Richard Hell vs. Rod McKuen

Richard Hell and the Voidoids: one of the seminal punk bands of the class of 1977. Richard Hell was one of the first innovators of the punk style. Malcolm McClaren talks a lot about him in the punk lexicon: Hell had the style and the songs. The Sex Pistols came up with a song call "Pretty Vacant" which was a similar sounding idea to Hell's "Blank Generation." But in reality "Pretty Vacant" was a much superior song with a killer riff: it reeked of the blank stare of youth into the abyss. Hell's "Blank Generation" was not about a void or the emptiness within; it was fill in the blank, do it yourself.

In any movie or film about punk rock music, you always hear about Richard Hell. He was in Television and the Heartbreakers. His music is not much like Television at all. It's more traditional rock and roll: an angry Chuck Berry? Apparently the Heartbreakers didn't want to play any of Hell's songs, even though "Love Comes In Spurts" sounds a lot like "One Track Mind." In histories about punk, Hell is always the outsider and the free agent. Hell didn't have any relationship with the two main women of the NYC scene: Patti Smith or Debbie Harry. He preferred Patty Smyth of Scandal, who he later married.

Richard Hell and the Voidoids did two mediocre albums that didn't sell. They hardly toured. The two most memorable songs seem like copies of other people's songs. Richard Hell even wrote a novel, GO, which has a lot in common with On The Road. The second album Destiny Street contained a bunch of cover songs by Dylan and Ray Davies. So in the end, Hell as a serious musician is a bit nebulous, and he's much like a blank slate that people attribute values to.

In the 1980s, Richard Hell spent most of that time in a drug coma. He appeared in a few films. He wasn't a great actor either. He wrote a lot for magazines. I can't recall much of his criticism. He started some publications. He has published more books than he did records. But I can't recall anyone having read them. It's like people are more into the idea of a Richard Hell book, than the actual experience of reading one.

Cheetah Chrome and Dee Dee Ramone have published great memoirs about the punk era. Richard Hell rarely reflects on this period or even remembers it. (note: Hell's recent memoir was actually pretty good).

So all we are left with is RICHARD HELL: a punk rock pin-up. The inventor of the safety pin as fashion and the downtown scumbag look. I am not sure if Richard Hell was ever poor. He used to live in the same building as Allen Ginsberg. Okay, right place right time, and maybe genius happens by osmosis? So we are left with Richard Hell the author of one great song "Blank Generation" that inspired this whole punk thing. Then it turns out Hell plagiarized that song too. There was a song in the 1950s by Rod McKuen "The Beat Generation." It was like a Beat-ploitation song. As if Maynard G. Krebs himself wrote a song on bongos. McKuen himself wrote some light poetry that was popular but never taken serious.

Hell took this song by McKuen with its jazzy descending four notes (odd for punk standards) and updated the lyrics. The song "Stray Cat Strut" shares a similar chord progression, but the Stray Cats are actually doing something brilliant and musical with a tired boogie woogie riff. Hell's idea is basically a madlib for modern people. "Blank Generation" is a novelty song moreso than a huckster version like McKuen's original. Here are the two songs below. You can decide for yourself whether this is inspiration or plagiarism.

NOTE: The Sex Pistols also lifted "Holidays In The Sun" from The Jam's "In The City." But in case of the Sex Pistols, both their liftings seem to outperform the original source.