Richard Hell (1949 - ) born Richard Myers, was the frontman for the early American punk band Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Their 1977 album, Blank Generation, contained many elements that would become identified with punk, from the nihilism of the title track (a play off of Rod McKuen's 1959 spoken-word song Beat Generation) to the frantic energy of the anti-romantic anthem, "Love Comes in Spurts".

Richard Hell was a high school dropout from Lexington, Kentucky who traveled to New York to become a poet, and eventually wound up in a tight social vortex that became the New York downtown punk scene of the mid-1970s. In his early twenties he formed a band with high school friend Tom Miller (who took the name Tom Verlaine), which became known as Television. The performances of Television at CBGB was a force that helped kick loose the first wave of punk bands, inspiring a number of different artists, notably Patti Smith who wrote the first press review of Television for the Soho Weekly News in June of 1974; started an affair with Tom Verlaine; and formed a band of her own that began performing on double-bills with Television, and later with The Voidoids.

Richard Hell split from Television after dispute over creative control: originally Hell and Verlaine had evenly divided the song-writing, but according to Hell, Verlaine later insisted on favoring his own songs. Verlaine remains relatively silent on the subject.

With former New York Dolls members Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders, Hell formed a band called The Heartbreakers (not to be confused with the later Tom Petty band), and later moved on to form a group of his own, the Voidoids.

Richard Hell, Dee Dee Ramone (of the Ramones), Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan were a clique of heroin users, according to Marky Ramone (who was originally a member of the Voidoids under the name of Marc Bell). Marky Ramone, Joey Ramone, Tom Verlaine and Patti Smith do not seem to have been members of this club, despite occasional rumors to the contrary.

Richard Hell is often regarded as the inventor of punk fashion: spiked hair (inspired, he says, by 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud) with torn and cut shirts. It's commonly believed that Malcolm McLaren had the Sex Pistols imitate Richard Hell's look. Richard Hell articulated the notion that punk fashion should be cheap and easily accessible to anyone, in contrast to disco's expensive, flashy styles.

In recent years, Hell has returned to literature. He published a quasi-autobiographical novel Go Now in 1996, and has released a collection of short pieces (poems, essays and drawings) called Hot and Cold in 2001.

External links

• Official press biography - http://www.richardhell.com/pressbio.html
• "Bio Core" from Richard Hell's site - http://www.richardhell.com/HellBio.html
• An interview - http://www.stompandstammer.com/cover0210.shtml
• A Joey Ramone interview - http://home.i-plus.net/scathach/carbona/gwarti.html
• A Marky Ramone interview - http://www.concertlivewire.com/interviews/ramonem.htm
• A 2005 interview where Hell excoriates the young interviewer's presupmtions - http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_03_004703.php