Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Blank Generation (1976)
Richard Hell knew how to pick bands, but he didn't always stick around. He was in early versions of Television and the Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders, but ultimately decided he wanted to run a band his way, so he formed another iconic group, Richard Hell and the Voidoids.
Born Richard Meyers in Kentucky, Hell moved to New York City after dropping out of high school in 1966, looking to become a poet. He formed a band called the Neon Boys with his high school friend Tom Miller, who changed his name to Tom Verlaine. The Neon Boys changed their name to Television in 1973 and the band became the first to play at the club CBGB. After clashing with Verlaine, Hell left Television in 1975 and co-founded the Heartbreakers with New York Dolls guitarist Thunders.
In early 1976, Hell, a bassist, formed the Voidoids with guitarists Robert Quine and Ivan Julian and added drummer Marc Bell, who later became known as Marky Ramone. Hell was inspired by the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, but were one of the first punk bands in NYC. The band's signature song was "Blank Generation," which Hell wrote while still in Television; the song had been played regularly with Television since 1974 and then later with the Heartbreakers.
Influenced by Bob McFadden and Rod McKuen's 1959 song "The Beat Generation," the song was first released on the Another World EP in 1976, with a reworked version showing up on the 1977 self-titled debut of Richard Hell and the Voidoids. The song opens with a riff by Julian that was inspired by the Who's song "The Seeker."
"I was sayin' let me out of here before I was/Even born, it's such a gamble when you get a face/It's fascinatin' to observe what the mirror does/But when I dine it's for the wall that I set a place/I belong to the blank generation and/I can take it or leave it each time, well/I belong to the generation but/I can take it or leave it each time."
The Voidoids were one of the first bands to wear "punk" fashion like ripped clothes held together with safety pins and spiky hair. After Malcolm McLaren had a management deal with the New York Dolls that fell through, he went back to England and said he took the Voidoids look and used with the Sex Pistols; John Lydon disputed that story.
"Triangles were fallin' at the window as the doctor cursed/He was a cartoon long forsaken by the public eye/The nurse adjusted her garters as I breathed my first/The doctor grabbed my throat and yelled, 'God's consolation prize!'/I belong to the blank generation and/I can take it or leave it each time, well/I belong to the generation but/I can take it or leave it each time."
The song was said to inspire the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant," even though songwriter Glen Matlock had never actually heard "Blank Generation"; he saw the song title and based it on that. The Voidoids toured England with the Clash in 1977 and the nihilist nature of "Blank Generation" was later reflected in songs like the Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K.," the Clash's "London's Burning" and Generation X's "Your Generation."
A few years after it came out, the Stray Cats had a hit with "Stray Cat Strut," which borrowed some elements from "Blank Generation" including the "whoo-oo" backing vocals.
But Hell was unable to follow up on his band's initial buzz because of his heroin addiction. The Voidoids didn't release another album until Destiny Street in 1982, but by this point, punk was out of style and new wave was all the rage. After this album flopped, Hell moved on to non-musical pursuits like writing and acting. He came out of retirement in the early '90s as part of the band Dim Stars with Quine, Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Don Fleming of Gumball. They recorded an EP and a 1992 album and played one show in public. He also appeared on albums by Shotgun Rationale and the Heads (an album featuring the three non-David Byrne members of Talking Heads).
Quine and Julian both went to play with many artists, including Matthew Sweet during his early '90s run of killer albums like Girlfriend and Altered Beast.
Even though the "Blank Generation" is now in its 70s (Hell himself is 75), the song still pops up in movies and TV shows from time to time; the band appeared in the 1980 movie Blank Generation playing the song at CBGB. A definitive classic of the genre.
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