Blank Generation (song)
"Blank Generation" | |
---|---|
EP cover | |
Song by Richard Hell and the Voidoids | |
from the EP Another World | |
Released | 1976 |
Format | EP |
Recorded | 1975, 1976 |
Genre | Punk rock |
Length | 2:45 |
Label | Sire |
Songwriter(s) | Richard Hell |
Audio sample | |
|
"Blank Generation" is the title track of Richard Hell and the Voidoids' 1977 debut album Blank Generation. A rewrite of Bob McFadden and Rod McKuen's 1959 record "The Beat Generation",[1] Richard Hell wrote the new lyrics during his time with the band Television, and performed it live with another band, The Heartbreakers.[2] The Sex Pistols' song "Pretty Vacant" was directly inspired by "Blank Generation".[3]
"Blank Generation" was previously released on the Another World EP in 1976.[4] Other versions of the punk classic were available as demos and on one 1975 limited-edition pressing as well.
An earlier live recording by the Heartbreakers, recorded at CBGB on July 7, 1975, appeared on the What Goes Around... album.[5] Demo recordings of the song also have survived.
A live March 1974 recording at CBGB with Television can be found on Spurts: The Richard Hell Story.[6]
"Blank Generation" was heavily sampled on rapper Amil's track "Get Down", from her 2000 album All Money Is Legal.
References
- ↑ https://www.discogs.com/Bob-McFadden-Dor-Songs-Our-Mummy-Taught-Us/release/9708453
- ↑ AllmMsic song review
- ↑ "I came back to England determined. I had these images I came back with, it was like Marco Polo or Walter Raleigh. I brought back the image of this distressed, strange thing called Richard Hell. And this phrase, 'the blank generation'. [...] Richard Hell was a definite, 100 percent inspiration, and, in fact, I remember telling the Sex Pistols, 'Write a song like Blank Generation, but write your own bloody version,' and their own version was 'Pretty Vacant'." --Malcolm McLaren in an interview in Please Kill Me, the Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Grove Press (1996), p. 199.
- ↑ Another World EP at Discogs
- ↑ The Heartbreakers: What Goes Around... at Discogs
- ↑ Spurts: The Richard Hell Story at Discogs