07/30/2026
Before it hits shelves, grab an advanced copy of Resident Punk directly from the author Legs McNeil at the Saturday, August 29th Phoenixville PRFM 11 Year Anniversary Super-Sized Spectacular! at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds!!!
Part memoir and part cultural history, Resident Punk offers a no-holds-barred expose chronicling the iconic and unforgettable music scene that would become defined by bands like the Ramones, Blondie, Television, the Heartbreakers, and Talking Heads, but it’s also so much more!
In 1975 at 19 years old, Legs McNeil cofounded PUNK magazine alongside John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn. In doing so, they inadvertently chronicled the start of a movement. Legs’s role in the whole thing? To be their “resident punk,” embodying the bold new zeitgeist the magazine was looking to capture. Now, just in time for the 50th anniversary of PUNK magazine, the coauthor of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (2.5 million copies cold!) tells the stories behind the stories in a sleazy, star-studded adventure. Legs shares the raw meat of his life, starting with his gritty suburban childhood and the teenage wasteland years that put him on a path to punk.
He invites readers along for the ride as he tussles with musicians and artists, groupies and writers, shady characters and legendary figures of ’70s New York. Featuring untold stories about Joey Ramone, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Alan Vega, Sinéad O’Connor, Tom Waits, Sid Vicious, Ozzy Osbourne, and Ron Jeremy, this book is an immersive look at the punk music scene as only a true insider can tell it.
Join Legs as he steals David Bowie’s hubcaps, hangs at CBGB with Norman Mailer, annoys Lou Reed, rafts down the Mississippi River with Richard Hell, faces off with corporate executives and uptight haberdashers, and wrestles his own demons—eventually settling in a small Pennsylvania town, where he’s very much still the resident punk.
Resident Punk (BenBella Books, dist. Simon & Schuster) by Legs McNeil with Crispin Kott features a foreword by Chris Stein of Blondie, and includes photographs by Stein, Tom Hearn, Bob Gruen, Roberta Bayley, Victor Bockris, and Jim Tynan.