Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
In the late 1970s, Legs McNeil was the “resident punk” around the New York office of the seminal underground publication Punk magazine. In this volume, he and co-author McCain gather together reminiscences (presented verbatim as an “oral history” and without commentary) of the movers and shakers in that city’s punk rock and proto-punk scenes, from the Velvet Underground and MC5 to the Ramones, the Dead Boys and even those limey interlopers the Sex Pistols. Some may quibble with the authors’ assertions that New York was the solitary birthplace of punk rock, or that the scene died with the arrival of the Sex Pistols in the U.S. and their implosion soon after. But the book is crammed with sleaze and gossip aplenty as well as hair-raising tales of heavy drug usage and indiscriminate sexual activity which will keep readers turning pages far past their bedtimes. The sensitive of heart take note: not since Romeo and Juliet have so many major characters died in the last act. LP
Publisher: Grove
Hardback: 320 pages
Illustrated