Richard Hell and the Voidoids
By the summer of 1976, Richard Hell (born Richard Myers) had
formed and then quit arguably the two most exciting bands of the
original CBGB's scene - Television and
The Heartbreakers. If
those bands personified first-wave American punk's extremes of
brains and balls, his next unit neatly synthesized the two.The key was Robert Quine, a friend since
they'd worked in a
bookstore together. Teaming Quine with Ivan Julian - a dreadlocked
kid recently arrived from touring Europe with The Foundations (of Build
Me Up Buttercup fame) - The Voidoids' wired two-guitar
attack was as sophisticated as Television's, but more driving and
angular.
Based on I Belong To The Beat Generation - a
novelty send-up of Kerouac and crew by Rod McKuen -
Hell's
composition Blank Generation had been a staple of
early Television and Heartbreakers sets. It appeared on The
Voidoids' debut three-track EP, co-produced by Hell and Ramones
producer Craig Leon (and released on Stiff in the UK).
A reworked version became the title track of their 1977 LP,
produced by Richard Gottehrer, co-founder of Sire Records and the
man who wrote My Boyfriend's Back.
There's a minor controversy about the meaning of the title
track Blank Generation. Many people adopted the song as a
nihilistic anthem of the 1970s (inspiring The Sex
Pistols' Pretty
Vacant), but Hell maintained that he meant it as a comment on
"generation" songs (specifically The
Who's My
Generation), saying it wasn't really about being blank, it
was blank in the sense of fill-in-the-blank free choice against
the determinism of social labels.
 It was with some mix of irony and appropriateness then that Blank
Generation became adopted as a label for the 1970s New York
punk scene.
Seven of the ten songs on the original vinyl release were
written solely by Hell, while Liars Beware and Betrayal
Takes Two were co-written by Hell and band guitarist Ivan
Julian, while Walking On the Water is a Creedence
Clearwater Revival cover.
Blank Generation surpassed all expectations of Hell,
but - following one unhappy tour of the UK supporting The Clash -
The Voidoids soon came to a halt.
Within months of the album's
release, Hell sued Sire to get out of his contract, and he
wouldn't
make another album until 1982's Destiny Street.
While recording what was to be the second and final Voidoids
album, Richard Hell was - in his own words - "so debilitated
by despair and drug-need I was useless. The record ended up a
high-pitched sludge of guitar noise".
He released a redux version of the album in 2009, entitled Destiny
Street Repaired, featuring newly recorded guitar parts and
vocals.
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