#dimstars

RICHARD HELL

“A cornerstone player, stylistically and musically, in the formation of New York punk rock during the 1970s, Richard Hell played in the embryonic versions of two famous bands, the Heartbreakers and Television, before going out on his own with the Voidoids. Hell (born Richard Meyers in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1949), along with fellow poets and musicians Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine, brought a sense of the doomed poetic to punk, as well as introducing the look of short, spiked hair and ripped clothing, with safety pins as fashion accessories. Malcolm McLaren was particularly taken by the look and tried his best to import first Hell and then Hell’s stylistic contributions to the early British punk scene. 

Hell and Verlaine (born Tom Miller) were schoolmates in Delaware before moving to New York and trying to reinvent themselves in the image of their Parisian poet idols, who had helped start the Romantic movement in poetry. In much the same way, Hell hoped to start a version of the Romantic movement in New York. Aiming to take the machismo out of rock and restore its roots in poetry, they published the poetry book Wanna Go Out under the name of fictitious prostitute Theresa Stern. They formed the Neon Boys in 1972, with Verlaine playing guitar and singing, and Hell on bass. After adding guitarist Richard Lloyd and drummer Billy Ficca, the band evolved the following year into Television. A power struggle ensued when Verlaine began to cut Hell’s material from the set, eventually causing Hell to leave Television for the Heartbreakers. After fighting the same battle with Johnny Thunders, Hell at last went solo, forming his own group, the Voidoids, and releasing the album Blank Generation in 1977. The Voidoids put out two more records with only Hell and guitarist Robert Quine before calling it quits in the early-1980s, partly due to Hell’s frustrations with rock ‘n’ roll. 

Hell recorded sporadically after the Voidoids’ breakup, most notably the Dim Stars project with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Don Fleming, and appeared in the occasional film, including Susan Seidelman’s 1982 portrait of the New York art-punk scene, Smithereens. Hell also continued to write poetry and novels (including Go Now in 1997 and Godlike in 2005); he served as film columnist for the magazine BlackBook from 2004 to 2006 and, perhaps most poignantly, penned the New York Times’ obituary on the closing of Television’s one-time home, CBGB.”

- Brian Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, (2006)

THE VOIDOIDS

1976-1982

“While Richard Hell was a brilliant songwriter, he needed musicians who were able to carry out his vision, and in his backing band the Voidoids--particularly the Coltrane-influenced guitarist Robert Quine and the inventive rock-oriented guitarist Ivan Julian--he found players who were more than up to task. Drummer Marc Bell was no slouch, either; after the Voidoids broke up, Bell joined the Ramones (becoming Marky Ramone) and toured with them for the next 16 years, with a brief hiatus for rehab. Following his stint with the Voidoids, Quine recorded several jazzy solo records and played as a session man for many artists, such as Tom Waits, Lou Reed, and Matthew Sweet, before committing suicide by heroin overdose in 2004.” 

- Brian Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, (2006)

Essential Albums