Customer Reviews

From the Velvets to the Voidoids: The Birth of American Punk Rock

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
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From the Velvets to the Voidoids is an insightful and very detailed history of the birth of American punk rock...Heylin starts right where he should, with the seminal influences on the first wave of punk rockers... the Velvets, Stooges, Dolls, Suicide, etc.. and the often forgotten Cleveland scene... Then it's a fantastic ride through the history of Televsion, Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramones, Richard Hell, Pere Ubu, Heartbreakers and even the No Wave....Included with quotes from all the players is an excellent discography, bibliography, and even a CBGB's chronology... While you may not agree with all his opinions,, anyone who loves any of the aforementioned bands should thoroughly enjoy this book....

Clinton Heylin's FROM THE VELVETS TO THE VOIDOIDS is another of the essential oral histories of punk. Unlike Legs McNeil's PLEASE KILL ME, this work is a bit more scholarly and opinionated. It doesn't offer the vicarious lurid glitter of PKM, but it does fill in a number of the blanks in the story, and the two works together present an authoritative portrait of the birthplaces - New York, Cleveland and Detroit - of punk.

The primary value here is the extensive digging into the otherwise skipped-over Cleveland scene - home to key groups like the Electric Eels, Mirrors and Rocket From The Tombs - an amalgamation of musicians some of whom later morphed into The Dead Boys and the incomparable Pere Ubu. The Detroit sections are similarly valuable.

Highly recommended.

-David Alston

I enjoyed the coverage of the Cleveland scene and there is a nice chapter on Suicide, but on balance this book is irritating. Much of it reads like a wrinkly love letter to Patti Smith, Heylin absolutely loathes British punk and the book ends with a "Postlude" that is both a bilious screed against any and all other writers on punk and also a frank mash note to Smith. That's hardly writing on "The Birth Of American Punk Rock," as per the subtitle, but rather some kind of personal emotional problem better suited to a therapeutic setting. See p. 331 for Heylin's sad description of Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming:" this is just unforgivable. So: find a used copy and pick out the interesting bits, ignore the rest.

This fascinating book would make an excellent companion volume to Roni Sarig's The Secret History Of Rock and In The Fascist Bathroom by Greil Marcus, especially since Marcus' book mostly ignores the New York history of punk rock.

It details the origins of the US punk and art rock scene, like Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell & The Ramones who were the originators of many stylistic and musical traits evident in later bands. It's an American punk Who's Who and a rock 'n roll What's What, a detailed history and a valuable reference work.

Starting with the Velvet Underground, it also covers The Stooges, MC5, Modern Lovers, Electric Eels, Suicide, New York Dolls, Wayne County & The Electric Chairs, Blondie, The Heartbreakers, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, Lydia Lunch and other seminal artists.

This is done in the form of interviews with the artists concerned, so you hear about the times in their own words. The famous venues CBGB's & Max's Kansas City also get their due. The bibliography provides a cross-section of the most useful published sources on American punk and there's an extensive discography. Black & white photographs (some very rare, like a pic of Patti Smith's graduation) enliven the text. Highly recommended for fans of intelligent rock music.

The long, first person quotes by people who took part in the New York and Cleveland scenes make the book worth reading, but Heylin's essays on the Meaning Of It All are tiresome. He makes a good case that the NYC and British scenes developed independently of each other, and I like how he tracks the evolution of bands' setlists as they led up to their recordings, but when he strays from reporting to his opinions it's best to skim to the next direct quote. (Of these quotes, It's unfortunate that with all the excellent descriptions we get from Jerry Harrison of his time with the Modern Lovers, we only get one paragraph from him about his tenure with Talking Heads.)

Heylin swallowed whole the musicians' seemingly constant name-checking of Albert Ayler and reinforced this with constant references to jazz (Fred Smith's "jazz-oriented approach" on bass? huh?); using his ears more would have shown Heylin that Television's extended guitar-drums-bass jams on a D major chord have a lot more in common with the Grateful Dead than they do with the jazz of any era.

It was particularly ironic that in Heylin's "sic"-filled Postlude screed about the factual failings of those who dared to write about the same subject before or after him he refers to the Ramones as "Brooklyn boys." Minor mistakes like referring to Archie Bell and the Drells as a doo-wop group in the section on the Dolls are forgivable, but the Ramones' Queens roots are such a basic part of their identity that you have to wonder what else Heylin misunderstood. I didn't bother to finish the Postlude.

This book presents a history of New York music, starting with the Velvet Underground and then skirting around bands like Blondie, the Ramones, the Jerry Harrison bands Modern Lovers and Talking Heads, the Richard Hell bands Neon Boys and Television and the Heartbreakers and the Voidoids, the Peter Laughner bands Rocket To The Tombs and Pere Ubu, Patty Smith, the New York Dolls, the Stooges, and many others.

Not dealing with any of these players in a thorough manner, the book comes off feeling a bit scattered, as well as a bit fanboy-esque, considering that zines from the era are a main source of quotes and material. The doomed Laughner is given the most thorough coverage, and he comes off as the most thoroughly investigated character, although Hell is also given a pretty decent treatment. Great assortment of old pictures from the day.

its people like the guy from the 1st review that unfortunately dominate our culture today. This book and punk music is extremely important!! It has the heart and soul of essentially what music is all all about. Clueless idiots like the this guy should noit post reveiww on topics they no nothing about. Great book that fetures all the eaearly punk stuff even covering insanely obscure bands like Rocket From The Tombs whose members went on to the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu!! Great stuff!!