The Uncensored Oral History of Punk - Please Kill Me

This a great addition to any library of music fans and especially those of punk rock 'N roll. This tells the story of the punk rock culture in our country.

Another must have in our punk rock collection is "Destroy All Movies!! The Complete Guide To Punks On Film (2010)"

.. but a little challenging to read. This book has very little (read none) narrative to tie the history and stories together. There are chapter titles, and then clips and quotes from interviews of people who were involved with punk and alternative music back in the day. Once you get used to the writing style, or cut and paste style, it is kinda fun to read. I bought the book to learn more about the history of punk, and I find it a little challenging to understand because I don't know many of the people quoted in the book.

The product was in excellent condition when I got it, actually it look like it hadn't been touched, it looked brand new. Need I say, "I was surprized". This is the kind of people I like doing business with.

Please Kill Me was a great read. entertaining, fun, and kinda scary. historic in scope and the 'the tale tells all' style reporting. hard to pit down as the next page is sure to yeild another storied gem.

Book was received on time and in great condition, however, it did not come with any instructions as to how to send it back. The recipient already had this book and now I'm stuck with it because I don't know where or how to send it back for a refund.

This is a truly excellent read for anybody interested in the early origins of punk, which began well before the terms "punk rock" or "new wave" or any of that were ever invented. It is generally accepted among music heads today that "punk" was not something invented by Malcolm McLaren out of whole cloth, but instead originated in the U.S. with the Velvet Underground, the MC5 and the Stooges. The concept was then refined by a passel of NYC bands including the Patti Smith Group, Television, the Ramones, and the New York Dolls. Finally the Sex Pistols essentially stole and gussied up the Dolls' act and shipped it back across the Atlantic to sell to Americans. The original target audience for this book likely knew all this already and therefore wasn't surprised by the absence of bands like the Dead Kennedys and Green Day, but as other reviewers have noted, readers of today who are expecting some kind of comprehensive punk-cyclopedia should be aware that this book stops about where the 80s started. There are also a goodly number of regional punk scenes and heroes that are left out, given that the focus here is primarily on the New York proto-punk bands of the 70s. Although the book's title is a bit misleading, the narrow focus makes for a very readable book as many of the characters interact with each other.

Certainly there are many of us who only became of age and aware of punk beginning in the 80s, so the whole idea that punk died at the end of the 70s seems a bit silly now, although it is true that many of the folks featured in this book have shuffled off this mortal coil. (The index in the back lists a number of people as deceased, and in fact since the last edition of the book was printed even more of them have passed away.) When you read their stories, you won't be surprised that they died fairly young; you're more likely to be surprised that Iggy Pop is still with us, seemingly second only to Keith Richards in terms of number of death-defying miraculous recoveries.

The format of the book is an oral history cobbled together from extensive interviews. Characters including band members, girlfriends, managers, record industry types and so forth tell their oft-trashy tales of how bands got together, recorded, played shows, supported themselves, did (massive amounts of) various drugs, broke up, got back together, dealt with love affairs and deaths and tried to have fun in the process. If you have read other bestselling oral histories like "Edie", the style will be familiar. The good thing about this approach is that you don't have to put up with an author grafting his opinion or analysis onto the recounted events (which sometimes differ depending on who's telling the story) plus you get that intimate, documentary feeling that you're sitting in the room with Lou Reed or whoever, listening to them talk. The bad thing about this approach is that if you haven't already read a few books on this era or these bands you may be a bit baffled as to who many of the speakers are, as they aren't introduced or explained for the most part. There is an index in the back to look unfamiliar people up, but I can see it getting a bit cumbersome if you had to do that all the time. Therefore, I wouldn't recommend this for anyone's introduction to 70s-era protopunk. It also focuses on the personal lives of the people involved and how everybody got along (or didn't get along) way more than it talks about how songs were written and recorded, so if you're one of these people who wants to read about exactly how many tracks and takes and techniques it took to get Song X and not about how many times the guitarist shot up in the bathroom during the recording, this is probably not the book for you (and if you're the recording-geek type I'd kind of wonder why you're even reading a book about protopunk anyway).

In any event, this book deserves five stars just for capturing the fleeting memories of and about a lot of seminal musical pioneers who aren't with us any more, as well as the checkered past of an era that's long gone - take a walk down the cleaned-up Bowery sometime if you need confirmation of that. Trashy, yet sometimes wistful (see the Jerry Nolan/ Elvis story near the end of the book) it's also an engaging story.

Most books on subjects such as this (the history of the punk rock scene) are fluff, or some lame writer's opinion. Here we have the major players talking (Lou Reed, Nico, Wayne Kramer, Iggy Pop, David Johanssen, Johnny Thunders, Patti Smith, Joey Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone, Tom Verlaine, Stiv Bators, John Lydon, Debbie Harry, etc etc.) Plus all their hangers-on and groupies and girlfriends and record suits (i.e. Danny Fields.) So this is about as close to the truth as you'll get about how it all evolved, and moved from Detroit to New York City to London. Iggy has a major role in it all, and I found him to be his usual truthful self. Iggy speaks of listening to the first Velvet Underground album in 1967 and not liking it at first (very honest there.) He also speaks of seeing Jim Morrison perform with the Doors in 1967 at some college concert, and being fascinated by the Lizard King's crazy stage performance. He formed the Stooges less than 6 months later, and Iggy ends up influencing his Detroit peers the MC5, and later hanging with the NY Dolls and then the Ramones in New York. The Ramones and to a lesser extent, Johnny Thunders from the Dolls travel to England and end up influencing the growing scene there, including John Lydon (who turns into Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.) All in all, good behind the scene stories are included. I only wish the early heavy metal players could be as honest in a book like this, instead of protecting their own egos.

I am not sure who invented the oral biography, though I suspect the honors should go to Studs Terkel. This is one of the best representatives of the genre that I have ever read. Some have called the book revisionist, in that it asserts the primacy of the New York and American punk movement over that of the English Punk movement. Properly speaking, it isn't at all revisionist: it is a corrective. In fact, the point of the book is that the British Punk Movement, which made more of an impact in the public eye and the mass media, actually hit the scene as punk was more or less dying. Johnny Rotten and the Clash and all the others didn't come at the beginning of punk, but only after it had been around for years and was actually fading in NY. In other words, Punk wasn't an English invention, but an American one.
The book begins with the Velvet Underground and then proceeds to the founders of Punk, people like Iggy Pop and the MC5 and the New York Dolls. All the major figures on the New York scene are dealt with in detail, from Patti Smith and the Heartbreakers to the Ramones and, my favorite NYC band, Television (who I discovered after they broke up for the first time, but who I have since seen live twice in Chicago, first in 1993 and then in 2001). Not merely the great bands and performers are featured, but a lot of the people on the scene that music fans might not have been familiar with. In fact, so many people are quoted that you begin to get confused, but not to despair: there is a very helpful Cast of Characters near the end of the book.
A great book, and one that will have any fan of the New York underground music scene in the sixties and seventies rushing to pull out their old records, and perhaps to rush out and buy a few new ones.

"Please Kill Me" is an invaluable record of what the 70's were really like, & why the music that came to be known as punk was inevitable & absolutely necessary. The authors (who were part of the scene as publishers of the first fanzine "Punk") let the musicians & scenesters tell the story in their own words. The structure of the book is the same as George Plimpton's "Edie", simply a collection of quotes grouped to tell a chronological story. McNeil & McCain really went to the effort of finding some of the most obscure "hangers-on" who were there, so the overall view is very well-rounded. What is truly intelligent about the presentation is that they understand punk did not beging with the Sex Pistols or the Ramones. Instead, we start with the Velvet Underground & Warhol, move to Detroit to talk to the MC5 & Iggy and the Stooges, then it's early glitter with the New York Dolls! Great stuff & the timing is excellent, especially since many of those interviewed have since died. The photo sections are also excellent altho I have a few quibbles about why some people are included & others not. There is also a very helpful "Cast of Characters" at the end of the book which even the most knowledgeable rocker will flip to often.
Many younger readers may be surprised that most of the book deals with the New York City music scene. Punk has become so identified as a British import that those who weren't part of it may not realise the Brits only got going after a visit to the UK by the Ramones. CBGB's was already a very hot & happening spot, long before Johnny was Rotten!
Whether you were there or not, you will enjoy "Please Kill Me", as well as learning quite a bit from it; check it out!

This book never lets up. The format --- a collage of interviews with dozens of people --- keeps you glued to the pages. Every sentence comes from someone with something important to say. These people were there, they know what happened, and they are opinionated. Every key moment in the book is described by more than one person, giving you a kind of Rashomon perspective. It's appropriate that there's a quote from William Burroughs on the cover --- the format has the same feel as his cut-up novels, where a thousand shards of information combine into a single, complex theme.

The subject matter is equally interesting. Although the subtitle refers to "punk," the focus of the book is a little bit more narrow. It's about the punk rock music scene in New York from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Any punk fan will tell you there are at least two more places to cover (Los Angeles and London) but you can't have everything in one book. For details on those two scenes, you'll have to read one of the many other punk rock histories.

All of the details are here, starting with the absurdist anti-glam of the Velvet Underground, all the way through the Ramones. In between, you get the complete history of the MC5, the New York Dolls, Iggy and the Stooges, and a significant dose of the Sex Pistols. (A final chapter continues the saga through the 1980s, but it's an afterthought. If you want that story, read OUR BAND COULD BE YOUR LIFE.)

The underlying theme of the book is drug abuse, which is a surprise. Although the music is covered, no single subject comes up as often as "dope." On every page, there's a comment about getting high, cleaning up, searching for money to get high, or overdosing. I'm not complaining --- if that's a big part of the story, that's fine with me. But if you want the music, you should just buy the old punk albums and listen to them. Reading about the music isn't going to work. You have to hear it to understand.

This is an important and endlessly entertaining story, a five-star book if there ever was one. It combines Burroughs with Studs Terkel in the best possible way. If you want to know about punk rock, you have to read this.

Wow! I came of age after the punk revolution that the people in this book started -- when punk look and attitude were watered down and mixed with disco beats, synths, and British fey to become New Wave. So opening this book is like stepping in a time machine to see punk origins, with the bonus of 'hanging out' with some extremely rowdy folks. From the mouths of Lou Reed to The Ramones, the narratives are so engaging you'd swear you were in front of CBGB's with a leather jacket slouched against a brick wall and puffing a smoke -- or much worse. Because unlike so many hyped books and movies these days, Just Kill Me is TRULY 'shocking,' 'edgy,' and 'it WILL blow you away.' The book follows the rekindling of the authentic rock and roll bonfire, fed by young bodies. They live fast and hard and many die disgusting. But the short lives and the way they are portrayed here is nothing short of brilliant. Why I else would I have such a strong desire to want to get to know these people even better -- even if it means waking up with a cut face and a needle in my arm. (That's poetic license -- Just Say No). I simply could not stop being utterly fascinated by these players. Wow! Only in America.... And then Britain.... And then back with 'meaning'... and profit.... Just Kill Me lets our relatively unhyped punk founders have their say -- and boy do they have a lot to say. Did I mention Wow?

It's interesting how "punk" means so many things to so many people. To some, it is a triumph of substance over style; to others, the exact opposite. This book starts at the roots of US/UK punk rock and works it's way up, and it's a fascinating read into the often sad world of the rock star life.
Since every band in this book is pretty famous and well-known, the whole account is like a fairy tale, with bands drifting from gig to gig to album to album without much mind; for most of the participants in this saga, the objective is sex and drugs, usually in the opposite order. The after the fact musings by Wayne Kramer of the MC5 and Iggy Pop and Ron Asheton on the Stooges heyday is worth the price of admission alone; Asheton's remembrance of snorting coke alongside Miles Davis is a bizarre image I can't get out of my head, a real mix of eras and genres, where for all of these different musical icons, drugs are the bottom line.
if you read this book without having heard any of these bands, I can't imagine coming away with any interest in hearing any of their music, since it is so obvious how little attention was paid to the music. However, if you know something about the punk world of the late 60's through the late 70's (MC5, Stooges, NY Dolls, Lou Reed, Heartbreakers/Johnny Thunders, Bowie, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, Ramones, Dead Boys, Sex Pistols, Clash, Dictators, etc.), this book is absolutely essential reading.

In the same way film maker Sergei Eisenstein would juxtapose film clips using his theory of montage, combining of two different elements that create a single new experience, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain create a thorough narrative using the a patchwork of various quotes from culled from the remnants and survivors of the early punk scene.

What impressed me most was the format of the book. It is a collage of quotations that forms a true story with a beginning, middle, and end. There is no prose or re-telling, just the assumed touch up of the spoken word to make the text more readable. And it's not the quotes themselves that guide the story, but the deliberate placement and order of the quotes that bring life to the text.

To show you how the book could have been a major disaster, just read the "More Depraved Testimony" in the appendix of the Penguin Books edition. These are bits and quotes that were left out of the first edition. They seem placed randomly around one another and don't have the same contextual feel as the book proper.

With an emphasis on the music and bands that predated the British version of punk, "Please Kill Me" tells the story of Iggy and the Stooges, the MC5, the Ramones, Richard Hell, Patti Smith Group, the New York Dolls, the Dead Boys, and the punks and groupies that frequented the infamous CBGB venue.

While the Sex Pistols and the like do appear in references, it usually in the context of the early punker's reactions to and encounters with the Pistols and the other Britt punks. Sid Vicious got much more attention later in the book, but only once his exploits were based out of New York.

The point of view is very New York centric, so rather than using the sub-title "The Uncensored Oral History of Punk," I might be more inclined to consider it "An Uncensored Oral History of Punk."

A major distraction is the story's meanderings away from the music itself to a tabloid sensationalism of the decadent drug use, sex, and exploiting one another. At times it seems that a lot of these bands were just getting together as something to do between scams.

Though I wasn't even born during the indie/punk genesis, I was an ancillary spectator of the mid-90s punk renaissance, and I'm not even a radar blip in the current scene; I like to think there was something more to the music that I can always go back to and always get something from than just fashionable, sneering cartoon cliché with a t-shirt reading "Please Kill Me."

Although it's occasionally a bit boring, this book is easily one of the best 'punk' reads on the market (or off it, for that matter). Oral biographies are usually easier to swallow, and in any event, there's enough information from many of the original sources to validate the book's existance.
In other words, it wasn't some hack writer who had nothing better to do except rummage through morgue files and try to make a buck off the names of some dead junkies. Although I was never personally a fan, the VU coverage is particularly impressive, and the bit about Miles Davis snorting up with Iggy & the Stooges is worth the cost of the book alone.
I don't know that the twenty-or-so last pages were worth putting in; they read like outtakes of the book that were left out for simply being mediocre stories. But the respective coverage of each scene represented is very even-handed, and mostly everybody comes out of it whole.
Even if they don't all come out alive.

"Please Kill Me" is a fascinating book that describes the origins of Punk but in my opinion goes beyond that - its a vivid commentary on the art and personalities emerging in the post-hippy era, a sharp inflection point giving birth to two decades of revitalized hard rock and gutter culture (a term I do not employ derisively).

I love the format, noting names emerging and passing with their relevance and influence. While the narrative is formed from disjoint quotes, the history is delivered intact.

I see a number of parallels between this book and "Dear Muffo" by Harold Conrad, which likewise uses anecdotes of dozens of personalities ranging from Erich Remarque to Muhammed Ali to Evil Kneivel to provide a fasinating history of a completely different (yet still fascinating) cultural era. Readers who love the style of Please Kill Me might also like this book.

This was the book that started my whole punk rock history kick many, many years ago. I love this book and I am so grateful that it came into my life and helped turn me into one of those annoying “I know so much about music let me tell you a bunch of stuff” people.

I found this book, appropriately enough, lying on the sidewalk. And I was up all night, reading it from cover-to-cover. Compliled from hundreds of taped interviews, LEgs McNeil makes it look easy with a brilliant editing job. The narrative carries you like a runaway train, building steam until the bitter end. Nobody (with the possible exception of John Holmstrom) could've written a more accurate inside account. Since McNeil mostly takes a "nothing-but-the-facts" approach, the reader is left to ponder out the true meaning of the story on their own. What did it all mean? This strange and "nihilistic" underground phenomonon known as Punk? Was it, as Jim Carroll suggested, the natural response to the pre-Nuclear Holocaust times we live in? Or was it that the great Rocknroll Dream that so many of us were chasing after was really a rotten Nightmare at its core? Or is it that life basically just kind of sucks, period? As you watch so many of the central characters wipe out and come to a bad end from the excesses of Sex and Drugs and Rocknroll, you can't help speculating on these dark questions. ANd yet, in spite of it all, so many of the deranged and demented characters in the cast -- such as Iggy Pop, Johnny Thunders, and Dee Dee Ramone -- come across as downright loveable in spite of it all

Please Kill Me must be one the sleaziest oral histories ever compiled. And that's just one of many good things about it. Like George Plimpton and Edie Stein did when they wrote Edie, McNeil and McCain helped, once again, to make oral histories not only worthwhile for the average reader, but actually COOL.

Please Kill Me is a must-read for any music fan interested in The Ramones, Television, Dead Boys, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls, The MC5, The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, Suicide, Richard Hell, Blondie - basically, the best and most vital American music of the early to late 1970s.

It is clear to anyone who reads this that the many subjects interviewed by McNeil and McCann are more than comfortable with the authors. As a result, Please Kill Me's view into this New York punk rock world - its brashness, its drugs, its mean-spiritedness, its pettiness and its artistic triumphs - is compelling, funny, harsh, pathetic and glorious all at once. This is bad candy and it tastes just delicious.

This book belongs on the same table as Spinal Tap, Motley Crue's The Dirt and the documentary Anvil. This is an oddball rock and roll classic that will never fade away.

Over the years there have been so many people and bands who have claimed to carry the "punk" banner that it's essence and spirit has been diluted into marketing babble. This book sets the record straight on the origins, practitioners and locations that defined what punk was all about. The narrative here is unadulterated and incredibly engrossing.
While you may think about some of these icons differently after reading this book, you cannot deny the incendiary creativity and raw lust for life in these New York and Detroit punk pioneers. At times simultaneously hilarious, repulsive and depressing, this book is a fascinating historical trip through the '60's and '70's. Say what you will, but these folks walked the talk like no one else in rock and roll before or since.
Finally, the bare bones, tell-it-in-their-own-words style here is refreshing and free of over-interpretation. Like punk itself, it avoids hyperbole and reflection and just tells it like it was, warts and all. Thanks to McNeil & McCain for such a terrific read. Some recent artists who claim to be punk should read this and just be ashamed of themselves...

Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain *****

Written and compialed mainly by 'Punk' magazines resident punk Legs McNeil, Please Kill Me is an oral account of the rise and fall of punk. Mind you that this is mainly a focus on New York punk as this is where Legs hails from.

Starting in Detriot in the 1960's with The MC5 and The Stooges and in New York with The Velvet Underground we see the rising of punk before it was even such a thing. A few years go by and all of those bands go by and then all the sudden the New York Dolls hit the scene and Iggy leaves the Stooges and goes solo. All of the sudden bands like The Dictators, The Ramones, Television, and The Dead Boys start to appear in New York brining punk to it's climax in clubs like Max's Kansas City and the legendary CBGB's. At about the same time in England they are doing same thing but with more of a political aggenda. The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers all start to appear, and this is the beggining of the end. The Pistols cross the water into America and break up at the end of the tour and then starts the violence and all the bad junk that is for some reason thought of any time the word punk is spoken. So punk officialy dies with an explosion creating many, many, many musical genres like New Wave, Hardcore, and Grunge to name a few. This is all told through the eyes of those who were their in bands like The Ramones and The Sex Pistols. Also by those who dated people in those bands like Bebe Buell and Nancy Spungen.

Please Kill Me is a great book for an introduction into what was punk culture in the late 1970's. That is all it should be used for is an introduction. It would be impossible to cover each and every band that emerged at the time because there was simply so many. But as a nice over view this hits the nail on the head perfectly when capturing the rise and fall of original punk rock.

Oral history is my favorite, the words a biographer usually draws upon, the source, and this book is an easy-as-pie, page-turning read, taking you from proto-punk Detroit and NYC beginnings (i.e. Iggy Pop, the MC5, the New York Dolls, and the Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol's Factory) through to the many nerves that branched off to sickening endings. I love this book. Its stories are quotes from those who were there. Introduced to many bands I'd never heard of, PLEASE KILL ME served as a guide through the later 70s lower Manhattan lore of CBGBs and Max's Kansas City, and -- of course -- the happenings across the Atlantic where the Clash, the Damned, and the Sex Pistols were among the first. I wanted more after I was finished. It's a good place to start and an excellent place to check if you already have a Punk pedigree. In the last pages there's a fitting picture of William Burroughs in front of big words, "Life's a Killer." I thought long and hard (beyond his circumstantial Bunker residency, which located him physically near the heart of the scene) about why his picture was at the back. You should too. Also, I really enjoyed meeting and learning about Lester Bangs' part in the story. I can think of no reason to give it any less than five stars.

"Please Kill Me" is a beautifully arranged oral history of punk music in America. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain are heroes for clipping together hundreds of interviews and making it not only coherant (it reads like everyone is in the same room together), but visceral - when Stiv Bators gets in a knife fight on the street or the Ramones pee into Johnny Rotten's soda, you're right there with them. It's a great read, and totally entertaining.
And something else, too. McNeil and McCain have the benefit of hindsight - they didn't arrange this book until long after punk was no more. The writing during the glory years have a wonderful, kinetic urgency to them - but as the music started to get co-opted, and people started to die as a result of hard living, the book becomes genuinely moving and heartfelt. And the fact that so much time is spent on "forgotten" artists is totally heartwarming - and completely in the spirit of the music, and the movement.
You can skip around "Please Kill Me," but it's a much better read from cover to cover. Read it, and emit a deep, mournful sigh at the next Blink 182 song you hear.

Absolutly compelling. If you like Rock & roll, or the Andy Warhol Scene, or post modern performance art, or storys about generally self destuctive behavior, this is the book for you. Masterfully constructed, this is the story of one of the most misunderstood, scoffed at and even villanized movements in popular music of the last century, as told by the people who were there. McNeil captures the decadence and pagentry of the rock & roll lifestyle perfectly. If there I have one complaint about this book it is that the scope is a bit narrow, focusing almost completely on the New York scene. But anything more would be a massive undertaking, and NY is where this all started anyway.

The Ramones were cartoon characters. Iggy was a junkie madman. Sid and Nancy were mere junkie [punks]. Same with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan. At least, that's the popular perception of punk's key figures until you read this oral history of the movement. Read this, and suddenly these folks are no longer mere one-dimensional caricatures, but suddenly they're the passionate, misguided, and doomed twenty-somethings of their generation (and, hey, weren't we all?). Whether or not you listen to or even care for punk, this is a great read. I mean, even if you don't listen to music at all. Even if you're deaf. And if you're blind, have someone read it to you.