Please Kill Me
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...
Scott Asheton, Iggy Pop's Brother in Noise
Scott Asheton was the greatest thug-rocker who ever lived. He was the ultimate hoodlum, standing outside of Discount Records in Ann Arbor, Michigan, spitting on cars. He passed away just over a week ago, so I dug up this old conversation, one of the...
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 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...
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...
Black Flag: Anatomy of a Lawsuit
Keith Morris and I have been pals for about a million years, ever since I crashed on his floor after another drunken night hanging out in LA during the 1970s. A month after we finished this interview, Greg Ginn, the guy who co-founded Black Flag...
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...
Happy, Happy, Happy! - A Memory of Arturo Vega
Arturo Vega, the man behind the Ramones' iconic logo, passed away on June 8, 2013. I remember him back in 1978 pulling all-nighters at the band's Second Street loft, pouring over their silk-screen operation—one long counter weighted down with a wooden...