Lots of "don't meet your heroes" material here, but many of the cast of characters are very humanized through this account. It's commendable that McNeil and McCain were able to weave a somewhat coherent narrative out of all of these disparate interviews, though there were naturally a few moments throughout that had jolting changes of subject. Considering the subject matter, that's okay. The interviews piece together a history of early punk in America, really told more from the lens of building the scene and culture, the people in the orbit, rather than the music itself. I think this is effective in that the listening is done as you go and after the fact, and now having many human moments to tie the music to can make these figures more sympathetic. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, in particular, come off as very tragic figures. It's often shocking, often funny, probably most often sad. I thought the funniest parts were the blatant contradictions from one interview to the next, like even with the titular t-shirt Richard Hell made with "please kill me" written on it. Multiple people attributing him to wearing it, even coloring their perceptions of his look and personality on that fact, and in the next paragraph, he's just like, "Oh yeah I never wore that are you insane? Someone might have killed me!"
Reviewed on Thursday, December 28th, 2023, 5:39am.
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