Punk magazine have advertised new music. "Hottest groups in town" they said. I went to check it out at CBGB, the black hole at Bowery and Bleeker streets. In 1975 it wasn't a much crowded in it. Two years later CBGB
was the hottest place in the United States.
Then I met Julia Carpenter, she was 21, daughter of FBI officer. She worked as housekeeper at Peter Sprague's house
at 6 Sutton Square, Manhattan of course. Julie's best girlfriend Marianne Flint was a girlfriend of Mark Bell. Julie introduced us to each other.
Mark Bell was a drummer for Richard Hell. O Brothers, Richard
Hell was a key figure of punk's musical scene. Actually he was a father of punk with his album "Blank Generation." Mark gave to me that vinyl, as a present. He also critically despised my simple, black Tshirt, and brought me Richard Hell's Tshirt
instead white with a map of the subway lines on it. He said that Richard Hell gave many interviews wearing that Tshirt. Tshirt was slashed here and there.
At that time neither I, nor Mark Bell, have understood all the importance of Richard Hell. Not only "Blank Generation" was first album of totally new music of young protest, but Richard Hell influenced Malcolm MacLaren, who invented Sex Pistols later,
when he came back from New York to London. It is known now that MacLaren was very much impressed with music played by Richard Hell, so he wanted Sex Pistols to play similar music.
Looking back to myself, sporting in those years that "IRT Lines" Tshirt, I am thinking it was a sort of symbolical Tshirt, as sacred object, what tied me to punk. Both my books written in New York, "It's Me, Eddie" in 1976
and "Diary of a Loser" (1978), are written in aesthetics of punk. "No doubt about that I fuck all of you, fucken into mouth beaches, go all to cocks!" the very end of "It's Me, Eddie." If it is not punk, what is it?
Then Mark Bell was invited to join Ramones. I met Ramones many times, but my destiny forced me to move to Paris. When Ramones touring Europe went through Paris I went to
hotel "Meridian" to greet them. Couple of times visiting New York I would each time to see Marianne and Mark Bell, or "Markie Ramone" as he was rechristened by Ramones .
My interests have switched from literature towards politics in the end of the 1980s.
But, when founding
NationalBolsheviks Party in 1993 I contacted Egor Letov, biggest Russian punk idol of all times. NationalBolsheviks flag was first showed to public at concert of Egor Letov at club of "Armed Forces" at Moscow.
It was choking: four meters, red, white, and black monster, hanging above stage. Certainly it was irritating, provocative, outrageous punk, our flag. It is even still irritating, provocative, outrageous
now. Egor Letov was given National Bolsheviks Party membership card number 4. I believe that such card could be given to Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten (the Johnny Rotten of 1977) and such membership would be accepted.
Letov, as all punk artists, proved to be inconsistent, capricious, and unpredictable. He quarreled with us in 1996, came back to party later, then went to his own punk solitude. Sometimes he is declaring
himself Red and NationalBolshevik, sometimes he makes believe he doesn't know us.
But his presence in leadership of NationalBolsheviks Party gave Party thousands of recruits over the years. Not all of
them become hardworking party activists, some just have passed through Party, but punks were skeleton of Party organizations in first years of our existence.
Loud
denial of so-called values of civilization, grotesque, trash, screamigns, some borrowings of Rightist aesthetics, were common for New York City punk movement of 1970s as well as for first NationalBolsheviks in 1990s.
Beside of Egor Letov dozens of violent musicians were incorporated in NBP. "Pauk" Sergei Troitski of "Korrosia Metala," Dimtry Reviakin of "Band of Fours" and "Day of Donor," as well as my defunct wife Natasha Medvedeva and
leader (also defunct now) of "Pop Mechanics" Sergei Kuriokhin were among NationalBolsheviks.