When Debbie first told this story about her friend asking her to put the name of his band on his T-shirt I thought it would be interesting for the Richard Hell fans to read, so I put a message up on the message board

And then a little bit of a storm broke out with Roy Suggs (Hells webmaster) claiming the T-shirt story was untrue - looking back on it now, he doesn't actually put it down in a bad way, but he does cast doubt over Debbies credibility which pissed me off

Basically he claimed that Hell wrote and owned the T-shirt - click here for more details

Unfortunately for Roy, he shows two pictures that seem to confirm Debbies story - one with Marc wearing the T-shirt and another with Richard wearing it, but now the neck of the shirt is much more distressed which infers that Mark wore it first which would fit in with Debbies story

Plus all he said was "... I was sure was wrong and that I've confirmed ..." but he does not offer who or where he confirmed this with - if he'd spoken to Richard Hell and he'd said "Yes, that was definitely me, I remember it well", than I could accept that and Debbie must've just written on another T-shirt not the one in the publicity shots, no big deal

On the other hand if he spoke to Richard and he said "I think I did it" then it could easily have been Debbies writing on the T-shirt, lets face it, this whole thing was over 25 years ago - as he didn't say who he'd confirmed it with I could only assume he wasn't sure enough of his sources to put them down

I emailed Richard for more info, but no reply - which was fair enough, why get drawn into an argument over an old T-shirt which at worst could only get bogged down into one persons word against another

I tried to get in touch with Marky, but didn't get a reply - who could blame him - can you really remember what happened 25 years ago tonight ?

Time passed and then I saw on the same forum that Richard Hell himself had disagreed with the writing on the cd re-issue of Blank Generation "I WASN'T responsible for the corny design with the bubbly and fake-scratchy silly-looking lettering" - but this writing is the same as on the T-shirt - why would he be complaining about it if it was his own design ?

Yet again, it seemed to be proving Debies point, so I put another message up here

and of course the storm broke again - everyone seems to have an opinion on Debbie, those that were around at the time and didn't know her (hey, I've been going to gigs for twenty years and theres plenty people in the audience that don't know me) those who werent around at the time, but doubt her authenticity because they havent seen her mentioned in books (she was a chef, not a rock star !) there was even suggestions that she was claiming she did it so that she could "make some financial claim regarding her intellectual and artistic property" (well if it was Michael Jacksons millions then they may have a point, but Blank Generation like all great albums has a much higher influential status than sales - I think I'm right in saying it was out of print from its first pressing in 1977 until it was re-issued on CD in 91 - it's a classic, but its not a milion seller and even if it was, how does scrawling on someone elses T-shirt mean you can claim some cash ?)

Anyway, eventually Roy Suggs said that "Richard did tell me he drew the t-shirt when I asked him"

It would have been useful if he'd mentioned that in the first place, but no matter, this just means that Richard remembers writing on a T-shirt, so does Debbie - whether it's the one in the photos or not, who really knows

But, I'd got myself in too deep by now and I felt like Charlie Chan so I had a look at the vinyl cover of "Blank Generation" to see if the typeface was like the T-shirt or not - it wasn't which seemed to prove Debbies story again

Then I looked on the back and saw that Ivan Julian (one of two amazing guitarists from the VoidOids) was wearing what looked like the same T-shirt - this time further down the line with the sleaves now removed

Maybe, just maybe, Ivan could be the man who knew the whole story

So I sent him an email, explaining the whole story as best I could, saying don't worry if you don't want to get involved or cant remember, I understand - it's the past and no-one else who could know anything wants to get involved anyway

And he sent me this reply

So, at last - the full story from an independant witness - Hell did create the T-shirts in Roberta Bayleys black and white photo's, his memory was correct (if you have ever seen him in the Ramones video "We're outta here" you can see how poor his memory can be) that's good enough for me

That's not where it ends though - Debbie had already told me that the T-shirt was yellow and was written on with various different colours - I assumed that because the pictures were in black and white that this was the same T-shirt and I was ready to use this as proof of Debbie having written on the shirt if Richard had got back to me - who else could have known the colours if the photo was black and white (although ironically if he had got back to me I would have been proven wrong as Richards T-shirt probably was white !) so it makes sense that Mark would take it along to a photo shoot and further enhance the writing on the T-shirt there

So, Roy was right, Richards memory was right and Debbie was right about drawing on Marks shirt, although she was wrong about Richard wearing it

Aint it nice when theres a happy ending for everyone ?

Unless of course, Roberta Bayleys photo shows Mark writing on a completely blank T-shirt in which case who knows what the fuck T-shirt Debbie wrote on !

Ach, fuck it, it was over a quarter of a century ago on the other side of the Atlantic, not even Charlie Chan could sort this one out - I give up !