Richard Hell Albums (6)
'Destiny Street Repaired'
Release Date 1/1/2009
Tracks 10
Label Insound
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
It's a rare artist who can look at their work without imagining what they could change if they had the chance, and musicians are hardly exempt for this. Acts from Ryan Adams to Frank Zappa have chosen to revise albums from their back catalog after a distance of several years, for a wide variety of reasons but nearly always with a similar result -- almost invariably, fan prefer the original versions of the recordings over the "improved" editions that emerge later on. Richard Hell presumably thought he could beat the odds of this game when, after a long legal battle, he won back the rights to his 1982 album Destiny Street, the second and last LP he cut with his band the Voidoids. Hell has made no secret of the fact he was unhappy with the way the album turned out -- it was produced during a period of physical and psychological crisis compounded by serious drug addiction -- but since the original multitrack session tapes and stereo mixdown reels for the album had long been lost, there wasn't much he could do about it. When a tape unexpectedly emerged of a two-track mixdown of the original rhythm tracks for Destiny Street without vocals or guitar leads, Hell took the unusual step of overdubbing fresh vocals and solos onto these basic tracks, and he's named the finished product Destiny Street Repaired. The title points to the biggest flaw of this new variant on the album -- Hell has tried to fix something that wasn't really broken. Destiny Street may be flawed, especially compared to his landmark debut Blank Generation, but if you can sometimes hear the wear and desperation in Hell's voice, it also adds to the edgy power and drama of the album, and the songs often reflect or complement Hell's condition at the time, making the original version a more accurate reflection of the time and place that gave them life. Hell was also still a working musician when he recorded Destiny Street, and the new vocals sound like the product of a man who gave up performing more than twenty years ago -- Hell is a more confident and nuanced performer on these tracks, but he lacks the passion of his younger self and he slips out of pitch and meter more frequently. An even stickier issue rises from the new guitar parts on Destiny Street Repaired. Robert Quine, who was Hell's key musical collaborator in the Voidoids, was among the most distinct and gifted guitarists of his generation, and stripping these songs of his bracing, wiry solos robs them of something vital. Hell brought in three stellar musicians to record new guitar leads for this version, and Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, and Ivan Julian all do superb work that honors Quine's memory (he died in 2004, making it impossible for him to take part in the "repair" project). But ultimately, they're trying to fill a space left by Quine's musical thinking (particularly since they're playing along with rhythm parts laid down by Quine and second guitarist Naux), and none of them have come up with a piece that fits the puzzle quite as well as the original. Destiny Street Repaired is far from a failure -- Hell's songs still resonate, the energy of the album is on a par with the original, and if Ribot, Frisell and Julian don't achieve the impossible goal of truly replacing Quine's leads, they more than justify Hell's faith in their talents, and the extended blowing session that closes the title track is excellent. But Hell hasn't repaired Destiny Street so much as he's thrown a coat of paint over the parts he didn't like, and frankly the original colors were more flattering, even if the basic framework is still strong enough to bear plenty of weight. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
There's little arguing that Richard Hell was one of the most important figures in the early New York punk rock scene, and he left behind an impressive body of work that merged a distinctive and literate lyrical intelligence with the primal force of stripped-down rock & roll. However, by his own admission, the man lacked the ambition or inclination for a long-term career, and for the most part he pulled the plug on his life in music in the early '80s. But there's been enough lingering interest in Hell's music that he's periodically released collections of material from his archives, and this retrospective, Time, is essentially an upgraded and augmented version of his 1984 odds and ends compilation, R.I.P. In fact, disc one of Time contains R.I.P. in its entirety, with three additional tracks -- a unreleased demo of "Chinese Rocks" cut with Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, and two tracks from a 1979 session with the Voidoids, "Time" and "Funhunt." The material has been remastered, and the audio is certainly an improvement over the ROIR cassette version (and the European CD), though the Heartbreakers demos still sound like they were dubbed from wobbly fifth-generation cassettes and some of the demo material is a bit thin (though Robert Quine's and Ivan Julian's guitars sound noticeably stronger). The real attraction for longtime fans is the live material on disc two. There are 11 songs from an absolutely ferocious performance at London's Music Machine in 1977, which Hell (in his intelligent and witty liner notes) describes as "one of the most aggressive sets we ever played"; while the recording quality is only fair, it's a flamethrower of a show that puts the material on the fine Funhunt collection to shame. And the set closes out with four strong if less incendiary tunes from a 1978 gig at CBGB, with noted Hell fan Elvis Costello lending guitar and vocals to two songs. Richard Hell was one of the few performer from punk's first wave who was able to express nihilism and compassion at the same time and, while his two studio albums (Blank Generation and Destiny Street) are a better introduction to his pungent genius, Time is a fascinating postscript to a brief but highly memorable career. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
This spoken-word disc features New York City punk legend Richard Hell reading from his novel Go Now over a bed of typically jarring electric guitar work from ex-Voidoids/Lou Reed/Matthew Sweet downtown noise guitarist Robert Quine. Most of the 21-minute-and-34-second, one-track recording consists of Hell, in first-person stream of consciousness mode, relating the daily routine of a severely neurotic heroin addict. His writing is vibrant and direct, and manages to treat a now clichéd topic with humanity and style. While Hell's plainspoken delivery is at first off-putting, it soon emerges as the perfect vehicle for his intensely descriptive, seemingly autobiograhical narrative. His laid-back style and slight Kentucky twang at times recalls John Cale's chilling, Welsh-accented recitation on "The Gift" from the Velvet Underground's classic White Light/White Heat. Quine's sublime guitar playing serves as a perfectly tasteful and understated foil, always complementing, but never overwhelming, the reading. In a time when Henry Rollins' (not to mention Jewel's) success has caused every musician who ever fancied himself or herself a poet to unleash amateurish ramblings on a gullible, chronically dumbed-down America, it's great to hear a rock performer who actually has a flair for genuine literature and has something to say worth hearing. Any fan of musician-produced spoken word that aspires to be something more than bad, hipster-approved standup comedy should check out this disc. ~ Pemberton Roach, All Music Guide
'Funhunt: Live at the CBGB's & Max's'
Release Date 1/1/1990
Tracks 16
Label ROIR
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Compiled from a series of audience tapes recorded between 1978 and 1985, Funhunt is a good live document that falls short of being definitive. True, the sound quality is not exactly high-fidelity, but the frequently enthralling performances shine through the murk. Richard Hell is in full howling banshee form, and guitarist Robert Quine (who appears on all but one track) flails with hypercharged fury. It also helps that, for the most part, the track listing is well chosen, containing all of Hell's most famous songs -- "Blank Generation," "You Gotta Lose," and "Love Comes in Spurts," -- in nicely venomous, if not conclusive, versions. In addition, this is the only place to hear the title track, one of Hell's best songs of the period. The song selection, however, highlights one of the flaws of the record: some of Hell's equally classic, though more obscure tracks -- "Another World," "Destiny Street," "I'm Your Man" -- are omitted in favor of a smattering of covers, none of which are more than merely pleasant. What's more, the selection is almost completely from the late-'70s-era lineup of the Voidoids, which omits any tracks on which Hell himself played bass or had Marc Bell (later of the Ramones) on drums. Thus, for fans it isn't quite as necessary a recording as it could be. Still, for a portrait of intricate, articulate punk rock, Funhunt is hard to beat. ~ Victor W. Valdivia, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
No one ever accused Richard Hell of being the hardest working man in rock & roll, and not only did it take him five years to get around to making a follow-up to his first album, the remarkable Blank Generation, but he didn't even bother to come up with a full LP's worth of new material for 1982's Destiny Street; the opening song, "The Kid With the Replaceable Head," first appeared as a B-side to a single in 1979, and three of the album's ten tunes are covers, which hardly speaks well of his productivity. But if it's hard to imagine why it took five years to come up with Destiny Street, there's little arguing that Hell's second album is nearly as strong as his first. While the covers might seem like padding, the interpretations of the Kinks' "You Gotta Move" and Them's "I Can Only Give You Everything" are wildly passionate and overflowing with ideas and energy, and Hell's dour, jagged take on Dylan's "Going, Going, Gone" nearly surpasses the original. Robert Quine's guitar work on Blank Generation staked his claim as one of the most interesting and intelligent guitarists to emerge from the New York underground scene, and if anything, he was in even stronger form on Destiny Street, while new members Naux (on guitar) and Fred Maher (on drums) give him all the support he needs. And though Blank Generation made it clear Hell was among the brainiest members of punk's first graduating class, the handful of new originals here show he'd actually grown since his debut; on "Downtown at Dawn" and "Ignore That Door," Hell subtly but implicitly rejects the dead end of night-life decadence, "Time" is a meditation on mortality that's unexpectedly compassionate, and the title cut proved Hell had not only begun to recognize his own faults, but had even learned to laugh at them. Destiny Street sounds looser and more spontaneous than Hell's debut, but it's just as smart and every bit as powerful, and it's a more than worthy follow-up. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Richard Hell was one of the first men on the scene when punk rock first began to emerge in New York City as an early member of both Television and the Heartbreakers (he left both groups before they could record), but his own version of punk wasn't much like anyone else's, and while Hell's debut album, Blank Generation, remains one of the most powerful to come from punk's first wave, anyone expecting a Ramones/Dead Boys-style frontal assault from this set had better readjust their expectations. "Love Comes in Spurts" and "Liar's Beware" proved the Voidoids could play fast and loud when they wanted to, but for the most part this group's formula was much more complicated than that; guitarists Robert Quine and Ivan Julian bounced sharp, edgy patterns off each other that were more about psychological tension than brute force (though Quine's solos suggest a fragile grace beneath the surface of their neo-Beefheart chaos), and while most punk nihilism was of the simplistic "Everything Sucks" variety, Hell was (with the exception of Patti Smith) the most literate and consciously poetic figure in the New York punk scene. While there's little on the album that's friendly or life-affirming, there's a crackling intelligence to songs like "New Pleasure," "Betrayal Takes Two," and "Another World" that confirmed Hell has a truly unique lyrical voice, at once supremely self-confident and dismissive of nearly everything around him (sometimes including himself). Brittle and troubling, but brimming with ideas and musical intelligence, Blank Generation was groundbreaking punk rock that followed no one's template, and today it sounds just as fresh -- and nearly as abrasive -- as it did when it first hit the racks. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
