I read most of this one night while working the graveyard shift at a very institutional group home in the real methy part of SE Portland. I was the only person awake and not severely mentally-ill in the whole building, except for the parole guys, who I was pretty sure were faking it, or at least greatly exaggerating. There were these big sliding glass doors where of course the methhead psychos lurking in the dark could watch me mopping, all lit up, but I couldn't see out, and most nights I'd be really on edge and ready to run for the parole guys' room if any of the scary noises I heard outside turned out to be some twisted someone smashing through the glass and grabbing my spleen as an ingredient to use in his basement meth lab. Legs McNeil is an American music journalist. He is one of the three original founders of the seminal Punk magazine that gave the movement its name; as well as being a former editor at Spin and editor-in-chief of Nerve Magazine. Besides Please Kill Me, McNeil is also co-author of The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, a definitive work on the porn industry. As Publisher’s Weekly said, “This compulsively readable book perfectly captures the pop culture zeitgeist. It doesn’t hurt that the history of American pornography is inextricably intertwined with all the subjects that captivate us: sex, drugs, beauty, fame, money, the Mafia, law enforcement and violence.” McNeil’s most recent book, Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose is another collaborative effort with Gillian McCain. Dear Nobody was published on April 1st 2014 and received widespread critical acclaim as being the authentic version of Go Ask Alice. McNeil has appeared on many TV documentaries, from the History Channel to VH1, and has produced and hosted a three-hour TV special on Court TV over three nights on the porn industry, which was the highest-rated original programming in that network’s history.

We refuse to cheat," says McCain, "where we'd have a piece of prose in between two people talking. 'And then so and so went to blah blah blah.' To me, that's cheating." Your book is the closest thing I've ever had to a bible," I said when I walked up to him, shaking his hand. "Thank you." When I was given an IQ test, I scored 155, but I consider Alene to be smarter than I am. She is the most intelligent woman I know. And, best of all, Iggy Pop, known for his terrible habit and dangerous excess had an ephiphany. He realized he "was the product". He cleaned up and he started saving his money. That's right. One of the most famous punks of all time, saved his life, by replacing nihilism with captalism. Isn't that fantstic? Free of historical self-revision or precious musical pontification, this book comes as close to capturing the coruscated brilliance and vein-puncturing style of the Blank Generation as the written word is likely to get.”But at the same time, I don't want anyone to shy away from this book just because they're worried they won't recognize all of the famous names. In fact, it would almost be more fun to go into this knowing nothing about the punk movement in America, because the book is really that masterful - even if I started out not knowing who, say, Danny Fields was, the characters all drift in and out of the narrative that the editors weave, and everyone is so memorable it's not too hard to keep the huge cast of characters straight in your head. Please Kill Me is now published in at least 12 other countries, including Russia, Japan, France, and China. It's considered one of the best and most important music books of all time, the first to document the punk era, this era that is now continually of interest. It seems like every year a new fashion magazine is making a “Guide to Patti Smith's Style” or a cultural publication is publishing forgotten images from CBGB. Audience investment seems constant and unfailing, as if people will always love punk, will always want to be a part of that world, and Please Kill Me is one of the easiest ways to get there. Debbie Harry thought the record companies gave them lots of drugs, not because they liked them, but to keep them compliant. McNeil: Because no governor wants to be known as the governor who paroled the Manson Family. Even though Clem [Steve “Clem” Grogan, who participated in the murder of movie stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea a few weeks later] has been out since the 80s, and he’s lived an upstanding life. It just goes to prove they’re political prisoners.

Please Kill Me" covers New York punk from its birth in the mid-60s at Andy Warhol's Factory all the way to its eventual death in the late '70s, as corporate America once again begins to catch the wave and numerous members of the original first wave of punk begin to burn out from the excessive and dangerous lifestyles that they embraced. McNeil and co-author Gillian McCain present their material in the form of interviews with a vast number of the people who were there on the front lines, experiencing and inventing the punk scene as it developed. Johnny Thunders, Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, The Ramones, Richard Hell, Danny Fields....they are all heard from here along with a host of groupies, drug dealers, hookers, agents and managers, club owners, and other scene hangers-on. After hundreds of interviews with everyone from icons like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop to lesser-known scene stealers like former "company freak" record exec Danny Fields and filmmaker Bob Gruen, the result was the best-selling book ever about punk music, which has been published in 15 languages. McNeil: It’s so immediate, and it puts you in the time and the place. It’s people making bad decisions in real time. urn:lcp:pleasekillmeunce00legs_0:epub:f89d5339-3631-4acd-8976-a73a85061614 Extramarc OhioLINK Library Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier pleasekillmeunce00legs_0 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8tb3qh2d Invoice 11 Isbn 0140266909 There’s nothing like the impact of hearing an outrageous story from someone who experienced it firsthand. That’s why Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain wanted to publish an oral history of the Manson Family murders and the late Sixties. “It’s people making bad decisions in real time,” McNeil says. For more than 20 years, the duo has been working on 69, the follow-up to Please Kill Me, their 1996 definitive history of the New York punk scene. They’re almost done, they swear.

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I know, I know. It's not really fair to go there, but man is this book a real piece of work. I mean, it starts off pretty cool, and has some interesting stories from time to time. It just gets old and depressing when well over half the book is just variations on how trashed so and so was and what stupid thing they did because of it. It's like reliving every inane conversation I've ever had with my old college roommates or the people I hung out with in my early to mid twenties. There is a reason I don't have those conversations anymore. McCain: We’re trying to debunk the myth that he was some criminal mastermind, because it was kind a of domino effect of stupid decisions on Charlie’s part.

Real credit goes to Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, who had the daunting task of cutting and pasting pieces from thousands of hours of interviews and crafting it into a narrative. This book is essentially one giant interview, but it flows like a novel. McCain: Pretty much up until that it was a real family commune. And it wasn’t a big sex thing. It was mainly the women had [such deep] friendships. But there is also one unclaimed persona that has impressed itself upon my memory since first reading this book over 18 years ago. Three short syllables that pierce through all traditional conventions of femininity and staunch 1950s morality like a stiletto—Mardou Fox. McNeil and McCain spoke with Rolling Stone about the lonely process of reporting on creepy subject matter, why the “Helter Skelter” theory is (mostly) bullshit, and how if you give someone enough acid you can make them believe anything you want.What pissed me off even more was that they didn’t mentioned any punk girls that weren’t just groupies or girlfriends aside from Patti Smith and Debbie Harris. They literally only name dropped the Runaways ONCE and didn’t even say anything about them or the members even tho they were 100 x more punk than the rest of the bunch.

I can't say the book is all bad though. I mean, you have some moments that are kinda interesting if you like a particular band. The stuff at the beginning about the Velvet Underground was cool. Iggy Pop had his moments too and I do like Television and Patti Smith enough to find some moments of interest in their stories. And there were some talks with and about Jerry Nolan near the end that just about had me in tears. Immensely entertaining…I found these tales of unholy madness and drug-fueled abandon all too thought-provoking.” PUNKING THE INDUSTRY: 'Please Kill Me' was the bestselling book ever about punk music, and opened the floodgates for hundreds of oral histories done in the same style. McNeil: And they were [young]. I mean if you take someone and give them lots of acid [and] isolate them in a community, you can get people to do anything.

The words and drawings of Mary Rose present a gritty, powerful, no-holds-barred true experience of a teen girl so desperate to be loved, so eager to fit in that she’ll go to extremes that could cost her her life. Learn More…