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Updated: December 2002 HOT AND COLD "Richard Hell is my hero, and this is why. Hot and Cold is a rhapsody of Hell's rigorous intentions, pure thoughts, and amazing feel for words. It's a defining history lesson, a moving, brainy personal exploration, and literature at its most uncompromising and greatest." —Dennis Cooper "But with the exception of those rare punk legends who didn't string themselves out on drugs, screw tons of scenesters, live in the East Village, and hang out with the likes of Johnny Thunders or Sid Vicious—or who did, but actually know how to write, like, say, Richard Hell, whose recent Hot and Cold: The Works of Richard Hell is a defining, even transcendent work of this genre—to detail one's late-'70s excesses runs the risk of being, well, excessive." —Dennis Cooper, Bookforum "Various and sundry works by Richard Hell...are assembled in Hot and Cold. Largely previously unpublished, and typically irreverent, lewd, sublime, non-sequiturous and anti-establishment—these works wrest the strange, funny, and disgusting out of most situations. In an early prose poem, Hell describes a bestiality fantasy; in a notebook entry, he describes a meeting with an ailing William Burroughs. Neo-punks and the alternative “whatever” crowd will enjoy this beautifully printed document of overlapping subcultures." —Publishers Weekly "Richard Hell, then Richard Meyers, ran away from home at age 17 to come to New York and be a poet—a romantic journey, tied as much to vices as verses... he slid from poetry to what became punk rock, gaining and losing something along the way." —"It's Only Rhyming Quatrains, but I Like It: Do Songs Succeed as Poetry?", The New York Times "The essays and art of 'the Prophet of Punk,' Richard Hell blows Hot and Cold." —Vanity Fair "When John Simon Ritchie (aka Sid Vicious) was still wearing Wallabees in London, the six iconoclasts pictured here—Chris Stein, Richard Hell, Joey Ramone, John Doe, Wayne Kramer and David Johansen—were setting the stage for a musical revolution in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit that would change the pulse of music forever." —Richard Hell photographed by Steven Sebring wearing head-to-toe Gucci and profiled in "Godfathers of Punk," GQ "In postmillenial America, those who dictate such things like their geniuses to suffer in button-down shirts and horn rims, preferably with earplugs and Ivy league pedigrees. This relegates a scribe like Hell, whose well-documented life has played out far beyond the borders of Quality Litland, to a kind of outsider, sideshow status. Which is Quality Lit's loss... Heartbreak, cynicism, insight, and loonily spot-on imagery... such a wondrous and wierdly inspiring compendium... He sought the sublime in the most squalid of circumstances. What's truly surprising, by the time you get to the end ofthis book, is that he has actually found it. Hell, as poet and essayist, has gone so deep into his own pain, he's come out the other side... Think Burroughs with a soul. Or Beckett with a ten-year habit and a string of groupies in a motel room he's already checked out of... I confess to a certain awe that someone who could stalk a stage like that could go home and write lines that blow your heart out of the back of your mouth.. From the beginning, Richard Hell has burned with the same blue flame of misfit insight and desperate beauty." —Jerry Stahl for Bookforum "Richard Hell, a fixture of the 1970s downtown New York music scene, is considered by many to be the original punk and the model for Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols. (We would have asked Hell to talk about this but it would have cost us a thousand dollars.) Here Hell talks with Rick Moody about Al Green's voice, Rimbaud's poetry, and his upcoming anthology, Hot and Cold... a thematically organized omnibus of Hell's poetry, lyrics, journalism, drawings, erotic and short prose pieces." —V magazine "It's an omnibus of arresting talent. Proving his generation's no longer blank, Hell fills the pages with electric riffs—in whatever medium or genre—of his singular and steady vision." —Rain Taxi, 2 page interview "Everything seen through a bemused, compound eye and filtered through a self-interrogating, complex mind. Here is Hell driving relentlessly through Interstates and disturbed states of mind, annotating anomalous roadside attractions with lyrical precision and recording his inner inquisitions with ruthless honesty. Cheek by jowl are metaphysical musings and narcissistic doodlings..." —David Dalton for Gadfly, featured interview with Hell "Part history lesson, part stream-of-consciousness tirade, the book encompasses childhood, fatherhood, and everything in between,. Although Hell is famously reluctant to discuss punk in interviews, Hot and Cold unearths it in all its glorious and grisly detail.....This is probably the closest the writer-turned-musician-turned-writer is ever going to get an autobiography....Hot and Cold is an intensely visceral piece of work filled with pain, pleasure, and acute insight. It stands both as a monument to the various intellectual paths Hell has trod over the years and as piece of history from one of punk's greatest visionaries." —Tema Celeste "...Hell's inner life is an open book. 'Hot and Cold'...bares Hell's soul. And other parts....There seems to be no revelation too private for Hell to include..." —Daily News "Hot and Cold: The Works of Richard Hell collects a bit of everything—his first poems, which date back to 1969; lyrics from two classic albums; and later work: violent sexual fantasies, penis self-portraiture and piquant essays on heroin, youth and aging. 'I like this book more than anything I've ever done, including records or anything,' says Hell. 'But nobody wanted to publish it. It was rejected everywhere.' It's hard to see why... Hot and Cold is occasionally 'shocking,' often shockingly good. It works as both punk memoir and a universal coming of age story about being young, rude and less stupid than you put on." —Gear "When the Kentucky-bred Richard Hell moved to NYC as a young teenager, few were aware he was to be instrumental in the assurgency of the punk rock movement that would turn the world on its head. Though his music (Voidoids, Television), art, writing, and performing, he has remained active as an innovative freethinker, and it's nowhere more evident than in his new book of prose, art and poetry, Hot and Cold. The poems deal with issues of self, isolation, anxiety, and sexuality, like the clever 'You Stranger I'm Tight and Juicy,' while essays on Johnny Thunders, The Ramones, and sid and Nancy offer Hell's personal takes on key scene events and figures." —Strength "...the best is saved for last. In a string of entries covering memories of his late father (heart-attack vctim at 38), Kentucky childhood, William Burroughs and a superb exploration of heroin addiction and its triggers (including his own), Hell's hilarious account of an insane turtle-hunting expedition with punk scribe Legs McNeil, jeered on by disbelieving hicksfolk, is inspired travelogue of the highest order. Huck Hell, anyone?" —Uncut "...punk prophet Richard Hell, another feather in powerHouse Books' urban sombrero, gave a solo reading of selections from Hot and Cold, his collection of poems, lyrics, essays, grocery lists, etc. to a standing room only crows in the historic catacombs of the National Arts Club." —New York Waste "...thi s compendium of Hell's oeuvre will be invaluable to hard-core fans..." —Classic Rock "If punk has a godfather, it's Richard Hell... Hell largely retured as a musician. Since then, he's published several books, including Hot and Cold, a career-spanning collection of writings and drawings that explore the darker corners of life." —Time Out New York "Hot and Cold is a look inside the head of a writer lead astray by 25 years of sex, drugs, and rock & roll." —the FADER "Hot and Cold is remarkable for its enthusiasm and generosity of spirit." —Blender "...contains examples of all of Hell's work from essays, poems, notebooks, drawings and photos to lyrics from every song he has ever recorded." —NME.com "If you dig raw books on punk culture, and even if you like Burroughs, Pettibon, Rollins, and hell, even Bukowski, you'd dig Hell's style. It's fucking awesome." —breakoutmag.com "...really give you insight into the mind of one of the founders of the Punk movement.... Highly recommended if you're into the nihilism of punk and poetry in the '70s. Stunning cover art too." —Stop Smiling "...rich, deep, and moving.... brutally honest, extremely delicate, raw, sexual, and downright depressing..." —Fat City "If you're looking for the perfect gift for the Hot and Cold running nihilist on your Christmas list...just go to powerHouseBooks.com" —New York Waste More Press Coverage !! |
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