The poet who became a punk icon through a shared, superimposed face

History · Published 2 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Before he was a cornerstone of the New York punk scene, Richard Hell was a wandering poet. Using experimental printing and even a fictional female persona, he built a literary identity that would eventually collide with the raw energy of CBGB.

Born Richard Lester Meyers in 1949, the man known as Richard Hell began his career far from the electric guitars of the 1970s. Moving to New York City to pursue poetry, he co-founded the magazine Genesis:Grasp in New Mexico with David Giannini. In 1971, alongside his frequent collaborator Tom Verlaine, Hell even adopted the pseudonym Theresa Stern. To create this persona, they superimposed their own faces in drag to form a single, fictional identity, eventually publishing the 1973 book Wanna Go Out? under that name.

This literary foundation provided the DNA for his musical revolution. As a member of bands like Television and the Heartbreakers, Hell helped pioneer the first wave of punk. His 1977 album with the Voidoids, Blank Generation, became a definitive text of the genre, with its title track later recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock. His departure from Television in 1975, following disputes over creative control, led to the formation of the Heartbreakers and later the Voidoids.

Hell's career has been a continuous loop of reinvention, oscillating between rock stardom and prolific authorship. Since the late 1980s, he has focused heavily on writing, publishing numerous novels like Go Now and Godlike, as well as collections of essays and poems. His life, marked by everything from running away from school in Delaware to a $50,000 archive purchase by NYU, remains a complex tapestry of American underground culture.

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