Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!: Day 281 - Richard Hell & the Voidoids

 Blank Generation - Richard Hell & the Voidoids

Sire

Produced by Richard Gottehrer & Richard Hell

Released September 1977

1990 CD Reissue with Bonus Tracks

A-Side
01- Love Comes In Spurts
02- Liars Beware
03- New Pleasure
04- Betrayal Takes Two
05- Down At The Rock And Roll Club*
06- Who Says
B-Side
01- Blank Generation
02- Walking On The Water
03- The Plan
04- Another World

(1990 Reissue Cover)

Bonus Tracks on 1990 CD Reissue
11- I'm Your Man
12- All The Way

*An Alternate Version appeared on the CD Reissue in 1990. Not totally sure why the Original Version was replaced. You can listen to the Original HERE.

Personnel
    Richard Hell – vocals, bass guitar
    Robert Quine – guitar, backing vocals
    Ivan Julian – guitar, backing vocals
    Marc Bell – drums

Singles on Blank Generation

Blank Generation / Love Comes In Spurts

Sire

U.S. 7" Release

October 1977

Blank Generation / Liars Beware / Who Says?

Sire

UK 12" Release

November 1977

 

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(I Could Live With You) (In) Another World / Blank Generation /You Gotta Lose

Ork Records

1976

(I Could Live With You) (In) Another World / Blank Generation /You Gotta Lose

Stiff Records

BUY 7

November 1976 

Blank Generation is the Debut Album from Richard Hell & the Voidoids. The song Blank Generation actually first appeared back in 1974 when Richard Hell was a member of Television and it was a regular in their live sets.

Blank Generation - Television

Live at CBGB's 1974

After departing Television in early 1975 and he joined up with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan who had departed the New York Dolls the same week and in May 1975 played their first show together as The Heartbreakers. Blank Generation would reappear as part of the set as would Love Comes In Spurts and You Gotta Lose. In 1976 the band recorded demos in Yonkers that featured these three Richard Hell songs. It's actually quite funny how Love Comes In Spurts as done by The Heartbreakers sounds uncannily like One Track Mind which was released by them as a single in 1977.

Not long after the demos were made Hell departed The Heartbreakers and formed his own band Richard Hell & the Voidoids. For guitarists Hell found Robert Quine and Ivan Julian - Quine had worked in a bookstore with Hell, and Julian responded to an advertisement in the The Village Voice. They lifted drummer Marc Bell (who would later go on to become Marky Ramone) from Wayne County. Though the Voidoids were not credited as such they did play on the Debut EP that was released by Ork Records in the States and by Stiff Records in the UK (see above).

That EP led to being signed to Sire Records.

The first time I ever heard Blank Generation was when I heard a cassette of the John Peel Punk Rock Special in December 1976. If I remember rightly someone had brought the tape into school a couple of days after it had been broadcast and we sat around and listened in amazement to some of the music he was playing!

I know that Richard Hell would probably be quite offended by me saying this but at times he does sound rather Tom Verlaine like with that whiney vocal inflection! But you could never imagine Verlaine performing this kind of music as Television were a bit more laid back in their style.

The album these days is regarded as one of the classics from the early Punk days and rightly so. It is easily on a par with the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads and Blondie Debuts.

Richard Hell & the Voidoids didn't release a lot of other material following this album. There was another cracking single in November 1978 - The Kid With The Replaceable Head. That single turned up on their only other studio album Destiny Street and that didn't appear until 1982! The reasoning behind was the serious drug problems that Hell had.

 

Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!

45RPM: #40: The Kid With The Replaceable Head - Richard Hell and The Voidoids (1978)

Happy Birthday

Richard Hell (Richard Meyers)

Born on this day in 1949

In the early 1970's Richard Meyers teamed up with school friend Tom Miller and drummer Billy Ficca to form Neon Boys. These three, with Meyers now called Hell and Miller named Verlaine were the founding members of Television. There's not masses of music around of the early trio but in 1975 a 4 track EP surfaced (which in 1991 was reissued as a 5-Track EP).

Richard Hell's time in Television ended in 1975 after some disagreements with Tom Verlaine. A 1974 film shows them in rehearsal. Television were one of the first rock bands to play at CBGB's and there's a recording of them from 1974 performing Blank Generation that Hell himself would release three years later with his band the Voidoids.

Next stop for Richard Hell was the formation of The Heartbreakers with former New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan. Strangely enough they had quit the Dolls in the same week that Hell quit Television. So at the end May 1975 they performed their first gig as a band at a club called The Coventry in Queens. By December it was all over as the band (now with Walter Lure added on guitar) basically up and left as they reacted to Hell trying to impose direction on the band. There's a pretty rough film from August 1975 of The Heartbreakers playing live that's worth checking out (Here). There's also footage of them performing Chinese Rocks as well, also from 1975. They were also performing Hell's songs like Blank Generation and Love Comes In Spurts (and their song One Track Mind sounds suspiciously like the Hell composition). There's a Demo floating around called The Yonkers Demos that are listed as 1976 but Hell was out of the band at the time and so it can't be from then but The Heartbreakers were in the studio in January 1976 so at least three songs do not feature Hell on the Bass but Billy Rath. Anyway, Click Here to have a listen.

The came a new band. For guitarists, Hell found Robert Quine and Ivan Julian—Quine had worked in a bookstore with Hell, and Julian responded to an advertisement in the The Village Voice. They lifted drummer Marc Bell (who would go on to become Marky Ramone) from Wayne County and the Electric Chairs. The band was named "the Voidoids" after a novel Hell had been writing.

Blank Generation finally got released in 1976 by Ork Records as the Blank Generation EP (featuring Another World and You Gotta Lose) but when it was released in the UK as a Limited Edition (5,000) by Stiff Records (BUY 7) Another World was the A-Side and Blank Generation the B-Side.

This lead to the deal with Sire Records and the re-release of Blank Generation as a single backed by Love Comes In Spurts and the Blank Generation album in September 1977.

Destiny  Street was their only other album, released in 1982 but inbetween there was this classic single released on Radar Records in 1978.

In 2009, Hell gave his blessing to the public access program Pancake Mountain to create an animated music video for "The Kid with the Replaceable Head". It was the Voidoids first and only official music video.

A-Side: The Kid With The Replaceable Head

B-Side: I'm Your Man