And that was such a fascinating time, with the whole urban guerillas, White Panther party. So I got to be in co-interviews with them. That early period seems like those might have been fun times but dangerous times too. And the Stooges started in the late '60s. Because ours starts at Warhol’s Factory and the Velvet Underground, I think our book is a continuation. But it branches out into all assets of the ’60s. Edie is this socialite who becomes a superstar. Our book is kind of a continuation of the book Edie, which is about the Warhol Factory. The books is really the first chronicle of that whole era, wasn’t it? Because that was when New York really started to change, in the early ‘90s. It had been 15 years and maybe people were getting nostalgic for that time in New York. As Legs says, he thinks most people didn’t expect the book to get published! I think it was just a time period that people were ready to talk. Because I think by the time period, there was just no interest in punk whatsoever. Was anyone reticent about being interviewed? We did about one-third of the interview together. But mostly they were original interviews done at that time. Some of the interviews used came from his archive. He had also done a lot of interviews for Spin and Punk Magazine. And I jumped on the last year before it got published. He worked on it for a year or two before me. When was this that you started working on it? You should do an oral history of punk.” He invited me to do it, and I knew if anyone else did it with him I’d be really jealous when I read the book.

I was reading all these transcripts and I said, “This story is so much bigger than just the Ramones. And Dee Dee was getting a little hard to work with.

But Legs was also interviewing Danny Fields and Richard Hell and kind of cut it together with Dee Dee. Legs had been doing a book with Dee Dee Ramone and had suggested to Dee Dee that they do it as an oral history because Legs was such a fan of the book Edie by Jean Stein and George Plimpton. City Paper spoke to McCain, before a reading in London two weeks ago. Beginning with the Velvet Underground, and continuing with the likes of Richard Hell (whose infamous t-shirt inspired the title) and the Ramones, it chronicles the story in unfiltered quotes from the musicians and friends who were there.Īs the authors mark its 20th anniversary, with an edition that includes a new afterword, they will visit Pittsburgh for a reading at the Ace Hotel on Monday, July 18. Click to enlarge Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain provided the first detailed document of the New York punk scene with Please Kill Me: The Uncensored History of Punk.

Legs mcneil and gillian mccain