Please Kill Me. The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk is the one story about the 1970s and the Blank Generation that has never before been told. Chronicling the birth of what we now call punk, from Andy Warhol's Factory to Max's Kansas City and CBGB's in the 1960s and 1970s, and on to the UK in the 1980s, authors Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain deliver the explosive story of America's most misunderstood pop phenomenon. Seamlessly constructed from a chorus of voices, Please Kill Me is oral history with all the narrative drive and excitement of a novel. In hundreds of interviews with all of the original players, including Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, Nico, Wayne Kramer, Danny Fields, Richard Hell, and Malcolm McLaren, we go backstage and behind apartment doors to relive what started in New York's underbelly as an exclusive art scene and became a truly revolutionary moment in music. Please Kill Me begins when CBGB's and the Bowery were a veritable no-man's-land: relives the heyday of the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, the MC5, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, Television, and the Patti Smith Group; and explores punk's demise - when it became front-page news and a new trend for latecomers.