Punk icon Legs McNeil reflects on co-founding PUNK magazine in 1975 at age 19, his role in chronicling the formative CBGB scene, and his chaotic career in a candid new memoir titled Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank and Stumbled My Way Through the ’70s Punk Scene (and Beyond), releasing September 15.
Few figures are as synonymous with the raw, chaotic birth of American punk rock as Legs McNeil. Decades after he helped coin and popularize the very genre defining the underground music scene, McNeil is peeling back the curtain on the booze, benders, and backstage battles that shaped his life. Co-authored with Crispin Kott and featuring a foreword by Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, the upcoming memoir traces McNeil’s journey from a difficult suburban childhood to the epicenter of downtown New York City’s underground cultural explosion, as detailed by Hudson Valley One.
Co-Founding PUNK Magazine and Naming a Movement
Back in 1975, the term punk
carried an entirely different connotation. When McNeil and his collaborators launched PUNK magazine alongside John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn, the bands playing at the legendary Manhattan club CBGB wanted nothing to do with the label. “Absolutely no one wanted to be called a punk back then,” McNeil recalled. “Not even the Ramones. Johnny Ramone demanded that we cross out every reference to punk in an article about them.”
That resistance did not last. Within a few years, cultural tides shifted dramatically, and suddenly everybody wanted to be called a punk! The Ramones quickly changed their tune, running around declaring themselves the primary architects of the movement. Driven by John Holmstrom’s zany illustrations, the magazine cast McNeil as its resident punk,
an illustration-heavy persona modeled after MAD Magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman. McNeil readily admits his initial credentials for the job were unconventional: My only qualification was that I was this huge fuck-up,
he said. I was barely literate and I wasn’t much of a writer at the time. But I was that guy.
“Having read this propulsive, gasp-inducing mosh pit of memories, I’m not 100% sure that 100% of Legs lived to tell this tale. But what’s left of him has written a knockout book.”
Patton Oswalt, actor and comedian
Witnessing the Implosion of the Sex Pistols
The memoir also takes readers on the road to witness the chaotic final days of the Sex Pistols. Tensions had reached a boiling point, with Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious outright refusing to pose together for a photograph. McNeil characterizes the performance as one of the most boring rock ‘n’ roll shows ever,
serving as the final performance before the group imploded and Rotten announced their breakup four days later.
That trip west also exposed McNeil to the stark culture clash between New York’s gritty scene and the West Coast. Arriving in Los Angeles hoping for an interview with Hugh Hefner at Playboy headquarters, McNeil instead found himself navigating hostile local reactions and fans radicalized by television coverage of English punk. Reflecting on the era, McNeil notes how quickly the movement mutated once mass media and corporate curiosity caught wind of it.
Legacy, Literary Success, and Quiet Life in Pennsylvania
Long before putting the finishing touches on his latest memoir, McNeil secured his literary legacy alongside co-author Gillian McCain with Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Published in 1996, the landmark oral history has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide. Its massive commercial success caught McNeil entirely off guard. None of the bands we were writing about sold,
he noted. Why would a book about them sell?
The profits from that project helped fund a major lifestyle change. In 1998, as New York City’s smoking bans took hold, McNeil packed up and left Manhattan behind, eventually settling into a three-story brick farmhouse built in 1870 located in a quiet Pennsylvania town of 1,500 residents. Now sober since his days working at SPIN magazine in the 1980s, McNeil lives far away from the relentless questions about his past Ramones encounters—even if his sharp, unfiltered opinions on music and culture remain completely unchanged.
