‘TV fury over rock cult filth’ thundered the Daily Mirror’s front page headline on December 2, 1976. This paper’s righteous rant was in reaction to ‘the filthiest language heard on British television,’ heard by millions of viewers of Thames TV’s teatime family show, Today, hosted by Bill Grundy.
The authors of the foul-mouthed performance 50 years ago were the Sex Pistols – who, a month earlier, released Anarchy in the UK …. and punk music was born. “I am an Antichrist … I am an anarchist,” snarled safety-pin wearing, spiky haired front man, Johnny Rotten – horrifying parents, while delighting their kids in equal measure.
What followed was a riot of brash, discordant music, wild pogo dancing, slashed up, slogan-covered fashion… creative anarchy that defined a generation. Author and cultural critic Kevin Dettmar says: “The Ramones, The Clash, The Stooges… these bands kicked the door down and ripped up the rulebook with their in-your-face, aggressive style and politically charged lyrics.”
In his new book, Punk in 50 Pieces, which is out now, Kevin relives some of the most influential songs of punk rock and the new wave and post-punk music that followed. Punk deconstructed the accepted appearance of a popular song – becoming to music what abstract art became to painting.
Kevin says: “Before punk rock exploded, mainstream popular music was dominated by polished arena rock, disco, and progressive rock.”
Inspired by 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock, punk stripped away the commercial polish of corporate arena rock.
Kevin says: “Punk said f*** that, let’s just strip it back to the studs. You had these people forming bands who couldn’t actually play an instrument, but it didn’t matter. It was more about attitude and energy, rather than being a prodigy. And, as a result, punk opened music up to a much wider swathe of artists.
“While Keith Emerson from Emerson, Lake and Palmer, or Rick Wakeman from Yes, used keyboards that cost as much as a house, punk saw people picking up – or stealing, which was even more punk – a secondhand bass.
“For the first-ever performance of Siouxsie and the Banshees [originally billed as ‘Suzie and the Banshees’] at the 100 Club Punk Festival in London, 1976, co-founder and bassist Steven Severin had literally first picked up a bass guitar less than 24 hours before taking the stage.”
Political dissatisfaction was the fire in punk’s belly. The 1970s’ economic crisis was a global period of severe economic downturn, defined by stagflation – a mix of stagnant economic growth, high unemployment, and soaring inflation.
Kevin says: “Anarchy in the UK became the ultimate punk anthem, because it weaponised raw youth frustration into a direct, abrasive assault on a stagnant British establishment. The thing that struck me about hearing the Sex Pistols was that they were frightening. Johnny Rotten scared me. And there was no precedent for that kind of unapologetic anger and disdain. That was really exciting.”
In 1977, Ian Dury’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll continued the conversation, confirming every parent’s nightmare about what the young people were getting up to behind closed doors. The lyrics read: “Sex and drugs and rock and roll are all my brain and body need.” Kevin says: “It points out the very real sense of ‘anything goes’ that characterised the early years of punk.”
When punk came along, it was abrasive, direct and in-your-face. This was then intensified when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979. Kevin says: “Youth unemployment was spectacular. Nobody could get a job. Everybody was on the dole and the fact that someone was addressing that struck a real chord. It was a collective release of anger.”
London’s Burning by The Clash, released in December 1979, tells the story of the boredom, decay and bleak economic climate of the capital. Kevin says: “The Clash used their music to address unemployment, police brutality, racism and class struggles, giving punk a purposeful voice.”
London Calling by The Clash is an apocalyptic and politically charged warning about impending global and societal collapse. Frontman Joe Strummer was inspired by news stories about the potential flooding of the River Thames and the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
Lines like ‘the ice age is coming’ and ‘meltdown expected,’ channelled deep anxieties over nuclear war, climate change, and ecological fragility. Kevin says: “Strummer explicitly criticised people for ignoring real-world threats when he sang, ‘while we were talking, I saw you nodding out’.”
Punk also addressed the issue of sexuality. Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) by the Buzzcocks in 1978 addressed the painful, universal experience of unrequited, or forbidden attraction.
Written by frontman Pete Shelley, the song explores the agony and emotional turmoil of falling for an unsuitable partner, captured in stark, biting lines like ‘you make me feel like dirt and I’m hurt’. Kevin says: “Shelley purposely kept the pronouns gender-neutral (‘someone you shouldn’t’ve’). Because Shelley was bisexual, this choice allowed for plausible deniability during a conservative era, while making the agony of desire universally relatable to anyone.”
No sooner had punk erupted, than it had gone. By the 1980s, a more sophisticated form of music had moved in – shifting away from punk’s simple three-chord aggression into darker, experimental sounds.
Soon emerging as post punk, the new sound kept punk’s rebellious energy. But mixed in was avant-garde art, electronic elements and funk. Bands like Joy Division, Gang of Four, Wire, and The Cure led the charge.
Then new wave moved in, trading raw, aggressive confrontation for catchy pop melodies, witty lyrics, and electronic experimentation. Artists like Blondie and Talking Heads kept punk’s rebellious energy and ‘anyone-can-start-a-band attitude’ alive, but made the music commercially viable and radio-friendly, tying in with the rise of MTV.
Remembering one American punk band, Kevin says: “Ultimately, pure punk was too chaotic to be sustainable. The Germs’ shows, for example, were so mad they had to begin booking them under a fake name [GI, which stood for Germs Incognito] because they had been banned from all of the clubs in LA.”
Because punk music wasn’t commercial, few artists were making any real money – and the musicians had bills to pay. Kevin continues: “They couldn’t get played on the radio. The Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen was not completely banned from the British charts, but its name was suppressed on official charts and it was blocked from the number-one spot.”
But the spirit of punk never really died. Many of today’s biggest artists have been inspired by the punk greats. Noel Gallagher called the Sex Pistols’ 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols the “most influential record of all time”.
Patti Smith described punk as an enduring idea and a state of freedom, rather than just a genre, saying: “It’ll be around 200 years from now for the people who want it”.
Kevin says: “Modern acts continue to be inspired. Yungblud blends modern pop and hip-hop with the ferocious angst, social commentary, and anti-authoritarian wardrobe of traditional punk. Fontaines DC channels aggressive vocal deliveries, raw counter-culture energy, and poetic lyricism.”
Mainstream artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Machine Gun Kelly have brought punk-inspired sounds back to the top of the Billboard charts. And bands like Green Day, Blink-182, and My Chemical Romance still pull massive streaming numbers and draw crowds to themed emo/punk club nights.
Kevin says: “One of the functions of rock and roll has always been to upset your parents, right? Kurt Cobain called it ‘territorial pi**ing’. It’s a way of sort of marking your territory. I’m going to play music that’s horrible. That means you don’t want to come into my bedroom. Nothing does that better than punk.”
*Punk in 50 Pieces: Punk Rock, Post-Punk, New Wave and the Five Years that Changed Pop Music Forever by Kevin Dettmar (Mudlark, £16.99) is out now
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: mirror.co.uk
