richard hell - pioneer or silly old fool

He's great on the BBC Rock Family Trees about NYC punk from the 90s, very funny and smart and unassuming. I've not read Tramp yet - I really should, but I read Go Now as a teen and it was brilliant but a lot darker than I was ready for.

Go Now, I think is a pretty exceptional novel, I remember kind of hating it at the time but I think mostly I was just sick of "junkie novels" which at the time were numerous. I re-read it a few yrs ago and thought it was great.

Godlike is one of my favorite novels ever, I've read it several times and every time I am more & more impressed by it. If it had another name other than Richard Hell on it I am sure fewer people would know of it but its rep would be greater.

I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp is much better then your average music memoir.

I am eagerly looking forward to the new poetry collection, hoping Rain Taxi hooks Mpls up with another Hell reading in town (he's done a few over the yrs)

Not quite sure why, but I saw Richard Hell introduce a screening of John Huston's Wise Blood at the Glasgow Film Theatre a few years ago. He made some good points about the soundtrack not being very appropriate/good. As Stevie says, he seemed smart and unassuming.

I also remember reading Thurston Moore saying that the Dim Stars project floundered when Hell insisted on individual songwriting credits rather than a collective Dim Stars credit. Maybe one of the ways you stay afloat as a countercultural icon is by making it your business to pay attention to things like writing and producing credits and the copyright on your recordings.

I doubt any of Richard's literary endeavors generate significant "coin" as the saying goes. Those speaking-bureau gigs can pay well from what I've heard but you need sizable and consistent audience demand. Back in the day there was a weird subculture of people, not necessarily involved in creative activities, who lived on the margins in Manhattan, without visible or ahem Traditional means of employment, in rent-controlled or stabilized apartments. I met a couple of these characters in the early Eighties. Reading Hell's excellent memoir you get some sense of this lost world. Today the city is so high-priced that it's hard to imagine anybody surviving this way. But there are a few holdouts. Richard Hell is still savvy and no doubt gets by on some combination of all the different suggestions here. I wouldn't want to ask him.

would love to find a copy of Godlike. the only one i see available is $400.

Hell is selling it. Mystery solved.

haha! it says "sold out" on his own site.

Friend of mine who worked in publishing used to throw Hell regular editing gigs throughout the 2000s, working under his fairly anonymous govt name. My friend knew it was him but never let on, getting the distinct sense that RH was happy to keep that kind of work separate from his more public identity. My friend had no interesting stories about his work relationship with RH except to say that RH was always polite, professional, and grateful for the work.

In 2005, he answered the question, Sort of.

Are you able to support yourself just on your artwork, your books, your poetry?

It's funny how often I get asked that. Since like 1975, there was only one period of about six months in the late '80s - that was where I made the shift from music to writing and wasn't getting a lot of music royalties - that I had to work a real job.

Now where does the money keep coming from? From the book tours? From sales?

No, I get record royalties. Everything that I want to be in print is in print. Now I write a movie column six times a year. I do two or three high-paying readings a year. There’s a steady trickle from merchandise at the site. Every couple of years I make a good score in advances, either for music or writing...

New book arrived yesterday, it is great

Couldn't make the reading/signing at White Columns tonight, but here's a couple of photos on IG:

White linen suit was very appropriate - hot and muggy as hell today.

Another with his Nan Goldin photograph behind him.

(seriously, pun not intended - it didn't occur to me until after I posted)

was a nice reading. he closed with a poem in progress on Verlaine, then read the note from the author of the CBGB's graffiti book about Verlaine saying he had to get Hell to write the introduction. broke up recounting a dream he had recently about TV, so they skipped the q&a. the gallery owner said they will post video at some point.

would love it if they post the video - i was wondering if TV or Verlaine would come up

(to clarify - the dream was about Verlaine too, not Television. very affecting to see his emotion)

Hell gave another reading tonight at the Powerhouse Arena, which had been postponed a few weeks due to COVID. A good crowd, every seat was pretty much taken, but it felt like a pretty low-key event - except for a poster in the store and a notice on Hell's website, I don't recall seeing any mention or advertising elsewhere.

And man was it great - at the start, Hell acknowledged what was happening in Gaza. He didn't mention any one or group by name - he just wanted to say it was very much on his mind that there was a lot of awfulness going on the world, but he decided to "stick with my original setlist." So he read some poems - at one point, he discussed how he recently found out about time’s relationship to gravity, and how for example time is actually different from the ground compared to the highest peak of a mountain, or how it passes differently within the absence of matter in the vast emptiness of space - he mentions that time was already a subject that held endless fascination to him (see his greatest song, IMHO, "Time") so naturally this concept is something that he has been thinking over extensively. (A quick google search comes up with quite a few articles on this subject, FWIW.)

And he did indeed finish his reading with the poem on Verlaine. He apologizes ahead of time that he couldn't get through it the one other time he's read it, but he says he can probably do it now. He asks if we know Johnnie Ray, and after discussing him a bit (how he's seen as a transitional point from pop to rock music, how he tried to emulate black, female R&B singers, and how his crying was indeed sincere, he wasn't faking it), he mentions that he feels like Johnnie Ray where people are showing up just to see him cry. He talks a bit about Verlaine, assuming most of us knew their history, and mentions they grew up together and were close, but then he says he discovered he really didn't like him, totally not like a joke, but we all laughed. He added the feeling was mutual, and he added he never reconciled with Verlaine. (By this point he told a few hilarious remarks throughout the reading that I wish I could remember.) He goes ahead and immediately you can tell he's trembling and his eyes are tearing up. It really was powerful to witness - I had my phone but I didn't record it, even though it was a public event, I would've felt awful doing it. In hindsight, I should've recorded the audio, but it'll be a moot point if his publishes this soon. I think he mentioned something about an artist's need for an audience to exist, and remarked about his own existence or how he viewed it once Verlaine was no longer with us. He then talks about the dream - him, Verlaine and "Patti" (Smith I presume, though Hell was married to Patty Smyth) in a shop in SoHo. I want to say a bake shop or something like that, but I feel like I'm misremembering and filling the gaps with my own familiar activities around SoHo. Anyway, for some reason, he isn't wearing a shirt in this dream, but Patti/Patty touches his back and it deeply moves him. Then he mentions there's a lot of prose, unfinished verses presumably, and he then talks about the tweets by that author of the CBGB's book and how Verlaine recommended Hell, something that deeply moved him. It's possible he said or repeated this part before reading the poem, but I can't remember.

The reason why my memory on a lot of this has already faded is because of the following Q&A. The first few questions were quick - most notably, he was asked to reflect on Terry Ork and Quine who are also gone. (Quine was devastated by his wife's passing. He'd have dinner with him and he'd tell Hell "I've got it down to three hours of crying a day." He also never did drugs, but he got into it, possibly because of his wife's passing, and he killed himself that way. He hadn't had contact with Ork for a long time until close to his passing. In fact, he even got an email from Ork the day he died.) The question that kind of overwhelmed my memory was someone asking what Hell was listening to these days, and to my great surprise...he's a really, REALLY big fan of the Stones' Hackney Diamonds and talked more about that than anything else! It actually smeared what had been a crisp, sharp memory of everything before because I was just trying to process his response.

Basically, he's a huge Stones fan. They hadn't done anything of note in decades, but this one "blew me away." He did say he's grown to appreciate a bit the later albums he's dismissed before like Bridges to Babylon and Steel Wheels, but not like the new one. Loves all the songs on Hackney Diamonds, especially Keith, who he says has arthritis now so he can barely play but he found a way around that. (As discussed in another thread, ProTools likely.) He's always connected with Keith, but "Mick's growing on me," he really loves Mick on the new one. He also mentions the solos - he doesn't think the Stones were really about the solos before and argues their presence on the new one is a new and welcome development. He compares it to Dylan, whom he holds in the highest regard as a songwriter, but he says Dylan is after another direction, making his old songs sound new. In terms of the rock n' roll element, his records don't touch the Stones. (Again, it sounds like he's only comparing the latter day records.) He says he's very much child of the '60s in that he still believes Dylan and the Stones are in a league of their own. Later when asked what he's doing next, he says - not really jokingly - he may write about the new Stones album, so if any of you editors out there want a Richard Hell review of the new Stones album, it sounds like he's totally down for it.

man that sounds like such a great experience

thanks for such a detailed recap!

You're welcome! I figured I should share as much as possible - it was just great and I didn't want it to disappear in memory.

Yeah, thanks. Very good detail

Also I relate to memory smearing factors

It’s like there is a buffer size that can easily be overrun

That's great - thanks so much. Hackney Diamonds!

Thanks for all that, bird - lovely to read.

he then talks about the tweets by that author of the CBGB's book and how Verlaine recommended Hell, something that deeply moved him. It's possible he said or repeated this part before reading the poem, but I can't remember

There was a book about CBGB's graffiti photos and the publisher reached out to Verlaine to write an introduction, Verlaine demurred but in his email response said "look I can't stand the guy but you should get Hell to write the intro, he would be the best person for it" when he passed the story made the rounds on twitter and Hell has mentioned how charmed he was by the story becuz it neatly summed up how he felt about Verlaine.

Hell's essays (esp on music) are great, I would be eager to read his review of the new Stones record, haha I tried to listen to it last night and couldn't get into it, but if Hell likes I might need to re-assess

ha, this!

yeah would love a R. Hell review of the new rolling stones, haha. He might convince me to listen to it!

Loved his latest book of poetry / musings.

https://naimapublication.com/issues/issue-1/richard-hell-tomverlaine

that feels honest enuf. not sure how else to aasess. i mean, i enjoyed readin it.

short and sweet — obviously he went into great detail about the relationship in Clean Tramp. amazing they never buried the hatchet and just went and had coffee sometime. they pretty much lived around the corner from each other for the past 50 years.

It is very much in the spirt & style of the recent book of poems in this sort of amazingly understated poetic voice he's cultivated

That’s great, thanks.

I was thinking about some variant of this kind of thing in my own situation recently, earlier today actually, won’t hijack the thread with the details, but really like his approach to talking about it.

in the spirit of the new beatles song, why don't they take the unfinished recordings for the 4th tv album, have hell write the lyrics and take the vocals (maybe using bootlegs as a baseline for melodies/lyrics), and have lloyd and ripp do the leads and backing vocals? you heard it here first. i claim a share of the profits. (joke, joke. what profits?)

lovely piece by Hell, you just want to put an arm round him and give him a hug, don't you?

am sure for years he just imagined there was no way tom would go first

It looks like a finished version of what he had at the reading I posted about, and yes, you kind of wish a friend would give him a big hug. The main body of the text was done when I saw him, and it had an immediate effect on him as soon as he started reading.

in the spirit of the new beatles song, why don't they take the unfinished recordings for the 4th tv album, have hell write the lyrics and take the vocals (maybe using bootlegs as a baseline for melodies/lyrics), and have lloyd and ripp do the leads and backing vocals? you heard it here first. i claim a share of the profits. (joke, joke. what profits?)

haha, if the goal is to make verlaine spin in his grave, it's a guarantee

just seems like a great way to reunite the clan. the whole mishpocha.

aw i love this

i like how messy their relationship is; that they started out being symbiotic & almost inseparable & became two opposable magnets

i hope writing about it like this at least gives hell some more peace somehow, as he alludes to in the final note

i sorta went thru life not taking hell srsly in ignorance and welp

I feel like I say this all the time but I always liked the way he talked about somebody like Robert Quine, as opposed to the way Lou Reed supposedly treated him.

Someone asked him about Quine at the reading, and it was clear they were close friends to the end, right through Quine's overwhelming grief over his wife's passing.

Speaking of Quine, there is a great poem in the new Hell book that mentions him and Thunders and some of his other CBGB friends, the piece is untitled but you can read it here https://caesuramag.org/posts/eight-poems-from-what-just-happened-richard-hell, scroll down to “I miss Sabel Starr and Elliot Kidd”

RH cut new vocals for some of Destiny street as part of the partial remix/recorded reissue. I'd pass on a new Television LP with his singing, lol

this is nicely put, and true (from I Miss Sabel Starr and Elliot Kidd)

I never thought a person’s
era was all that significant to consider
about them, but it is. There are things
only the people who were together
young, in the time, can understand. And
who else is there to laugh about it
with? No one. Maybe
it’s just as well — we do tend to kind
of get twisted with age.
Half of us would have problems with
most of the others. Did at the time.
It’s all a mess.

Hey there’s some heavy Lou Reed referencing in another of those poems.

i got Hell’s autobiography for xmas :D

i’m only halfway through but i don’t want it to end. dreamy and detailed and wistful (sidebar: also wow he is singularly obsessed with vaginas isnt he lol jeez)
the stuff about him and tom is so so good, as expected

yeah that book is great, pairs well with Patti Smith's "Just Kids"

yeah otm
god i love Just Kids, and def has the same vibe - i’m going to reread that next

i liked the autobio a lot but the sex stuff does become a bit ott. iirc there were a few bits towards the end where he goes a little too far in the telling imo, and appears to make a point of naming names in a way that seems to cross the line into being unnecessary and demeaning to the people in question. but that was my only quibble. wish he would do another one that picks up where it left off.