Tyner, Rob. "Back in the U.K." New Musical Express, no. 1 Oct. 1977, pp. 29-31. Photographs by Chalkie Davies
Back in the UK
— Rob Tyner of MC5 documents Britain's 1977 punk scene in this first-hand account, opening with a chaotic Generation X show at London's Marquee Club where fans spit on Billy Idol amidst "phantom werewolves in battle gear".
— Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious (watching banned videos at Virgin Records) and Paul Cook, plus analysis of punk's political divide between UK and US audiences.
— Britain's scene thrives despite establishment backlash, namechecking Donovan Letts' Punk Rock Movie and Keith Moon's dismissal of punk as "a new disease".
New Musical Express | October 1st, 1977 | Cover & Page 29
October 1. 1977 U.S. $1.10c Canada60c UK 18p
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THE CLASH
Back in the UK
New Musical Express | October 1st, 1977 | Page 30 & Page 31
Back in the U.K.
By Rob Tyner
Photographs by Chalkie Davies
It was one of those days when we were sitting round looking for new ideas to amaze and baffle you all.
“What we need,” somebody said, “is a whole new perspective.”
“Huh?” the rest of us replied.
“We’re all too close to what’s going on here. We need someone who can take a step back and look at the entire scene in perspective.”
“The big picture, so to speak?” We all nodded. “Cute... cute idea.” — “Yeah, but who?” There was a long pause. Some of us scratched ourselves, others stared blankly or tried to think of a plausible excuse so they could slide off to the pub.
“Ideally we ought to have a musician. Somebody whose name gets bandied about as a seminal influence on the New Wave.”
Those of us who knew what “seminal influence” meant looked up.
“Iggy Pop?”
“Too difficult.”
“One of the Dolls?”
“Can they write?”
“Jim Morrison?”
“Hard to get hold of.”
“One of the MC5?”
“Rob Tyner’s been writing longer than he’s been singing. He even treats Lester Bangs like a human being.”
There was no denying that the MC5 and their singer Rob Tyner are a major influence on today’s New Wave. You can hear traces of Tyner’s staccato, powerhouse vocal style in maybe half the current New Wave singles.
With the added plus that he could find his way round words longer than five letters, he seemed like the ideal candidate.
So it all began. The transatlantic wires hummed. Air flights were booked and hotels reserved. No expense was spared.
Finally, two weeks ago, Rob Tyner stepped onto a Pan Am jumbo in Detroit and was whisked into Heathrow.
For the next fourteen days, Tyner and the redoubtable Chalkie Davies saturated themselves in all that was good, and some that was not so good, in British rock and roll.
From Generation X to The Pirates, via The Clash and Sid Vicious, they saw it all.
What you’re about to read is the result, what U.K. ’77 looked like to one of the original Motor City wild bunch.
The crowd busted into full pogo and I was almost knocked over. I quickly caught myself and snapped into a semi-karate stance with my elbows sticking out samurai-style to ward off a future eruption.
This wasn’t an attack on me or anything... it was just punks in action at the Marquee. Groups of ten or twelve dudes who looked like a cross between A Clockwork Orange and Night Of The Living Dead were leaping up and down with shaking heads and rolling eyes and crazy teeth. Generation X was up on the stand lashing and flailing and Billy Idol, their blond lead singer, was exhorting the crowd. They responded by spitting on him. I could scarce believe my eyes.
The air was thick with sweat and spit and noise as Billy opened his teenage lips to shout his unintelligible lyrics into the jam-packed club. A girl pushed past me in the crush with her hair dipped in what looked like glue. She’d painted her eyelids bright magenta and was wearing a dog collar as her black lips mouthed Billy Idol’s gibberish words.
I suddenly looked around me at all the chaos and I began to feel a little out of it. Phantom werewolves in battle gear and ghoul-goddesses were dancing in an insane bacchanal, their bared and deadly fangs dripping unknown essences. It was a barn-dance in the Emerald Galaxy. The dance floor was electrified and the crowd jerked and shuddered and jolted with the volts...
This was my introduction to British New Wave, live and in person. I’d heard all the records and seen pictures, of course, but this was face to face, literally. I’ve seen the Ramones and Patti, but that’s American Punk. The British are (and always were) more into the “look” and there’s a hell of a lot more primping that goes into it here.
Back in the States, you just wear black leather and say to hell with it. The “Art Dachau” starvation look is usually sufficient and most don’t augment it with make-up much.
The mob was closing in and the heat was a visible steam in the air. My lungs had to struggle to get any oxygen at all and I could feel the tiny trickles of sweat running down my back. Gen X’s music is pretty one-dimensional. (Granted it’s the fourth dimension, but just one dimension, still). Their tunes are hard and played really fast but the titles are really baby-talk. Youth, Youth, Youth.
They bashed into their single, Your Generation, the hook of which goes “Your generation don’t make sense to me!” Not bad, but highly derivative to put it mildly. Nonetheless, the people broke out in shouts and waving fists, chanting along like a football cheer.
The first bona fide British Punk Rocker I met was (perfectly enough) Sid Vicious, bassist of the Sex Pistols. Photographer Chalkie Davies and I were at Virgin Records to see some video-tapes of the Pistols, and I looked up and saw him walking up to the office in his ancient jeans and black leather jacket studded with badges and military medals. He was wearing a Texas Chainsaw Massacre T-shirt, every other word out of his yap was gutter filth and I liked him immediately.
He sat on the couch with his lovely wife Nancy, shared a smoke and watched the video-tapes with us, as he’d never seen them himself. The first was really well produced and very funny. It was God Save The Queen, complete with Palace guards marching in time with the beat in red dress uniforms.
Johnny Rotten’s perfect rock face came leering and snarling, spliced with the marching tin soldiers as he spat out “God save the Queen, she ain’t no human being!”
I thought Jeez, I gotta see this band live, they’re incredible. The drummer, Paul Cook, has really good timing and he anchors the sound solidly with the thumping bong of Sid’s raw bass.
Steve Jones, the guitarist, appears to be the hottest around, but I’d need to see him live to be able to tell for sure. His smashes are really big and his slides and rips are murderous. The choppy chords on Queen have tons of elemental drive and a raw rock rumble that’s a little scary, just like good guitar should be.
But it’s Rotten who rivets the eye with a mighty magnetism that buzzes right off the screen. He hangs, looning and mincing, clutching a huge chromium-plated microphone that looks eerily like a skull.
His features are oddly Victorian and he has the air of a degenerate young English nobleman who’s into dissipation, drinks, drugs and the lash.
His words are hissed viciously through clenched teeth and his goo-goo eyes have a fire and intensity like a young Iggy. This sequence was followed by some footage of Anarchy and a clip of an abortive gig on a boat cruising the Thames.
The police pulled the plug and everyone got mad and finally there was a big scuffle and Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren was kicked in the butt accompanied by whoops and gales of laughter from Sid Vicious sitting there watching.
A few nights later I bumped into Pistols’ drummer Paul Cook at (of all places) a No Dice gig at the Marquee. He was standing at the bar enjoying a little spirits and I walked up and introduced myself.
He said, “What are you doing here?”
I said, “Come over to see you guys play.”
“Huh!” he snorted, “Where?” Good question. The tactics that the Sex Pistols have used to promote their act have gotten them white hot, but they’ve backfired on them too. What good is it to be really hot when you can’t play for an audience that wants you? But then it’s historically perfect. The Stones were banned, the Troggs were banned, I was banned, everybody and their momma has been banned. It’s part of the social backlash syndrome that occurs when groups begin to stir up the wrath of the authorities. But it’s more than the cops against the Pistols, it’s mums and dads. They’re a more powerful pressure group than most bands can take on and beat. I’ve been asking people like cabbies and milkmen and postmen and cops about punk and their reaction is interesting.
“Every time I see one of those bleeders,” says a grizzly cabbie, “walkin’ round with safety pins and swastikas all over their asses I look up to God and curse the seven years of my life I spent fighting the Nazis in the big war.”
A constable said, “If they like to fight and spit so much, perhaps a couple years militia would sort them out. Then they could work off that spunk fighting England’s battles and not bashing innocent people in the face.”
When I went to see Donovan Letts’ Original Punk Rock Movie, I met these two spinster sisters who looked horrified all through the flick. I kept one eye on the screen and one eye on the sisters. When something juicy would happen on film, they’d cover their faces.
The movie is shot in what looks like Super 8 and it’s cut really jagged and gives a great representation of the subject. The sound is raunchy and chaotic, just like the music. Afterwards, I popped up to the two nice ladies to get their opinion about all this madness. (I took off my Acid Punk badge first, see. I’m undercover over here and didn’t want to blow my cover.) I offered to buy them a drink in the bar and got ’em loosened up enough to get the real scoop out of them. They were drinking Martini Sweet Red (yecch). The older spinster sister related that they recently had a punker (sic) working in the architectural office on the switchboard. The younger spinster sister said, “Yes, and she was on drugs too, I could tell!”
The first S.S. said “These people are animals!” Her eyes were worried, “All that screaming and the part where that young man was cutting himself on the belly with a razorblade was the most disgustingly sick thing I’ve ever seen!”
Well, self-mutilation is never pretty, but they saw something even more ominous behind the thing. They felt that if some nouveau-Hitler type came along to direct and channel the insane energy, we’d have a deadly urban army of vampires and werewolves bent on destroying spinster sisters as we know them today.
Picture her in her nightgown with a candle peeking under her bed at midnight and finding a grinning Sid Vicious with a trench knife. She may have a point there...
People in the American Midwest are somewhat repulsed by New Wave probably because the press has portrayed it as inane flailing by moronic bondage-sickos. But I’m here to say that in every New Wave band I’ve seen so far, there’s only been three or four of the aforementioned undesirables and so there.
The night I saw the Boomtown Rats was the sweatiest and most chaotic scene so far. Even before the band went on there was steam in the air in the dressing room. I glanced over and here was this dude standing around in his pyjamas. Nice comment on the heat, I thought.
Later I found out that his name is Johnny Fingers and he always wears pyjamas. Great image and a stroke of genius.
Funny to see the Rats accepting their gold album with Fingers standing there yawning in his jammies. Anyways, I offered my services to introduce the band and it was mighty tasty. The crowd crashed and rumbled in summer thunder as the Rats took the stage in a remarkable display of pyrotechnic dynamism and stage presence. The lead vocalist, Bob Geldof, worked them up into a real lather like a young and electric Jagger as their ballsy R&B-ish tunes crested and rolled.
The audience was a sea of waving arms and shaking hair. Some leaped up in the air and violently shook their heads like sailfish fighting to dislodge the hook. A slim girl passed out and had to be lifted up across the stage into the little sauna dressing room where she lay limp and soggy.
The band was raging and snarling, whipping the already frenzied crush with tune after tune as gobs and shouts filled the surging air. There were a dozen cups of water on the drum stand and in between tunes I reached over and handed one to a kid in the front row. He gulped it down greedily, spilling lots of it fighting off his mates. Gasping for a drink themselves, the others stretched their hands, pleading like prisoners in a concentration camp for water. There was nothing that the band could do but fling the water in the air over the crowd, affording them blissful, if momentary, relief from the infernal heat. The Rats are a great stage act and should go down well in the States.
The frenzy of London’s punk audiences is at once inspiring and a little scary. The real New Wavers keep warning me about “posers”, the weekend punks who dress up on Saturday night in Sex Pistols drag and get violent. There are always bandwagon types who’ll jump on any trend and give the thing whatever bad name it has.
There must be a lot of posing going on because I certainly haven’t seen many punks out in the street during the day. Maybe, like the vampires they resemble, they only rise from their crumbling crypts after the sun has gone down in blood-red west. (Dave Vanian’s hand sneaks out from the crypt and lifts the coffin’s lid, cre-e-e-ak...)
But I must conclude that it’s easier to be a weekend punk than it was to be a weekend hippie. To be a proper hippie, one needed really long hair to prove your dedication to the cause.
It’s very difficult to hide a four-foot mane of hair and try to blend into the mainstream of society. Now, weekend punks can take off their plastic bags, wash off their make-up and comb down their short hair. Boom, you can blend in nicely.
As a matter of fact, I don’t mean to worry you, but one of these dangerous bondage sickies could be serving lunch to you at any London restaurant. I’ve actually seen a waiter from a King’s Road restaurant leaping through the Vortex in razorblades and SS gear. But I must admit that to be a proper serious New Waver, you have to live with the image as much as hippies did.
I mean, it’s hard to pull off being a milkman with blue hair and a pierced cheek.
Authenticity also demands that you be unemployable and on the dole, so the job thing needn’t really matter. It’s the very lack of bread that gives rise to the ingenuity of the New Wave. The style embraces safety pins, antique gym shoes, tattered Levi’s and all manner of refuse and castoffs. The gear is made from objects that cost nil or nearly nothing. Class from trash. Totally unlike the Mods, whose gear was expensive, the punks make theirs from junk. Of course, at Malcolm McLaren’s you can still buy hipness for a very high price. Even though leather jackets cost a lot, after the initial investment you have some gear that will wear like iron and be in style forever. (Been in style 25 years now, with no end in sight.)
I must admit that this whole thing is damn scenic, though. Some nights in the Vortex, these jaded eyes have beheld sights unimaginable.
Two heavy-set chicks with shocking pink hair and leotards walked past, both decked out in dog collars and spiked heels straight out of Mondo Bizarro.
They crawled under the stairway and clinched on the floor in passionate kisses as this black dude with rainbow stripes dyed in his hair was attacked by a rowdy punker in a blue flak suit with a parachute bag hanging off his butt.
There was a gigantic scuffle and several other Martian humanoids got involved and the fists and curses began to fly. They were separated by a couple of rhino-sized bouncers and dragged bodily up the stairs to God knows what fate. The crowd was still charged up from the violence in the air, so I kept one hand on my laser gun and one eye on the door.
The levels of violence around here are weird and random. At least, back in the U.S.A., if you’re getting the shit kicked out of you, you know exactly who is doing it and why. Here, it seems to just erupt and could easily spill over your innocent lap. In lovely London town, the lines of struggle are sharply drawn between punks and Teds and hippies. You can get smashed for any of a multitude of reasons: (a) having long hair, (b) having short hair, or (c) not greasing your hair back in a pompadour.
Seriously, the animosity between Teds and punks and hippies totally mystifies me. People here treat relatively minor stylistic differences as if they were the uniforms of warring armies. These factions seem to fail to realise that we’re all into rock and roll. Teds and punks actually have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of society. We’ve got the big beat in common. It’s just disgusting to see rock and roll people bashing each other around.
Mick Jones of The Clash told me about coming out of Jonathan Richman’s concert in Hammersmith and getting bashed in the head with a Ted’s crash helmet. It’s definitely tribal warfare and utterly senseless. The rock and roll of the Teds formed the historical basis for the psychedelia of the hippies and that formed the basis for New Wave. It’s all from a common root.
I believe the Teds are keeping alive a really important musical influence that’s all but died out in Detroit. I can’t remember the last time I saw a waterfall hairdo, or heard the name of Eddie Cochran on the grey streets of the Motor City. People have nearly forgotten Gene Vincent in contemporary America, but here he’s a live and vital musical force even today. Which is cool. But, you can’t cut it off at 1957 and violently oppose other rockers exploring new influences.
There are others keeping alive the heavy historical pulse and making its powerful message ring on the stages of today’s U.K.
Chalkie Davies and I made a mini-cab pilgrimage to Manchester to witness The Pirates. Their set starts out with a tape of seagulls and the ocean’s roar. Then, with a barrage of cannon fire, The Pirates hit the deck like a boarding party in an Errol Flynn epic. I’d always heard that Mick Green was a wizard guitarist, but I’ve got to testify that this dude can play rhythm and lead, simultaneously.
Honest, he stands there in his flash pirate duds and strums away like he’s just playing the chord part, but my ears were hearing a blistering lead. Mick’s fellow buccaneers, Johnny Spence and Frank Farley, are a truly professional and utterly powerful rhythm section. Bassist Spence’s lead vocals are real window rattlers.
Mick Green has this perfect rock and roll face; complete with a hip sneer like Ricky Nelson, only grown up and deadly serious. He tunes his high E string down a full tone when they do their thunderstorm version of Shaking All Over. His whizzing fingers made a cardonating thunder of rock and roll that was truly inspired.
I didn’t mind the four hours there and the four hours back to London at all. Ship ahoy. Honorable mention beau coup.
The great disaster of Chelmsford was held on a gray day with chilling winds and ominous clouds overhead. Backstage was a-grumble with disconcerted security crew and bands milling around rumbling.
The promoters weren’t even allowed to sell booze back there, which would have made conditions somewhat more agreeable. In retrospect, they probably wish they’d gotten the security gang soused and in better spirits. I met The Damned.
Hi, Damned.
Bye, Damned.
They pulled out of the gig on grounds of no bread and the professional in me couldn’t blame them, but the fan in me wanted to see them play. It was a little disappointing. But they saw it as a disaster and pulled out on the basic level of sheer survival.
Tsk.
The Doctors of Madness went on and played some really heavy stompy tunes and the people brightened up a little and then even more. The violinist had an insane violin that was stripped down to just an outline of its former self and it was painted day-glo orange. The sound that came blasting out of the amplifier was piercing and gutsy.
At the end of their set, they kept repeating “Where are your punk-rock bands when you need them? That’s how much they think of you... That’s how much they think of you!”
The Doctors have a really powerful rhythm section and a big pumping sound. Their lyrics seem to be some of the most biting and surreal that I’ve heard this trip, and I dig that because when faced with a choice between political and vacant, I’ll take sarcastic.
Now, I realise that it’s not fashionable to dig The Rods. I understand that and know full well the risk I am about to take. Being your basic rock and roller at heart, I really do dig The Rods.
Maybe the dudes in plastic bags and fuchsia hair don’t know, but the little girls understand.
When The Rods hit the boards, all of a sudden, the crowd changed. Immediately, there were pretty girls right down at the front where, seconds before, there had been boys jumping up and down with each other.
Interesting transformation.
Barrie Masters, The Rods’ jack-in-the-box lead singer, ran and dazzled and did flips all over hell. He climbed up the support rods that held up the stage’s canopy and hung there 40 feet over the crowd, and generally made happy mayhem while the band was rocking out down on stage. I’ve developed a real affection for The Rods, both musically and personally, and I believe that they have the best chance for America of all the bands I’ve seen here.
I was hanging out with Barrie Masters at the La Chasse (members only, eat your hearts out), having a drink after what turned out to be a fairly sedate evening with The Motors at the Marquee. The tiny club was nearly full, which means that there were about 12 people there. Keith Moon was doing his usual loonery, which is only what’s expected of him. For a giggle, I stopped him and asked him what his thoughts were on the New Wave.
“Never heard of it.” quoth he, his eyebrows raised in lofty disdain.
“What is it? A new disease?” He smiled brightly, his face registering mock puzzlement. “A religious sect?” His pinball eyes were flashing and there was a little neon sign over his head that said “Boinng”.
“Maybe so...” said I.
“I think maybe if it hangs around long enough, it’ll catch on,” he said evenly, “but I doubt it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Look!” he snarled, suddenly manic and eagle-eyed. “If any of them punk-rockers gets anywhere near my drum kit I shall kick ’em square in the knackers! I got fifteen years in this bloody business and what the hell do these bastards know?”
Obviously, the gentleman has his mind made up.
The old guard is still in control of the mass market, judging from the most recent charts and popularity polls. I believe that in some ways the politics of the New Wave are responsible for the lack of worldwide acceptance.
In the States, punk is buzzing around the fringes of the industry like hornets, but they haven’t found the way in yet. None of them, with the slight exception of Patti Smith, have made any sort of inroad toward the mass audience, but the politics of Ameri-punk are implicit in the stance and not really a blatant part of the lyrical content any more. But then, we went through our heavy political period in the late ’60s and ’70s. Britain is in a serious “No Future” trajectory, and on that level, Rotten is dead on.
The music of groups like the Pistols and The Clash draw an energetic electricity from the political environment. Which is as it should be. But the problem inherent in this is that U.K. politics do not translate into the American.
This may keep the more political acts from reaching the broad masses of the American Midwest, which is a large chunk of the world marketplace.
While it’s a smoking track,
Anarchy In The U.K. doesn’t have the potency in Omaha, Nebraska, that it enjoys in London.
While some groups would find the political thing a major stumbling block, acts like the Boomtown Rats and The Rods would have a much easier time translating the buzz abroad.
That’s strictly from an American point of view of the business and musical tastes. All I can say is that Yes are doing six nights at Wembley and the Pistols say they can’t play under their own name.
I know it’s in vogue to say that the scene here is dead and decaying and you should’ve seen it last year, but that kind of talk doesn’t faze me at all. I’ve given Brit-rock my seal of approval and a clean bill of health.
The atmosphere is more exciting than I’ve ever seen it before and there is more possibility for hip action than there was when I came to this great city six years ago. The bands are hotter, the folks in the street seem happier and the pubs rowdier.
And if this is decadence and decay, where do I sign up and take my blood test?
Pics from top: Tyner and Steve and Jones of Sex Pistols; Generation X at the Marquee; Tyner and the Feelgoods. Left, Victorian degenerate Johnny Rotten.
Pics from top: Tyner and The Clash; Barrie Masters of Eddie And The Hot Dogs (joke); Generation X. Right: Motor City madman Rob Tyner at the Chelmsford Fest.
NEW MUSICAL! EXPRESS October 1st, 1977