March 30, 2008

I bought an old copy of Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s entertainingly droll and depraved book, “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk,” at The Strand the other day, and I’m re-reading it.

Here’s a choice passage:

Richard Hell on the Ramones: ”I felt an immediate affinity with the Ramones. I dug them and didn’t have any reservations about them. They were just the way they always were. Lisa Robinson hired me to write about them in “Hit Parader”— the first article about them that was ever published nationally. All their songs were two minutes long, and I asked them the names of all their songs. They had maybe five or six at the time: “I Don’t Wanna Go Down in the Basement,” I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You,” I Don’t Wanna Be Learned, I Don’t Wanna Be Tamed,” and “I Don’t Wanna” something else.”

“And Dee Dee said, ‘We didn’t write a positive song until “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.’”

Download: "Rockaway Beach" by the Ramones. Album: "Rocket to Russia" (1977).

Paul Tatara