Richard Hell's Morning Routine

The punk author wakes up to Cafe Bustelo, but when it comes to food, he doesn't want any trouble

April 30, 2013

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Welcome to My Morning Routine, where we take a look at how people kick-start the day. And by "people" we mean celebrities.

If you know anything about punk rock, you know that
Richard Hell kind of started it all. He was spiking his hair with Elmer's glue, sporting shredded T-shirts, and screaming into the mic at CBGB before such behavior even had a name--and he published an autobiography about it all, called I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, in March. (See New York magazine's recent article about punk fashion for proof of his princedom.) So when he started our interview by saying, "I don't know if this is really appropriate, I may be too crude for you," we'll admit we were a little worried that this piece would end up containing more dashes and asterisks than legible letters. Fortunately, "crude" referred not to his language but to his culinary aplomb. Let's take a look at his morning routine.

I wake up anytime between 4:30 and 7:30 a.m. I mean, I tend to sleep four or five hours, six tops, and then I might take a nap later. I get up really early.

I immediately make this really strong cup of Café Bustelo espresso. I love the yellow package, it just really represents vitality to me. I would be happy if there was nothing in my apartment but packages of yellow Bustelo, for real. I want a brick wall made out of it.

I drink the coffee and sit in front of my computer, I make a kind of routine of wasting 45 minutes before getting to work. Looking at e-mail, reading the New York Times, drinking my coffee before I actually start on whatever project I've got going.

As far as ingesting some nourishment--which is really the subject of this--frankly, I realized after I agreed to do this that in reality I simply don't know how to feed myself. I have never known how to feed myself or take care of myself in many departments. When I was thinking about it, I mean, I wonder if I'm mentally defective in some way.

It brings to mind this lyric from a Bob Dylan song, off of Blood on the Tracks, called "Idiot Wind." He's excoriating a woman, and a refrain of it is "It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe." That's how I am about managing to eat. I mean, left to my own devices, I'm no good at it, I'm completely baffled by it. It's a problem because it ends up making me so hungry that I just don't care and go out and get a big pastrami sandwich or something.

I've managed to come up with a means of getting a few calories and some protein into myself during the day, but it's really crude. The phase I'm in right now, come two or three hours after I've gotten up, and my hunger is too great to postpone eating any longer, I make three soft-boiled eggs. Well, first I fill up a bowl with these crumbled crackers, Wasa Multigrain Crispbreads. I crumble up a few of those big crackers--because it's easier than making toast--and then I pour olive oil on them, and then add three soft-boiled eggs to the bowl. It takes 5 minutes. Literally, 5 minutes because I cook the eggs for like 4 and a half minutes, and then I empty the egg shells into the bowl. And that's breakfast. I've been doing that now for maybe 3 to 4 weeks, every morning. I'm not sure that that's healthy--they say you're not really supposed to eat eggs every day--but I'm hoping the olive oil will compensate. That's supposed to be healthy, right? That's basically what I eat until dinner.

My breakfast routine goes in cycles, because I'll get really sick of it before too long. It'll get too boring and familiar and I'll tire of it. So I'll have to come up with something else that I can do every morning. Immediately preceding this it was oatmeal, before that it was a mixture of blueberries and almonds. And for a long time it was crackers with vegemite, and usually I would follow that with one peanut butter and jelly cracker. Vegemite and crackers isn't quite enough, but I really like them.

For me, it's just mechanical during the day, I just want to have the fuel, and I don't want it to be any trouble. I wish I had something that I could just stick with that was edible and good for me, but it's been a lot of years of these random shots in the dark that ultimately have a pretty short life span.

(Photo credit: Inez & Vinoodh)