It was always interesting
[laughs]. Richard Hell got a
lot of criticism back in the day
for his lack of prowess on bass,
but I always defended him.
While he wasn’t technically
accomplished, he was always
coming from a place far from
the mundane. He invented
these great bass lines that
almost sounded illustrated—
like cartoon characters—and
Bob [Quine] and I would try
to fit something around those
lines. On the other hand, it
could sometimes drive us crazy
to work with Richard. Because
he wasn’t a “real” bass player,
we could spend up to a month
rehearsing a song in order for
him to get up to speed.
Julian playing an Ampeg Dan Armstrong guitar at New York City’s famed CBGB club in in 1978. “That’s the last guitar I ever sold,” he laments. “I miss it. Never sell guitars—ever.” Photo by Tanda
school and stole my sax. So,
the band and music instructor
had me switch to the bassoon,
which at first I found to be an
odd instrument. I came to real-
ly love it, but what made me
switch to the guitar was that I
wanted to create music outside
of the structure and hierarchy
found in classical music. I
didn’t want to just go to a con-
servatory and then find a job in
an orchestra playing the same
old compositions.
How did you and Quine
distribute the guitar
responsibilities?
Bob and I agreed we’d never
play on the same part of the
neck at the same time. I’ve
always found that it’s redundant
for two guitarists to be playing
the same open G chord. One
should find something different to play, to make things
interesting, and both guitarists
needn’t be constantly playing at
the same time. Another thing
about working with Bob was
that he was heavily jazz influenced, and he turned me on to
a lot of great music like Albert
Ayler records and odd Charlie
Parker outtakes—nonstandard
stuff that got me to incorporate
subtle nuances when soloing
and encouraged me to be more
adventurous in general.
You also absorbed a bit of
theory in high school. Did
that shape your approach to
the guitar?
It’s more like an analytical thing:
I know my scales and my inter-
vals, and I can easily communi-
cate with other musicians. I don’t
really think about theory when I
play guitar, as you can probably
tell from my playing. [Laughs.]
To me, it’s more about geometry
than anything else—I make
triangles, squares, and trapezoids
on the fretboard with my fingers
and see what happens.
What was it like to make geometric shapes with Richard
Hell & the Voidoids as part of
the first wave of punk?
How would you describe your
compositional process?
The impetus for my songs
often comes from my immediate surroundings. I wrote the
music to “Liars Beware” off [the
Voidoids’ 1977 classic] Blank
Generation when I had just
moved to New York and heard
about four or five sirens upon
