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The legendary Richard Hell trades quips with MUSICBLITZ's resident smart-ass in this slam-bang Q&A sesh! The concept was simple: 20 questions via email, no edits, straight from the lips of the original punk rock potentate! And now … go to HELL!

1) What's the most bullshit thing ever written about you?
It's all bullshit. I like it when Bob Dylan writes about me though. He calls me Sara.

2) What's the biggest lie about you that you want people to believe?
Oh, Christ, let's see. Biggest lie. Lie. Big. Things they say. Lies I encourage. I want to say, "that I care," or "don't care." I don't know, your questions are too good -- my answers can't measure up! I wonder what you're thinking of. Mustn't it be something about my having "invented punk?" I mean that's always the first thing that's brought up by tired journalists, that then other even more half-assed journalists like to dispute, but it's not a lie, it's just chatter, though granted it does serve a purpose, in its pathetic way… I wrote a whole essay on the subject once so I know a lot about it.

3) Is it easier to get laid as an enfant terrible or as the eminence grise?
About even.

4) Thoughts on appearing in GQ's "punk icons" piece?
Well I refused twice, but they persuaded me, though I didn't get the Louis Vuitton shoes and Gucci coat I really wanted.

5) Art or money?
I don't follow you. Are you saying it's one or the other? In America, for someone like me, money isn't hard, except the question of what humiliating things you might have to do for it (I always think of what Mr. Bernstein said in Citizen Kane -- something like, "Money isn't hard to make, if all you want is to make money." And that's true.). Art is hard. Art that makes money is that much harder. I guess art is a "spiritual" thing, or at least about seeing, as far as possible, including "ethically," or the whole question about what the fuck matters, while of course money isn't -- it's about making people think they need something that you can make them think they can buy from you. I have to ask myself what Bart Simpson or Andy Kaufman or Jean-Luc Godard would do. I've pretty much managed to scrape by doing what I more or less want to do ("art") since I was in my early twenties. It's been real lean sometimes though, but I actually do feel lucky that way.

6) The last time you cried?
At movies. I'll never forget what that Ponette did to me a few years ago. It was mortifying, but interesting because I had no idea. I know I'm really pissed off but I didn't know how baffled and beat up I was. Apart from that it's Sheelagh Bevan.

7) Patti Smith, circa 2000 -- punk priestess or shill?
She creeps me out with those messianic pretensions -- it'd be laughable if it weren't so repellent. The "music" has never interested me either, but she's a good writer apart from song lyrics, and she's very good with a crowd which is as much a talent as anything. I hardly like anybody though, and it's ridiculous for me with my meager accomplishments to be putting anybody down. Still, the older I get the more I think just about everybody is an idiot, certainly big-ego media people.

8) Having been through it, is drug addiction as much of a dead end as, say, a 9-5 job?
Yeah.

9) You've recorded infrequently, and toured only sporadically -- how the hell do you survive?
I have simple needs and I charge for things other people do for free.

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