Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk »

Steven Lee Beeber’s writing has appeared in Bridge, Conduit, Fiction, Heeb, Maxim, MOJO, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Playboy.com, Rain Taxi, Spin and elsewhere. He is the editor of Awake: A Reader for the Sleepless.

Based in part on the recent interviews with more than 125 people—among them Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Hilly Kristal (CBGBs owner), and John Zorn—this book focuses on punk’s beginnings in New York City to show that punk was the most Jewish of rock movements, in both makeup and attitude. As it originated in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the early 1970s, punk rock was the apotheosis of a Jewish cultural tradition that found its ultimate expression in the generation born after the Holocaust. Beginning with Lenny Bruce, “the patron saint of punk,” and following pre-punk progenitors such as Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, Suicide, and the Dictators, this fascinating mixture of biography, cultural studies, and musical analysis delves into the lives of these and other Jewish punks—including Richard Hell and Joey Ramone—to create a fascinating historical overview of the scene. Reflecting the irony, romanticism, and, above all, the humor of the Jewish experience, this tale of changing Jewish identity in America reveals the conscious and unconscious forces that drove New York Jewish rockers to reinvent themselves—and popular music.

Foreword

Authoritative history of Jews in punk.

Introduction: The Punks Were Jewish?!     xi
The Protocols of the Elders of Punk: Lenny Bruce: The Patron Saint of Jewish New York     1
The Punk Zeyde: Lou Reed: The Godfather of (Jewish) Punk     9
A Nice Jewish Boy: Danny Fields Begets the Shaman, the Misfit, and the Punk     27
Suicide Is Painful: Martin Rev and Alan Vega Bring the Jewish Streets Indoors     39
I'm Straight!: Jonathan Richman: Cool Nerd     49
The Ten Nuggets: Lenny Kaye and the Compilation of the Ten Punk Commandments     63
The Fiddler on the Bowery: Hilly Kristal Sets Up a DIY CBGB OMFUG     77
Juidos 'n' Decaf Italians: Irony, Blasphemy, and Jewish Shtick     87
A Jewish American Band: The Hebraic Foundations of the Ramones     103
Der Ubermensch!!!: Comic Books, Golems, and Super-Jews Christen Punk     123
A Jewish Hell: Richard Meyers Creates a Jewish Mother's Worst Nightmare     133
The Shiksa Goddess: Chris Stein Creates the First Punk Princess     149
Hotsy-Totsy Nazi Shatzes: Nazi Imagery and the Final Solution to the Final Solution     163
The New JAPS (Jewish American Punks): Jewish American Women and the Birth of Female Punk     179
Write Yiddish, Cast British: How England Stole Jewish Punk     193
A Post-Punk History of a Pre-Cool Jew World: How the Radical JewishCulture Movement Took NY Punk Further Downtown     211
Epilogue: One of Us     225
Afterword: Seeing God     231
Source Notes     233
Index     243