Richard Hell

Hot and Cold [Inscribed to Tom Verlaine]

New York: Vehicle Editions, October 1998. Preview edition, limited to 240 copies. Octavo (5-1/2" x 7-3/4") in blank white card stock wraps with pictorial dust jacket, [32] pages. Condensed preview edition of the exhaustive compendium of previously uncollected writing from punk musician, poet, and visual artist Richard Hell, inscribed to title page in black ink to former bandmate, collaborator, and best friend Tom Verlaine: "For Tom with thanks and more sincerely" Hot and cold

Hell and Verlaine met as high school students Richard Meyers and Tom Miller in Delaware and developed their identities alongside and against each other -- running away to New York City and forming the pivotal punk band Television together before their well-documented falling out in the mid-1970s. It wasn't until decades later, when both men had settled into quieter and more individuated lives of less-public creative production, that they resumed any sense of rapport. Hell related to this bookseller that he would see Verlaine browsing the dollar racks outside Manhattan's Strand Bookstore, occasionally presenting him with his latest book as their tensions thawed.

Hot and Cold contains much content from their time of collaboration, with poems from their jointly-created alter ego "Theresa Stern" as well as essays and photos regarding the Television/CBGB's days.

This copy was printed in a very short run of 240 copies, 40 of which were hardcover, by Annabel Lee's Vehicle Editions for the author's exhibition at Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery in October of 1998, in anticipation of the full edition which appeared the following fall of 1999. Corners gently bumped' horizontal indentation running from fore edge halfway to spine on front board; else clean and sound; Very Good (+). Clean unclipped dust jacket also holds the same indentation mark to front; trace edge wear besides; Near Fine. Item #2690
ISBN: 093142870x

Price: $1,800.00