| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
Comes as close to capturing the coruscated brilliance and vein-puncturing style of the Blank Generation as the written word is likely to get (MOJO )
Archly contentious and enormously enjoyable (SUNDAY TIMES )
Monumental and intensely entertaining (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
Archly contentious and enormously enjoyable (SUNDAY TIMES )
Monumental and intensely entertaining (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
Product Description
What Britain refined, America defined. Assembled by two key figures at the heart of the movement and told through the voices o musicians, artists, iconoclastic reporters and entrepreneurial groupies, PLEASE KILL ME is the full decadent story of the American punk scene, through the early years of Andy Warhol's Factory to the New York underground of Max's Kansas City and later, its heyday at CBGB's, spiritual home to the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie.
PLEASE KILL ME goes backstage and behind apartment doors to chronicle the sex, drugs and power struggles that were the very fabric of the American punk community, to the time before piercing and tattoos became commonplace and when every concert, new band and fashion statement marked an absolute first. From Iggy Pop and Lou Reed to the Clash and the Sex Pistols (the first time around), McNeil and McCain document a time of glorious self-destruction and perverse innocence - possibly the last time so many will so much fun in the pursuit of excess.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
DANNY FIELDS: When I wasn't getting laid elsewhere I went to Max's Kansas City every night. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
DANNY FIELDS: When I wasn't getting laid elsewhere I went to Max's Kansas City every night. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A candid account of the 1970's New York music scene. Punk before it was given a name. Anyone who is anyone contributes, and a few nobodies to boot. It is basically a selection of interviews pieced together enabling you to read about different accounts of the same situations, many of which involve the then up and coming, and now rather infamous, musicians of that decade; Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Johnny Thunders to name a few. This is SEX, DRUGS and ROCK & ROLL as its most extreme, and most disgusting.
Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the Lou Reed bar account. Truly horrible! You most certainly won't be able to put this book down but you might need to take a shower once you've reached the other side.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
McNeil & McCain were two-thirds of the team behind the original "Punk" magazine. Obsessed with the Velvets, MC5, Stooges, New York Dolls - They later had their own pet punk band in the Ramones. "Please Kill Me" rarely lets the music get in the way and sticks to the dirt and apocryphal that you really want from any good pop music book. Written entirely in interview quotes that retain a loose chronological thread it captures the dirty glamour of mid-70's New York perfectly. CBGBs, Max's Kansas City, Iggy, Johnny Thunders, Blondie, Richard Hell and a supporting cast of supergroupies are all here. Ultimately it settles the debate concerning where Punk Rock was invented and it's not on the King's Road. In "Punk" magazine terms the Sex Pistols were the death-throes.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
From the title ('The oral history of AMERICAN punk') you shouldn't be duped into thinking this is much to do with the UK scene. In fact, the story pretty much ends with the [...] Pistols arriving in America and the whole Sid and Nancy debacle.
What you do get, however, is the genesis of punk, American style. The authors take a Studs Terkel-like approach to interviewing and let the major and minor players give their take on the whole scene - from the early days of the Velvet Underground, through the MC5 and the Stooges, up through the Dolls, the CBGB scene and Patti Smith.
It's chock-full of great stories and hilarious anecdotes (Elton John trying to sign Iggy, by leaping on stage at a Stooges show dressed as an ape, for example) - and gossipy enough to make getting through it fun and easy. I've re-read my copy so many times now that the covers are coming off.
What you do get, however, is the genesis of punk, American style. The authors take a Studs Terkel-like approach to interviewing and let the major and minor players give their take on the whole scene - from the early days of the Velvet Underground, through the MC5 and the Stooges, up through the Dolls, the CBGB scene and Patti Smith.
It's chock-full of great stories and hilarious anecdotes (Elton John trying to sign Iggy, by leaping on stage at a Stooges show dressed as an ape, for example) - and gossipy enough to make getting through it fun and easy. I've re-read my copy so many times now that the covers are coming off.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Greatest book on punk history
I'm going to keep this short. If you love music and want to know the true origins behind punk (and the many genres it accidently created) then you need to read this.. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Deadly People
Not complete. But completely overwhelming.
This is NOT the complete history of punk rock, not every band is mentioned, classic albums are not discussed in detail, and the book ends (apart from an epilogue) in 1979 with the... Read more
Published 5 months ago by gonnemans
Falling into the past.
Falling into the past with Iggy and Bowie, strolling along to CBGB's, this book makes you feel part of history. Read more
Published 20 months ago by TheWallflower
Punk America
From Velvet Underground The Stooges and MC5 to The Ramones, the New York Dolls and the whole CBGBs scene this is brilliantly put together and compelling reading if you're at all... Read more
Published on 3 April 2010 by Butch Waghorn
My favourite book about music
Please kill me covers my favourite period in music the Punk Rock of the late seventies but also the bands/musicians who influenced and often became involved again during that... Read more
Published on 23 April 2007 by Mr. Paul D. Maher
Infatuating, intimate portraits of the icons of (pre-)punk
I became immediately infatuated by this book, and found myself dragged into it, like if it was a novell. The structure of this book, is no less than genius. Read more
Published on 7 Feb 2007 by PattiVirginia
Misleadingly-titled
The one thing you shouldn't buy this book for is a history of punk rock. As a history of the American garage rock scene of the late sixties and early seventies it's... Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2005 by "charly_crash"
Yank punks junk Brit punks
Interesting confessionals from American proto-punks desperately trying to say they invented punk. They certainly did, in the form of two-minute masterpiece geniuses The Ramones. Read more
Published on 7 Nov 2002 by Dobester
A good read
This book adopts the formula of quite a few other recent books about punk. Or maybe it was the first. Read more
Published on 29 Sep 2002 by R. Shaikh
AMAZIN
A great read on the culture that helped structure lives like mine. from the pistols to Andy Warhol. This is a great read. BUY IT...NOW!!!!!!! Read more
Published on 12 Jun 2001
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Film, Television & Music > Music > Rock & Pop
- Books > Biography > Historical > Social & Urban History
- Books > Biography > Medical, Legal & Social Sciences > Anthropology & Sociology
- Books > History > Cultural History
- Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Music > Styles > Rock & Pop > Styles > Punk
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Social & Cultural
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
