1. Since the late 1980s, Hell has devoted himself primarily to writing, publishing two novels and several other books.
22 Facts About Richard Hell
1. 2.
Richard Hell was the film critic for BlackBook magazine from 2004 to 2006.
3.
Richard Hell Lester Meyers was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1949.
4.
Richard Hell's father, a secular Jew, was an experimental psychologist, researching animal behavior.
5.
Richard Hell attended the Sanford School in Delaware for one year, where he became friends with Tom Miller, who later changed his name to Tom Verlaine.
6.
Richard Hell never finished high school, instead moving to New York City to make his way as a poet.
7.
In 1971, along with Verlaine, Richard Hell published under the pseudonym Theresa Stern, a fictional poet whose photo was actually a combination of both his and Verlaine's faces in drag, superimposed over one another to create a new identity.
8.
Richard Hell formed a highly successful band of her own, the Patti Smith Group.
9.
Richard Hell started playing his punk rock anthem "Blank Generation" during his time in Television.
10.
In early 1975, Richard Hell parted ways with Television after a dispute over creative control.
11.
Richard Hell claimed that he and Verlaine had originally divided the songwriting evenly, but that later Verlaine sometimes refused to play Richard Hell's songs.
12.
Richard Hell left Television the same week that Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders quit the New York Dolls.
13.
Also in 2009, Richard Hell gave his blessing to the public access program Pancake Mountain to create an animated music video for "The Kid with the Replaceable Head".
14.
Richard Hell played bass, sang lead vocals and wrote the lyrics for the album.
15.
Richard Hell guested on the 1993 Roller Coaster album by Shotgun Rationale, and co-wrote and sang lead vocals on the song "Never Mind" by the Heads, a 1996 collaborative effort between three former members of Talking Heads.
16.
Richard Hell's early poetry collections include I Was a Spiral on the Floor and Across the Years, both published by Soyo Publications.
17.
Richard Hell released a collection of short pieces called Hot and Cold in 2001.
18.
Richard Hell's nonfiction has been widely anthologized, including a number of appearances in "best music writing" collections.
19.
The mural, located in the city's North Limestone neighborhood, has three parts: two profiles of Richard Hell, and a quote from his autobiography, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp.
20.
Richard Hell has appeared in several low-budget films, most notably Susan Seidelman's Smithereens.
21.
Richard Hell had a non-speaking cameo role as Madonna's murdered boyfriend in Seidelman's 1985 Desperately Seeking Susan.
22.
In 1976, Richard Hell dated Nancy Spungen for a few months before she moved to England.