Fifty years ago, a series of events on both sides of the Atlantic conspired to give birth to a new strain of rock that was paradoxically both revolutionary and reactionary. It was branded as “punk rock.” Over about 12 months, it demonstrated an aesthetic, an attitude and a sense of fashion, although punk split into two distinct flavours. In the U.K., punk was political, an assault on the class system and sometimes violent. But in New York, it was more art than angst. More than a few poets, writers and painters were part of that original scene.
NYC punk’s epicentre back then was CBGB, a former biker bar on the ground floor of a flophouse hotel filled with the broken, addicted and indigent. From a small scene that began coalescing in late 1973 and early 1974, many a legend was born. Together with Britain’s spin on things, the punk of 1976 was the Big Bang for the creation of what we now call “alternative rock.”
Legs McNeil was a sub-100 lb teenager who was there. He’s chronicled things for years, starting with a ‘zine called Punk (more on that in a moment) along with a series of books, most notably Please Kill Me a 1996 oral history of the era co-created with Gillian McCain. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in music history.
Legs’ new book is Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the ’70s Punk Scene and Beyond. I had a chance to speak with him about it.
Alan Cross: How would you describe this book?
Legs McNeil: I hated being labeled a music journalist. I still hate it. I never wanted to be a rock critic. I wanted the people who actually did it, who were in the room, to tell the story. And I did that. It’s snapshots. I thought I’d put down different snapshots of my life, like Polaroids. I thought of it as taking Polaroids. Remember, people used to take Polaroids in the ’70s and that was all the rage. Andy Warhol used to take them all the time. And I thought, Oh, I’ll just write little Polaroids.
Alan Cross: Can we agree, more or less, that 1976 is the beginning of what the public would call punk rock?
Legs McNeil: Yes. We had been working on Punk magazine through 1975. [My friend] John Holmstrom got the idea to do this magazine about rock and roll and comic books. He wanted to call it Teenage News. I said, “That’s stupid. Count me out.” Teenage News sounded like Scholastic magazine, for crying out loud. I didn’t want any part of that.
Alan Cross: Who came up with the word “punk”?
Legs McNeil: I did.
Alan Cross: Why?
Legs McNeil: Because that’s what I’d been called my whole life. It just seemed obvious. What I wanted to do, and I think what Holmstrom wanted to do, was create a new Mad magazine, because John’s teachers at the School of Visual Arts were Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman. One of those guys had gotten John a job at Scholastic, where John had a comic strip called Joe. We were paid $300, and I was still in high school. If I wrote a four-panel Joe comic, I got paid $150. So John and I had already been working together off and on.
Get breaking National news
Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.
Alan Cross: Here’s the story I’ve heard: The first issue of Punk comes out with Lou Reed on the cover. It’s called Punk, and then you go around interviewing other musicians, artists and creators who were part of that scene in ’75 and early ’76. And it came to pass that any musician who was featured in Punk magazine was a punk rocker.
Legs McNeil: None of the people, including the Ramones, wanted to be called a punk rock band. In fact, Johnny Ramone asked Holmstrom to cross out the word “punk” in every magazine. No one wanted to be called punk when we put out the magazine. No one.
Alan Cross: So why did the term stick?
Legs McNeil: I have no idea. Because the media needed something to attach it to. We thought it was funny to put out a magazine called Punk. Doesn’t that strike you as kind of hysterically funny?
Alan Cross: I remember when punks were guys in leather jackets on motorcycles, committing acts of vandalism and beating up old people for their money. Those were punks. Ne’er-do-wells.
Legs McNeil: Yeah. I weighed 99 pounds dripping wet and I wore a black leather jacket, and everyone thought I was a tough guy. I was not a tough guy at all. John always wore a blue denim jacket and the same T-shirt, which said “We’re Almost Finished.” John was not a punk. John was an intellectual, a contrarian intellectual and a fantastic artist. And he taught me how to write, just by arguing with him. We argued about everything.
Alan Cross: So the word catches on for reasons we don’t understand. Probably because the New York Times or the New York Post or somebody picked up on it.
Legs McNeil: We put up these posters that said “Watch Out! Punk Is Coming!” all over New York City. It was like November 1975, and it was freezing cold. You had to slap the wheat paste on and get the poster up before it froze. It was awful. Debbie Harry said, “We thought it was another sh*tty band with an even sh*ttier name.” And then it came out, and it was this magazine, and it was hysterically funny.
Alan Cross: So the mainstream, regular people didn’t get the joke.
Legs McNeil: No. No one got the joke.
Alan Cross: Why did Johnny Ramone want the word removed from articles about the band?
Legs McNeil: Because they just thought they were a rock and roll band.
Alan Cross: Well, they weren’t.
Legs McNeil: I know, I know. To me, they were the first, besides Iggy. Iggy and the Stooges, Raw Power and Fun House, that was punk. And the MC5, and Patti Smith.
Alan Cross: So here we are in 2026, and this is sort of the 50th anniversary of punk. But punk didn’t just explode in 1976.
Legs McNeil: Punk never exploded. It never sold. But it became very, very important.
Alan Cross: Punk became very important to the right people. We have the MC5, we have Iggy Pop in ’71 and ’72, we have the New York Dolls in ’73, we have Television, CBGB opens, and in ’74 the Ramones play their first show.
Legs McNeil: And before that, we had the ultimate punk band, which was the Velvet Underground. They did everything first. You’ve got to give it to Lou and John Cale and Sterling Morrison and Nico. I mean, Nico invented Goth. How many different forms of music did the Velvet Underground invent? And those two albums are just fantastic.
Alan Cross: Pretty much incalculable. So take me back to 1976. You’re in New York. How old are you?
Legs McNeil: Nineteen. No, I was 19 in ’75. I lied about my age because I wanted to stay a teenager. I was born in ’56, so I was 20 in ’76, but I said I was 19. I had been 19 in ’75, when we started the magazine.
Alan Cross: Where exactly were you living?
Legs McNeil: In the Punk Dump. It was on 30th Street, at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. There were all these transvestites who came out at night. There was always a big traffic jam trying to get into the Lincoln Tunnel, and the transvestites solicited johns in their cars while they were waiting. New York was fantastic. It was the end of white flight. Every other building on the Lower East Side had been burned out by the landlord, because the rent wasn’t paying the mortgage anymore. They’d burn out their buildings, and they were immediately taken over by drug dealers who lowered down baskets. You’d put your cash in the basket, they’d hoist it back up, and then they’d lower down whatever drug you wanted, heroin or cocaine.
Alan Cross: Not to mention that the city itself was broke, and the garbage was piling up everywhere.
Legs McNeil: Yes, it was amazing. It was like a giant movie set. It was like Dresden after the firestorm, I always say. It was destroyed. No one wanted to live there except us. We thought it was fantastic. I was hanging out with Joey [Ramone]. We were drinking and going out and trying to pick up chicks.
Alan Cross: So were you one of those guys who was always in the room when things were happening?
Legs McNeil: Yeah, I was.
Alan Cross: How were you able to make ends meet? How did you pay the bills?
Legs McNeil: Girlfriends. We didn’t have a shower in the Punk Dump, so you’d say, “Hey, can I take a shower at your house?” And they’d let you, and you’d move in. And if you had a stripper girlfriend, they made 700 bucks a week in $1 bills, so you’d see her counting out the $1 bills. $700 was a lot of money then.
I was on a mission from God. You’ve got to remember, in the ’70s there were only two ways to be. You were either a hippie, a Grateful Dead, dope-smoking hippie, or a jock. Those were the only two things to be. And it seemed like the world was a bigger place, and there had to be more weirdos like us who didn’t fit into either. I hated sports. I was born with one leg longer than the other. Eventually they did a femoral shortening, where they cut two inches off my right femur. Before my operation, I always slouched to keep my legs even, which is why everyone called me a punk. I looked like a total asshole, which I was.
Alan Cross: Is that where the name “Legs” came from?
Legs McNeil: Yes, it is.
Legs has some incredible stories to tell about The Ramones, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, KISS, critic Lester Bangs, and even Diana Ross. It’s insightful, funny and a great window on some of the things that needed to happen for alternative music to exist today.
Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the ’70s Punk Scene and Beyond is published by BenBella Books. This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
