I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography
Richard Hell (born Richard Meyers in Lexington, Kentucky), the punk-rock musician with the seminal punk bands Television and the Voidoids, presents an autobiography that ends in the early 1980s, when Hell stopped playing music and became a full-time writer. From an early age, Hell knew what he wanted: a “life of adventure.” He remembers growing up in suburban America in the 1950s and feeling like an outsider. He was bored with school, got into small scrapes with the law, and generally wished he were somewhere else. He eventually made his way to New York. He writes about the jobs he had (including stints in such iconic bookstores as Gotham Book Mart and the Strand) and the musicians he met, from Debbie Harry to Patti Smith. Hell is a fine writer and full of self-knowledge, and part of the pleasure of this randy, drug-addled memoir are his descriptions of New York during the bad old days when crime was rampant and the streets filthy. A compelling and entertaining memoir by a punk-rock pioneer. --June Sawyers