legs mcneil
Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain Just Dropped Their First Book Since 'Please Kill Me'
Even if you haven't read Please Kill Me, you've seen its black-and-red ransom-note logo on even the most shallow of bookshelves. Legs and Gillian haven't put out a book together in 18 years, but last week they released Dear Nobody, a...
Question Mark & the Mysterians: The Making of '96 Tears'
The piercing organ riff, bare-bones vocal track, and low-fidelity production make "96 Tears" a safe candidate for first garage punk song ever, and if you haven’t heard it I feel sorry for you.
Moe Tucker - Snapshots of the Underground
The first female drummer in one of the most revolutionary bands of all time.
Moe Tucker - Snapshots of the Velvet Underground
As an average high school girl from Levittown, Long Island, Moe's life was actually saved by rock 'n' roll. Here's an oral history of the first female drummer in one of the most revolutionary bands of all time.
GG Allin's Last Day on Earth
When I was doing a reading tour of the south last winter, I became friendly with Johnny Puke, from Charleston, South Carolina. GG overdosed and died in Johnny's apartment in the East Village—this is his report.
Ron Asheton - King of the Stooges
Ron and Scott Asheton were the nucleus of the Stooges, the greatest punk band in the world. In Iggy's words, “These guys were the laziest delinquent sorts of pig slobs ever born." Ron passed away in 2009, but not before I sat down with him for ten...
What Lou Reed Taught Me, by Legs McNeil
Lou mined the depth and articulation of sheer desperation. Whether I was waiting for my drug dealer, or trying to get off during sex, or some other private weirdness I was too mortified to admit, Lou'd already been there, and he'd come back with a song.
Dee Dee Ramone - Portrait of a Punk
Dee Dee was the archetypical fuck-up. He was a male prostitute, a would-be mugger, a heroin user and dealer, an accomplice to armed robbery—and a genius poet who was headed for an early grave, but was sidetracked by rock ‘n’ roll.
Alice Cooper's Dead Drunk Friends
I first met Alice at a party in the mid-1970s. It was really one of those, “I’m not worthy” moments. Alice was someone I truly respected, mostly because he’d made it on his own terms by driving a stake through the heart of the peace and love generation.
100 Miles Per Hour
I was talking to photographer Bob Gruen the other day, and he told me he’d just come from visiting our old friend Alan Vega, the lead singer of the revolutionary electronic proto-punk band Suicide, in the hospital. I immediately thought, 'Oh shit, not...
Among the War Pigs
It’s amazing how many real-life Spinal Tap moments I’ve had. They always lead me to ask myself, “Did that really happen?” I had one of those experiences with Ozzy Osbourne in Nuremberg, Germany, in the same stadium where Leni Riefenstahl made her epic...
David Bowie Stole My Suicide Record So I Ripped the Hubcaps off His Limo
In my ongoing attempt to rebuild my vinyl collection, I was recently perusing a Brooklyn hipster record store and came across the new David Bowie album, 'The Next Day.' This is sort of a review, but it’s mostly about the time he robbed me at the...