Legs McNeil – who along with Gillian McCain co-wrote what many consider the original punk bible, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk – gets even more personal with his newly published memoir, Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the ’70’s Punk Scene (and Beyond) with Crispin Kott.
I will say upfront there is much about McNeil’s story that I will not spoil. It’s too fun not to let readers discover for themselves.
It’s an engaging memoir which will likely spark moments of nostalgia for those there and open the world to those who weren’t.
McNeil starts the memoir at NYC punk rock’s ground zero, the now-shuttered CBGB. While I have never been to that institution, my sister has seen the later-stage Ramones there.
But alas, when crashing with my NYC-based siblings, I often visit the Joe Strummer mural. The East Village I see is the sanitized version, with a Starbucks being the first thing visible coming out of the train station. I was a kid growing up on Long Island in the era of most of this book, so it was a blast to take this journey through punk’s heyday on the Lower East Side.
McNeil quickly detours to describe his years growing up in “my least favorite place,” Cheshire, CT, with his friends John Holmstom and Ged Dunn. McNeil vividly the agony of growing up in the CT suburbs as he recalls a teacher calling him by his birth name (It is among the interesting bits I won’t spoil for the reader), dealing with his severe dyslexia, and enduring corrective surgery to shorten his right femur. After losing his father at just three months old, McNeil, his brother, and sister were raised by his now-single mom. His desire to escape hit him at an early age and only grew as the years went on.
His one obsession at the time was reptiles, and he became so well known for that he earned the nickname The Swamp Rat, which was shortened to Rat. Seems McNeil was not fond of that nickname, as it reminded him of Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman’s down-and-out character in the Best Picture Oscar winner Midnight Cowboy).
But he did manage to have a few adventurous moments —too many to describe and too good to spoil here- before finally finding his way to NYC. At 19, he and his friends Holmstron and Dunn created the seminal PUNK magazine. The magazine chronicled the burgeoning punk scene in NYC. McNeil’s official title at the publication was “Resident Punk.”
McNeil became good friends with many legends in making, including Joey Ramone, whom he calls his best friend. McNeil vividly sets the gritty atmosphere as he describes the struggles and successes of co-creating PUNK.
McNeil admits to being a bit of an asshole, a view apparently shared by many others. He also recounts his many sexual exploits with beautiful women, yet it does not come off as braggy or crass, Just a matter of fact for a handsome young man.
McNeil was a bit of a chaos agent, and it seems he was not altogether impressed by some of the established superstars of those days. He shares his resentment of one in particular who stole an important album from McNeil.
Along the way, he also befriends two of the most acclaimed and legendary American writers, and makes us a bit forlorn that we were not able to partake in the conversations but glad we get to “listen” in. He also dates a future music and cultural icon and dabbles in international conflict journalism as a respite from all things punk.
Resident Punk..is funny, insightful, and a hell of a fun read. It’s also very compelling and satisfies a need to feel on the ground in the East Village, meet icons before they became icons. Including McNeil himself. Lace up your Docs, enjoy the ride.
