From dyslexic kid to 'Resident Punk': Legs McNeil on surviving the scene that made him a writer

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Set us as preferred Legs McNeil doesn’t come across as sentimental.It’s what happens when you’ve dumped out decades’ worth of memories and stories as part of your life’s work documenting the origins of punk rock for the better part of 50 years.

McNeil has made a career out of reliving the gritty tales of debauchery and explosive expression that gave rise to the Ramones and CBGB’s and shocking tales of New York in the 1970s.Having co-written the seminal tome on the subject, the 1996 N.Y.

punk oral history, “Please Kill Me,” as well as several other books, there’s a sense that he’s been talked out on a lot of the well-trodden territory of a culture that he captured as the co-founder of Punk magazine as the outlet’s wiley mascot, a.k.a.“Resident Punk.” This time-worn moniker is now the title of his new memoir (released Tuesday), “Resident Punk: How I Smoke, Drank and Stumbled My Way Through the ’70s Punk Scene (and Beyond).” Written with fellow author Crispin Knott and a foreword by Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, the book is a compilation of stories, insights and snapshots of the early origins of punk from the self-described “f— up who lived to write about it.” With a cartoonishly brash and hilarious demeanor in his younger days (and still a bit today) he became the avatar for a movement that turned him into not only a writer but one of punk journalism’s key figures.

Today, at age 70, he’s ready to tell his side of the origin story of punk from his view as a journalist, a friend and a fan of not only the Ramones but seminal artists like Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Andy Warhol and many more.Between copious hits from a vape, relaxing in his home office in rural Pennsylvania, McNeil talks about the strange process of writing about his own punk rock life for a change.

This intervie...