Writer and rock historian Legs McNeil launched his career at age 15 by writing cartoon captions.
“John Holmstrom had a comic strip in ‘Bananas,’ a Scholastic magazine,” McNeil says. “He was paid $150 per strip.
“He did like six at a time. I would get $75 a piece. It bought a lot of beer and cigarettes, which is all I cared about.”
Holmstrom, an underground cartoonist and writer, is best known for illustrating the covers of the Ramones albums “Rocket to Russia” and “Road to Ruin,” as well as his characters Bosko and Joe in the aforementioned comic strip. He also co-founded Punk Magazine with McNeil, a high school friend.
“He has a new book now where he rewrites me out of history,” McNeil says without rancor. “John’s story changes every 10 years.
“He wanted to call the magazine ‘Teenager News,’ which I thought was a stupid idea,” McNeil says. “I said, ‘Why don’t we call it Punk?’ He said that was brilliant, that was great.”
McNeil and fellow writer Gillian McCain, who are co-authors of “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk,” will be in Savannah Jan. 27 for a literary/rock event at the Bay Street Theatre.
The word “punk” came to define the rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976. At the time, McNeil and Holmstrom were fans of The Dictators, whose lead singer was “Handsome Dick” Rick Manitoba, and came up with the idea for a boxing match.
“We had been listening to The Dictators’ ‘Girl Crazy,’” McNeil says. “John said, ‘You can be the resident punk and wrestle Rick Manitoba, but we can’t call you Eddie McNeil.”
After considering Muscles McNeil, Holmstrom came up with Legs McNeil and the nickname stuck. “We actually did have a drinking contest at Club 82 and I wore boxing trunks,” McNeil says.
“It was supposed to be the drinking contest to end all drinking contests. Andy Shernoff (a founding member of The Dictators) pulled my shorts down and I couldn’t get them up because of the boxing gloves. I was running around the ring with my pants down.”
Later, McNeil was the senior editor at Spin Magazine, and the founder and editor of Nerve. Ironically, he doesn’t like being called a music critic or even a music writer.
“I hate writing,” he says. “With ‘Please Kill Me,’ we let everyone tell the stories and the stories should be so good, you can hear the music, like the soundtrack.”
A song called “Weekend” on The Dictators’ album refers to “Eddie, a local punk.”
“It’s what everyone had called me all my life,” McNeil says. “It’s what they called the bad guys on ‘Kojak.’
“All the cop shows in the 1970s used to shoot in New York City,” he says. “No one wanted to be in New York City at that time and no one really appreciated the city unless it was a bunch of us nasty little kids.
“It wasn’t a big stretch to say, ‘Hey, punk.’ People called me that all the time.”
McNeil has a new website, www.justkillme.com, on which he is going to post some of the best interviews from the book. “I haven’t read it in a while except to do readings.,” he says. “It’s fun to go back now and read them.”
With Jennifer Osborne and Peter Pavia, McNeil is the author of “The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry.”
“I thought porn mirrored punk,” McNeil says. “I hadn’t realized there had been that many murders in the industry.
“It’s a $10 billion industry that no one wanted to talk about,” he says. “I worked on the book for seven years.
“It was interesting because it had all the morality — was it good? was it bad? — and it just got bigger and bigger. It had wild sex in it.”
Currently, McNeil is finishing a new book, an autobiographical account of the death of his girlfriend. Unbeknownst to him, she had been using black tar heroin and contracted a flesh-eating bacteria from it.
She died a gruesome, agonizing death after a leg amputation that was done in an attempt to save her life. “She died horribly,” McNeil says. “I was messed up for 10 years.
“I’m an alcoholic and haven’t had a drink since 1988. After she died, I had anxiety and tantrums and was taking Valium and Xanax.
“Finally, I went into rehab for trauma,” he says. “I worked with a trauma therapist who suggested I write my life down. I came home and started writing and it really did help.”
Free of anxiety and tantrums, McNeil was writing 10 to 12 hours a day. “I said I should take it out and see if anyone likes it,” he says.
“I took a tour of the Midwest and the kids seemed to love it. She died on my birthday, and I thought it would be better to be out reading instead of moping.”
The movie “CBGB,” which filmed last summer in Savannah and stars Alan Rickman as club owner Hilly Kristal, Ashley Greene as his daughter, Lisa, and Peter Vack as McNeil, seems to some critics to be based on or inspired by McNeil’s book.
“I don’t plan on seeing the movie,” he says.
“They have Holmstrom as being one of consultants and a gorgeous model playing Lisa Kristal, which is already kind of disingenuous to say the least,” McNeil says. “Hopefully it will be fun.
“Apparently they have some guy playing me and he’s better looking than I am. People are saying, ‘He’s really cute and you’re ugly.’”
The literary event is a departure for organizer Jim Reed, who normally produces film screenings and concerts. “For several years now, both with my friends in the Tiny Team and on my own via Knocked Out Loaded Concerts, I’ve independently promoted live appearances by internationally known, critically acclaimed musicians, songwriters and stand-up comedians that would otherwise never stop here,” he says.
“It was always my goal to expand that into booking speakers and authors, but while I’ve looked into that a great deal in the past, the right opportunity never came up. When I found out Legs and Gillian are planning a short East Coast tour and were intrigued at the notion of stopping in Savannah, I immediately reached out to them and we were able to hammer out an arrangement.”
Reed is a longtime fan of McNeil’s work. “It’s a treat for me to be able to present him here,” he says.
“Legs is a very interesting cat to me. As a child growing up in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains who always felt a bit apart from his immediate surroundings, I spent a lot of time enthralled with the NYC music world of the ‘70s and ‘80s — particularly the punk and so-called ‘no-wave’ scenes.
“Legs was a talented and driven guy who was in the right place at the right time,” Reed says. “He happened to be on hand right at the birth of what later come to be known as the first wave of punk rock, long before it was turned into a caricature and resold to gullible kids by the British.”
McNeil and Holmstrom recognized that something major was happening around the CBGB nightclub and a few other key venues, Reed says. “They seized on that moment to launch a DIY fanzine called Punk Magazine,” he says.
“Legs knew all the major and minor protagonists on the original punk scene, either as friends or acquaintances, and this allowed him almost unfettered access to their shows, as well as their personal lives.”
Reed’s friend and fellow musician Keith Kozel is DJ KZL. “He fronts local rock bands Superhorse and Gam, among others,” Reed says.
“He has an amazing and eclectic record collection in an incredibly wide variety of genres. He just has a voracious appetite when it comes to music.
“Keith was one of the first around here to simply play music that was great to listen to — whether or not it was geared for dancing,” Reed says. “He was instrumental in starting up the monthly Vinyl Appreciation Nights at Muse Arts Warehouse, which has now blossomed into a well-known scene of its own that appeals to vinyl record collectors and esoteric and adventurous music fans.”
Kozel will provide classic and little-known punk after the presentation. “I wanted to make this night more than just a standard book reading and Q&A with the authors,” Reed says.
“At that point, the whole thing just turns into a mixer-style party, where folks can listen to great punk music, meet and talk with the authors, get drinks from the bar and have their books and posters autographed.”
Reed plans to do more literary events in the future.
“I really appreciate what folks like Unchained, The Book Lady Bookstore and Seersucker Live are doing here in town to invigorate the local literary scene,” he says.
“They’re doing a great job of getting a wide variety of people to view literary and storytelling events with the kind of excitement and enthusiasm usually reserved for rock concerts,” Reed says. “That’s always been a goal of mine, and if a local audience is now developing for these sorts of things, I’d love for Knocked Out Loaded to offer its own unique sensibility to that scene as well.”
IF YOU GO
What: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, with DJ KZL
When: 8 p.m. Jan. 29
Where: Bay Street Theatre, 1 Jefferson St.
Cost: $12
Info: knockedoutloaded.com