Raised in a violent, unreconstructed Southern family, Thomas Ransom was not the first of his generation to imagine rock & roll as a way out. But he took it to the extreme, becoming an outrageous singer and, at 21, editor of the magazine that invented punk - before crashing in 1970s New York. Still, it isn't music that saves him. It's a soft-spoken painter, who turns out to be the most outrageous character of all. Tom's memoir-like story recounts adventures with both the famous (Springsteen, Clash, Stones, Lester Bangs) and the luminously obscure. And music is just the start.
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