Please Kill Me: the oral history that made punk talk

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, was published in 1996. It tells the story of American punk from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s through the voices of the people who were there, from the Velvet Underground and the Stooges through the New York Dolls, the Ramones, Television and Blondie to the Sex Pistols and the messy aftermath of 1977. It is not a critical study or a scene-by-scene survey; it is a long, funny, often unpleasant conversation, edited into book form.

What does Please Kill Me cover?

The book opens in the mid-1960s, in the overlap between New York art, rock and the Velvet Underground, and follows the thread forward through Detroit and the Stooges, the New York Dolls and the Mercer Arts Center, the rise of CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, and the parallel London story of the Sex Pistols. It ends roughly with the collapse of the original New York scene and the dispersal of its characters into other bands, drugs and jobs.

The geography matters. New York is the spine of the book, with Detroit and London as important detours. Los Angeles, Cleveland, San Francisco and the wider American Midwest appear only in passing. That is a choice, not an accident: McNeil was a founding editor of Punk magazine, and the book reflects the world he was closest to.

The cast is large and mostly familiar: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. Lesser-known figures — managers, girlfriends, photographers, hangers-on, drug dealers — get plenty of room, and some of the best material comes from them.

How does the oral-history format work?

An oral history is a book built from interviews rather than from a single author’s narration. In Please Kill Me, McNeil and McCain conducted and collected interviews, then edited the transcripts into a sequence of short, attributed passages. There is no narrator explaining what things mean; the reader moves from voice to voice, and the story emerges from the gaps and overlaps.

The effect is immediate and often very funny. Speakers contradict each other, settle scores, remember things wrongly and say things they probably should not have. The editors’ presence is felt in the ordering and the cuts rather than in commentary, although short linking passages set the scene between sections.

It is a format with a long pedigree in music writing, and it has been copied a lot since. If you want a sense of how punk documents itself — paste, cut, arrange, let the voices do the work — it is not far from the logic of a zine.

What are the strengths of the book?

• Texture. The book gives you the sound of people talking: petty, funny, vindictive, occasionally generous. You get a strong sense of what it felt like to be in the room.
• Access. Many of the interviewees were not writers and did not produce memoirs. Their testimony exists here and in few other places.
• Momentum. The editing is tight. Short passages and frequent changes of speaker keep the book moving, and it reads quickly for its length.
• Anecdote as history. Details about money, flats, equipment, drugs and transport give a grounded picture of how a scene actually functioned.
• Influence. The book helped establish the oral-history approach as a standard way of writing about music scenes, and its tone — irreverent, unsentimental — is widely imitated.

What are the criticisms?

• Narrow geography. The book is often read as a history of punk, but it is really a history of a particular New York and London milieu. Scenes in other cities, and the broader American and European punk networks, are largely absent.
• Narrow cast. The same small group of people recur. Women and people of colour are present but often framed through the men around them, and some key figures are barely heard from.
• Chronology is loose. Dates and sequences sometimes conflict between speakers, and the book does not always resolve them. Readers looking for a clear timeline should use it alongside a more conventional history.
• Anecdote over analysis. The book is strong on atmosphere and weak on context: economics, politics, the music business, the wider culture of the 1970s. It rarely steps back to explain why things happened.
• The myth-making problem. The oral-history format rewards the most talkative and self-mythologising participants. Some stories have hardened into legend partly because they are repeated here.
• It stops early. Punk after 1977 — hardcore, Oi!, anarcho-punk, the independent scene — is outside its scope. For that, you need other books; our own list of essential punk books is a reasonable place to start.

Where does it sit among punk books?

Please Kill Me is best understood as a companion rather than a standalone history. It pairs well with Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming (1991) for the British side, and with later, more argumentative accounts of the American underground. It is also a useful corrective to tidy narratives: the people in it are rarely heroic, and the scene emerges as a mess of ambition, boredom, friendship and bad behaviour.

For readers coming to punk through the music rather than the mythology, the book is a good introduction to the names and the geography of the early scene. For readers already deep in it, the pleasure is in the voices and the details, not in the analysis. If you want the broader DIY infrastructure that grew out of this period — labels, zines, venues — those are separate stories, covered elsewhere on this site, from starting a small label to the fate of Europe’s DIY venues.

Should you read it?

Yes, with expectations set correctly. Read it as testimony, not as a reference work. It is excellent on atmosphere, friendship, rivalry and the ordinary mechanics of being in a band in the 1970s. It is weak on context, balance and the parts of punk that happened outside its chosen cities.

If you want one book that explains punk, this is not it. If you want a book that makes you feel like you were in the room while it was happening — and that will make you laugh and wince in roughly equal measure — it is still one of the best. The title, taken from a phrase associated with the scene, tells you most of what you need to know about its attitude.

Frequently asked questions

Who wrote Please Kill Me? Legs McNeil, a founding editor of Punk magazine, and Gillian McCain, a writer and editor. It was first published in 1996.

What period does it cover? From the mid-1960s New York art and rock scene through the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and the New York Dolls to the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the fallout of 1977. It does not cover later punk in any depth.

Is it a reliable history? It is reliable as first-hand testimony, but it is not balanced or comprehensive. It leans heavily on New York and on a small group of participants, and dates and details sometimes conflict.

What is the oral-history format? The book is built from edited interview transcripts, stitched together without a narrator. Speakers are identified by name, and the text moves between them to create a continuous, multi-voiced account.

FAQ

Who wrote Please Kill Me?

Legs McNeil, a founding editor of Punk magazine, and Gillian McCain, a writer and editor. The book was first published in 1996.

What period does Please Kill Me cover?

It runs from the mid-1960s New York art and rock scene through the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and the New York Dolls to the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the fallout of 1977. It does not attempt to cover punk after that in any depth.

Is Please Kill Me a reliable history of punk?

It is reliable as a collection of first-hand testimony, but it is not a balanced or comprehensive history. It leans heavily on New York and on the memories of a small group of participants, and dates and details sometimes conflict.

What is the oral-history format of Please Kill Me?

The book is built from edited transcripts of interviews, stitched together without a narrator. Speakers are identified by name, and the text moves between them to create a continuous, multi-voiced account.