I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography - Hardcover

Hell, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062190830 ISBN 13: 9780062190833

Publisher: Ecco, 2013

Synopsis

“In his poetic memoir, Hell takes us on a tour of a lost world and stakes out his place in cultural history.”—Los Angeles Times

“A rueful, battle-scarred, darkly witty observer of his own life and times.”—New York Times

The sharp, lyrical, and no-holds- barred autobiography of the iconoclastic writer and musician Richard Hell, charting the childhood, coming of age, and misadventures of an artist in an indelible era of rock and roll.

From an early age, Richard Hell dreamed of running away. He arrived penniless in New York City at seventeen; ten years later he was a pivotal voice of the age of punk, cofounding such seminal bands as Television, The Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids—whose song "Blank Generation" remains the defining anthem of the era, an era that would forever alter popular culture in all its forms.

How this legendary downtown artist went from a bucolic childhood in the idyllic Kentucky foothills to igniting a movement that would take over New York and London's restless youth culture—cementing CBGB as the ground zero of punk and spawning the careers of not only Hell himself, but a cohort of friends such as Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, the Ramones, and Debby Harry—is a mesmerizing chronicle of self-invention, and of Hell's yearning for redemption through poetry, music, and art. An acutely rendered, unforgettable coming-of-age story, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp evokes with feeling, lyricism, and piercing intelligence both the world that shaped him and the world he shaped.

About this title

About the Author

Since retiring from music in 1984, Richard Hell has focused primarily on writing. He is the author of the journals collection Artifact; the novels Go Now and Godlike; and the collection of essays, notebooks, and lyrics Hot and Cold; as well as numerous other pamphlets and books. Hell has published essays, reportage, and fiction in such publications as Spin, GQ, Esquire, the Village Voice, Vice, Bookforum, Art in America, the New York Times, and the New York Times Book Review. From 2004 to 2006 he was the film critic for BlackBook magazine. He lives in New York City.

From the Back Cover

The sharp, lyrical, and no-holds-barred autobiography of the iconoclastic writer and musician Richard Hell, charting the childhood, coming of age, and misadventures of an artist in an indelible era of rock and roll...

From an early age, Richard Hell dreamed of running away. His father died when he was seven, and at seventeen he left his mother and sister behind and headed for New York City, place of limitless possibilities. He arrived penniless with the idea of becoming a poet; ten years later he was a pivotal voice of the age of punk, starting such seminal bands as Television, the Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids—whose song "Blank Generation" remains the defining anthem of the era. Hell was significantly responsible for creating CBGB as punk ground zero; his Voidoids toured notoriously with the Clash, and Malcolm McLaren would credit Hell as inspiration for the Sex Pistols. There were kinetic nights in New York's club demi-monde, descent into drug addiction, and an ever-present yearning for redemption through poetry, music, and art.

"We lived in the suburbs in America in the fifties," Hell writes. "My roots are shallow. I'm a little jealous of people with strong ethnic and cultural roots. Lucky Martin Scorsese or Art Spiegelman or Dave Chappelle. I came from Hopalong Cassidy and Bugs Bunny and first grade at ordinary Maxwell Elementary." How this legendary downtown artist went from a prosaic childhood in the idyllic Kentucky foothills to igniting a movement that would take over New York's and London's restless youth cultures—and spawn the careers of not only Hell himself, but a cohort of friends such as Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, the Ramones, and Debbie Harry—is just part of the fascinating story Hell tells. With stunning powers of observation, he delves into the details of both the world that shaped him and the world he shaped.

An acutely rendered, unforgettable coming-of-age story, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp evokes with feeling, clarity, and piercing intelligence that classic journey: the life of one who comes from the hinterlands into the city in search of art and passion.

Reviews

"Half of the beauty of rock and roll," Hell writes, "is that 'anyone can do it' in the sense that's it not about being a virtuoso but about just being plugged in in a certain way, just having an innocent instinct and a lot of luck." So much of Tramp is just a recounting of where that instinct took him. Mostly you read I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp for Hell's mind, which is weird and singular and superbly self-aware. He's a scumbag with an intimate, articulate understanding of scumbag psychology. "Being a rock and roll musician was like being a pimp," he writes, "It was about making young girls want to pay money to be near you." This isn't nice, but it's true—something you could say about most of this memoir. Hell's gift, then and now, is for finding a redemptive kind of ugly in otherwise blank, beautiful things, himself very much included. —Zach Baron

Richard Hell (born Richard Meyers in Lexington, Kentucky), the punk-rock musician with the seminal punk bands Television and the Voidoids, presents an autobiography that ends in the early 1980s, when Hell stopped playing music and became a full-time writer. From an early age, Hell knew what he wanted: a “life of adventure.” He remembers growing up in suburban America in the 1950s and feeling like an outsider. He was bored with school, got into small scrapes with the law, and generally wished he were somewhere else. He eventually made his way to New York. He writes about the jobs he had (including stints in such iconic bookstores as Gotham Book Mart and the Strand) and the musicians he met, from Debbie Harry to Patti Smith. Hell is a fine writer and full of self-knowledge, and part of the pleasure of this randy, drug-addled memoir are his descriptions of New York during the bad old days when crime was rampant and the streets filthy. A compelling and entertaining memoir by a punk-rock pioneer. --June Sawyers

Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062190830
• ISBN 13: 9780062190833
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304