Coon, Caroline. "Punk Power: The Revolution Starts Here..." Melody Maker, 27 Nov. 1976, pp. 33, 6 page.
Punk Power: Six Page Melody Maker guide
— Caroline Coon documents the explosive rise of the UK punk scene in 1976, centering on the Sex Pistols' growing cult following and the movement's rejection of indulgent, wealthy rock stars in favour of raw, honest music that reflects a tough economic reality.
— Sex Pistols at El Paradise, Soho (18 April 1976) — 100 Club Punk Rock Festival (21-22 September 1976, Main Article: )
— Sex Pistols residencies and gigs at the Marquee, Nashville, Dingwall's, and the Roundhouse
Melody Maker | November 27. 1976 | Cover
Melody Maker
NOVEMBER 27, 1976 15p weekly USA 7cents
Index
The Revolution starts here...
Punk alphabet
Rotten to the core
Underground overground
Phase 3
Melody Maker | November 27. 1976 | Page 33, 34 & Page 35
Six page guide Punk power
The revolution starts here...
It was obvious that the Sex Pistols had a growing cult following in April this year. They had played around London, with a few gigs farther afield, since November 1975.
But on Sunday, April 18, 1976, 150 people crammed in to see them play at a seedy little Soho strip club called El Paradise.
It had become increasingly difficult for the band to play the established rock circuit. Their name was synonymous with trouble, obscenity and violence.
They had been "banned" from the Marquee, the Nashville, Dingwall's and the Roundhouse (they refused to play "pubs") and their manager Malcolm McLaren began to promote a series of concerts himself. The El Paradise gig was the first.
Advertised by word of mouth and leaflets, it was a night with a memorable sense of occasion.
Three months later, not only had the Sex Pistols' following dramatically increased (fans were travelling from Durham and Nottingham to see them) but other musicians and bands were impressed by their stance.
At every Pistols' gig after July there was an excited buzz in the audience as new bands formed and others, like the 101ers, re-formed radically changing their musical approach.
By September 21 and 22, the 100 Club's Punk Rock Festival, what had begun as one band breaking new ground had developed into a movement, a new wave of music, a dramatic injection of new blood into the mainstream of rock 'n' roll.
There is nothing mysterious in the Sex Pistols appeal or the movement they represent. The majority of fans and musicians are in their late teens and early twenties. Since they left school they have been totally disenchanted with what rock was offering them.
Rock 'n' roll had systematically severed its working-class roots. Musicians, oozing self-congratulatory indulgence, flashed their wealthy lifestyles and moaned about having to leave the country to avoid tax. The business side of rock 'n' roll took priority over the music.
To a new generation of fans growing up in an atmosphere of increasing economic severity, this stance was impossible to identify with, nor was it very appealing or even interesting. They needed heroes who reflected and expressed the essence of the society they experienced every day.
The Sex Pistols, and bands like The Clash and The Damned, are important because they have brought rock down to earth again. The musicians, unimpressed by the trappings of stardom, promising to put any money they make back into the community, are as close to their audience as rock 'n' rollers have ever been.
Their lyrics, eschewing the cultural irrelevancies of American R&B, are committed, searching comments about the new morality and tough environment they grew up in. Their music is fast, intensely emotional, fierce and devoid of pretence.
The fans, inventing vigorous dances like the Trampoline and the Pogo, have developed a highly creative dress style — a mixture of Johnny Rotten's decadently erotic bondage suits, The Damned's black, street-corner vampirism and The Clash's paint-spattered graffiti.
They want action and honesty, and they are impressed when they believe someone or something is "real." Their rejection of the romantic escapism, which typified the hippie movement's music, is total. In 1967 the maxim was Peace and Love. In 1976 it is War and Hate.
Their mood is inspired by the violence of frustration. In the new wave music, they have found a positive creative outlet and musicians they can admire and respect.
Caroline Coon
Punk alphabet
by Caroline Coon
Anarchy, as in the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" single. Anarchism is a theory of government based on the idea that individuals can come to free agreements rather than submit to the authority of law. Acme Attractions, a King’s Road basement and Portobello Market shop selling a mixture of original sixties "fab gear" and leather ’n’ plastic "anti-fashions."
Buzzcocks: Howard Devoto (vocals), Pete Shelley (guitar), Steve Diggle (bass) and John Maher (drums), average age 20. Boredom: what everyone is trying to escape. A key word in 90 per cent of punk rock songs. Bizarre Records: run by Larry Debay, Tim Ransome and Derek Murray at 1 Praed St, London, W2. Purveyors of punk fanzines and every rare, small independent record label ever pressed. The Bromley Contingent: the very first group of Sex Pistols fans. Simon (19) saw one of the Pistols' first gigs at Ravensbourne College of Art last December. He enthused to his friends Billy Idol (now with Chelsea), Debbie (15), Steve Havoc and Siouxsie (both of the Banshees) and together they have been to almost every gig since.
The Clash: Joe Strummer (vocals, guitar), Mick Jones (guitar, vocals), Paul Simonon (bass), Terry Chimes (drums), average age 21. A total audio-visual experience. Key songs: "White Riot" and "Career Opportunities". Chelsea: Billy Idol (guitar), Gene October (vocals), Tony James (bass), John Perfect (drums), average age 20. Just formed. Lyrics are inaudible. Committed and fast.
The Damned: Dave Vanian (vocals), Brian James (guitar), Ray Burns (bass), Rat Scabies (drums), average age 21. Spectacular rhythm section, wild guitar and deadpan vocals despatch songs about personal relationships and night life. First single "New Rose" (Stiff). Dumb: as in unintelligent, insensitive or inexpressive — what UK punk rock is not. Decadence: accepted as natural, the style and mood of the times.
Eddie and the Hot Rods: Barrie Masters (vocals), Dave Higgs (guitars), Steve Nicol (drums), Paul Gray (bass), average age 21. Contemporaries of the Sex Pistols. Current single "Teenage Depression" (Island) is their fourth. They play ultrafast rock rooted in yesterday’s R&B structures and, because they are prepared to tone down their lyrics in deference to BBC airplay, they are the acceptable face of the UK punk rock scene. Eater: Andy Blade (vocals), Brian Chevette (guitar), Ian Wood (bass), Dee Generate (drums), average age 15. Key songs: "Bedroom Fix" and "I’m 15", a re-working of Alice Cooper's "I’m 18."
Flamin’ Groovies: see Old Guard. Fanzines: see Mark P. Fans: naturally inclined to dismiss old-fashioned, plastic concepts of beauty. They look exotic and sexual, rather than pretty and feminine, or sharp and confident rather than tough and masculine. Flowers are orchids rather than daisies, colours are primal and bold. They socialise in groups (like the Bromley, Romford, Durham or Nottingham Contingents) rather than couples, and they are beginning to trek miles to keep up with the bands who play out of London.
Girls: a sneering pejorative as in "That’s for G-I-R-L-S." Everything hated, like two pick-ups on a guitar instead of one, dishonesty, electrocution. Yes, Genesis, flared denims, long hair, platform shoes etc.
Hand-me-downs: the basis of punk rock chic. Clothes from Oxfam shops, Salvation Army jumble sales, modern secondhand market stalls. Sta-Press trousers, mod drip-dry shirts, black plastic dustbin liners, chains "acquired" from public conveniences — anything "sharp" which can be painted, pinned or ripped-up. Labels, bus tickets, bits of film, pictures out of magazines — anything odd can be pinned, tied, or stapled to clothes.
Influences, Idols and Inspiration: Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, The Stooges, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground, The New York Dolls, The Kinks, "Substitute", Pete Townshend, The Small Faces, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, T. Rex, Ian Hunter, reggae, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Dracula, Jackson Pollock, "Whatcha Gonna Do About It", economic deprivation, teenage depression, hating art school and apathy.
"Judy is a Punk" sing the Ramones. For the first time ever, a culture is developing which is not, like mods and rockers, dominated by males. Post-hippie equality and transsexuality are a nearly fully realised fact of life. Women like Judy Nylon (writer, singer), Chrissie Hynde (bass), Vivienne Westwood (Sex shop co-owner and designer), Viv Albertine (bass with Sid Vicious’ band), Paloma (drums), Siouxsie, Sarah Hall and Joe Fall (ex-band members looking for compatible musicians), Jordan (Sex shop minder and stylist), Debbie and Sue Catwoman (teenage super women) — and countless others — are trailblazing a lifestyle and breaking down the barriers. The Jam: Paul Weller (guitar), Bruce Foxton (bass), Bob Gray (keyboards), Rick Buck (drums), average age 17. Sixties revivalist rather than hard-core punk (as yet).
Kicks: "How do you get your kicks for living?" asks Lou Reed (Coney Island Baby). The crunch of shattered glass and alcohol has replaced roach ends and the whiff of pot.
Louise’s: West End night-spot presided over with style and calm benevolence by Madam Louise. Love: "Something you feel for a dog or a pussy cat," says Johnny Rotten. An emotional currency spent on oneself. A luxury. Or, as Joe Strummer says, "we’ve got no time for love. It’s been replaced by passion and lust."
Mark P: 19-year-old ex-bank clerk and founder editor of Sniffin’ Glue, the first exclusively punk rock fanzine.
New wave: an inclusive term used to describe a variety of bands like Eddie and the Hot Rods, The Stranglers, Chris Spedding and the Vibrators, The Suburban Studs, Slaughter and the Dogs who are not definitively hard-core punk but, because they play with speed and energy or because they try hard, are part of the scene. New York Dolls: the only New York punk band to have any real influence on the UK scene.
Old: a punk sneer liberally used to put down The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Queen, Led Zeppelin, music critics, etc. Old Guard (respected): Dr Feelgood, Flamin' Groovies, Kilburn and the High Roads, Nick Lowe, Graham Parker and the Rumour, The Gorillas, Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan — sometimes. 100 Club: the "home" of punk rock, until violence at a punk rock festival there.
Punk: not a popular label but now accepted to describe bands like The Clash, The Damned, Eater, Chelsea, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Subway Sect and the Sex Pistols — bands who usually play frantically fast, minimal, aggressive rock with the emphasis on brevity, an all-in sound rather than individual solos and an arrogance calculated to shock. The Pogo Dance: a rigidly perpendicular pounce at the ceiling.
Question: "How long will it last?" A punk reply: "Who cares!" Says Paul Simonon: "It’s music isn’t it? So it will last forever."
Razor blades: as flowers were to hippies, so razor blades are to punk rock. Reggae: very popular because, like punk, its inspiration is oppression.
Sex Pistols: Johnny Rotten (vocals), Steve Jones (guitar), Glen Matlock (bass), Paul Cook (drums), average age 19. Their influence has been profoundly significant. Apart from an exceptional natural style, their uncompromising opinions are stated fearlessly. Sex: the King’s Road boutique (soon to be renamed Seditionaries) co-owned by Malcolm McLaren (Pistols’ manager) and his partner Vivienne Westwood. A long-time meeting place and refuge for disaffected youth. Subway Sect: Vic Goddard (vocals), Robert Miller (guitar), Paul Myers (bass), Paul Smith (drums), average age 19. A sound as devastatingly grey as their drab, dustbin-salvaged attire. Siouxsie: the Bromley Contingent realises its [text missing in OCR]. Safety pins: the runaway success of the seventies, they are pinned to everything, including flesh. Stiff: a nicely flexible independent record label. Catalogue includes the best of hard-core punk. Chris Spedding and the Vibrators: Chris Spedding (vocals, guitar), Knox (vocals, guitar), John Ellis (vocals), Pat Collier (bass), John Edwards (drums), average age 29. Old school rock fashionably speeded-up but without direction or commitment to anything other than weak pastiche.
T-shirts: ripped up and then safety-pinned together, a sartorial de rigueur.
USA: "I’m So Bored with the USA" sing The Clash. They, like UK punk rockers generally, identify with their working-class roots and reject the conventional pseudo-American accents affected by most rock stars.
Violence: this has been a year when anyone selling crash helmets at rock concerts could have made a fortune. It looks suspiciously as though a new generation of rock fans has grown up expecting violence.
Wallpaper: the character-illustrating nom de punk adopted by a real fan, like Chaotic Bass, Sid Vicious, Andy Blade, Steve Havoc, Flee, Catwoman, Valtentine, Shann Scratch.
X, as in ex-offender: punk rock is, as the Pistols’ Steve Jones says, "rock ’n’ roll off the streets." At least 50 per cent of the fans and musicians consider themselves very lucky to have escaped prison or Borstal.
Young: the punk age is 19, but fans and musicians range between 14 to 25.
Marc Zermati: French rock entrepreneur in the Barnham tradition. Founder of Sky Dog Records, which released the already legendary live Stooges album Metallic KO. Zermati was the instigator of the first European Punk Rock Festival.
Gallery of punks: front top, The Clash; Slaughter and the Dogs; Eater; Chelsea/Siouxsie and the Banshees
Rotten to the core
Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols gives his first-ever interview to Caroline Coon
I haven’t seen a hippie in two weeks. That’s disgusting. They’re so complacent. They let it all — the drug culture — flop around them. They were all dosed out of their heads the whole time.
"Yeah man, peace and love. Don’t let anything affect you. Let it walk all over you but don’t stop it."
We say bollocks. If it offends you, stop it. You’ve got to or else you just become apathetic and complacent yourself.
You end up with a mortgage watching TV with 2.4 kids out in suburbia — and that’s just disgusting. All those hippies are becoming like that.
All that’s different from them and those they were reacting against is that they’ve got long hair and bowler hats!
Everyone is so fed up with the old way. We are constantly being dictated to by musical old farts out of university who’ve got rich parents.
They look down on us and treat us like fools and expect us to pay pounds to see them while we entertain them — and not the other way around. And people allowed it to happen!
But now they’re not. Now there’s a hell of a lot of new bands come up with exactly the opposite attitude.
It’s not condescension any more. It’s plain honesty. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. You’re not forced to like it through propaganda.
People think we use propaganda. But we don’t. We’re not trying to be commercial.
We’re doing exactly what we want to do — what we’ve always done.
So speaks Johnny Rotten, lead singer of the Sex Pistols: a cult band with a potentially mass audience.
They sing anti-love songs, cynical songs about suburbia, songs about hate and aggression, and it sounds natural because it’s their life. Their fans like it because they recognise it as their lives, too.
The Sex Pistols are adamant. They want to shock people out of apathy. They want people to do something. They want to have fun — which is why they’ve kept going. The Sex Pistols’ story is the story of this era. It’s as simple as that.
They started in London in 1975. This fact is significant. It’s in London suburbs where the contrast between the promise of a better future and the reality of the impoverished present is most glaringly obvious.
Drab, Kafka-like working-class ghettoes are not only a stone’s throw from the wealth paraded on King’s Road, but also from the heart of the banking capital of the world.
It was natural that if a group of deprived London street kids got together and formed a band, it would be political. And that’s what’s happened.
Johnny Rotten had left school when he was 16. Even then he wrote songs with a startling anti-establishment bias. Occasionally he worked as an office cleaner. More often he was on the dole, with time on his hands, bored.
Johnny has a way of being at once cutting and sarcastic and yet affectionately tender and positive. He’ll sit very still, totally inert, his eyes glazed, staring mutely ahead and yet his febrile body, lean, without a trace of indolent flesh, gives the impression of perpetual motion.
It’s as if he’s stiffened by an electric current. He is a man of enigmatic contrasts. He assesses character in a flash.
To those who come on trying to impress him, he feigns the expected, sneering punk façade, revealing nothing about himself. He rarely opens up in public.
But to the genuinely curious or friendly he’ll be unexpectedly warm. He kneels on the stage and chats to fans. He smiles and jokes a lot.
In 1975, he and his close friends, John Grey and Sid Vicious, were the terrors of the King’s Road.
“I used to go up and down King’s Road gobbing (spitting) at the poseurs.
“I just couldn’t stand them. There used to be groups of them on the corners of those shops and we would chase them around all the time. I mean, they were weeds!
“They wouldn’t defend themselves in any way. Not even verbally. They’d say ‘Oh, get off’ and run away. We expected someone to put up an argument. But they were spineless.”
It was after feeling particularly hostile to all that symbolised Chelsea’s wealth and well-groomed finery that Johnny bought (or acquired) a brand new suit, shirt and tie. He took it home and slashed it up to pieces. He pinned and stapled it together again, and then he wore it.
“We used to be as obnoxious as possible,” he continues. “We’d go into pubs and get kicked out of all of them. And I got called Rotten. Steve (Jones, the Pistols’ lead guitar) called me Rotten first. He said ‘you’re Rotten, you are!’.”
“It was his teeth,” explains Steve. “He never used to brush his teeth. They used to be green!”
Johnny and Steve have just finished putting the last overdubs on "Anarchy in the U.K." It was the second attempt to get the single right.
“The first time,” said Johnny, “we went into the studio, got pissed and just messed around.”
Then Malcolm McLaren, their manager, called in Chris Thomas. “He’d come to several of our gigs and he had time off and nothing better to do.”
Johnny thinks the new version is a definite improvement and both he and Steve are elated, but tired.
Steve has the reputation of being a man of few words. He’s always looking for action. Of the four, he probably has the most fractured childhood.
He and Johnny get on well together. Steve was at school with Paul Cook, the Pistols’ drummer. Neither of them did any work. They went to school because it was somewhere to go.
Many of their friends didn’t bother going at all. When Steve and Paul fancied a day off, they’d go over to a mate of theirs called Wally. His parents were the most easy-going and they could spend afternoons in the back garden drinking.
In 1973, just to relieve the boredom, so they say, Wally suggested they put a rock and roll band together. Steve, calling himself Q. T. Jones, was the singer.
He gave a drum kit he’d acquired to Paul, and Wally was on lead guitar. They needed a bass player.
And they didn’t have to look far. Like Johnny and his friends, Paul and Steve spent happy hours nicking clothes (they now confess) and listening to the jukebox in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road shop.
Glen Matlock, a budding bassist, worked there on Saturdays. Malcolm put the three of them together. Then Wally got the elbow. Steve wanted to play lead guitar and he couldn’t sing anyway. Now they needed a lead singer.
“It was so obvious really,” says Johnny. “Malcolm’s shop was a great place to go. The clothes were always different. It was new and good and honest. It was anti-fashion and anti-organisation.
“He’d often seen me in the shop and one day he came up to me and asked why I always looked so bored and why was I so awful to everyone. He asked me whether I’d like to sing with the Sex Pistols.”
They all met in the Roebuck pub on the King’s Road and Johnny was on good form, dishing out insults and calling them all “a bunch of fools.” They thought he was loony but they dragged him the few hundred yards up the road to the shop and stuck him in front of the jukebox for an “audition.” Johnny remembers jumping up and down and mouthing along to an Alice Cooper single. He didn’t know the words.
Johnny continues: “I couldn’t sing. I have never even bothered to sing in my whole life. I had absolutely no interest in singing. I wrote songs but I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. I was more interested in being obnoxious.
“They all laughed at me, so I said, ‘now I want to hear what you sound like.’ I went all the way down to Rotherhithe, where they were meant to be rehearsing, but they didn’t turn up.
“I rang up Malcolm and told him to forget it. I thought they were a bunch of lazy cunts and said they’d never get anywhere. But Malcolm kept ringing me up.”
Another rehearsal was arranged, which Johnny now says was “indescribably terrible. At the time they all wanted to leave the band. Paul had already quit but he was ‘just sitting in’ to help them out.”
Paul isn’t a man to take chances. He kept up his daytime job, in a brewery, until two months ago — just in case. The evening he finally left his job the band played in Chelmsford maximum security prison.
Paul was so drunk he fell off his drum stool. He is usually calm, wide-eyed and bubbling with good humour — the easiest one to talk to.
“Everyone thinks we’ve only just picked up our guitars," he told me recently. “But we’ve played for three years. We rehearsed every night, just shutting ourselves away from everything.
“We did get to the point where we thought we were great. We used to boast that we were in a group and it got comfortable. We’d sit drinking in the Roebuck with all the Chelsea successfuls thinking ‘we’re great. We’re in a rock ’n’ roll band.’
‘Then Malcolm came along and gave us a boot and we started wondering what we were doing and why we weren’t looking forward to getting up on stage.” Johnny was just the galvanising influence they needed. “I was not behaving very well,” he says. “It was getting sick. It just had to stop and I knew that if I didn’t get on in the group then I’d either end up in a loony bin or in some kind of prison.”
How did he sing at that first rehearsal? “God, it’s such a weird feeling,” he recalls. “For the first time in your life you get up in front of these people you don’t know, who you’ve been very cynical about.
“I’d never done anything myself and I thought ‘Oh my God! I can’t back up what I’ve been saying.’ So I just grabbed the mike and I screamed.
“And it came out really awful and I just wanted to run out the door. But I stuck with it. But every time I used to go out to the bog they’d go ‘oh, what a cunt he is’.”
Johnny’s singing technique, like his phenomenal stage presence and sense of style, have evolved through experience. Very few people have influenced him — unless it’s his close friends like Grey and Vicious. He denies having any idols.
“I’d listen to rock ’n’ roll,” he says, “but I had no respect for it. It was crawling up its own arse. It was redundant and it had nothing to do with anything relevant.
“Rock ’n’ roll was about as relevant as all that funk played in those King’s Road clothes shops. Do people actually listen to that music? No!
“It’s just background music while they buy their jeans — flared jeans. Is that any state for rock to be in? I just feel very sorry for the people who try to apply their brains to it. It’s moronic rubbish and it reflects on them.”
The Sex Pistols literally crashed in on the music scene exactly a year ago. They were unknown and found it virtually impossible to get gigs. Not deterred, they’d discover where London colleges were putting on dances, and they’d ring up the social secretary with the information: “We’re the Sex Pistols. We’re on the bill tonight.”
The method worked. At least they gigged, if not for money. The dole kept them in cigarettes, sometimes beer. They were very poor.
Johnny lived in a “squat” (he’s just been evicted and is temporarily at home). Paul and Glen still live at home because they can’t afford to live anywhere else, and Steve, who couldn’t live at home if he wanted to, crashes in a one-room studio with no hot running water, where the band rehearses.
By January this year they were making headway. They sounded solid, fast, with an unforgettably aggressive stage attack. Johnny, “looking like a berserk convict, starving and strung up on a wire hanger,” poured forth vitriolic streams of antagonising lyrics, alienating large sections of the audience.
But he lapped up the heckling, and gradually the band’s unprecedented commitment to raw energy and iconoclastic blasts at established idols and sacred cows attracted fiercely loyal fans like the Bromley Contingent.
They began their Tuesday night residency at the 100 Club in February and it held them in good stead, as first the Marquee (where Johnny had thrown chairs around), then the Nashville (where the band had leapt offstage mid-set and joined in a fight) and the Roundhouse (where John Curd just didn’t like them), banned them from ever playing there again. (The 100 Club banned them, too, after the incident at the Punk Rock Festival).
They made regular sorties up north and made their first appearance outside Britain in Paris.
Now Johnny has developed a powerfully idiosyncratic vocal style. He forces out syllables like machine-gun bullets and there’s never any doubt about the extent of his commitment to what he is doing.
Steve, after two amazing gigs on large stages in July — London’s Lyceum and Manchester’s Free Trade Hall — has begun to move and play with an originality which has even cynics calling him the new Pete Townshend. Steve doesn’t deny the Townshend influence but he’s never consciously copied him.
Glen and Paul, perhaps because the bassist and drummer are traditionally the least visible in a band, have yet to receive the recognition they deserve.
They have developed a fine partnership. Glen’s driving bass lines and Paul’s billowing drum storm make a superb bedrock of taut but fluid rhythm structures.
They’ve worked very hard and they’ve survived together because, as Paul says, “there’s not exactly an alternative, is there? And we do know we’re doing something worthwhile.”
They wanted Johnny to pull them together, to be the ingredient that would give their music purpose, and that’s exactly what he’s done. It wasn’t easy to discover how best to work together and there have been fierce arguments.
These were overcome when Johnny insisted that rehearsals were an open forum. He forced and cajoled everyone to participate in the development of the band’s musical identity.
Glen was the one who most often wanted to have the last say and, by general consensus, he knows the most about rock ’n’ roll history. His background is no less deprived than that of the others, but his parents insisted he went to the local grammar rather than the secondary modern school.
Not unnaturally, therefore, he has a taste for more musical complexity than the others.
But the tensions this creates are positive. Steve and Johnny fight to pare songs down to the bare essentials, and Glen presses for a touch of elaboration. Johnny writes most of the lyrics but, as Glen has said, “the spirit of the rest of us is in them.”
Says Johnny: “I make sure that if I put words in a song they are what everyone thinks — that it’s not just me bullshitting to my heart's content.
“All our songs will be credited to the Sex Pistols. We don’t want any of that ‘he wrote this so he gets more money’. That’s disgusting.
“No song is ever written entirely on your own. It’s always slagged off by the others so, by the time it’s been slagged, other people have put their ideas into it. We’ve all made it what it is.”
He finds it difficult to write lyrics without a tune in mind, so he imagines one, even if Steve or Glen drastically changes it. "No Feelings" and "Satellite" are basically Steve’s melodies.
"Problems", "I Wanna Be Me" (the B side of the single) and "Liar" were written together in the studio. "Pretty Vacant", "Submission" and "Anarchy in the U.K." are mainly Glen.
"Anarchy in the U.K." was several of his tunes put together,” says Johnny. “We did it at rehearsal on Sunday. I came in a bit late and they’d already got the basic melody and I just said ‘I’ll call it Anarchy!’ The rest of the words came quite easily.”
"I had absolutely no interest in singing. I was more interested in being obnoxious"
Never before have groups of musicians like the Pistols or The Clash been so unselfconsciously political. “We’re more anti-social than political,” maintains Glen.
Nor is Johnny writing protest songs, as such. He is protest. In "Anarchy in the U.K." he is not advocating anarchism. He is anarchy. It’s a subtle shift of emphasis.
Instead of placing himself on the outside, the adversary on the attack, he stands in the centre, already the victorious personification of the issues which once defeated him. He is no longer the victim. He is no longer acted upon. He is the action.
He has come a long way since the early days when he used to write "ludicrous songs about people killing each other with broken light bulbs" and other epics of similar comic strip blood and guts.
Now, with dramatic words which cut into your conscience as deeply as graffiti gouged with sharp nails into slum walls, he creates atmospheric songs as dour and forbidding as the council tenements and concrete back yards which are his inspiration.
What kind of childhood did he have? Where was he educated? What kind of house did he live in?
“It was a collection of matchboxes,” he replied reluctantly. The past is not a topic he willingly discusses. “It was fucking awful. Just a square box. A front room and three bedrooms.
“I’ve got three brothers. One works and the other two are still at school. They’re all younger than me.
“I went to a Catholic school, which is even worse than a state school because they have no money at all. It really was like 500 to a class — and a woman teacher who just couldn’t keep control.
“I went to school with Grey and 20 others and we all just decided to forget everything and educate ourselves.
“We decided not to listen to the bullshit they were throwing at us — like Mass every morning. So we went off into another classroom and did what we wanted. But they kicked me out for being a Hell’s Angel.
“I would never let anybody tell me I was no good. Teachers were always telling us we were no good. The most famous job they tried to throw on you was bank clerk. Always, bank clerk.
“And I just said ‘bollocks, I ain’t going to be no bank clerk’. Then you start pushing the teacher around because they offend you so much.
“They offend public decency. What they did to us was a crime. But it’s not even their fault. There’s always somebody higher up making them do it.
“The most vivid thing I remember about my childhood is just hating teachers. You sit down and you look at them and you want to cut their eyes out because they just don’t care a shit about you.
“They give you absolutely nothing. They take, take, take, they'd take your soul if they’d got the chance. They didn’t take mine!”
Does Johnny, like Paul, believe that the only way to change the system is through violence? “I don’t think he means that,” Johnny explains. “He doesn’t mean smash people in the face if they don’t agree with you. He means that you shouldn’t let people override you.
“As The Damned said in MM last week, people have blown our involvement in violence right out of proportion. They want to associate us with violence.
“It’s the only way, really, they can slag us off. It makes us out to be just crude, ignorant and loutish. Which means we aren’t a threat to them.”
Has he, as it’s been alleged, ever encouraged a fight? “Of course I haven’t. I just won’t let people tell me I’m wrong when I know I’m right.
“But if I have, then it’s just too bad. That’s human nature. You are just a fool if you pretend it doesn’t happen. Why people are so frightened of violence I’ll never really understand.”
Certainly Johnny’s life has been more conditioned by violence than anything else. In his unyielding, concrete environment, violence is about the only feeling strong enough to survive.
Not surprisingly, his body is scarred with knife wounds — the aftermath of street life. But what about the cigarette burns on his hands and arms?
“What about them?” he retorts. “Pain doesn’t hurt. I did it for my own amusement. I thought it would be good fun. It had and has nothing to do with anybody else.
“I won’t have people slag me off for what I do to my own body. Because it’s mine. If I want to cut my own leg off, I will.”
It seems as if he lacked an adventure playground, or something, when he was a child!
“Yes. We had nowhere to go. So what did we do? We threw bricks at passing cars. That’s an old favourite. That’s something you can do in the flats. The police can’t come in unless there’s a complaint.
“So you just go four or five storeys up and throw bricks down at cars. Who goes to the youth club? Do they exist? I heard rumours.
“But they are only in West Hampstead and they are filled with Jonathan and Cecil. So you just go to the pubs at an early age.” Or as Steve points out, the launderette.
“Someone like Bryan Ferry,” Johnny continues, “has tried to escape all that. But we’re not ashamed of it. And we’re fighting back from the inside. Ferry just got carried away with the flash restaurants and he’s really fallen into the star trip.
“But that system doesn’t work. It gets you absolutely nowhere. It’s not a solution for us. If you do what we are doing and try to break out of all that, then you get slagged off — from all sides. But it’s worth it. It’s better than going along with it.”
Johnny, like Steve (who’s not the only young musician around acquainted with Borstal), was, before he joined the Sex Pistols, only a hair’s breadth away from a terminal prison existence.
In the circumstances, that the Sex Pistols have little time for romantic love is hardly surprising. They are tough, realistic and they scorn the conventional euphemisms which protect people from the truth.
But is the most intense emotion Johnny really feels hatred?
“No. No. If you just hate you don’t do anything constructive. You’ve got to be realistic to see the situation you’re in and then you must use what you know to your own advantage.
“You mustn’t let people override you and walk over you like they do at school. Comprehensive schools have such a high failure rate.”
“There’s no such thing any more as a successful comprehensive kid. You just don’t make it unless you’ve been to Eton. Your outlook is so low for a start...”
“You’re forced to accept that you’ve got to be married by the time you’re 22. Or else you think you’re a failure. And that’s terrible. I wouldn’t have that.” Does he have girlfriends? “Yes. But what’s that got to do with marriage? I don’t go around arm in arm with girls. But I don’t hate sex. It’s just that it’s all been done between the ages of 12 and now. You do it all then.
“It’s so easy nowadays. So by the time you’re 20 you just think — yawn — just another squelch session. It’s as simple as that. You just disregard it. It happens or it doesn’t.”
Is there any love at all in his life? “No, there’s no love at all. I don’t believe in love. And I never will. It’s a myth brought on by Mickie Most and co. to sell records,” he laughs.
“I mean, when you actually listen to a love song and try to relate to it to something that happens in real life, it just doesn’t work. There’s no connection.
“You can’t love anything. Love is what you feel for a dog or a pussy cat. It doesn’t apply to humans, and if it does it just shows how low you are. It shows that your intelligence isn’t clicking.”
What happens, then, between people who like each other? “Lust. That’s all. I can’t see it going any further. After that it begins to get vampiristic, like clutch — ‘don’t leave me’.
“Then you just end up using somebody for your own selfishness because you’re too weedy to be out on your own.
“You can like someone. You can get on with someone really good, but the point is do you really need to be with them all the time? You get bored with someone after two or three days.
“You’ve said everything and you just have to go off and be alone for a while. And that’s the same with friends. If you hang around with somebody the whole time you must be a real moron.”
What about children? “What about them? If you want a family you can go down to an orphanage.”
What about the future? Is getting in the chart important to them? “It’s not essential. And we’ll never compromise. If nobody likes the single, they can drop dead!
“And that’s not because we’re big-headed. But we’re the ones that count. If we don’t like it we wouldn’t do it.
“If we are successful, if we make money, we can use it so that kids can have somewhere to go. Money is to be used. It isn’t to enable you to languish in ecstasy the rest of your life.
“If the single gets into the chart then it will show that it’s all been worth it — that there are thousands of people who are pissed off with everything.
“And I really think they are. I can’t see how they can put up with it. People say we’re not the alternative. But we never said we were. We’re just one alternative. There should be several.
“And already there is an excitement in the atmosphere. There are some groups who are extravagantly different. It is going to happen. I can see it already.”
Page 38 — Melody Maker, November 27, 1976
Underground overground
CBGB OMFUG
Chris Charlesworth on the New York scene
“Punk rock? What’s that supposed to mean? The bands that play at my club aren’t punks. They might wear leather jackets, chew gum and try to look tough, but they’re nice guys.
“Even the Ramones are nice guys when you get to know them. They ain’t punks, and I dunno what the expression means. They’re just rock groups to me, and many of them are good rock groups.”
Billy Kristal seemed genuinely bemused at the thought of “punk rock”, in a broad sense, being used as a term to embrace the bands that appear at his now notorious New York bar, CBGB’s. He’s right, too. Many of the bands on the current New York underground circuit these days sound more like Yes than Iggy Pop, though it must be said that almost all of them owe a debt to Lou Reed.
There are now many young bands emerging from the suburbs to appear at CBGB’s (or at the other three establishments which cater for them). What began at the Mercer Arts Centre, five years ago with the New York Dolls and Patti Smith, has grown into a tidal wave of eager groups, all anxious to take part in a rock renaissance.
And the record companies are starting to take notice at last. The latest count in the signing sweepstake is seven, including Patti Smith and the Ramones, whose record deals have already yielded finished albums. The other five are currently in the studio, holding back until after Christmas:
— Television have been signed by Elektra-Asylum. They are currently in the studio working with Andy Johns, brother of famed producer Glyn Johns. Their album is expected in February.
— The Dictators have also been signed by Elektra-Asylum, although the release date of their debut album is “indefinite”, according to the record company. This band — a heavy-metal outfit of awesome proportions — is now managed and produced by Sandy Pearlman, who also manages and produces the Blue Öyster Cult.
— Blondie have signed with Private Stock, and completed an album due for release in January. Originally they were signed to a deal for a couple of singles only but increased enthusiasm within the record company led to an album.
— Talking Heads have signed with Sire. They are due in the studio in January.
— Mink DeVille have signed with Capitol for the US and Canada and EMI for the rest of the world. They are due in the studio in January and hope to have an album out in April.
And to keep the record straight, Patti Smith has just released her second album on Arista, while the Ramones’ first album on Sire has now been out six months. There are also Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, originating from Boston, who have had out two albums on the Berserkley label.
Eight bands appeared on the first CBGB’s compilation album which is being distributed by Atlantic, who have an option to sign any of the bands on the record. As yet they haven’t picked up the option on any of the bands, one of which (Mink DeVille) has already gone elsewhere. A second CBGB’s album is in the making and RCA are showing a strong interest in picking up a similar distribution and option deal.
Seven bands are featured on an album released last week by Max’s Kansas City which, like the CBGB’s album, is being distributed independently unless a major picks it up.
Richard Hell, whose name bears the closest resemblance to “punkdom” of any underground character in the city, has just released his first single, albeit on a private, independent label. Hell, one of the most original and expressive characters to have emerged from the scene, is a former member of both Television and The Heartbreakers. He now fronts a band called The Voidoids.
All this leaves many of the better-known bands without immediate recording prospects. The Heartbreakers, whose act has improved immeasurably since their early days, are still on the hunt but record companies are doubtless scared off by the presence of Johnny Thunders, a one-time New York Doll. (No-one likes being reminded how Mercury lost a small fortune by signing and promoting the Dolls.)
Lastly, the Dolls themselves (they’ve dropped the New York since re-organisation) are still battling forward under the leadership of David Johansen who refuses to lie down. No record prospects though.
With the possible exception of Lou Reed, Hilly Kristal can justifiably claim to have done more to promote the New York underground scene than any other individual. Reed may have provided the inspiration (several bands seem to emulate the Velvet Underground with uncanny accuracy), but Kristal provided a base for them to operate.
CBGB’s, at the junction of Bleeker Street and the Bowery, lies in the seediest section of the Village Eastside. Before Kristal took the place over two years ago, it was a hangout for Hell’s Angels. It was — and still is — flanked by “hotels” that offer a bed for the night at ridiculously cheap rates. The catch is that you share a room with half a dozen others whose sense of personal hygiene is, perhaps, not in tune with the national average.
Kristal is a large, quiet man of the strong but silent mode. With his red-and-black check shirts, burly physique and curly beard he looks more like a lumberjack from the Canadian forests than a patron of the arts.
He’s made it his business to look after his charges like a family patriarch, encouraging them to develop their own musical policy whether he personally likes it or not. One of the rules for bands playing at CBGB’s is that they must play original material or, if they do offer a non-original, they must have worked out a creative arrangement of their own.
There’s a spirit of unity among the bands that play CBGB’s that keeps the bandwagon rolling and, in early days, assured everyone of a reasonable audience. On any given night members of various bands will drop by to watch their colleagues, not just to size up the competition but to share in the universal uphill struggle they are all a part of.
It’s a long, narrow bar with a ludicrously small stage at one end. Neon beer signs flicker down on the audience — 300 or so at the most — and waitresses fight between tables to deliver beer in cramped conditions. A jukebox plays mainly British Sixties music between sets (and sometimes during, though no-one notices) and when a band starts the din is often so loud that glasses tremble on the table tops.
Kristal hopes to enlarge his emporium soon. “I’m gonna knock down the washrooms and put the stage further back. We’ll put the washrooms in the cellar and get another hundred people in by next February.” he told me proudly last week.
“I felt that it was important that we put it out because we had the momentum going at that time,” he said, referring to the CBGB’s album. “We felt it would encourage others to do a similar thing. Jim Delehant (an Atlantic A&R man) seemed to be the keenest record company man so I went with him when he proposed the idea, but I’d have put it out myself either way.
“They have first option on the bands, but they haven’t exercised that because their first concern was this album and the idea behind it. They felt that a lot of the groups might make it, but that wasn’t the prime concern. I think that a lot of the people who have reviewed the album have taken the wrong attitude. It’s the idea of the album that is important. The idea is to document what’s happening.
“I don’t think reviewers realise that the album is live. We didn’t go over and over tracks polishing them up, I just picked what I thought was a representative thing. People have said to me that it doesn’t represent the underground rock in New York because it didn’t have Television or the Talking Heads, but I just took what was available.”
Originally Kristal pressed 5,000 copies of the album and advertised it by mail order in local papers. Many orders (including one for 2,000 from Paris) came from Europe, but once it became known that Atlantic had taken it over, the orders fell off. Kristal still has about 1,000 originals left which he sells as collectors’ items.
The album has not made a profit. “It cost $17,000 (or $21,000) to make the album and that’s just my expenses in making the master tape before the actual pressing. The bands haven’t started to earn their money from it yet, but they could use the money so we’ll be attending to the publishing of it all in two or three weeks.”
Following the release of the album, all eight bands — the Shirts, Mink DeVille, Laughing Dogs, the Miami’s, Sun, Manster, Tuff Darts and Stuart’s Hammer — went off on a “tour” together, supervised by Kristal, an administrative headache of alarming proportions since the entourage numbered over 50.
Billed as the CBGB’s Road Show, the bands took over Boston’s Rat Club for a whole week. Some only played one or two sets, but others stayed the week and gave up to a dozen performances. Kristal’s plans for the future involve taking his bands all around the East Coast. As yet, of course, none save the more established acts like Patti Smith and the Ramones have travelled very far.
“After the first two weeks the sales figures on the album reached about 12,000 which isn’t too bad. Atlantic thought it would sell in New York, but they didn’t realise we could sell in Cleveland, St. Louis and even California. I think that sales will pick up after Christmas because we can’t really compete with all the big acts releasing albums right now.”
Curiously Kristal had no intention of creating an underground rock palace when he took over the Bowery club. CBGB’s, in fact, stands for Country, Bluegrass and Blues which is the type of music he originally envisaged promoting. “There just wasn’t enough talent around playing that kind of music, and it turned out that there were a lot of rock bands rehearsing all over with nowhere to play.
“What I felt was that they had to develop character in their own music. I didn’t tell them what to play, but they can’t play copy music. Original doesn’t have to be only their own stuff. If a band can interpret something and make it really their own, then that’s better than writing their own music that copies things others have done.”
A certain rivalry exists between CBGB’s and Max's Kansas City, where underground acts now appear regularly in the top room. The rivalry has occasionally taken on ugly proportions with clubs vying for acts on the same weekend and deliberately promoting rival bands on the same night to see where the fans’ loyalty lies. Some bands remain loyal to one club but others, especially high steppers like the Ramones, are obviously welcome at both clubs.
“There’s a natural rivalry in a sense of competitiveness.”
“We’ve tried to get together on this but we can’t because we each have to do our own thing. I know that Peter Crawley (booker at Max’s) hasn’t wanted to book bands that have played at CBGB’s a week before. I think the bands don’t realise this... that we have to run these places to make a profit and over-exposure will kill that.”
Leee Childers, who until recently did publicity for Max’s and who now manages The Heartbreakers, confirmed that at one time there had been a vicious rivalry between the two clubs.
“When Max’s decided to go rock and roll, they had a meeting with Hilly Kristal and decided to co-operate by not booking conflicting bands on the same night, but Max’s were only offering one night’s work compared to CBGB’s three. As soon as Max’s booked a band for Friday night, CBGB’s would turn around and offer the band three nights. Obviously they’d prefer three nights’ work so Max’s suffered.” Childers told me.
“At one time there was an unwritten rule that if a band played CBGB’s, they couldn’t play Max’s, but that’s cooling down a bit now. Most bands can play both clubs. Except of course, The Dictators who will never play Max’s.”
The latter remark stems from a physical confrontation that took place between Wayne County, the rock female impersonator who is a strictly Max’s artist, and Handsome Dick Manitoba, the burly lead singer of The Dictators. It occurred during a Dictators set at CBGB’s and has resulted in bad blood between these two acts ever since.
At both clubs the bands earn whatever is taken on the door minus a sum for the supporting act. At CBGB’s the Ramones hold the record for a single night’s takings — slightly over $2,000 — though The Runaways almost beat them on their first and only visit to the city.
According to Childers, bands can earn more in a single night at Max’s (Max’s is bigger than CBGB’s) but they prefer the three-night policy of CBGB’s not only because they enjoy playing as much as possible but because three nights means more money in the long run.
“At the end of a three-day run, we always make about $2,500 at CBGB’s,” said Childers, referring to The Heartbreakers. “It’s not bad money really... we’re not starving at all, despite what people think.”
Kristal says Television are his most consistent big draw. “After three nights, playing two sets a night, any one of about half-a-dozen of the top groups would take away between $3,000 and $3,500... maybe a little less if things are quiet.”
Kristal does have a problem, though, with industry types and other musicians who don’t want to fork out their $3 or $4 entry fee. “We can get up to 150 people who are in bands and who don’t want to pay and if that prevents the groups from making money, then I have to put a foot down somewhere.
“That’s why I have this three-night policy, putting bands on for Friday, Saturday and Sunday or Thursday, Friday and Saturday. If other musicians want to see the group they can come in on the Thursdays or the Sundays when it’s slower.”
Aside from CBGB’s and Max’s, three other clubs are now presenting underground bands. Club 82, at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 4th Street, still presents bands on an occasional basis, although most nights it is a disco. The 82 was among the first to offer opportunities to unsigned acts, opening its doors immediately after the Mercer Arts Centre (where Patti Smith and the Dolls played their initial gigs) burned down. The club suffers from a dubious reputation as a hang-out for transvestites.
Two weeks ago a new club called On The Rocks opened at Bleeker and Broadway, presenting acts on as many nights a week as they can book them. The Dolls played opening night and The Heartbreakers are due there this week. Like CBGB’s they are attempting a three-nights policy, though they haven’t quite established themselves yet.
Lastly, the former owner of Max’s, Micky Ruskin, has presented selected underground bands at his Lower Manhattan Ocean Club way downtown on Spring Street. Current policy at the Ocean, which opened in May, is to have live music on Monday and Tuesday only, commencing at midnight, and they attempt to cater to a rather more sophisticated (older) audience than that attending CBGB’s or Max’s.
Among the bands appearing there are Talking Heads, the Miami’s Black Eagle (a New York-based reggae band) and John Cale (who put together a scratch band for a one-off appearance earlier this summer). Elsewhere Manhattan offers little in the way of venues for the underground bands.
Even so the bands continue to multiply at alarming proportions. Recently CBGB’s showcased half-a-dozen unsigned bands from Boston during a special “Best of Boston Underground” weekend, and two outfits, Ready Teddy and Willy Loco, impressed the locals.
“It’s not getting overpopulated,” emphasised Danny Fields when I suggested that matters were getting out of hand. Fields, who manages the Ramones and who has fashioned a career out of promoting punk rock from The Doors to the MC5 to Iggy Pop, is a firm believer in “the more the merrier” attitude.
“I don’t object to the number of bands increasing each week,” he said. “This year the record companies have realised that there is something real happening in the New York underground, and bands are being recognised at last as having something worthwhile to offer.
“Of the bands that I am familiar with, there is no common factor in the music or the output, and there’s an audience out there for all the different types of music that these bands are creating. New York has always been a centre for talented people in all facets of the arts and now it is becoming a centre for rock as well.”
Page 40 — Melody Maker, November 27, 1976
Phase 3
Michael Oldfield looks at the punk pioneers
The current upsurge of punk rock has surprised many people; it shouldn’t have, for it’s happened twice before, under almost identical circumstances.
The first time was in America during the mid-Sixties, at a time when pop was becoming increasingly taken out of the hands of musicians by Svengali-like producers and writers — Phil Spector, Shadow Morton, Goffin and King and so on.
The second was on both sides of the Atlantic during the late Sixties/early Seventies when West Coast rock became too esoteric and pop once again fell back into the producers’ laps — the Kasentz/Katz team, who produced the Ohio Express, the 1910 Fruitgum Company and other bubblegum acts being a prime example.
The music produced by the three waves of punk rockers may not be identical (yet there is a kind of logical progression) but the reason for their rise is: a sterile music scene which lays emphasis on manufactured or complex sound which prompts a return to the grass roots, music made by ordinary people.
It’s rather like a set of scales: rock is split into two; on one side there’s energy, on the other expertise. As one becomes popular, it sinks with the weight, pushing the other side higher — and thus in a better vantage point from which to state its case.
The Beatles were the inspiration for the first wave of punk rockers. (Though don’t make the mistake of thinking these were the first punks. Back in the Fifties they were dragging hoodlums off the street corners of New York and Philly into the studios, cutting a couple of sides, and throwing them back with a couple of bucks to refurbish their zip guns. Behind many of those angelic-voiced doo-wop records are faces mean enough to give even the likes of Johnny Rotten and Rat Scabies a fright.)
The Beatles were significant because they were an actual performing group who wrote their own songs and made it without the help of fancy production and session musicians.
And it was a huge success!
All over America, over the next few years bands left the queue outside their local Phil Spector’s office and went home to write their own songs and cut demos. From the East Coast came the Barbarians, from the Midwest the Shadows of Knight, from the South the Swingin’ Medallions, from the West Coast the Standells.
Each had a distinctive sound (though many showed an affinity for thrashing around with old workhorses like “Baby Please Don’t Go”) and shared a common lack of musical profundity, compensated for by a great enthusiasm.
Their limited capabilities meant that most of them had to rely on one really powerful, catchy riff to carry a record (remember, these were the days of singles) — and who can deny the beauty of the riffs that made the Standells’ “Dirty Water”, the Swingin’ Medallions’ “She Drives Me Out Of My Mind” or the Castaways’ “Liar Liar”?
Naturally, it didn’t take the heavy producers long to cotton on to what was happening and get in on the act. Leon Russell, for example, after working with Spector, arranged for the Knickerbockers, whose speciality was imitating the Beatles. Their “Lies” is a classic, complete with “John Lennon” vocals and “George Harrison” guitar; so good is it that even today some Beatles fanatics still believe it was recorded by the Fab Four under the Knickerbockers alias.
Feldman–Goldstein–Gottehrer were another production team: they masqueraded under the name of The Strangeloves and cut several great singles: “Cara-Lin,” “Night Time” and “I Want Candy” among them. Just to keep their name in the charts, they were also known as The Sheep, who had a hit with “Hide And Seek.”
This period of punk rock is full of strange stories, many of which are related on the sleeve of “Nuggets” (US Elektra 7E-2006), a double album collection compiled by Lenny Kaye before he started putting his ideas into practice with the Patti Smith Band.
There, for example, you’ll find the tale of “Moulty”, in which the Barbarians’ drummer sings the sad, sad story of how his love of music overcame the handicap of losing a hand.
This particular era of punk rock ended when West Coast rock took over as the driving force in music. But before it tightened its grip, there was much confusion between the two.
The Electric Prunes, for example, started off with a mix of punk and psychedelia which emerged under supposedly hip (but actually silly) titles like “Get Me To The World On Time,” “The Great Banana Hoax” and “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” before moving on to the real thing — their “Mass In F Minor.”
On the West Coast were Count Five, with “Psychotic Reaction”, and the Leaves, who cut one of the earliest versions of “Hey Joe” alongside The Byrds and Love. And who could forget those princes of punk, The Seeds, whose lead singer Sky Saxon’s grating voice veered alarmingly between gentle hippie (“Flower Lady And Her Assistant”) and aggressive thug (“Pushin’ Too Hard”)?
The second wave of punks came when the rawness of the West Coast bands was rubbed away and replaced by musical integrity. As the sets became longer and more political, a substantial part of the audience got more and more bored.
Once again, it was left to the little local bands to counteract the sophistication of the establishment with a stiff dose of raw power. Specifically, it was the bands of Detroit who brought in phase two, soon to be titled heavy metal.
“Detroit had its fair share of mid-Sixties punks — Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Bob Seger, and the Amboy Dukes, who cut the definitive version of “Baby Please Don’t Go.” And it’s a city with a ready audience for high-decibel rock, an unwillingness to follow national trends and an intense love for homegrown heroes (witness the longevity of Seger and ex-Amboy Ted Nugent).
Hence the rise of the SRC, the Stooges and Grand Funk Railroad. Punks, man, they were armed with equipment beyond the wildest dreams of the Standells and Co. — enough to turn those beloved riffs into a veritable cacophony of sound.
Also, great strides had been made in lyric writing: everything from the most complex emotions, to political harangues, to Lou Reed’s sordid tales of the New York streets could be expressed in song.
Which left the door open for the anti-subtlety of heavy metal, like the Stooges’ “No Fun,” which consisted mostly of “No Fun” and “Come On”, or the MC5’s “Ramblin’ Rose”: “Love is like a ramblin’ rose / The more you feed it, the more it grows.”
Grand Funk were the band who really hit the big time (in the States, anyway) with this simplistic formula, but it was the others who were the really creative (if that word can be used in this context) bands.
The Stooges had an outrageous stage act, with leader Iggy Pop scratching himself until he bled or vomiting over the audience; SRC had a curious doom-laden sound and deserve some sort of awfulness medal for grafting “Beck's Bolero” onto Grieg’s “In The Hall Of The Mountain King.” The MC5 were the ultimate in high energy, as their “Kick Out The Jams” and “Back In The USA” albums amply demonstrate.
In Britain, Black Sabbath quickly rose to prominence with a distinctive brand of heavy metal, making bizarre, simplistic statements like “War Pigs,” “Children Of The Grave” and “Paranoid” to the tune of suitably heavy riffs.
Once again, the rise of more sophisticated music drove the metal merchants away; though some, like Sabbath and Grand Funk, have become more adventurous and been absorbed into mainstream rock.
If it’s any consolation to the opponents of today’s punk rock, history shows that it won’t last. And, of course, it becomes increasingly difficult to pose as an anarchistic rebel when you start making hit records and retire to a £100,000 mansion in Basingstoke.
Still, some good may come of it: musicians like Todd Rundgren, Al Kooper and Ted Nugent all cut their teeth in punk rock bands, and Blue Öyster Cult have made a very smooth transition from heavy metal to rock.
Rat Scabies jams with Eric Clapton? It could happen...
Ramones: one of the first punk bands to get a record contract
Richard Hell: now fronting The Voidoids, has just released his first single
The Heartbreakers: improved immeasurably, but record companies may be scared off by Johnny Thunders
Melody Maker, November 27, 1976