I just finished reading Richard Hell's autobiography I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp. It was a delightful, and sometimes disturbing recount of Hell's life as one of the accidental pioneers of "punk"; you have him to thank for the spiky hair, torn clothes and safety pins thing, which Malcom McLaren stole and imported to England and repackaged for the Sex Pistols.
Hell was essentially a self-styled ego-driven "poet" and private eye of the NY CBGB's art and music scene of the mid 70s. In 1980 he made a film with Ulli Lommel alongside the beautiful, vapid french actress Carole Bouquet. At this point he was a full blown junkie, annoying his band whom he'd become bored with, and was experimenting with the idea of acting. He wasn't very happy with the way this film turned out, but it does include some great live performances of the band performing at the top of their game. It's a good showcase of one of my favorite oddball lead guitarists - the brilliant Robert Quine, who I think successfully expressed Hell's nervous, jittery, over-sexed, adolescent, poetic style effectively through his Fender Stratocaster (no easy task).
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