“I’m embarrassed to use that word, but still, it’s a perfect word,” he says, ultimately conceding to the genre tag’s lurid allure from a purely typographical standpoint. “It’s four letters and it ends with a ‘K’ — that’s a formula for success.”

Nevertheless, Fields is contemplating punk when RANGE reaches him over the phone at his New York City apartment. Specifically, he’s in the process of putting together contact sheets from a vast archive of personal photographs to bring to NOFX founder Fat Mike’s new Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas. The hope is that some of these could hang with the rest of the institution’s accumulated hardcore history. His collection is quite iconic, including years of candid Ramones photos—from goofball poolside shots of bassist Dee Dee Ramone, to the brick wall-set stoicism of the Rocket to Russia album cover, as well as curios like the first-ever live performance from Patti Smith and guitarist Lenny Kaye. New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders loungin’ at New York’s famed Max’s Kansas City venue? Sure, he’s got those, too. He wonders, however, whether decadent photos of Alice Cooper “on a boat in a bikini bathing suit” fit the scope of the museum. “Everybody in the world has a different idea of what it means,” he suggests earlier in the conversation of the great punk debate. “Must you have green hair? I don’t know. Must you have razor blades in your nose and tongue? Some say you do.”

Pristine Condition and Danny Fields in the documentary Danny Says.

“Must you have green hair? I don’t know. Must you have razor blades in your nose and tongue? Some say you do.”

— Danny Fields

Fields’ multifaceted journey through the music industry is likewise a little tricky to define, and almost happenstantial. What’s clear is that while he grew up in a musical family, he had no allusions of becoming a performer.

“My father played eight instruments; he was a genius instrumentalist. He worked his way through medical school leading a band—played saxophone, violin. I took clarinet lessons in elementary school and I hated it; I got splinters in my mouth,” he explains, adding of his talents, “I know technically nothing [about performing music]. I know what I like, though.”

After dropping out of Harvard Law School, the New York-raised Fields found himself  back in the East Village, and hanging out within Andy Warhol’s Factory studio scene. He took an editing job at teen magazine Datebook, subversively promoting the Velvet Underground’s sadomasochistic outsider pop to 12-year-old girls, while also striking up a lifelong friendship with photographer Linda Eastman (later Paul McCartney’s wife and Wings bandmate). Most infamously, he printed John Lennon’s quote about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus” (“I just wanted to make a little mischief, that’s all,” he says to sum up his time at Datebook). 

When Fields moved on to Elektra Records, he championed the harmonium-driven “gloom-and-doom” that his friend and former Velvet Underground collaborator Nico ended up releasing as 1968 cult classic The Marble Index. He worked with the Doors, too, but did not get along with Jim Morrison. He more fondly recalls climbing the stairs towards the ballroom of the Ann Arbor student union building as the sneeringly seductive strains of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” reverberated through his bones for the first time. It was irresistible. Somewhat poetically, what sold him on the hyperactive rock and roll of Ramones—within the first 15 seconds of a set—was the cool-but-creepy narrative of their “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to The Basement” (“I’m not big on lyrics, but what a great idea for a song.”).