Author: Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain
Title: Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Year: 1996
Type: Book (Grove Press; twentieth-anniversary edition, 2016)
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk is a book by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, published by Grove Press in 1996. It tells the story of punk from the birth of the Velvet Underground in New York in the mid-1960s, through Detroit, the MC5 and the Stooges, to the New York Dolls, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Richard Hell and Television, told wholly in the words of the people who were there. In Robert Christgau’s reading, the book holds that punk took shape in New York, that drugs, fame-hungry suburban kids and English bands claiming the music as their own brought its bohemia down, and that the scene was not homophobic. McNeil, a founder of Punk magazine, said that he and McCain wanted the book itself to be punk. Christgau, in the New York Times Book Review, found it immensely entertaining but disputed several of its arguments, among them its account of race on the scene. Elyssa Goodman wrote in Vice in 2016 that it is considered one of the best music books ever written.
Grove Press published the book in 1996.1, 2 Elyssa Goodman reported in Vice in 2016 that the book began as a memoir Dee Dee Ramone, newly out of the band, wanted to make with McNeil; McCain “suggested the book could be so much bigger than just the one Ramone,” and it grew into an oral history of the whole scene. The twentieth-anniversary edition of 2016 restored twenty-two pages cut from the first, and by then the book had been published in at least twelve other countries.2 Goodman traces its path from the Velvet Underground’s beginnings in New York in the mid-1960s, out to Detroit, and back to the New York bands of the 1970s.2 Christgau described it as “constructed entirely of excerpted interviews with several hundred principals.”1 McNeil told Goodman that they did not want the book to be about punk: “we wanted the book to be punk.”2
Goodman and Christgau disagree about whether the magazine gave the music its name. Goodman describes McNeil as one of the founders of Punk magazine, “from which the music genre got its name.”2 Christgau, writing of McNeil’s years as Punk magazine’s “Resident Punk,” granted that McNeil named the magazine but not the music. The term punk rock, he wrote, “had long been floating around rock criticism,” especially at the Detroit magazine Creem, one of many publications other than Punk whose impact the book “minimizes by virtual omission.”1
The title’s phrase appears in the book’s interviews on a T-shirt, and the accounts of it differ.3 Hell’s Television bandmate Richard Lloyd says that Hell “had designed a T-shirt for himself that said Please Kill Me, but he wouldn’t wear it,” and that he wore it himself. Hell says, “I don’t ever remember wearing the Please Kill Me T-shirt,” though he remembers making Lloyd wear it. The photographer Bob Gruen recalls Hell walking into CBGB’s in it.3
The book was praised on publication, and Christgau’s admiring review disputed several of its arguments. Christgau called it “an immensely entertaining portrait of a bohemia.”1 It was excerpted in Vanity Fair, and Time Out New York and the New York Daily News named it among their ten best books of the year.2 Goodman wrote in 2016 that it is “considered one of the best and most important music books of all time.”2 Christgau wrote that, more than most oral histories, it “imposes arguments on its materials.” He found McNeil “fairly convincing” in denying that the scene was homophobic, but found it harder to credit the suggestion that “this almost entirely white scene wasn’t at least as racist as any other,” especially after Punk magazine’s John Holmstrom “climaxes the presentation with a pronunciamento worthy of David Duke.”1
“As Please Kill Me would have it,” Christgau wrote, punk’s “dissolute utopia” was killed by drugs, by fame-seeking suburban teenagers and by “those English posers convincing the world that they had invented punk rock.” He agreed “that punk crystallized in New York” but called it “myopic boosterism” to imply that the Sex Pistols, the Clash and their progeny “weren’t as momentous and valid as our bands.” He found the authors siding with the view that rock and roll comes down to being “un-allowed,” a “know-nothing bias” he traced to McNeil. “Probably because Please Kill Me has no use for artistic transcendence,” he wrote, Tom Verlaine, Tommy Ramone and David Byrne “are virtually absent,” while the Dead Boys “mouth on for pages.”1
Key contributions
- An oral history that locates punk’s making in New York, with a detour through Detroit, from the Velvet Underground to the Ramones and Television.
- A defense of the New York scene against the charge of homophobia, and a case against the English claim to have invented punk rock.
- A bohemia’s fall blamed on drugs, fame-seeking newcomers and the English bands’ claim to punk.
See also
- England’s Dreaming — Jon Savage’s 1991 history of British punk
- Our Band Could Be Your Life — Michael Azerrad’s 2001 history of the American indie underground
Footnotes
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Robert Christgau, “Inventing Punk,” The New York Times Book Review, July 28, 1996 (accessed October 21, 2026); verbatim. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
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Elyssa Goodman, “‘Please Kill Me,’ 20 Years Later,” Vice, July 29, 2016 (accessed October 21, 2026); verbatim. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7
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The passage NPR excerpted: NPR, All Songs Considered, excerpt from the book, © 2005 (accessed October 21, 2026); verbatim. ↩ ↩2
