{"id":857,"date":"2007-09-11T22:14:55","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T02:14:55","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-09-11T22:18:13","modified_gmt":"2007-09-11T22:18:13","slug":"richard-hell-multi-untalented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/richard-hell-multi-untalented\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Hell: Multi-untalented?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VQJSHY1K80c?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nIn thinking about how cool Robert Quine was, and in searching for a killer live clip of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, I was reminded of how weak Richard Hell&#8217;s career was beside that first Voidoids album. Oh, the second album has a couple of good tracks, especially a cover of Them&#8217;s &#8220;I Can Only Give You Everything&#8221;, but the truth is Hell got a ton of mileage out of a couple of good ideas, a great <strong>Look<\/strong>, and lord knows how many Sugar Daddies and Sugar Mommas. <\/p>\n<p>For starters, who funded the making of this film, entitled &#8211; with prescience of the man&#8217;s severely limited supply of greatness &#8211; <em>Blank Generation<\/em>? I don&#8217;t recall it having been released back in the days when I was young enough to have run out to see it. Have any of you seen this? Check out the plot synopsis from IMDB:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nada, a beautiful French journalist on assignment in New York, records the life and work of an up and coming punk rock star, Billy. Soon she enters into a volatile relationship with him and must decide whether to continue with it, or return to her lover, a fellow journalist trying to track down the elusive Andy Warhol.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>By the time I was 20 I didn&#8217;t need any more proof that Hell was one <strong>multi-untalented<\/strong> dude.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rIZ_QWdlB8c?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI knew Hell had put out some books of poetry, but poetry&#8217;s typically not my bag. No offense to any hard-working poets out there, but <strong>Jewel<\/strong> and <strong>Jimmy Stewart<\/strong> wrote books of poetry too. It&#8217;s probably pretty easy to get a book of poetry published if you&#8217;re gap-toothed with nice jugs or one of America&#8217;s greatest actors. Hell was pretty much of the gap-toothed\/great jugs variety, so I may have overlooked a truly telented American poet. If so, my apologies.<\/p>\n<p>I do recall seeing Hell in his <strong>post-lone great work prime<\/strong> in some other movie, <em>Smithereens<\/em>. in which he played pretty much himself as a lame boyfriend to a nice Jewish girl who was trying to be a punk. Or something like that. I think there were a lot of empowerment issues being explored. I just remember wishing I&#8217;d found the girl more appealing to watch while probably earning her NYU acting degree.^  <\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u99T0Ab0MNw?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Years passed, and every once in a while I&#8217;d try to check in to see if Hell would be doing anything new. He must have had a nice little income from whatever it was he was doing while seeming to do nothing. Finally there was that <strong>Dim Stars<\/strong> project, in which Hell, Robert Quine, some Sonic Youth members, and others delivered&#8230;a brief EP! An EP that stunk, mind you. They may have done something else down the road, but by this time I wasn&#8217;t checking back any time soon.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, about 5 or 6 years ago I finally got to hear the early Televison demos that Brian Eno recorded, when Hell was still in the band. They were <strong>terrible<\/strong>, primarily because Hell couldn&#8217;t play bass. What was he, someone&#8217;s girlfriend? I know he had those nice, full lips and chiseled cheekbones, but the guy was <strong>proto-bad<\/strong>! When we think of brilliant moves that our favorite artists made in their careers, we should rank the dumping of Richard Hell from Television high among the accomplishments of <strong>Tom Verlaine<\/strong> and <strong>Richard Lloyd<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><small>^Note: Director Susan Seidelman would go on to direct Desparately Seeking Susan, with both Madonna and Rosanna Arquette, two women who did a much better job of holding my interest. Hell had a small role in this film. Consider Seidelman one of his Sugar Mommas.<\/small> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In thinking about how cool Robert Quine was, and in searching for a killer live clip of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, I was reminded of how weak Richard Hell&#8217;s career was beside that first Voidoids album. Oh, the second album has a couple of good tracks, especially a cover of Them&#8217;s &#8220;I Can Only <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/richard-hell-multi-untalented\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}