Legs McNeil
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Legs McNeil is the co-founder and a writer for Punk Magazine. He was also a features editor at Spin magazine and editor in chief of Nerve.
At the age of 18, in 1975, disgusted with the hippie movement that seemed to be going nowhere, McNeil gathered with two high school friends, John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn. They were contemplating creating "some sort of media thing" for a living. They settled upon making a magazine, assuming that people would "think [they were] cool and hang out with [them]" as well as "give [them] free drinks". The name "Punk" was decided upon because "it seemed to sum up...everything...obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side".
Nicknamed the "resident punk" in the magazine, he claims (to much dispute) that he was the first person (along with co-founder John Holmstrom) to have coined the term "punk" to describe a certain type of music, fashion, and attitude. He says he came up with the name punk because Telly Savalas used the line "you lousy punk!" on the show "Kojak." According to McNeil: "After four years of doing PUNK magazine, and basically getting laughed at, suddenly everything was "punk," so he quit the magazine.
McNeil is also co-author of the book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk with Gillian McCain (Penguin Books, 1996). Legs is originally from Cheshire, Connecticut.
