Bolan's boogie. In particular, it's Verlaine who wants to break away from glam, put off by the Dolls' foul-mouthed attitude, feeling closer to the intellectual approach of Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers.

The two are remarkably prolific, and from the very start there's a connection between them despite their quite different personalities. "Love Comes in Spurts" is the perfect synthesis of Richard's love for riffs and Verlaine's cacophonous experiments in the style of Velvet Underground and the Stooges. While "That's All I Know (Right Now)" deconstructs the typical Stones-style rhythm, Meyers' first composition - "High Heel Wheels" - is more influenced by Bolan's sound. With their first songs recorded, Neon Boys recruit an old friend of Tom's, Billy Ficca, on drums. To play live, though, they're missing a second guitarist, so they decide to place an ad in the Village Voice that reads: "Narcissistic rhythm guitarist wanted - minimal talent okay too". At the auditions show up a certain Doug Colvin, later better known as Dee Dee Ramone, and Chris Stein, a very hippie long-haired kid who would find greater fortune as guitarist for Blondie. Neither convinces Richard and Tom, who carry on with a reshuffled lineup through the rest of 1972, eventually letting Ficca go as well.

With still only a handful of songs recorded, Neon Boys go shopping for a radical new look. Boots and leather jackets borrowed from police uniforms, big dark Ivy League sunglasses, shaved heads, torn black jeans and safety pins. It's hardly a coincidence that Richard Hell will go down in music history as a punk rocker ante litteram, and above all as one of those artists who understands the value of personal style within rock'n'roll aesthetics, much like Elvis Presley's quiff or the early Beatles' mop-top haircuts. Richard Meyers is thus ready to become Richard Hell, a pseudonym dreamed up on the spot, perfectly evoking something negative and final. Everything's set, everything's ready. Too bad they still lack a second guitarist to play live. Neon Boys are forced to stop, in the middle of 1973.

In the apartment of his new girlfriend Jennifer, Richard picks up his Olivetti typewriter again for a new collection of writings titled "The Voidoid", born from his playful habit of tacking the suffix "-oid" onto any word. While writing, he goes back to work with his friends at Cinemabilia, now run by a rotund, bearded expert on European cinema, Terry Ork. A lover of contemporary art and Godard, William Terry (his real name) has a strange past, reportedly having organized, together with model and actor Gerard Malanga, an unauthorized resale of Andy Warhol artworks. But Ork is an enterprising, likable guy, and he gets Neon Boys new equipment to play with, becoming their manager. Hell and Verlaine are ready to start over, but under a new name: Television.

Chapter Five: Television

At the end of 1973, Richard and Tom hold a meeting with their new manager Terry Ork to weigh a series of new names to replace the outdated, luckless Neon Boys. On Hell's list is Television, Tom Verlaine's favorite. The two start recording at Ork's place in Chinatown, finally with a full band thanks to Ficca's return on drums and the addition of second guitarist Richard Lloyd. After so many setbacks, the two friends are ready to start over (this time) in earnest, riding furiously on the rock lifestyle. From the very beginning, Tom's weight as a guitarist - he's been playing for nine years - bears heavily on Richard, who's only been playing bass for a few months and wants to focus mainly on writing new songs. Lloyd follows Verlaine like a shadow, while Terry Ork works on organizing the new band's first live show.

It's March 2, 1974. At the Townhouse Theater, the crowd of about two hundred spectators, mostly invited guests, is waiting for Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine's Television to take the stage. The four of them are nervous, drinking to ease the tension. It's their first show and they can't afford to mess it up. At the end of a furious set, Richard is satisfied: Television's debut has gone more than well. But Tom Verlaine completely disagrees - the sound was ragged, with next to no harmony among the four of them. Hell clenches his jaw, says nothing, but senses something's off. With a shaky debut behind them, the band sets its sights on a new venue on the Bowery with an oddball name: Country Blue Grass Blues, or simply CBGB. Officially opened on December 10, 1973, the club is owned by Russian-born New Yorker Hillel (or Hilly) Kristal, already the owner of Hilly's on the Bowery and now ready for a new venture in the world of his favorite music. When they knock on his door, Richard and Tom want Television to play there every weekend, taking only the door money and leaving Hilly the bar proceeds. In those years, New York - and the Bowery especially - is a dangerous environment, teeming with drunks, criminals, and penniless addicts. The city is culturally buzzing but unsafe, just as CBGB is a dark, disreputable dive. Perfect for characters like Richard Hell.

When Television take the stage for the first of their scheduled Sunday-night shows on the Bowery, it's March 31, 1974. Hell has worked on a poster with his own text, collaborating with Verlaine on the band's first official bio. "Television's music satisfies the adolescent desire to screw the girl you never got to know because you'd just been hit by a car. Three-minute songs made of passion, performed by four guys who make James Dean look like Little Nemo." Two 45-minute sets, revisiting some of the songs already written for Neon Boys, plus the distorted psychedelia of "Hard On Love" and the street rock of "Foxhole", already quite far removed from the iconoclastic fury of Hell's songs, chief among them "Love Comes In Spurts". Television's shows draw New York's attention, and the crowds grow exponentially, because those songs seem to herald a new course for the city's music. In the audience one night is also Patti Smith, along with her guitarist Lenny Kaye. Already well known on the New York underground scene, Patti is bowled over by Television's music, and above all by Verlaine's moves - he becomes her new boyfriend just a few months later. Smith herself publishes a review of the show in the local magazine SoHo News, helping boost the reputation of the band now resident at CBGB every Sunday night.

The new Verlaine-Smith couple strains Tom's relationship with Richard even further, since Patti admires his songwriting style, already radically different from Hell's. Supporting Richard are figures closer to punk's imminent revolution, such as English artist Malcolm McLaren, who arrived in New York in 1974 to work with the Dolls. By the mid-1970s, the rock'n'roll of bands like the New York Dolls is about to give way for good to a more alienated, disgusted sound. McLaren promises Richard his support should he leave Television, quickly realizing there's a rift destined to become irreparable. While the Big Apple's music scene explodes at CBGB with the first shows by the Ramones, the Stilettos - the first incarnation of Debbie Harry's Blondie - Talking Heads and the Patti Smith Group, Television remain one of the most beloved acts at the Bowery club, until spring 1975, when everything falls apart.

Chapter Six: Heartbreakers

Between mid-1974 and throughout 1975, Hell's presence at venues like CBGB and Max's Kansas City lingers like a ghost in dark jeans and a leather jacket. The new music scene emerging at Kristal's nightclub is viewed by the media as a mere symptom of underground alienation. Even Lisa Robinson, an authoritative voice in the city through magazines like Rock Scene and Hit Parader, sees the fledgling punk scene as just another fad of New York's decadent nightlife. As Hell himself would recount decades later, "it was a world made of rock'n'roll and poetry, of anger and rivalry, drunkenness and sex, but all very specific. It brought real life, as opposed to the conventionality of pop songs, back to true rock'n'roll, but starting from the reality of existing in one specific time and place. The traits and distinguishing marks of what would come to be called punk are the new ways we found to bring out what was already inside us."

While Television rack up gigs and new followers at Cbgb, Tom Verlaine starts excluding every song written by Hell from the setlists, telling him not to get too close to his spot on stage. The final straw comes when Virgin Records asks the band to record a five-song demo produced by Brian Eno: Verlaine picks only his own songs. The bassist's last live performance with the band is dated March 9, 1975, opening for the New York Dolls' final New York shows. Not even a month later, Johnny Thunders calls Richard to tell him that, together with drummer Jerry Nolan, he wants to form a new band called Heartbreakers.

Richard doesn't know Johnny particularly well; they've only crossed paths occasionally for a drink. Among the most highly rated guitarists on the New York scene, Thunders has chosen the name Heartbreakers for his new sonic venture after leaving the Dolls, and has picked none other than Hell to play bass. Richard isn't keen on the name, but after the friction with Verlaine, he's careful not to get off on the wrong foot. Before the new trio even starts playing together, they head down to the Hudson River for a photo shoot that captures just how unlikely they look as a unit. Jerry Nolan on drums, with a style that looks straight out of an Italian-Irish gangster movie; Johnny Thunders with long dark hair, striking the pose of a future heavy-metal hero; Richard Hell in dark glasses, the very picture of Velvet Underground aesthetics. Only Malcolm McLaren seems less than thrilled about Hell's new future, which feels too far removed from the ex-Dolls' sound, and he's worried about the drug abuse that likely sealed the departure of the band's two new members.

The Heartbreakers start rehearsing in a loft converted into a recording studio in SoHo, fueled by heavy doses of speed and visceral guitar riffing. Hell has never been better, far from Verlaine's self-centered hang-ups, free to sing his own songs, which are paradoxically softer than Thunders'. It's a fantastic scenario: rehearsals, blistering live shows, sex and drugs, no bosses and no pressure whatsoever. Wired on drugs, the three Heartbreakers make their live debut in late May at a club in Queens, before bringing in a second guitarist, Walter Lure, and expanding to a four-piece.

Their first night at Cbgb comes at the start of a sweltering July in 1975, when the guitars launch into a more glam rendition of "Love Comes In Spurts". Hell and Thunders share the stage like good bandmates: Johnny delivers the foul-mouthed rock'n'roll of "Pirate Love", while Hell works on more punk, distorted rhythms, "New Pleasure" and a devilishly bluesy version of "Blank Generation", already written back in the Television days.

Captured on a record that wouldn't see the light of day until 1991, titled Live At Mother's, the raw power of the early Heartbreakers reaches its peak with the supersonic bubblegum-punk of "Chinese Rocks", written by Hell and Thunders together with their friend Dee Dee Ramone.

The harmony between the two leaders doesn't last long; it's almost fleeting. Richard wants more control over the band's creative direction, so he gives Thunders an ultimatum: most of the songs played live will be his. Johnny won't have it and decides to walk away, taking both Nolan and Lure with him, who turn their backs on Hell. After one last show in Boston in the spring of 1976, the Heartbreakers carry on with bassist Billy Rath, leaving Hell to his fate of alienated, violent, hopeless music.

Chapter Seven: New Pleasure

Richard Hell first meets Robert Quine at the Cinemabilia store in 1975. Born December 30, 1942, Bob hasn't built up any reputation as a musician, his experience limited to a few college rock'n'roll bands. A complex personality prone to depression, Quine is a serial devourer of music, with a passion for Sixties records and a status as one of the earliest Television fans. When Richard starts hanging out at his apartment, he notices stacks upon stacks of records of every kind, from Fats Domino to Velvet Underground. Robert only hates a few genres, reggae and punk among them. Bald and angry at the world, Quine plays guitar over the solos of Jimi Hendrix and J.J. Cale. When Hell confides in him in 1976 that he's fed up with the Heartbreakers, Quine senses the opportunity of a lifetime.

Spring 1976. Right after the break with Thunders, Richard is approached by manager Marty Thau, who had already been in cahoots with the early New York Dolls before Malcolm McLaren's last-ditch rescue attempt. Thau has recently struck up a partnership with Richard Gottehrer to launch Instant Records, aiming to sign at least two or three new bands. Gottehrer works as a record producer, a former member of the punk-garage outfit The Strangeloves (yes, the ones behind the Bo Diddley-style beat of "I Want Candy") and co-founder of Sire Records alongside Seymour Stein. In effect, it's the first time Richard finds himself picturing a genuine rockstar future, complete with a record deal, three years on from his first songs and his first stage experiences with Television and Heartbreakers. Instant Records offers him a funding deal to make the new band's first demo tape with Robert Quine, plus a weekly payment of 100 dollars. Once the demo is finished, the label commits to landing him a deal within four months for a debut album. In exchange, Gottehrer will take 50% of the royalties from the recorded tracks, promising a coveted deal with Sire, which has already signed bands like Ramones and Talking Heads.

Everything seems set, ready to go. With the promise of a real record label behind them, Richard and Robert Quine set their sights on drummer Marc Bell, already touring with Wayne County. After renting a recording studio, Hell leaves it to Bob to pick his partner on second guitar. The choice falls on the very young Ivan Julian – real name Ivan Parker – who already has a solid résumé after touring Europe with The Foundations. The new lineup, called Richard Hell and the Voidoids, starts recording the demo tape promised to Instant, made up of just three songs. The first is a reworking of the anthem "Blank Generation", distorted punk'n'roll dressed up with Quine's new twisted guitar runs and falsetto backing vocals led by Hell. The second is the Bolan-esque "You Gotta Lose", followed by the new composition "Another World", which experiments with Talking Heads-style guitar rhythms paired with Sixties-flavored vocals.

While the Another World EP is pressed with Instant's backing on Terry Ork's label, word arrives from the UK of a new band being pushed by Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols. Dressed just like Richard, the Pistols are ready to tear apart London's regal scene. In Albion, several music magazines – chief among them NME, Sounds and Melody Maker – are particularly attuned to underground phenomena, giving Rotten and co. huge visibility. The exact opposite of what's happening in the States, where the conservative Rolling Stone ignores the first cries of Ramones, Blondie and, indeed, Voidoids.

Richard is fascinated by the figure of Johnny Rotten, who wants to destroy rock'n'roll with the most nihilistic approach imaginable. That's why his new band's musical style grows increasingly aggressive, as if staking a kind of non-violent claim to precedence over the new British punk rockers. The blank generation versus anarchy, which – by Hell's own admission – is decidedly more appealing, both in terms of audience impact and commercial potential.

The Voidoids make their live debut at Cbgb in November 1976, signing their first contract with Sire Records two months later and immediately starting work on their debut album. Released in September 1977 with producer Richard Gottehrer, Blank Generation "helps define the punk movement", as the New York Times critic writes shortly after. From the very first distorted notes of opener "Love Comes In Spurts", Hell and co.'s manifesto is crystal clear: dress primal punk fury in greater intellectualism, embellishing it with the complex textures of Quine's guitar work. From the howling rock'n'roll hysteria of "Liars Beware" and "New Pleasure", Hell's snarling vocals carry the listener into a magma of anti-social nihilism.

There's no shortage of softer numbers like "Betrayal Takes Two", graced by Quine's tenderness as he allows himself his first solo, recalling his love for certain Sixties flavors. It's only the briefest of pauses, though, because the record resumes its furious pace with "Down At The Rock And Roll Club", which showcases Bell's pitch-perfect drumming. Likewise, the lopsided "Who Says?" dips a toe into new wave with Quine's oblique geometries and Hell's free-form writing, which brings to mind Captain Beefheart more than Rotten.

If the intro to the anthem "Blank Generation" vaguely recalls the riff of "The Seeker", the song's development in the Voidoids' version is worthy of the best Dylan, dropped into the hopeless reality of American punk. Richard's inferno then shifts into the martial "Walking On The Water", a radically reworked take on the Creedence Clearwater Revival catalog. While "The Plan" offers another moment of relaxation with an unusually sparkling guitar part, the long, uneasy ballad "Another World" closes the circle on a seminal record for America's fervent underground scene.

Chapter Eight: In the Tunnel

When Hell seals the deal between the Voidoids and Sire Records, his habitual use of hard drugs intensifies. In 1977 Richard is up to shooting two bags of heroin a day, later securing massive doses of methadone from a Puerto Rican neighbor. The new label plans a European tour for the band supporting the Clash, a total of twenty-one shows in twenty cities in just over three weeks. It's the first time Richard has left the United States, ahead of the Voidoids' debut beyond the walls of New York. The impact with the UK isn't great: Richard feels out of place, hates the English atmosphere, and keeps using. During the shows he's exhausted, can't sleep, and suffers severe vomiting and diarrhea. Only small traces of codeine in cough syrup manage to keep him on his feet to perform onstage. Hell is furious with Sire, who didn't even get the album out in time for the British market, and who only provide the band with a tiny minicar to get from city to city. Not exactly the rockstar life he'd dreamed of before signing the contract.

The brief experience touring with the Clash helps Richard truly understand everything he doesn't want in his professional life. Strummer and co. are good people, and their music is rebellious but aimed at a young audience. Hell is like the dark lord of the underground, wanting to please no one, aiming instead for an intellectual, harrowed kind of rock. At the start of a set in Manchester, in front of about three thousand people, the microphones cut out, sending the frontman into a rage; he smashes his instrument, hitting a security guard in the back. Richard hates the English crowd booing him, as well as certain music journalists tearing into the Voidoids' music. Hell feels increasingly uneasy throughout the tour, and the idea of giving it all up after just one album starts forming in his mind. "An alienated, fatalistic junkie" can't keep going down the road of rock'n'roll.

Back in London, the Voidoids headline the Music Machine ballroom alongside Siouxsie and the Banshees. Among the crowd are Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and Mick Jones. Furious at the whole world, Hell decides to stage an explosive live show, practically spewing songs at the roughly 500 people present. Rotten gets up onstage at the end of the show to rile up the crowd, which is rewarded with an encore featuring a cover of the Stones, one of the bands the Sex Pistols themselves had dismissed as "old farts".

At the end of 1977 Richard is approached by young German actor and director Ulli Lommel, who had already worked with the master Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Lommel wants Hell in his next film, "Blank Generation", to be shot in New York to document the Cbgb scene alongside French actress Carole Bouquet. His role in the film isn't the only thing putting the Voidoids project essentially on hold. Constant drug abuse, lack of direction, depression after the English tour: there are plenty of reasons currently pulling Richard Hell away from the music world, on top of the punishing contract signed with Sire Records, which among other things demands a second album. The idea is to use the film as a vehicle for a soundtrack release, but the band quickly realizes there are no new songs ready. The real problem is that Richard absolutely does not want to put out another record with Sire, so he finds an unexpected loophole in the contract after the unauthorized inclusion of the track "You Gotta Loose" on a compilation.

February 1978. Filming begins on "Blank Generation", a new nightmare for Richard Hell. His relationship with Lommel grows increasingly tense, as does his relationship with the film's other key figures. Hell discovers his artistic vision is light years away from Fassbinder's, finding the way the film depicts the New York underground scene unbearable. Despite the friction, the Voidoids play at their best back at Cbgb, recorded live as if it were a real concert. After all, performing within those familiar walls, wrapped in the acrid smell of sweat, is undoubtedly far more comfortable.

Dubbed "the Mick Jagger of punk" by Time magazine, Richard Hell would have no trouble continuing to play at home, where the Voidoids are in demand even outside the Big Apple. Offers come in from promoters, along with chances to earn more than just pocket change. Annoyed and broke, drummer Marc Bell decides to leave the group to tour with the far more lucrative Ramones. While Richard manages to get by on royalties from his original compositions, the other Voidoids no longer seem drawn to his nihilistic vision of the artistic life.

Chapter Nine: The Road of Destiny

With Marc Bell gone, Richard Hell decides it's time to let go of his main instrument, the bass, as well. Never particularly skilled technically, Hell wants to experiment with his voice, finding the rhythmic demands of the bass too limiting. Robert Quine doesn't agree with the decision, wanting instead to keep the same instrumental lineup, simply replacing Bell on drums. Having found the loophole to void the Sire Records contract, Richard is approached by several interested labels, including Rolling Stones Records and Private Stock, Blondie's first label. The only one that really catches Hell's imagination, though, is Jake Riviera, a former aspiring professional boxer who grew up on the streets and found great success with Stiff Records, a label specializing in punk and pub-rock bands. In mid-1978, Riviera offers Richard the following deal: the release of at least one single within the current year produced by Nick Lowe, and a three-week tour of England at the end of the year as the opening act for Elvis Costello. The Voidoids' second album will come out on his new label, Radar.

The offer is accepted in the fall, as the band brings in Jerry Antonius on bass and Frank Mauro on drums. The new Voidoids lineup plays again at Cbgb at the end of October, a benefit show to raise funds for St. Mark's Church, which had been destroyed by fire. The concert is broadcast live on WPIX radio and features Elvis Costello joining onstage for a couple of songs. Among the setlist highlights is the new rock'n'roll number "The Kid With The Replaceable Head", or at least an early version of it, with Hell simply repeating the opening lines in Joey Ramone style. The track, with its unusually poppy rhythm, is released as a single at the end of the year, produced by Nick Lowe on the Radar label. For the B-side they choose "I'm Your Man", an almost martial beat with a sixties flavor and a couple of great solos from Quine.

On December 15, 1978, the Voidoids once again board a plane for London for two Christmas shows before setting off on a proper three-week tour with Elvis Costello. Hell's second English experience is no better than the first: Riviera decides to rent a houseboat on the Thames to put up the band, but the space is cramped and the damp is relentless. Richard is grappling with heroin withdrawal and is impossible to deal with; Quine snaps for the first time, objecting to the presence of the new bassist.

In 1979, back home, Richard keeps using heavily, cycling through heroin, speed and cocaine. Jack Riviera wants his album, but soon realizes he'll have to wait. Between one hit and the next, Hell works on his new column "Slum Journal" for the new monthly East Village Eye. The months fly by, Quine is distant. No intention of going back into the studio or onstage. The following year is remembered only for a manic road trip in a 1959 Cadillac from the East Coast to the West Coast. In 1981 he lands a part in Susan Seidelman's film "Smithereens", about a girl with no particular talent trying to make it on New York's new wave scene. After this return to acting comes a return to music, as he finally gets to work on the second album Riviera never got out of him. Hell reconnects with Marty Thau and his label Red Star Records, striking another questionable deal for just 50% of the royalties.

The first person to call for the recording of the new songs is naturally Robert Quine, who, despite their recent friction, agrees. Richard is after a new sound for the second guitar, so he enlists Juan Maciel (known as Naux) along with drummer Fred Maher, recently out of the experimental band Massacre. Studio 171A is booked for three weeks of rehearsals, while Richard disappears into the bathroom every twenty minutes for his dose of cocaine. The other members of the new band are simply told he's drinking too much coffee.

The actual recording sessions take place at Intergalactic Studio in the Upper East Side, but Richard is increasingly strung out and can't finish several of the new songs, feeling inadequate and guilty towards the others. Produced by Alan Betrock, founder of the music magazine New York Rocker, Destiny Street is released under the name Richard Hell & The Voidoids in 1982, an album Hell himself considers even "better" than Blank Generation. The record opens with the already-known single "The Kid With The Replaceable Head", less raw and furious here with its bubblegum-pop approach. In the breakneck rock'n'roll of "You Gotta Move", the band dips into Ray Davies' (The Kinks) catalog, before completely switching gears and slowing down with a drunken version of "Going Going Gone" (Bob Dylan). The following "Lowest Common Dominator", at just over two minutes, instead calls to mind the original early Voidoids, the ones who used to slug punk in the face with Quine's abrasive guitar at full force.

If "Downtown At Dawn" carries a not-so-subtle dig at disco rhythms – with the bassline pushed to the front despite Richard's struggles with drugs – it's in the gorgeous "Time" that it becomes so clear why the New York Times critic would go on to call Hell a "contemporary Bob Dylan".

The record pushes relentlessly on with Them's martial cover “I Can Only Give You Everything”, and the hard-edged riff of “Ignore That Door”, which confirms (as if there was still any doubt) Robert Quine's importance within the whole creative framework built by Hell's songwriting.

Destiny Street is thus a more carefree and spontaneous record than Blank Generation. Despite his shaky psychophysical condition, Hell seems to have matured as a frontman and writer, and Quine's phrasing (for instance on the ballad “Staring In Her Eyes”) ranks among the best to be heard in the early '80s.

Chapter Ten: New Ending, New Beginnings

Right after its release, Destiny Street is included by the New York Times among the ten best albums of the year, even praised to the skies by none other than Lester Bangs, who hadn't exactly showered the Voidoids' debut album with compliments. The new record is nonetheless doomed to commercial oblivion, given the scant distribution push from Red Star. Hell and co. play few live shows, since Richard himself had barely managed to finish the album. It's a situation now completely out of control, one that Hell finally confronts head-on only in mid-1983, when he decides to get clean and leaves for France together with his friend and lover Lizzy Mercier Descloux. When she departs for South Africa in search of new sounds for her own songs, Richard is left alone in Paris, in his apartment. Between women and countless bottles of wine, it's hardly the ideal condition for kicking drugs. The elation of a new life fades quickly, so Richard returns to New York to seriously commit to a round of rehab sessions.

As the '80s rage on, Richard Hell's Voidoids are by now a distant memory. Getting out of the drug tunnel also means getting out of the music tunnel, bringing an end to a brief and troubled relationship. In 1985, Richard marries Patricia Smyth, singer and songwriter of the pop-rock band Scandal. His fleeting film appearances continue, including a cameo role in the Madonna film “Desperately Seeking Susan”. Hell's main goal, however, is to return to his first calling as a poet, publishing the collections “I Was A Spiral On The Floor” (1988) and “Across The Years” (1992). This is followed by “Artifact: Notebooks From Hell 1974-1980”, a collection of his journals from the heart of the punk era, published in 1990.

His return to the world of music comes in the early '90s, when he joins the supergroup Dim Stars together with an offshoot of Sonic Youth — guitarist Thurston Moore and drummer Steve Shelley — plus second guitarist Don Fleming, one of the founders of Gumball. Robert Quine is also added for the first recording sessions, ahead of the release of a debut Ep on the Ecstatic Peace! label. The embryo is unleashed under the name Dim Stars in 1991 and contains a sprawling, experimental version of the old “You Gotta Lose”, split into no fewer than 4 parts shifting between noise drift and The Stooges-style punk fury.

In Manhattan, anticipation for a first full album (and the ensuing tour) is feverish: Dim Stars comes out the following year, this time as a full-length record on Paperhouse.

Starting with the opening track, “She Wants To Die”, the band's intent is to experiment with an uneasy cohesion, scraping away with Moore and Quine's heavy, distorted guitars and leaving Hell's voice to improvise his apocalyptic lyrics. This diseased stream of consciousness always seems right at home, whether on the rock'n'roll of “All My Witches Come True” or over the more honeyed notes of “Monkey”, which veer toward a distinctly American alternative flavour. The album doesn't always hit the mark, especially when it strays too far into experimentation (“Natchez Burning”) or lets itself drift into more mainstream rhythms (“Stop Breakin’ Down”).

Aside from a benefit show at The Ritz in New York, the band will never tour, essentially dissolving like snow in the sun within less than two years. Amid excess, spewed-out lyrics and a more intellectual brand of punk spirit, the great escape of Richard Inferno is ready to continue.

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