Shh . . . Don’t Tell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Who Is Also Reponsible For Punk Rock
Posted by Contrarian on December 29th, 2006
The global conspiracy expands to include punk rock:
Take a fistful of New York attitude, more than a dash of kvetching, irony, humor and sarcasm; throw in the memory of the Holocaust and aspiring to assimilate; blend with lefty politics and social justice; stir up youthful disaffection, outsider status and rejection of your parents’ and society’s values, and you’ve got the makings of a movement. In the early 1970s, its musical expression devolved into punk. And according to author Steven Lee Beeber’s entertaining, engrossing and provocative new book, “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk,” it was “the most Jewish of rock movements.”
. . .
At a recent panel discussion at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, Beeber and several illuminati of the early New York punk scene discussed among themselves how Jewish sensibility, consciously or unconsciously, was instrumental in creating the punk sounds, symbols and shtick, and how the Jewish-owned CBGB was instrumental in unleashing every parent’s worst nightmare.
. . .
The nexus of the punk universe was CBGB on the Bowery in the low-rent East Village, former Jewish ghetto, founded by Hilly (Hillel) Kristal, former farm boy. His uncle, Benjamin Brown, founded the back-to-the-land cooperative farm movement around Hightstown, N.J., known as the Jersey Homestead, which mirrored Zionist principles in Israel, explained Beeber.
. . .
While Tommy Ramone, Lenny Kaye, Richard Meltzer (co-manager of the Dictators with Sandy Pearlman) and Handsome Dick Manitoba (a Dictator, real name: Richard Blum) “might find their connection to Jewishness essential, others such as Richard Hell, Chris Stein and Joey Ramone might find it tangential . . . [However,] there is no way to fully understand these musicians without exploring the Jewish part of them, whatever that may consist of,” he contends.
Case in point was Beeber’s contentious exchange with poet-writer-musician-artist Richard “Hell” Meyers, who refused to be interviewed or provide any information for the book. Hell, who was raised in Kentucky in the 1950s, at first denied his Jewish roots, declaring he didn’t want to be appropriated by any group. (Beeber was born in Atlanta and can understand his reluctance to out himself as a Jew.) Hell finally admitted his father was born Jewish but raised him to be a Communist and an atheist, to which Beeber related to the audience, who laughed knowingly, “That’s a definition of a Jew.”
Adam Sandler obviously needs to update “The Chanukah Song” to include good ol’ self-hating Dick Hell . . .
3 Responses to “Shh . . . Don’t Tell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Who Is Also Reponsible For Punk Rock”
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It’s obvious to anyone with any powers of perception who reads Beeber’s book that he has no integrity. He may be a Jew but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a deviously self-serving deceiver. Hell does not hide his ethnic background. You can read at http://www.richardhell.com/TP.html#xmas a newspaper column Hell published over a year ago where he describes it (and actually pre-empts Beeber’s obvious linking of atheism/Communism with ’30s Jews). Hell’s first book (WANNA GO OUT by Theresa Stern)described its author as having a Jewish father, and the protagonist of his first novel (GO NOW) is named Bernhardt. Hell just didn’t like or trust Beeber so he chose not to participate in his project. Hell had every right to do that. Beeber of course made him pay by portraying him as a “self-hating Jew.” Typical sleazy journalist tactic.
Why Hell sees Beeber as sleazy or self-serving takes greater powers of perception than my own. Beeber gave Hell numerous opportunities to go on the record regarding his feelings about his background, but Hell refused for the reasons discussed in Beeber’s book (namely that Hell felt anyone who referred to him as a “Jew” was co-opting his identity for their own purposes). Beeber did not in turn try to make Hell out to be a self-hating Jew. He described Hell as a deeply complicated artist who may have been affected by many aspects of his past, one of them perhaps being his having been raised by a father who was born Jewish. Beeber did not discuss Judaism as a religion, but rather Jewishness as a culture; much in the same manner that one might discuss Hell’s Southerness as part of his cultural makeup. Furthermore, Hell did not pre-empt Beeber’s ideas by publishing a column on his feelings about his Jewishness last Christmas. Beeber had already repeatedly tried to interview Hell for two years by that point and was in the midst of editing the final proofs of his book. The fact that he did not see that Hell had published a brief reference to his Jewishness at that time is no fault of Beeber’s — and it has little if any bearing on the questions he raises in his book. As far as I can tell, Hell was mostly angry that Beeber had interviewed others who knew him — something that any conscientious reporter intent on exploring the full story would have done — and something that Beeber had clearly told Hell he would be doing. There was absolutely nothing sleazy or disreputable about that, and if Hell weren’t so busy looking for insults, he might see that what Beeber wrote about him is very flattering in almost every respect.