Edition #18
Florence, 2025
This is an essential book for those who want to understand how punk, one of the most important genres in history, was born. What's more, the stories are hilarious... It doesn't have a linear narrative, it's just a lot of testimonies from people who lived the scene at the time. We've selected some of the best bits and put them together below. But we haven't added anything that might give away spoilers, such as the part that explains the name of the book... Anyway, if you haven't read the book yet, you need to! And if you have already read it, remember and enjoy these passages from the book...
Ron Asheton: “We went to see The Who at the Cavern. It was jam-packed. We forced our way to about ten feet from the stage, and Townshend started smashing his twelve-string Rickenbacker. It was my first experience of total pandemonium. A human pack trying to grab pieces of Townshend’s guitar, people fighting to get onstage, and he was swinging the guitar at their heads. The audience wasn’t screaming—it was more like the howling of animals. The place became completely primitive—like a pack of starving animals who hadn’t eaten in a week and someone threw them a piece of meat. I was scared. It wasn’t fun, but it was mesmerizing. It was like, ‘The plane’s crashing, the ship’s sinking, so let’s tear each other apart.’ I’d never seen people go so crazy—the music was taking people to such dangerous extremes. That’s when I realized, ‘This is exactly what I want to do.’”
Ron Asheton: “Iggy came down the stairs looking for some advice. He came up to me and said, ‘Well, I think there’s something wrong, maybe you can tell me what it is.’ Then he pulled out his dick, squeezed it, and some green discharge came out. I said, ‘Man, you’ve got gonorrhea.’ Nico gave Iggy his first case of the clap.”
Alan Vega: “That blond guy with bangs—he looked like Brian Jones—came on stage. At first I thought he was a chick. He was wearing this torn denim jumpsuit and some ridiculous moccasins. He had this wild look—staring at the crowd and yelling, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ Then the Stooges launched into one of their songs, and the next thing you knew, Iggy was diving off the stage, cutting himself with a broken guitar. It wasn’t theatrical; it was theater. Alice Cooper was theatrical—he had all the props—but with Iggy, it wasn’t an act. It was the real thing.”
Iggy Pop: “When we came to New York to play Ungano’s, I went to see Bill Harvey, the general manager of Elektra. I told him, ‘Look, I probably won’t be able to do four shows in a row without drugs—hard drugs. Now this is how much it’s going to cost, and I’ll pay you back after...’ It was like a business proposal, right? And he just looked at me like, ‘I can’t believe this.’ But to me, it was very official and logical, you know? Like, ‘What’s wrong with this?’”
Scott Kempner: “Other guys might punch you in the mouth, but that heals. But Iggy was hurting me psychically—forever. I could never be the same after the first twenty seconds of that night—and I never was.”
Leee Childers: “I think David Bowie’s fascination with Iggy had to do with Bowie wanting to penetrate the rock and roll reality that Iggy lived in. Bowie could never live that reality because he was a posh little art student from South London, and Iggy was from the scum of Detroit. David Bowie knew he could never capture the reality that Iggy was born into. So he thought he could buy it.”
“DKANDLE weaves swirling multi-colored vibrant unearthly soundscapes, blending fuzzy and reverberating Shoegaze textures, mesmerizing Dream Pop meditations, sludgy Grungey tones and moody Post-punk strains, heightened with soul-stirring lyricism and pensive emotive vocalizations”
Jerry Nolan (New York Dolls): “We had the most beautiful girls. I’d say to Johansen, ‘Jesus Christ, David, we could never get girls like this on our own. They’re way too gorgeous.’ Later that same night, we’d be in bed with those same women, their legs in the air, looking at each other and laughing. One time, the two of us were screwing these girls, and ‘Looking for a Kiss’ came on the radio. Wow, we were amazed. We laughed so much we went soft.”
Ronnie Cutrone: “The 82 Club was this old, famous drag queen place where Errol Flynn used to whip out his dick and play piano with it.”
Mickey Leigh: “I remember driving down 53rd Street and Third Avenue and seeing Dee Dee Ramone standing there. He was wearing a black leather biker jacket—the same one he’d wear on the cover of the first album. He was just standing there, and I figured out what he was doing because I knew that was the gay hustler spot. Still, I was kind of shocked to see someone I knew out there, like, ‘Holy shit, look, it’s Doug working the corner. He’s really doing it.’”
Malcolm McLaren: “I thought Richard Hell was absolutely incredible. Again, I bought into the idea of another victim of fashion. It wasn’t someone dressed in red vinyl, with bright orange lipstick and high heels. He was this completely wrecked guy, looking like he’d just crawled out of a sewer, covered in slime, like he hadn’t slept or bathed in years, and like no one gave a damn about him. And it looked like he didn’t give a damn about you, either! He was this amazing, bored, destroyed, dirty guy in a ripped T-shirt. (…) Richard Hell was absolutely one hundred percent an inspiration, and I remember telling the Sex Pistols, ‘Write a song like “Blank Generation,” but make it your own badass version,’ and their version was ‘Pretty Vacant.’”
Dee Dee Ramone: “The Ramones always put a little piss in anything they gave to their guests, just as a joke. When Johnny Rotten came to see the Ramones at the Roundhouse, he asked Monte if he could go backstage to say hello. Johnny Ramone said it was fine and was very cordial when they met. He shook his hand, patted him on the back, and asked if he wanted a beer. Ha, ha, ha. Johnny Rotten took it and drank it in one gulp. We all kept straight faces, holding our breath. Then he left.”
Dee Dee Ramone: “It was summer, and there’s no air conditioning in London. This was at a place called the Country Cousin or the Country Club, where everyone had their parties. They were serving wine and beer, and everyone was trashed. The bathroom was completely covered in vomit—in the sink, the toilets, the floor. It was disgusting. Someone asked, ‘Dee Dee, do you need anything?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I need some speed.’ Suddenly, I had a huge pile of speed in my hand. I started snorting like crazy and got really high. Then I saw Sid, and he said, ‘Do you have anything to get high?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got speed.’ So Sid pulled out a kit, put a huge pile of speed in the syringe, stuck the needle into the toilet full of puke and piss, and drew it up. He didn’t heat it—he just shook it, stuck it in his arm, and nodded out. I just stood there staring at him. I thought I’d seen everything up to that point. He looked at me, kind of dazed, and said, ‘Man, where did you get this stuff?’”
Legs McNeil: “When Joey came back [from London], you could see in his eyes that something had happened [at the Ramones’ first London show]. Joey kept saying, ‘Legs, you won’t believe it! You won’t believe it! They loved us!’ I had no idea what he was talking about because at that time, punk was still just the magazine, the Ramones, Richard Hell, Johnny Thunders, Patti Smith, and the Dictators. There were maybe a hundred people hanging around CBGB. And half of those people weren’t punks—they were art-world types brought to the Bowery by David Byrne’s yuppie whining. The Dictators lived in the Bronx and hardly ever came out. It felt like everyone, except for Joey and me, was a junkie. So punk, the whole thing, just felt like our little inside joke, destined to stay that way.”
Mary Harron: “You could feel the world really moving and shaking in the fall of 1976 in London. I felt like what we had done as a joke in New York was being taken seriously in England by a younger, more violent audience. And somehow, in the translation, it had changed—it had sparked something different. What, to me, had been a much more adult, intellectual, and bohemian rock culture in New York had become this insane, teenage thing in England.”
Malcom McLaren: “Back in the early seventies, the philosophy was that you couldn’t do anything without a ton of money. So my philosophy turned into, ‘Fuck it, we don’t care if we can’t play or if we don’t have good instruments. We’re doing it anyway because we think you’re all a bunch of assholes.’ Deep down, I think that’s what created the anger—the anger was simply about money. Because culture had become corporate, we didn’t own it anymore, and everyone was desperate to take it back. This was a generation trying to do just that. I was trying to do with the Sex Pistols what I’d failed to do with the New York Dolls. I was picking up the nuances of Richard Hell, the pop faggotry of the New York Dolls, the politics of boredom, and mashing it all together to make a statement—maybe my final statement. And pissing off that rock ’n’ roll scene, that’s what I was doing.”
Mary Harron: “We didn’t really have any reason to be idealistic, and I was sick of hippie culture. People were trying to hang on to those ideals of peace and love, but they were so devalued. Plus, it was this time when it was cool to be a capitalist, and no one bought into that anymore. It was exhausted, but because hippies stood for what was good, no one could let it go and say, ‘It’s over.’ It was like you were forced to be optimistic, interested, and good—and to believe in peace and love. And while maybe I did believe in it, I resented everyone telling me what to believe. I didn’t like hippie culture. I thought it was nauseating, fake, sentimental, and all smiley faces. Then Richard Hell came along and said, ‘This is what we are. We’re the blank generation. It’s over.’”
Legs McNeil: “Punk was like this: this is new, this is now, apocalyptic, powerful. But it wasn’t politicized. I mean, maybe that was the political thing about it. What I’m saying is the great thing about punk was having no political commitment. It was about real freedom, personal freedom. It was also about doing anything that would offend an adult—just being as offensive as possible. And that felt delicious, purely euphoric. Just being who we really were. I loved that, you know?”
Danny Fields: “When the Sex Pistols ended in San Francisco, it showed everyone that the punk thing wasn’t viable. That they were all about self-destruction, and so what was the point of investing in any of them? (…) American radio, back then and now, doesn’t want to get involved in anything dangerous, revolutionary, or radical. So the whole thing turned into this huge pile of shit that no one wanted to go near.”
Legis McNeil: “After the Sex Pistols, I wasn’t interested in making Punk magazine anymore. It felt more like a media scam. Punk wasn’t ours anymore. It had turned into everything we hated. It seemed to have become everything we were protesting against when we launched the magazine.”
Duncan Hannah: “Suddenly CBGB’s was packed. And the more people there were, the more clones there were, right? So what used to be unique, like James Chance, Anya Phillips, and Richard Hell—suddenly there were twenty-five versions of each of them wandering around. I remember punk was in Vogue, and when that issue came out, I saw Diana Vreeland at CBGB’s and all these tourists, you know, visiting the slum—the Bowery.”
Wayne Kramer: “I said, ‘Hi, Patti. I’m Wayne Kramer. I thought I’d stop by and say hello and thank you for mentioning me on your album.’ She kind of went, ‘Oh,’ and catapulted away from me. I felt like, ‘She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t care who I am.’ Then I realized that putting my name on the album’s back cover had nothing to do with solidarity or keeping my name out there. It was about giving her credibility. It was her aligning herself with me, not the other way around.”
Eliot Kidd: “I talked to Neon Leon the next day. He said that when he left Sid and Nancy, that fucking guy was still there. I said, ‘Who was that?’ He said, ‘You know, the Tuinal dealer.’ Neon Leon told me everyone had left, and the Tuinal dealer was the only person who stayed. All we knew about the guy was that he lived in Hell’s Kitchen. Sid was in jail for two or three weeks before getting bailed out. I think Malcolm and the other guys from the Sex Pistols pooled the money for his bail. I talked to Sid the day he got out of jail. He told me all he remembered was waking up and going to the bathroom—which is the first thing most people do when they wake up—and Nancy was under the sink, covered in blood, and she was dead. I think he kept his knife in the wall. Sid had this big knife, and in the morning, it was on the floor near Nancy. Sid told me they had eighty bucks, and the drawer where they kept their money was open, and the money was gone. If you knew Nancy, you could see her going to the bathroom, coming out, catching the guy rummaging through the drawers, and seeing him taking the money—and going for him.”
Wayne Kranmer: “Doing drugs doesn’t take much talent, and I think that’s why we stooped as low as Sid, who you could say was the ultimate product of the whole punk movement.”
Suggested further reading: " I Slept with Joey Ramone" - Mickey Leigh and Legs McNeil
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