The last part of the book is disappointingly boring but most of this memoir is well-worth reading. ( )

Not very good. I don’t even think he writes the words Marquee Moon. Nope. Just searched the text. Ugh.

I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp
by Richard Hell
2013
Harper Collins
3.5 /5.0

I enjoyed reading about Richards childhood playing cowboys in the caves around Lexington, Ky, to touring with Elvis Costello, dope sick. His stories of running away as a young boy, and eventually moving to Greenwich Village, in New York; of starting a poetry magazine, and working in bookstores are full of dark and hard times. Its a good book, but hard to read.
This books focus is on his life until the late 1970's. His drug addiction and mental health were his biggest obstacles, his sexual addiction and abuse of women are only hinted at. It has obviously been a factor for most of his life. His life has never been easy. He seems lonely and misunderstood. " Richard Hell and the Voidoids " is still one of my favorite albums, the songs are so true and crafted with expertise. I am a fan, I love his talent, but I find it hard to like him. ( )

More (& more) songs about buildings and sex (& drugs).

I didn't hate this, Hell had a lot of connections to music, writing & art I love, so there were facts I found interesting, but this has to be one of the dullest autobiographies I've read by someone who lived in an interesting milieu.

The under-examined life is, apparently, worth publishing. I'm just glad I got this from a library and didn't buy it. ( )

As a music lover and someone who remembers NYC back in its grittier, down-trodden days in the 1970's and early 80's, I really loved this book. It brought back memories of all the places I used to hang out, like Gem Spa. Also, when I was 14-15 years old, and an unhappy high school student, I was reading about Richard Hell and Patti Smith and the downtown music scene in the periodicals in the high school library, and my brothers' NYC nightlife and music magazines, like Creem, Crawdaddy, and Soho News. Once I saw a picture of Richard Hell, I was hooked.

But happy memories aside, I would've loved this book anyway because the quality of the writing is really high, and the story is fascinating. It takes a lot for me to get through a book these days, and I read this one pretty quickly. It kept me turning the digital pages, that's for sure. It's honest, the writing is strange and unusual, definitely out of the ordinary, yet relatable, and the characters are colorful and interesting.

At times the author threatens to veer off into bitterness, but he balances the bitterness with self-deprecating humor, and if he says something derogatory or uncomplimentary about someone, he balances it with comments about their good points.

On the whole, I feel that I got a good look inside the world of the early punk rock movement and downtown NYC music scene of the late 70's, early 80's, and I'm glad I read this book and satisfied my decades-old curiosity about "Whatever happened to Richard Hell?"

One caution, and that is that Hell's descriptions of the women in his life at this time, friends and lovers, are erotic and focused primarily on their physical attributes, to an extent that his male friends and associates are not. Considering that one of the reasons he became a rock musician was so he could "get girls," that is perhaps not surprising, and it's also not surprising that women and girls were apparently throwing themselves at him. So if you're turned off by men talking about all the women they had sex with, maybe this isn't the book for you. On the other hand, it provided me with an insight into men that ... well, that I'd frankly seen before. It's not like they go to great lengths to hide their fascination with women.

It's a good book to read if you're interested in the downtown NYC music scene of the 70's and 80's, if you're interested in rock history, the punk rock movement, the early history of CBGB's, Patti Smith, the Ramones, Malcolm McLaren, the punk rock movement in Great Britain, and NYC in its less glamorous years, especially the Lower East Side. I also recommend it if you're interested in song lyrics and poetry, and the process of songwriting and performing with a rock band.

A thoroughly enjoyable read. ( )