Danny Fields

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Danny Fields was a journalist, record executive, manager, scenemaker, and influential figure on the New York and Detroit underground punk rock music scenes during the 1960s and 1970s.

Born 1941, Fields grew up in Richmond Hill, Queens. He attended Harvard Law School in 1959, but was disinterested in his studies and left during his first year. He moved to Greenwich Village around 1960, briefly enrolled at New York University, and became involved with the downtown arts and music scene, through which he eventually fell in with Andy Warhol's social circle. He hosted a radio show at New Jersey's WFMU during its groundbreaking free-form years, 1968-1969.

Fields became a journalist, then got more deeply involved with Warhol's Factory scene. He shared a loft with Warhol actress Edie Sedgwick, and wrote eyewitness accounts of Lou Reed's Velvet Underground during their early years. (He later penned liner notes for the band's historic Live At Max's Kansas City album, recorded in 1970 but released in 1972 after VU disbanded.)

After drifting away from the Warhol circle, he was hired by Elektra Records as a publicist. Elektra, once primarily a folk music label, was having huge success in the rock market with The Doors. Fields, then based in Detroit, recommended that the label sign the cutting edge Detroit bands the MC5 and The Stooges, the latter launching the career of Iggy Pop. Both bands served as huge inspirations for the US and UK punk music movements of the mid- and late-1970s.

After he moved back to New York, Fields discovered the Ramones at the club CBGB, and helped get the band signed to Sire Records. After he became their manager, he took the band to England in 1975, where they had a huge impact, inspiring the nascent UK punk movement, which spawned The Sex Pistols and The Clash. However, back in the US, Fields took the Ramones on their first tour across the U.S. with little success outside of New York. Frustrated with the lack of commercial breakthrough, the band fired him. Their song "Danny Says", possibly lampooning the lack of success, is written about him. Fields also managed Steve Forbert and Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers. After leaving the music business, he returned to journalism, ghostwrote the bio for Warhol superstar Cyrinda Foxe (Dream On), and undertook a variety of jobs to survive. Fields currently lives in New York City.

Legs McNeil, co-author (with Gillian McCain) of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, dedicated his book: "To Danny Fields, forever the coolest guy in the room." The 2006 book The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (A Cappella Books/Chicago Review Press), by Steven Lee Beeber, includes a chapter about Fields, entitled, "A Nice Jewish Boy."

Fields has portrayed himself in a number of TV productions, including "End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones" (2003); "25 Years of Punk" (2001); "We're Outta Here!" (1997); and "Nico Icon" (1995).