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| The album of Richard Hell's demos – originally issued as part of the Destiny Street Complete – gets it's own release June 12. |
Richard Hell & the Voidoids: Destiny Street Demos
The 40th anniversary 2-CD deluxe edition of Destiny Street (titled Destiny Street Complete) was released earlier this year and contained three versions of the album, Richard Hell’s detailed liner notes, plus a fourth LP’s worth of demos and prior studio versions of the album’s material called Destiny Street Demos. Destiny Street Demos essentially compiles all of Richard’s songwriting output recorded between the release of Blank Generation in 1977 and the recording of Destiny Street in 1981. It includes demos, the original Radar Records single (produced by Nick Lowe), Hell’s 1980 single on Shake Records, and a performance of “Time” recorded at the Robert Quine memorial. For Record Store Day 2021, Omnivore is proud to offer Destiny Street Demos as a stand-alone clear vinyl LP on June 12th.
Destiny Street was the follow-up album to one of the greatest punk albums of all time, 1977’s Blank Generation, which was originally recorded in 1981 and released in 1982, but not to Hell’s satisfaction. As he says in his new liner notes to the recently released vinyl Destiny Street Remixed, “The final mix was a morass of trebly multi-guitar sludge.” Now, for the 40th anniversary of its creation, the album is at last presented the way Richard Hell originally intended: “The sound of a little combo playing real gone rock and roll.”
Richard Hell co-founded his first band, the Neon Boys, with Tom Verlaine in 1973. That band became Television. When Hell left Television in 1975, he formed, with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, both formerly of the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers. After another year, Richard departed the Heartbreakers and created Richard Hell and the Voidoids, which, along with other CBGB bands of the era, such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, formed the template for punk, the effects of which are still being felt. Apart from Hell on vocals and bass, the original Voidoids comprised Robert Quine (guitar), Ivan Julian (guitar), and Marc Bell (eventually “Marky Ramone”). The Destiny Street-era band retained Quine, but otherwise the backing lineup became Naux (Juan Maciel) on guitar and Fred Maher on drums.
Richard had wished forever that he could remix the original Destiny Street but was told by the record company that the original 24-track masters had been lost. In the early 2000s, Hell discovered a cassette from 1981 that contained just the album’s rhythm tracks (drums, bass and two rhythm guitars) and he realized he could add new guitar solos and vocals to that to obtain a cleaner, improved version of the songs. He enlisted Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell to overdub the solos (Quine had died in 2004 and Naux in 2009) and he re-sang everything. This was released as Destiny Street Repaired in 2009. Hell was pleased. Then, in 2019, three of the four original 24-track masters were discovered. Now, at long last, Destiny Street could be fully remixed, and Hell signed on Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) to help him with that. The result became the uncanny centrepiece of the 2-CD Destiny Street Complete extravaganza released in January of 2021 which you can still get right here; the stand-alone vinyl LP Destiny Street Remixed is also available.
Check out Richard Hell's demos for "Ignore That Door," "The Kid with the Replaceable Head" and "I'm Your Man" followed by the album's track listing below.
Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Destiny Street Demos
SIDE 1:
THE KID WITH THE REPLACEABLE HEAD
I’M YOUR MAN
CRACK OF DAWN
GOING GOING GONE
FUNHUNT
I LIVED MY LIFE
SIDE 2:
IGNORE THAT DOOR
SMITTEN
STARRING IN HER EYES
TIME
DON’T DIE
TIME (Live) [Bonus Track]
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