Imagine witnessing Nico begging for drug money; being told off by Johnny "Rotten" Lydon; watching a punk club owner spell your name in cocaine; spending three weeks in a cramped one-room apartment with the infamous Dead Boys.

Alissa Wolf experienced these outrageous moments during punk rock’s reign, and she survived to write Punk Rock Princess: How a Nice Upper Middle-Class Girl Wound Up Waking Up to the Dead Boys, about her immersion in this seamy world in the late 1970s.

You can almost hear crashing chords and slashing guitars in this personal memoir by an entertainment reporter oozing through Philadelphia and Atlantic City in the wake of the splashes made by The Ramones, Iggy Pop, and the Sex Pistols. Alissa slammed into the infamous: Dead Boys, Killing Joke, Johnny "Rotten" Lydon, Sid Vicious, and Nancy Spungeon, and she glided among the famous: Tony Bennett, Rodney Dangerfield, Tina Turner, and CBS founder William Paley. Anecdotes from her personal glimpses into their worlds electrify the air like a catchy guitar riff — and are amusing, sad, scary, yet always entertaining.

The Dead Boys anthem may have seemed young, loud, and snotty, but Alissa Wolf’s autobiography is intimate, detailed, and personal. Flushing through that seedy underworld of drugs, sex, and rock and roll with Alissa are Nan—her colorful grandmother, and Allison—a guitarist for an all-girl punk rock band and a cocktail waitress as New York’s legendary CBGB. Their experiences reverberate like an over-amplified garage band tune thrashing with discord and flogged with friction.

About Alissa Wolf: a veteran newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, she covered the entertainment industry for many years for such publications as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Hit Parader, WordUp!, The Newark Star-Ledger, Asbury Park Press, Atlantic City magazine, and Atlantic City Weekly. She received two awards from the National Association of Marketing and Public Relations for feature article writing.