Blank Generation is the debut studio album by American punk rock band Richard Hell and the Voidoids. It was produced by Richard Gottehrer and released in September 1977 on Sire Records.
Background
Kentucky-born Richard Meyers moved to New York City after dropping out of high school in 1966 aspiring to become a poet. He and his best friend from high school, Tom Miller, founded the rock band the Neon Boys, which became Television in 1973. They changed their names: Miller became Tom Verlaine, after the Symbolist Paul Verlaine, and Meyers became Richard Hell. The group was the first rock band to play the club CBGB, which soon became a breeding ground for the early punk rock scene in New York. Hell had an energetic stage presence and wore torn clothing held together with safety pins and spiked his hair; in 1975, after a failed management deal with the New York Dolls, impresario Malcolm McLaren brought some of Hell's ideas back with him to England and eventually incorporated them into the Sex Pistols' image.
Disputes with Verlaine led to Hell's departure from Television in April 1975, and he co-founded the Heartbreakers with New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan. Hell lasted less than a year with this band, and began recruiting members for a new one in early 1976. For guitarists, Hell found Robert Quine and Ivan Julian—Quine had worked in a bookstore with Hell, and Julian responded to an advertisement in The Village Voice. They lifted drummer Marc Bell from Wayne County. The band was named the Voidoids after a novel Hell had been writing.
Hell drew musical inspiration from acts such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Stooges and fellow New Yorkers the Velvet Underground, a group with a reputation for heroin-fueled rock and roll with poetic lyrics. Hell also drew from—and covered—garage rock bands such as the Seeds and the Count Five, both found on the 1972 Nuggets compilation.
Hell had written the song "Blank Generation" while still in Television; he had played it regularly with the band since at least 1974, and later with the Heartbreakers. The Voidoids released a 7" Blank Generation EP in November 1976 on Ork Records containing "Blank Generation", "Another World" and "You Gotta Lose". The cover featured a black-and-white photo by Hell's former girlfriend and unofficial CBGB photographer Roberta Bayley, depicting a bare-chested Hell with an open jeans zipper. It was an underground hit, and the band signed to Sire Records for its album debut. Bell eventually left and became a member of the Ramones in 1978, adopting the stage name Marky Ramone.
Recording
The album was co-produced by Richard Gottehrer, a songwriter associated with the Brill Building who co-penned his first hit in 1963 with "My Boyfriend's Back" and who performed in the group the Strangeloves, known for hits such as "I Want Candy".
According to Hell, they recorded and mixed the entire album at Electric Lady Studios in New York City across three weeks beginning on March 14, 1977. Two months later, they were informed that the album release would be delayed until September because their label, Sire Records, was changing distributors. "In the meantime, I had noticed a lot of things about the record that I thought we could have done better," recalls Hell. He asked their label if they could re-record the album, and after getting their approval, they booked three weeks in late June and early July at Plaza Sound Studio, located on the eighth floor of Radio City Music Hall. The final LP would use the Plaza Sound recordings for every song except "Liars Beware," "New Pleasure" and "Another World," where the Electric Lady recordings were retained. Their rendition of John and Tom Fogerty's "Walking on the Water" was also added to the LP during the Plaza Sound sessions; the song had been added to their repertoire after it debuted during a CBGB performance on April 14, 1977.
Final mixing began at Plaza Sound on July 13, but their work was interrupted a little after 9:00 p.m. by the New York City blackout of 1977. Electricity would not be restored until the next day, and mixing wouldn't resume until July 18 when all remaining studio work was completed on the same day.