Weymouth: “Richard Hell is one of my heroes. He’s the erudite punk. I think he was Rimbaud to Tom Verlaine’s Verlaine, although Richard Lloyd was my favorite guitarist. Still, Richard Hell is incomparable. The iconographic imagery that he conveyed was startling.

“He made the Voidoids cook. He had that thing about him that stirred the senses. And no matter what anybody says to the contrary, he was a wonderful bass player. To me, he’s a legend.”

Frantz: “The song that made Richard truly punk was one that just cut a wide swath in the whole downtown music scene. It was called Blank Generation. I actually first saw him do that song with Television, and it was just as punk with them as it was with the Voidoids.

“Between Television and the Voidoids, Richard was in the Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan and Walter Lure, and they also did the song. It was different each time, but it was always the cool kind of ultimate punk song. Richard would never acknowledge this, but I understand that he copped the chorus from a Rod McKuen poem called The Beat Generation.”