The sharp, lyrical, and no-holds-barred autobiography of the iconoclastic writer and musician Richard Hell, charting the childhood, coming of age, and misadventures of an artist in an indelible era of rock and roll...
From an early age, Richard Hell dreamed of running away. His father died when he was seven, and at seventeen he left his mother and sister behind and headed for New York City, place of limitless possibilities. He arrived penniless with the idea of becoming a poet; ten years later he was a pivotal voice of the age of punk, starting such seminal bands as Television, the Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids—whose song "Blank Generation" remains the defining anthem of the era. Hell was significantly responsible for creating CBGB as punk ground zero; his Voidoids toured notoriously with the Clash, and Malcolm McLaren would credit Hell as inspiration for the Sex Pistols. There were kinetic nights in New York's club demi-monde, descent into drug addiction, and an ever-present yearning for redemption through poetry, music, and art.
"We lived in the suburbs in America in the fifties," Hell writes. "My roots are shallow. I'm a little jealous of people with strong ethnic and cultural roots. Lucky Martin Scorsese or Art Spiegelman or Dave Chappelle. I came from Hopalong Cassidy and Bugs Bunny and first grade at ordinary Maxwell Elementary." How this legendary downtown artist went from a prosaic childhood in the idyllic Kentucky foothills to igniting a movement that would take over New York's and London's restless youth cultures—and spawn the careers of not only Hell himself, but a cohort of friends such as Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, the Ramones, and Debbie Harry—is just part of the fascinating story Hell tells. With stunning powers of observation, he delves into the details of both the world that shaped him and the world he shaped.
An acutely rendered, unforgettable coming-of-age story, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp evokes with feeling, clarity, and piercing intelligence that classic journey: the life of one who comes from the hinterlands into the city in search of art and passion.

I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography

Hell, Richard

Humor & Entertainment

Ecco

From an early age, Richard Hell dreamed of running away. He arrived penniless in New York City at seventeen; ten years later he was a pivotal voice of the age of punk, cofounding such seminal bands as Television, The Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids—whose song "Blank Generation" remains the defining anthem of the era, an era that would forever alter popular culture in all its forms. How this legendary downtown artist went from a bucolic childhood in the idyllic Kentucky foothills to igniting a movement that would take over New York and London's restless youth culture—cementing CBGB as the ground zero of punk and spawning the careers of not only Hell himself, but a cohort of friends such as Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, the Ramones, and Debby Harry—is a mesmerizing chronicle of self-invention, and of Hell's yearning for redemption through poetry, music, and art. An acutely rendered, unforgettable coming-of-age story, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp evokes with feeling, lyricism, and piercing intelligence both the world that shaped him and the world he shaped.

Punk: Chaos to Couture

Arts & Photography

BOLTON, Andrew

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Metropolitan Museum of Art

A fascinating history of the explosive convergence of avant-garde art and rock music The dynamic relationship between rock music and visual art crosses continents, generations, and cultures. Beginning with Andy Warhol’s involvement with The Velvet Underground in 1967, artists have maintained a strong connection to rock. Artists such as Slater Bradley, Mike Kelley, and Raymond Pettibon have created album covers and music videos for rock bands, while rock musicians such as Bryan Ferry, John Lennon, and Peter Townsend have emerged from art schools, and punk and new wave bands such as Talking Heads and Sonic Youth have shared the same social and artistic milieu as artists including Robert Longo and Richard Prince.
Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 looks at the intimate and inspired relationship between the visual arts and rock-and-roll culture, charting their intersection through works of art, album covers, music videos, and other materials. Organized regionally by cultural centers including London, New York, Los Angeles, and Cologne, the essays examine rock and roll’s style, celebrity, and identity politics in art; the experience, energy, and sense of devotion rock music inspires; and the dual role that many individuals play in both the sonic and visual realms. Presenting work that defies a more literal interpretation of the theme and instead suggests the style, energy, and attitude that has come to be associated with rock and roll, this fascinating volume is essential for admirers of contemporary art and culture.

Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967

Graham, Dan

Diederichsen, Diedrich

Nickas, Bob

KELLEY, MIKE

Higgs, Matthew

Molon, Dominic

Tumlir, Jan

Koether, Jutta

Elms, Anthony

History

Yale University Press

The provocative punk aesthetic and its incendiary influence on high fashion Since its origins in the 1970s, punk has had an explosive influence on fashion. With its eclectic mixing of stylistic references, punk effectively introduced the postmodern concept of bricolage to the elevated precincts of haute couture and directional ready-to-wear. As a style, punk is about chaos, anarchy, and rebellion. Drawing on provocative sexual and political imagery, punks made fashion overtly hostile and threatening. This aesthetic of violence – even of cruelty – was intrinsic to the clothes themselves, which were often customized with rips, tears, and slashes, as well as studs, spikes, zippers, D-Rings, safety pins, and razor blades, among other things.
This extraordinary publication examines the impact of punk’s aesthetic of brutality on high fashion, focusing on its do-it-yourself, rip-it-to-shreds ethos, the antithesis of couture’s made-to-measure exactitude. Indeed, punk’s democracy stands in opposition to fashion’s autocracy. Yet, as this book reveals, even haute couture has readily appropriated the visual and symbolic language of punk, replacing beads with studs, paillettes with safety pins, and feathers with razor blades in an attempt to capture the style’s rebellious energy. Focusing on high fashion’s embrace of punk’s aesthetic vocabulary, this book reveals how designers have looked to the quintessential anti-establishment style to originate new ideals of beauty and fashionability.

Billy, a burnt-out, drug- and sex-addicted punk musician, sets out with his erstwhile French girlfriend, Chrissa, on a cross-country writing assignment that turns into a ricocheting, brain-searing, agonizing head trip

Go Now: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

United States

Scribner

On the road with the Blank Generation, "Go Now" takes readers on a wild trip across the country and into the head of a down-on-his-luck punk musician. ""Go Now" is a vile, scabrous, unforgivable, and deserving of the widest possible audience".--William Gibson.

Go Now

Simon&Schuster

"To me this little book is a work of fiction, or a movie prop for maybe a Stroheim set - some obsessively realistic director - or an archeological artifact." - Richard Hell, NYC, Mar 1990

Artifact! Notebooks from Hell 1974-1980: Notebooks from Hell, 1974-80 (Hanuman Book No. 37)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Hanuman Books

Weather is a sublime, chilling, and hilarious twelve-poem-long set of variations on, or mutations departing from, one short lyrical text ["The weather was still exciting. The whole city seemed to optically snap with the cool brightness of the just-moist light and air ricocheting in pings and flapping planes from surface of stone to surface of stone around and through the teeming traffic flesh and pumped out metal fumes and fresh water widely below and entering the underlooked and overseeing sky."] The perfect cover art is by Christopher Wool (whose giant show that originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A., is now at the Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh).

Weather

Poetry

C U Z Editions

Hot and Cold: The Works of Richard Hell is a stupendous compendium of poetry, prose, photography, illustrations, interviews, essays, lyrics, and more by acclaimed artist, author, and rock star, Richard Hell. Since he first came to public attention in the 1970s, Richard Hell has made a spectacular if specialized reputation for himself in every conceivable medium—from music, painting, and photography to fashion, design, and writing. A man with a vision, Hell was the Prophet of Punk: the originator of the spiked haircut; ripped, drawn-on, safety-pinned clothes; and the seminal punk anthems “Love Comes in Spurts” and “(I Belong to the) Blank Generation.” “I came back to England determined. I had these images that I came back with, it was like Marco Polo, or Walter Raleigh. These are the things I brought back: the image of this distressed, strange thing called Richard Hell. And this phrase, ‘the blank generation.’” —Malcolm McLaren

Hot And Cold: essays poems lyrics notebooks pictures fiction

Individual Artists

powerHouse Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hell, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hell, Richard