Legs McNeil is an American music journalist. He was one of the three founders of the seminal Punk magazine that gave the movement its name, a former editor at Spin, and former editor-in-chief of Nerve. His titles include Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, a book widely hailed as the Punk “Bible.”
Resident Punk: An Uncensored Adventure Story for Boys and Girls
From the co-author of the legendary multi-million copy international bestseller Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk comes Resident Punk: An Uncensored Adventure Story for Boys and Girls, by Legs McNeil and Crispin Kott – the story of the New York City punk scene and beyond, as seen through the eyes of its chief reporter and most irascible scoundrel.
Part memoir, part historical account, Resident Punk tells a different story than any you’ve heard before: the stories within the stories, oozing with sex, drugs and rock & roll. Along the way, Legs tussles with musicians and artists, groupies and writers, Golden Age Hollywood film stars and legendary figures of 70s New York. But most of all, Legs wrestles with his own demons, as they threaten to overwhelm him – as they would so many others.
In 1975, at just 19 years old, Legs McNeil – alongside John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn – co-founded PUNK magazine, and in doing so inadvertently chronicled the start of a movement. Often credited with popularizing the phrase “punk,” PUNK was like a Ramones song in semi-monthly form, with squirts of Creem and Mad magazines for good measure.
McNeil’s role in the whole thing? To be their Resident Punk – embodying the zeitgeist the magazine was looking to capture, however he thought appropriate that night: most of the time getting fucked up with musicians, artists, writers and hangers on; and sleeping with a different girl every day of the week. Legs leapt off the pages in both print and – thanks to Holmstrom’s iconic illustrations – cartoon form.
In Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, McNeil was seen as a cross between embedded reporter and enigmatic Zelig-like character along for the ride, putting other major players in the spotlight. Resident Punk puts McNeil right where he belongs: at the heart of the action, every bit a co-conspirator in the rise and fall of the New York City punk scene.
A sleazy, star-studded travelogue, and a unique cultural history – See Legs steal David Bowie’s hubcaps, wrestle Norman Mailer, and dance with 12-year-old Brooke Shields (but not date her until she was 21)! Resident Punk makes use of McNeil’s own scintillating memories and vast archives to provide a Legs’-eye view of many of the most eternally compelling moments in musical and cultural history. Legs’ position as something of an everyman – talented journalist, yes, and later to be found as the chronicler-in-chief of those heady days, but not fronting a band or cultivating a public persona beyond the inner circles in which he roamed – make him the perfect cypher for the reader. Whether they pogoed to I Wanna Be Sedated in a dingy basement bar in their teens, or experience punk for the first time through Spotify, Legs’ story creates a nostalgia for a world they may never have directly encountered – and gives the reader the ability to imagine that they, too, were there.
I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir
“A powerful story of punk-rock inspiration.” Rolling Stone
When the Ramones recorded their debut album in 1976, it heralded the true birth of punk rock. Unforgettable front man Joey Ramone gave voice to the disaffected youth of the seventies and eighties, and the band influenced the counterculture for decades to come.
With honesty, humor, and grace, Joey’s brother, coauthor Mickey Leigh, shares a fascinating, intimate look at the turbulent life of one of America’s greatest – and unlikeliest – music icons.
While the music lives on for new generations to discover, I Slept with Joey Ramone is the enduring portrait of a man who struggled to find his voice and of the brother who loved him.
The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Film Industry
A raucous and revealing oral history of the birth of the adult film industry, The Other Hollywood peels back the candy coating to let the true story be told – by the stars, movie makers, and other industry players who lived it.
And what a story it is: Through hundreds of original interviews, contemporary newspaper accounts, police reports, court testimony, and more, Legs McNeil and coauthors Jennifer Osborne and Peter Pavia trace today’s billion-dollar industry from its makeshift, mob-connected origins to the Internet age. Along the way we encounter porn stars such as Linda Lovelace, John Holmes, Traci Lords, and Savannah – along with countless mainstream stars, politicians, FBI agents, and more.
Epic, hilarious, and moving, The Other Hollywood contributes to the porn industry the one thing missing in all previous accounts: a vivid, tragicomic, irresistible humanity.
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
What Britain refined, America defined. Assembled by two key figures at the heart of the movement – Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain – and told through the voices of musicians, artists, iconoclastic reporters and entrepreneurial groupies, Please Kill Me is the decadent story of the American punk scene, through the early years of Andy Warhol’s Factory to the New York underground of Max’s Kansas City and later, its heyday at CBGB’s, spiritual home to the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie.
Please Kill Me goes backstage and behind apartment doors to chronicle the sex, drugs and power struggles that were the very fabric of the American punk community, to the time before piercing and tattoos became commonplace and when every concert, new band and fashion statement marked an absolute first.
From Iggy Pop and Lou Reed to the Clash and the Sex Pistols (the first time around), McNeil and McCain document a time of glorious self-destruction and perverse innocence – possibly the last time so many will find so much fun in the pursuit of excess.