Legs McNeil

Nov 15, 2024 | airmail.news | Legs McNeil

I never paid too much attention to the West Coast–East Coast gangsta-rap wars of the 1990s, but I learned something interesting while finishing work on Pusherman: Frank Lucas & The True Story of American Gangster, a documentary about the notorious Harlem heroin dealer. Namely that Sean “Diddy” Combs’s father, Melvin Combs, had done business with Lucas and was murdered in his car, parked off of Central Park West in 1972, for being a suspected informer.

Sep 13, 2024 | airmail.news | Legs McNeil

“I got into this profession thanks to women,” Alain Delon, who died last month, said in 2018. “They’re the ones who got me into making movies.

Aug 5, 2024 | shepherd.com | Chris Payne |Lizzy Goodman |Legs McNeil |Gillian McCain

This book gave me a drive. Goodman’s account of the Strokes’ debaucherous rise in 9/11-era New York City ignited my passion for oral history and to tell the story of the music that made me. Downtown cool kid garage rock shaped popular culture immensely, but so did My Chemical Romance and their cohort (even more so, I’d argue). Up to this point (MMITB was published in 2017), 2000s emo was frequently misconstrued by those too old to have understood its impact or left out of the conversation entirely.

Oct 27, 2023 | airmail.news | Legs McNeil

When I interviewed the rock ’n’ roll photographer Bob Gruen for my book Please Kill Me, he told me that John Lennon had seen a U.F.O. in 1974. I put Bob’s Lennon-U.F.O. story to the side, since I knew it would only bring about more ridicule, and rock ’n’ roll, and especially punk rock, had already been ridiculed to death in the mainstream media. So I let it go.

Sep 30, 2023 | thedailybeast.com | Legs McNeil

On a chilly February afternoon in 1983, the baby shower guests made their way into Annie Sprinkle's Lexington Avenue apartment in Manhattan. Inside, a couple dozen people mingled around the "Sprinkle Salon," as Annie, an adult film star, called it. Her home was a sort of Andy Warhol factory of the porn and underground art worlds, a place where she'd hosted sex world luminaries alongside artists and celebrities like the singer Tiny Tim.