Post by stuartB on May 11, 2011 21:49:48 GMT
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. This is James' latest essay towards his history. the subject is politics of protest and focusses on the sex pistols and punk. he doesn't take after me thank goodness with a little more than 2 lines ;D
The politics of punk: how important and influential were Britain’s two great punk bands?
It all peaked in 1977. It was the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, celebrating 25 years on the British throne, but it was to be marked not only by celebration but also a moment of rebellion. The end of May, a week before the anniversary itself, saw the release of ‘God Save the Queen’ - not a version of the national anthem, but a deliberate provocation by the increasingly popular punk rock band the Sex Pistols. The brainchild of their manager Malcolm McLaren, the band had been active for about a year and a half, during which time they had been signed to three different record labels due to a number of controversies that had simultaneously infuriated EMI and A&m and inspired a rapidly growing following.
The song was openly and provocatively anti-royalist, proclaiming the royal family to be a ‘fascist regime’, but also very pessimistic, with the repeated claim that England had ‘no future’, and calling on (presumably) the country’s young people to rebel against authority with ‘Don’t be told what you want / Don’t be told what you need’. And of course it was not only the lyrics that rebelled - the accompanying music was loud, raw, fast-paced and powerful. The Sex Pistols’ musicians were not necessarily the most talented, but that was not the point - actually, if anything, it was the point that they were not very good, as a counter point to the skill of overblown prog rock or the perfection of pop arrangements. There was also the band’s appearance, again intentionally wild and hellish, in order to provoke antagonising remarks from the more senior and sensible members of society, and this continued on the sleeve of the single, which featured a controversial image of the monarch with a safety pin through her nose.
The single, the band’s second after the similarly mutinous ‘Anarchy in the UK’, was immediately controversial with the authorities; as critic Craig Reece wrote, ‘banned from the airwaves in the United Kingdom by both the BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority, the song was effectively blacklisted.’ But this notoriety helped make it a massive success, so much so that it is widely believed that the BBC fixed the British singles chart so that ‘God Save the Queen’ would not be the number 1 for the week of the Silver Jubilee; instead, the much more acceptable face of Rod Stewart and his double-A side single ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It/First Cut is the Deepest’ provided a more middle-of-the-road chart-topper. But it had left its mark. Punk rock, from here on, exploded into life - this was ‘the day the punk bomb exploded.’
The Sex Pistols were not the first or indeed the most pure form of this new genre, nor did they even last that long, but they would pave the way for bands like The Damned, the Buzzcocks and many more. But while some would focus on the superficial elements of punk, such as the image and the attitude, others would take a more political route. The greatest exponents of this alongside the Pistols were The Clash, with their seminal albums The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, London Calling, Sandinista!, and Combat Rock. The late 1970s also saw a second wave of bands emerge such as Sham 69, who took an equally political but populist approach to their sound in response to the art school-inspired bands of the first wave. All combined to create a hive of activity in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the punk movement, and its political connotations, grew quickly and then declined at a similar pace. But its legacy lives on, as an influential period of popular music and political mobilisation.
To begin with, it was not a movement born in Britain itself. It is generally considered to have emerged out of an underground scene in New York. A number of American acts active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, are now often considered under the retrospective label of ‘protopunk’. Much of the energy of later punk bands can be seen in album like The Stooges’ Raw Power or MC5’s Kick Out the Jams, while The Velvet Underground provided the provocative fashion styles and nihilistic lyrical themes. They were followed by the ‘first’ punks, led by female singer Patti Smith, and the R&B girl group-inspired New York Dolls. The latter was perhaps the most significant influence on British punk, as Malcolm McLaren was briefly their manager shortly before their split in 1975, and ‘stole their concept and formed a new band, the Sex Pistols.’ One intriguing difference between the American bands and their British predecessors, though, has been noted by Stacy Thompson: ‘the desire to avoid commercialization that ran through the New York Scene did not reappear in the English Scene,’ with the leading punk bands all signing to major record labels; this, despite preaching a rebellious message, makes them seem a little hypocritical.
1960s British bands including The Kinks and mod groups The Small Faces and The Who have also been cited as influencing the sound of punk, while in terms of fashion, the Teddy Boy style, which was undergoing a revival in the early 1970s, was also a stylistic influence: leading punk historian Jon Savage suggested ‘[Malcolm] McLaren and [his then-girlfriend, the designer Vivienne] Westwood were greatly impressed by the Teds’ foppish brutality and their hard style, which seemed like a subversion of the status quo.’
But as punk was largely a reaction against rock music of the day (amongst numerous other things, such as the establishment in general), perhaps the greatest influence is exactly what they were reacting against, in that they were trying to do the opposite. The stripped-down, fast-paced, simplistic sound was some distance apart from some of the most popular rock grounds of the mid-1970s, such as Queen, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, with their long instrumental solos, high production values, refined image and largely meaningless lyrics. As punk music critic Steven Wells wrote, ‘by 1976 rock music had become a bloated self-parody - an ageing generation of ex-hippie millionaire superstars living a luxury lifestyle, totally out of touch with the kids who bought their records.’ A step further would be to consider the mainstream pop music of the day: British number 1s of 1976 included songs by ABBA, Chicago, The Four Seasons and 1950s revival group Showaddywaddy. The music scene was ripe for a revolt.
McLaren is also said to have been influenced by and involved in the Situationist group King Mob, self-proclaimed ‘forces of chaos and anarchy.’ Situationism did take off in some Western countries, most notably the Netherlands with the Provos. However, in late 1960s Britain, it did not. Savage suggests this was ‘partly due to revolutionary priorities - terrorist groups like the Weathermen in the USA, Baader/Meinhof in Germany, and the Angry Brigade in the UK were moving towards real armed struggle - and partly due to the marginality of groups like King Mob’ , but much of the anti-establishment rhetoric of the campaign, in which McLaren was involved on the periphery, can be seen in the message of ‘his’ band, the Sex Pistols, a decade later, even though this has been disputed. Robert Garnett has also noted that the emergence of punk ‘was approximately coincidental with the rise of the term Postmodernism within intellectual culture. It was around punk that the reconfiguration of the interface between high art and popular music first began to be conducted.’
The Pistols’ initial existence was very brief but they would prove to be one of the most important and influential bands of the 1970s. They released only one full studio album, the ground-breaking Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Released in late 1977, it was the fruition of a year of recording and touring, during which time they had already achieved considerable notoriety. They first sprang into the national public conscience with their famous appearance on Thames Television’s Today programme in December 1976. Guitarist Steve Jones reacted angrily to presenter Bill Grundy’s flirting with another up-and-coming punk star Siouxsie Sioux. Grundy goaded Jones into further remarks, including several expletives. The exchange was front page news in several of the leading British newspapers and led to the band being dropped by their first of three record labels, EMI (as well as Grundy being dismissed himself). The brief tour that followed saw a number of gigs cancelled as a result, and those that did go ahead were often accompanied by protests. As well as ‘God Save the Queen’, the songs ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’ had been released as singles before the album to moderate success and acclaim.
The album too would be highly controversial, not least due to its risqué title and content. A number of high street retailers chose to ban the album from their stores, but as with ‘God Save the Queen’, the furore once again only helped boost record sales, and it charted at number 1 on the UK albums chart regardless. It also received considerable praise from the critics, and continues to frequently be ranked towards the top of all-time greatest album charts today, along with some of its songs and the band itself in respective lists.
It is an angry, snarling album that captured the imagination of a disaffected youth suffering in a time of hardship, high unemployment and unrest - as critic Ali MacQueen wrote, ‘the entire country seemed in a state of cold turkey, the optimism of the 1960s a distant memory.’ The tracks cover numerous different themes. The title of opening song ‘Holidays in the Sun’ is a paradox, as it is about the Berlin Wall and the ‘claustrophobia’ and ‘paranoia’ of the Cold War. It is perhaps the most political song on the album; the opening line, ‘A cheap holiday in other people’s misery’ is a reference towards ‘graffiti that appeared in Paris in 1968 during the campaign for a more egalitarian society by the revolutionary movement Situationist International.’ But it also reflects the ‘oppressive atmosphere that surrounded the Pistols at the time’ due to the role of the demanding McLaren.
It is followed by the purely inflammatory ‘Bodies’, which contains a graphic representation of abortion, in which lead singer Johnny Rotten says the ‘f-word’ five times in the space of a few seconds. ‘No Feelings’ is from the point of view of a wife-beater. ‘God Save the Queen’ is of course a pessimistic rant about the royal family and effectively the class system as a whole. ‘Seventeen’ is specifically about the subject of teenage rebellion, while in ‘Pretty Vacant’, Rotten’s emphasis on the second syllable in ‘vacant’ was a hint towards another expletive. The album’s closing track, ‘EMI’, is a direct attack on the record label that dropped them, as well as a hint to their second label, A&m, who they had also parted with by this time.
But the album’s crowning glory is ‘Anarchy in the UK’, that first single released on EMI the previous year. It is interesting to note that the form of ‘anarchy’ Rotten sings about is not necessarily a political one, and takes a particularly violent form, reflecting the times in which it was recorded. It is this song that perfectly captures what the band are all about. Rotten’s lyrics are full of bitterness and fury, as is his intentionally poor and loud ‘singing’, while in the background, Jones’ simple crunching guitar riff, Matlock’s bass and Paul Cook’s pounding drumming combine to create a ‘wall of sound’, though a lot more raw and high energy than a production by its pioneer Phil Spector.
But we must not think of the Sex Pistols as a spontaneous revolution. McLaren was the key man, bringing them together and controlling them as much as any other modern manufactured band, particular with the band’s image, from Rotten’s spiked, bright orange hair to the whole attitude and demeanour of the band on- and off-stage. There were also other signs that, as some would put it, it was not all about the music. Original bassist Glen Matlock was dropped for not fitting the right image, or, as Craig Reece termed it, ‘fired for being “too nice.”’ He was replaced by Sid Vicious, who could barely play the instrument (and indeed can only be vaguely heard on one track on the album, ‘Bodies’) and although Rotten later admitted ‘bringing Sid in brought a sense of chaos that I liked’ , he would prove to be a destructive presence in the band, after developing a heroin addiction and becoming increasingly violent. Both McLaren and Vicious were cited as the main factors behind the departure of Rotten in January 1978, after which the band effectively split, although McLaren cobbled together a couple of recordings during that year for the soundtrack to the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, including a contribution from on-the-run Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, something Rotten later described as ‘a pretty shitty idea to support an ageing tosspot robber’ . The film itself would not be released until 1980, by which time McLaren was financially ruined and Vicious was already dead, after a heroin overdose in February 1979.
This commercial, manufactured side to the band is perhaps why they should be treated with caution. McLaren was a keen follower of trends, as shown by his later career as a solo star when he was one of the first mainstream acts to embrace rap and hip-hop. He and his girlfriend, designer Vivienne Westwood, had a key role in shaping the image of the Sex Pistols, which proved to be highly influential in forming the image of punks as a whole. Jamie Reid, who designed the Sex Pistols’ album and single sleeves, also played an understated role; his visuals have been considered ‘important not just because it amounts to the greatest single contribution to punk’s visual identity, but because it also articulated the most vital aspects of the Pistols’ critique of pop.’
However, the core members of the band, in particular Rotten (who reverted to his original name, John Lydon, on the formation of his next band, the critically-acclaimed Public Image Ltd) were clearly well-intentioned and believed in the message they were spreading. Rotten would later play down McLaren’s role in the band in his autobiography, writing ‘Who put the Pistols together? Not Malcolm, really. Born out of a clothes store he owned? That’s a pop myth’ and:
‘We made our own scandal just by being ourselves. Maybe it was that he knew he was redundant, so he overcompensated. All the talk about the French Situationists being associated with punk is bollocks. It’s nonsense! There’s no master conspiracy in anything, not even in governments. Everything is just some kind of organised chaos.’
However, McLaren alternatively believed ‘Rotten never had an ounce of musical ability. Whatever he said, he was just an arrogant little shit who thought he knew everything.’ Savage cites Jones as the man who brought the band together: ‘In fact, it was Steve Jones who first had the idea of putting the group, or any group, together with McLaren. He chose McLaren, not vice versa.’ Something that further supports the argument against McLaren’s influence is the Grundy incident, as it was down to a totally spontaneous reaction by Jones.
Ultimately, there is no doubt that they themselves had a massive influence on the punk genre and social movement regardless of who was behind it. Their fusion of their own brash music and style, and political and social themes, would immediately inspire many contemporaries very quickly - 1977 is notable in punk terms not only for Never Mind the Bollocks, as it also saw the first album of arguably the other great British punk rock band. As Steven Wells termed them, ‘after the Sex Pistols, The Clash were the most influential punk band ever.’
The Clash had been in the same London scene as the Sex Pistols but would take a different path over the next decade, with more experimentation, merging a variety of musical genres and styles, and more political lyrics. In some ways, they were seen as more intellectual interpreters of punk, especially when compared to some of their more commercial-orientated punk contemporaries such as the Buzzcocks and The Damned. Critic Chris Bryans summed this up by writing this response:
in the classroom of English first-generation punk, if The Damned were the loons messing around at the back and scaring the girls with frogs, then the Sex Pistols were the snot-nosed tearaways disagreeing with everything they were told because…well, just because. That left The Clash as the defiant ones who reminded everyone - repeatedly, and at high volume - how messed up the world had become.
As a result, while the Sex Pistols remain the most well-known and infamous of the two great British punk bands, it is The Clash that are today the most critically acclaimed, as seen in Rolling Stone magazine’s top 100 greatest artists issue, where the Sex Pistols were ranked at number 58 and The Clash at 30. In the issue, U2 guitarist The Edge cited them as an inspiration, writing ‘The social and political content of the songs was a huge inspiration, certainly for U2. It was the call to wake up, get wise, get angry, get political and get noisy about it.’ Two of the band’s six albums, their eponymous first album and London Calling, joined Never Mind the Bollocks... in the book 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die, while the songs ‘London Calling’, ‘Rock the Casbah’ and ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ featured in the accompanying book 1001 Songs to Hear Before You Die.
The first album, The Clash, was released shortly before Never Mind the Bollocks... in April 1977, and has been described as ‘the first great album of the punk era…It was raw. It was angry. It was overtly political and sounded as if it had been made in a frenzy of impatience. And it was what an entire generation had been waiting for.’ Several of the songs on the album are shorter than two and a half minutes, packing in the energy and attitude of their contemporaries into short, sharp bursts, as previously developed by the American ‘bubblegum punk’ band the Ramones, but in a more sophisticated way owing to the focus on political themes. This is summed up by 2 minute romp ‘White Riot’, the fourth track on the album. It was inspired by the 1976 Notting Hill race riots and was aimed at white rioters in order to encourage them to rise up against something worthy rioting about, specifically the establishment and the powers-that-be. The ironically-titled ‘Career Opportunities’ is another key track, focusing on the lack of opportunities for young people in the mid-to-late 1970s (‘Career opportunities are the ones that never knocked / every job they offer is to keep you out the dock’). As Ali MacQueen wrote, ‘their output was often derided as sloganeering but the lyrics of “Career Opportunities” brilliantly capture the prospect facing the nation’s youth: menial work or life on the dole.’ Unlike the Sex Pistols, it is this direct appeal to working class young people that made the album and the band popular, perfectly encapsulating what punk was all about - again, in the words of MacQueen, ‘the band had a political and musical vision that reached a good way beyond the myopic outlook of their punk contemporaries.’
Second album Give ‘Em Enough Rope, released in November 1978, was their commercial breakthrough, reaching number 2 on the UK albums chart, and was also their first album to be released in the USA. It was again well-received by the critics, as suggested by Steven Wells: ‘Sharp, aggressive and much “rockier” than the first album, Rope also featured some of the best Clash material to date.’
But intriguingly it did not contain the song ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’, released as a single earlier that year. The song was dramatically different to anything heard from the band before, being heavily influenced by reggae. Lead singer Joe Strummer had been inspired to write it after attending a reggae performance night at the Hammersmith Palais in West London; according to Jon Harrington, ‘this night led to Strummer’s writing the song he regarded as his best…not because he was inspired but because he felt the show was too showbiz and the music “pop reggae”, rather than the revolutionary “roots” sounds he had hoped for.’ But as well as criticising the concert, Strummer also refers to a number of other political issues; he points out that no working class uprising could ever work due to the strength of the British Army, he comments on the lack of wealth distribution and asks for someone to ‘phone up Robin Hood’, condemns the British far right groups (‘If Adolf Hitler flew in today / they’d send a limousine anyway’), and even criticises other punk bands for in-fighting (‘They won’t notice anyway / they’re all too busy fighting / for a good place under the lighting’) and being too commercial, with the lines ‘the new groups are not concerned / with what there is to be learned / they got Burton suits, ha you think it’s funny / turning rebellion into money’ said to be an implicit jibe at the emerging political punk/New Wave band The Jam, with whom The Clash had fallen out on tour. The song is a turning point for the band, as from here on they would continue to embrace and merge a number of different musical styles and genres in their music; Wells considers the song ‘probably The Clash’s finest moment…one of the top ten rock/pop singles of all time…the perfect fusion of reggae and punk.’
It is third album that is considered their magnum opus: December 1979’s London Calling has received considerable critical acclaim from all quarters, and is considered one the finest albums in the history of rock music as demonstrated in 2003 when it was ranked as high as the 8th greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone. Critic Ignacio Julià wrote that it was ‘The Clash’s masterpiece…still stands as the work that offered a vital exit from punk’s solipsism. London Calling was the definitive Clash statement after the punk manifesto of their first album and the States-friendly production of Give ‘Em Enough Rope.’ Even its distinctive cover is a classic, with the pink and green writing mimicking that on Elvis Presley’s debut album but instead with a typically punk photo of bassist Paul Simonon on the verge of smashing his instrument.
Of the tracks on that album, the stand-out is arguably the title track, one of the band’s best-known hits. Influenced by The Kinks hit ‘Dead End Street’ (which also came from a politically leftist perspective), the pounding riffs and beats were supplemented by Strummer’s vicious lyrics, referencing ‘the nuclear scare at Three Mile Island in the United States, police brutality, drugs, meltdown (both financial and climatic) and cultural vacuity’ , while the title itself hints at the beginning of BBC broadcasts during World War II that would begin with ‘This is London calling…’, suggesting this song should be taken as a similar warning. It was anti-establishment, like ‘Anarchy in the UK’, but in a completely different way. It even sounded very different: both are loud, and ‘London Calling’ has every bit of the swagger of ‘Anarchy…’, but without the ‘wall of sound’ effect and the quick tempo.
Follow-up album Sandinista!, released a year later, was another critical success, continuing the expansion into other genres seen in ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ and London Calling with influences from rap, calypso, folk, rockabilly, jazz and R&B. But by 1982, the end was nearing for the band, with increasing tensions, and the golden era of punk in the late 1970s seemed ever distant. Combat Rock was less experimental than Sandinista! but would be their most commercially-successful release. It would prove to be the last album for the classic line-up (guitarist Mick Jones and drummer ‘Topper’ Headon would soon be dismissed), and penultimate overall. But it still contained two significant Clash songs, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’, later a number 1 in the UK singles charts after its inclusion in advert for Levi jeans, and ‘Rock the Casbah’, a top 10 hit in the USA. The former, written and sung by Jones, is a slow-paced rocker in the traditional Clash style, complete with a memorable sing-along chorus. The latter, written by Strummer and Headon, could not be musically less punk due to its groovy rhythm, but lyrically it is as anti-establishment as ever, being about defiance of a ban on rock music by a Middle Eastern state. It once again showed the band pushing the boundaries even within the punk genre. After the firing of Jones and Headon, final album Cut the Crap flopped and the band split in 1986.
Overall, one cannot underestimate the individual importance of the Sex Pistols and The Clash to the punk scene. Before the emergence of the former into the mainstream, punk was a developing underground scene. Then, in from 1976 onwards, it exploded into the public sphere and went global. The Pistols were at the forefront of this, effectively introducing the nation to punk with ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and the Grundy incident. But above this, as Wells points out, they came to epitomise the stereotypical punk band from that point onwards:
Other bands (The Ramones and the New York Dolls) might have invented the punk sound. Richard Hell might have been the originator of the punk image. But the Sex Pistols came to define punk. They are THE punk band. They are the band that turned punk from a cool, cliquey, self-referential little rock ‘n’ roll sub-genre into a worldwide musical artistic and literary explosion. The Sex Pistols ripped punk off from New York and made it their own. They made it HAPPEN.
But while the Sex Pistols influenced more people, this is not to say The Clash are second best in the annals of rock history. As the more political of the two great British punk bands, many modern political rock bands can trace their lineage back to them, such as Los Angeles rap metal band Rage Against the Machine, who have become a Clash for the 1990s generation with their attacks on capitalism and globalisation, or Welsh socialist rockers the Manic Street Preachers. Despite emerging after the Sex Pistols, who had offered something totally different to anything else in the music scene at the time, The Clash were the far more radical of the two bands - as Wells infers, ‘Where the Sex Pistols offered nihilism, The Clash offered revolution.’
Beyond both of these legendary bands, there were others that made an impact, including on a political level, but in doing so took punk in a different direction again. One of these was Sham 69, known for their hits ‘If the Kids are United’ and ‘Hurry Up Harry’. They were part of the reaction to the first wave of art school punk bands that became known as the genre ‘Oi!’ due to its down-to-earth nature, reliance on chanting, and populist political orientation. The Northern Irish band Stiff Little Fingers, best known for their 1978 hit ‘Alternative Ulster’, are proof that punk was not purely London-centric. Equally, often the punk movement can be seen as predominantly male, but that would be to overlook the considerable female involvement: Siouxsie Sioux, leader of the Banshees, is the most well-known; X-Ray Spex, who became famed for their 1978 album Germ Free Adolescents, were fronted by the late Poly Styrene; and there were also a number of all-female groups, such as The Slits, that would inspire the 1990s Riot Grrl scene.
But ultimately, the Sex Pistols and The Clash are at the root of all of these bands. They were the trailblazers. The Pistols made the initial breakthrough, and The Clash would pick up the baton as punk’s standard-bearers, pushing the boundaries of the genre as they went. Their influence can still be felt today. As Wells infers, ‘the basic tenet of punk was that anybody could form a rock band. And thousands of kids all over the US and the UK (and later the world) did just that.’ This is something that can still be seen now - almost all rock bands, particularly political rock bands, owe a lot to the two great punk rock bands of Britain.
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The politics of punk: how important and influential were Britain’s two great punk bands?
It all peaked in 1977. It was the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, celebrating 25 years on the British throne, but it was to be marked not only by celebration but also a moment of rebellion. The end of May, a week before the anniversary itself, saw the release of ‘God Save the Queen’ - not a version of the national anthem, but a deliberate provocation by the increasingly popular punk rock band the Sex Pistols. The brainchild of their manager Malcolm McLaren, the band had been active for about a year and a half, during which time they had been signed to three different record labels due to a number of controversies that had simultaneously infuriated EMI and A&m and inspired a rapidly growing following.
The song was openly and provocatively anti-royalist, proclaiming the royal family to be a ‘fascist regime’, but also very pessimistic, with the repeated claim that England had ‘no future’, and calling on (presumably) the country’s young people to rebel against authority with ‘Don’t be told what you want / Don’t be told what you need’. And of course it was not only the lyrics that rebelled - the accompanying music was loud, raw, fast-paced and powerful. The Sex Pistols’ musicians were not necessarily the most talented, but that was not the point - actually, if anything, it was the point that they were not very good, as a counter point to the skill of overblown prog rock or the perfection of pop arrangements. There was also the band’s appearance, again intentionally wild and hellish, in order to provoke antagonising remarks from the more senior and sensible members of society, and this continued on the sleeve of the single, which featured a controversial image of the monarch with a safety pin through her nose.
The single, the band’s second after the similarly mutinous ‘Anarchy in the UK’, was immediately controversial with the authorities; as critic Craig Reece wrote, ‘banned from the airwaves in the United Kingdom by both the BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority, the song was effectively blacklisted.’ But this notoriety helped make it a massive success, so much so that it is widely believed that the BBC fixed the British singles chart so that ‘God Save the Queen’ would not be the number 1 for the week of the Silver Jubilee; instead, the much more acceptable face of Rod Stewart and his double-A side single ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It/First Cut is the Deepest’ provided a more middle-of-the-road chart-topper. But it had left its mark. Punk rock, from here on, exploded into life - this was ‘the day the punk bomb exploded.’
The Sex Pistols were not the first or indeed the most pure form of this new genre, nor did they even last that long, but they would pave the way for bands like The Damned, the Buzzcocks and many more. But while some would focus on the superficial elements of punk, such as the image and the attitude, others would take a more political route. The greatest exponents of this alongside the Pistols were The Clash, with their seminal albums The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, London Calling, Sandinista!, and Combat Rock. The late 1970s also saw a second wave of bands emerge such as Sham 69, who took an equally political but populist approach to their sound in response to the art school-inspired bands of the first wave. All combined to create a hive of activity in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the punk movement, and its political connotations, grew quickly and then declined at a similar pace. But its legacy lives on, as an influential period of popular music and political mobilisation.
To begin with, it was not a movement born in Britain itself. It is generally considered to have emerged out of an underground scene in New York. A number of American acts active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, are now often considered under the retrospective label of ‘protopunk’. Much of the energy of later punk bands can be seen in album like The Stooges’ Raw Power or MC5’s Kick Out the Jams, while The Velvet Underground provided the provocative fashion styles and nihilistic lyrical themes. They were followed by the ‘first’ punks, led by female singer Patti Smith, and the R&B girl group-inspired New York Dolls. The latter was perhaps the most significant influence on British punk, as Malcolm McLaren was briefly their manager shortly before their split in 1975, and ‘stole their concept and formed a new band, the Sex Pistols.’ One intriguing difference between the American bands and their British predecessors, though, has been noted by Stacy Thompson: ‘the desire to avoid commercialization that ran through the New York Scene did not reappear in the English Scene,’ with the leading punk bands all signing to major record labels; this, despite preaching a rebellious message, makes them seem a little hypocritical.
1960s British bands including The Kinks and mod groups The Small Faces and The Who have also been cited as influencing the sound of punk, while in terms of fashion, the Teddy Boy style, which was undergoing a revival in the early 1970s, was also a stylistic influence: leading punk historian Jon Savage suggested ‘[Malcolm] McLaren and [his then-girlfriend, the designer Vivienne] Westwood were greatly impressed by the Teds’ foppish brutality and their hard style, which seemed like a subversion of the status quo.’
But as punk was largely a reaction against rock music of the day (amongst numerous other things, such as the establishment in general), perhaps the greatest influence is exactly what they were reacting against, in that they were trying to do the opposite. The stripped-down, fast-paced, simplistic sound was some distance apart from some of the most popular rock grounds of the mid-1970s, such as Queen, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, with their long instrumental solos, high production values, refined image and largely meaningless lyrics. As punk music critic Steven Wells wrote, ‘by 1976 rock music had become a bloated self-parody - an ageing generation of ex-hippie millionaire superstars living a luxury lifestyle, totally out of touch with the kids who bought their records.’ A step further would be to consider the mainstream pop music of the day: British number 1s of 1976 included songs by ABBA, Chicago, The Four Seasons and 1950s revival group Showaddywaddy. The music scene was ripe for a revolt.
McLaren is also said to have been influenced by and involved in the Situationist group King Mob, self-proclaimed ‘forces of chaos and anarchy.’ Situationism did take off in some Western countries, most notably the Netherlands with the Provos. However, in late 1960s Britain, it did not. Savage suggests this was ‘partly due to revolutionary priorities - terrorist groups like the Weathermen in the USA, Baader/Meinhof in Germany, and the Angry Brigade in the UK were moving towards real armed struggle - and partly due to the marginality of groups like King Mob’ , but much of the anti-establishment rhetoric of the campaign, in which McLaren was involved on the periphery, can be seen in the message of ‘his’ band, the Sex Pistols, a decade later, even though this has been disputed. Robert Garnett has also noted that the emergence of punk ‘was approximately coincidental with the rise of the term Postmodernism within intellectual culture. It was around punk that the reconfiguration of the interface between high art and popular music first began to be conducted.’
The Pistols’ initial existence was very brief but they would prove to be one of the most important and influential bands of the 1970s. They released only one full studio album, the ground-breaking Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Released in late 1977, it was the fruition of a year of recording and touring, during which time they had already achieved considerable notoriety. They first sprang into the national public conscience with their famous appearance on Thames Television’s Today programme in December 1976. Guitarist Steve Jones reacted angrily to presenter Bill Grundy’s flirting with another up-and-coming punk star Siouxsie Sioux. Grundy goaded Jones into further remarks, including several expletives. The exchange was front page news in several of the leading British newspapers and led to the band being dropped by their first of three record labels, EMI (as well as Grundy being dismissed himself). The brief tour that followed saw a number of gigs cancelled as a result, and those that did go ahead were often accompanied by protests. As well as ‘God Save the Queen’, the songs ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’ had been released as singles before the album to moderate success and acclaim.
The album too would be highly controversial, not least due to its risqué title and content. A number of high street retailers chose to ban the album from their stores, but as with ‘God Save the Queen’, the furore once again only helped boost record sales, and it charted at number 1 on the UK albums chart regardless. It also received considerable praise from the critics, and continues to frequently be ranked towards the top of all-time greatest album charts today, along with some of its songs and the band itself in respective lists.
It is an angry, snarling album that captured the imagination of a disaffected youth suffering in a time of hardship, high unemployment and unrest - as critic Ali MacQueen wrote, ‘the entire country seemed in a state of cold turkey, the optimism of the 1960s a distant memory.’ The tracks cover numerous different themes. The title of opening song ‘Holidays in the Sun’ is a paradox, as it is about the Berlin Wall and the ‘claustrophobia’ and ‘paranoia’ of the Cold War. It is perhaps the most political song on the album; the opening line, ‘A cheap holiday in other people’s misery’ is a reference towards ‘graffiti that appeared in Paris in 1968 during the campaign for a more egalitarian society by the revolutionary movement Situationist International.’ But it also reflects the ‘oppressive atmosphere that surrounded the Pistols at the time’ due to the role of the demanding McLaren.
It is followed by the purely inflammatory ‘Bodies’, which contains a graphic representation of abortion, in which lead singer Johnny Rotten says the ‘f-word’ five times in the space of a few seconds. ‘No Feelings’ is from the point of view of a wife-beater. ‘God Save the Queen’ is of course a pessimistic rant about the royal family and effectively the class system as a whole. ‘Seventeen’ is specifically about the subject of teenage rebellion, while in ‘Pretty Vacant’, Rotten’s emphasis on the second syllable in ‘vacant’ was a hint towards another expletive. The album’s closing track, ‘EMI’, is a direct attack on the record label that dropped them, as well as a hint to their second label, A&m, who they had also parted with by this time.
But the album’s crowning glory is ‘Anarchy in the UK’, that first single released on EMI the previous year. It is interesting to note that the form of ‘anarchy’ Rotten sings about is not necessarily a political one, and takes a particularly violent form, reflecting the times in which it was recorded. It is this song that perfectly captures what the band are all about. Rotten’s lyrics are full of bitterness and fury, as is his intentionally poor and loud ‘singing’, while in the background, Jones’ simple crunching guitar riff, Matlock’s bass and Paul Cook’s pounding drumming combine to create a ‘wall of sound’, though a lot more raw and high energy than a production by its pioneer Phil Spector.
But we must not think of the Sex Pistols as a spontaneous revolution. McLaren was the key man, bringing them together and controlling them as much as any other modern manufactured band, particular with the band’s image, from Rotten’s spiked, bright orange hair to the whole attitude and demeanour of the band on- and off-stage. There were also other signs that, as some would put it, it was not all about the music. Original bassist Glen Matlock was dropped for not fitting the right image, or, as Craig Reece termed it, ‘fired for being “too nice.”’ He was replaced by Sid Vicious, who could barely play the instrument (and indeed can only be vaguely heard on one track on the album, ‘Bodies’) and although Rotten later admitted ‘bringing Sid in brought a sense of chaos that I liked’ , he would prove to be a destructive presence in the band, after developing a heroin addiction and becoming increasingly violent. Both McLaren and Vicious were cited as the main factors behind the departure of Rotten in January 1978, after which the band effectively split, although McLaren cobbled together a couple of recordings during that year for the soundtrack to the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, including a contribution from on-the-run Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, something Rotten later described as ‘a pretty shitty idea to support an ageing tosspot robber’ . The film itself would not be released until 1980, by which time McLaren was financially ruined and Vicious was already dead, after a heroin overdose in February 1979.
This commercial, manufactured side to the band is perhaps why they should be treated with caution. McLaren was a keen follower of trends, as shown by his later career as a solo star when he was one of the first mainstream acts to embrace rap and hip-hop. He and his girlfriend, designer Vivienne Westwood, had a key role in shaping the image of the Sex Pistols, which proved to be highly influential in forming the image of punks as a whole. Jamie Reid, who designed the Sex Pistols’ album and single sleeves, also played an understated role; his visuals have been considered ‘important not just because it amounts to the greatest single contribution to punk’s visual identity, but because it also articulated the most vital aspects of the Pistols’ critique of pop.’
However, the core members of the band, in particular Rotten (who reverted to his original name, John Lydon, on the formation of his next band, the critically-acclaimed Public Image Ltd) were clearly well-intentioned and believed in the message they were spreading. Rotten would later play down McLaren’s role in the band in his autobiography, writing ‘Who put the Pistols together? Not Malcolm, really. Born out of a clothes store he owned? That’s a pop myth’ and:
‘We made our own scandal just by being ourselves. Maybe it was that he knew he was redundant, so he overcompensated. All the talk about the French Situationists being associated with punk is bollocks. It’s nonsense! There’s no master conspiracy in anything, not even in governments. Everything is just some kind of organised chaos.’
However, McLaren alternatively believed ‘Rotten never had an ounce of musical ability. Whatever he said, he was just an arrogant little shit who thought he knew everything.’ Savage cites Jones as the man who brought the band together: ‘In fact, it was Steve Jones who first had the idea of putting the group, or any group, together with McLaren. He chose McLaren, not vice versa.’ Something that further supports the argument against McLaren’s influence is the Grundy incident, as it was down to a totally spontaneous reaction by Jones.
Ultimately, there is no doubt that they themselves had a massive influence on the punk genre and social movement regardless of who was behind it. Their fusion of their own brash music and style, and political and social themes, would immediately inspire many contemporaries very quickly - 1977 is notable in punk terms not only for Never Mind the Bollocks, as it also saw the first album of arguably the other great British punk rock band. As Steven Wells termed them, ‘after the Sex Pistols, The Clash were the most influential punk band ever.’
The Clash had been in the same London scene as the Sex Pistols but would take a different path over the next decade, with more experimentation, merging a variety of musical genres and styles, and more political lyrics. In some ways, they were seen as more intellectual interpreters of punk, especially when compared to some of their more commercial-orientated punk contemporaries such as the Buzzcocks and The Damned. Critic Chris Bryans summed this up by writing this response:
in the classroom of English first-generation punk, if The Damned were the loons messing around at the back and scaring the girls with frogs, then the Sex Pistols were the snot-nosed tearaways disagreeing with everything they were told because…well, just because. That left The Clash as the defiant ones who reminded everyone - repeatedly, and at high volume - how messed up the world had become.
As a result, while the Sex Pistols remain the most well-known and infamous of the two great British punk bands, it is The Clash that are today the most critically acclaimed, as seen in Rolling Stone magazine’s top 100 greatest artists issue, where the Sex Pistols were ranked at number 58 and The Clash at 30. In the issue, U2 guitarist The Edge cited them as an inspiration, writing ‘The social and political content of the songs was a huge inspiration, certainly for U2. It was the call to wake up, get wise, get angry, get political and get noisy about it.’ Two of the band’s six albums, their eponymous first album and London Calling, joined Never Mind the Bollocks... in the book 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die, while the songs ‘London Calling’, ‘Rock the Casbah’ and ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ featured in the accompanying book 1001 Songs to Hear Before You Die.
The first album, The Clash, was released shortly before Never Mind the Bollocks... in April 1977, and has been described as ‘the first great album of the punk era…It was raw. It was angry. It was overtly political and sounded as if it had been made in a frenzy of impatience. And it was what an entire generation had been waiting for.’ Several of the songs on the album are shorter than two and a half minutes, packing in the energy and attitude of their contemporaries into short, sharp bursts, as previously developed by the American ‘bubblegum punk’ band the Ramones, but in a more sophisticated way owing to the focus on political themes. This is summed up by 2 minute romp ‘White Riot’, the fourth track on the album. It was inspired by the 1976 Notting Hill race riots and was aimed at white rioters in order to encourage them to rise up against something worthy rioting about, specifically the establishment and the powers-that-be. The ironically-titled ‘Career Opportunities’ is another key track, focusing on the lack of opportunities for young people in the mid-to-late 1970s (‘Career opportunities are the ones that never knocked / every job they offer is to keep you out the dock’). As Ali MacQueen wrote, ‘their output was often derided as sloganeering but the lyrics of “Career Opportunities” brilliantly capture the prospect facing the nation’s youth: menial work or life on the dole.’ Unlike the Sex Pistols, it is this direct appeal to working class young people that made the album and the band popular, perfectly encapsulating what punk was all about - again, in the words of MacQueen, ‘the band had a political and musical vision that reached a good way beyond the myopic outlook of their punk contemporaries.’
Second album Give ‘Em Enough Rope, released in November 1978, was their commercial breakthrough, reaching number 2 on the UK albums chart, and was also their first album to be released in the USA. It was again well-received by the critics, as suggested by Steven Wells: ‘Sharp, aggressive and much “rockier” than the first album, Rope also featured some of the best Clash material to date.’
But intriguingly it did not contain the song ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’, released as a single earlier that year. The song was dramatically different to anything heard from the band before, being heavily influenced by reggae. Lead singer Joe Strummer had been inspired to write it after attending a reggae performance night at the Hammersmith Palais in West London; according to Jon Harrington, ‘this night led to Strummer’s writing the song he regarded as his best…not because he was inspired but because he felt the show was too showbiz and the music “pop reggae”, rather than the revolutionary “roots” sounds he had hoped for.’ But as well as criticising the concert, Strummer also refers to a number of other political issues; he points out that no working class uprising could ever work due to the strength of the British Army, he comments on the lack of wealth distribution and asks for someone to ‘phone up Robin Hood’, condemns the British far right groups (‘If Adolf Hitler flew in today / they’d send a limousine anyway’), and even criticises other punk bands for in-fighting (‘They won’t notice anyway / they’re all too busy fighting / for a good place under the lighting’) and being too commercial, with the lines ‘the new groups are not concerned / with what there is to be learned / they got Burton suits, ha you think it’s funny / turning rebellion into money’ said to be an implicit jibe at the emerging political punk/New Wave band The Jam, with whom The Clash had fallen out on tour. The song is a turning point for the band, as from here on they would continue to embrace and merge a number of different musical styles and genres in their music; Wells considers the song ‘probably The Clash’s finest moment…one of the top ten rock/pop singles of all time…the perfect fusion of reggae and punk.’
It is third album that is considered their magnum opus: December 1979’s London Calling has received considerable critical acclaim from all quarters, and is considered one the finest albums in the history of rock music as demonstrated in 2003 when it was ranked as high as the 8th greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone. Critic Ignacio Julià wrote that it was ‘The Clash’s masterpiece…still stands as the work that offered a vital exit from punk’s solipsism. London Calling was the definitive Clash statement after the punk manifesto of their first album and the States-friendly production of Give ‘Em Enough Rope.’ Even its distinctive cover is a classic, with the pink and green writing mimicking that on Elvis Presley’s debut album but instead with a typically punk photo of bassist Paul Simonon on the verge of smashing his instrument.
Of the tracks on that album, the stand-out is arguably the title track, one of the band’s best-known hits. Influenced by The Kinks hit ‘Dead End Street’ (which also came from a politically leftist perspective), the pounding riffs and beats were supplemented by Strummer’s vicious lyrics, referencing ‘the nuclear scare at Three Mile Island in the United States, police brutality, drugs, meltdown (both financial and climatic) and cultural vacuity’ , while the title itself hints at the beginning of BBC broadcasts during World War II that would begin with ‘This is London calling…’, suggesting this song should be taken as a similar warning. It was anti-establishment, like ‘Anarchy in the UK’, but in a completely different way. It even sounded very different: both are loud, and ‘London Calling’ has every bit of the swagger of ‘Anarchy…’, but without the ‘wall of sound’ effect and the quick tempo.
Follow-up album Sandinista!, released a year later, was another critical success, continuing the expansion into other genres seen in ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ and London Calling with influences from rap, calypso, folk, rockabilly, jazz and R&B. But by 1982, the end was nearing for the band, with increasing tensions, and the golden era of punk in the late 1970s seemed ever distant. Combat Rock was less experimental than Sandinista! but would be their most commercially-successful release. It would prove to be the last album for the classic line-up (guitarist Mick Jones and drummer ‘Topper’ Headon would soon be dismissed), and penultimate overall. But it still contained two significant Clash songs, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’, later a number 1 in the UK singles charts after its inclusion in advert for Levi jeans, and ‘Rock the Casbah’, a top 10 hit in the USA. The former, written and sung by Jones, is a slow-paced rocker in the traditional Clash style, complete with a memorable sing-along chorus. The latter, written by Strummer and Headon, could not be musically less punk due to its groovy rhythm, but lyrically it is as anti-establishment as ever, being about defiance of a ban on rock music by a Middle Eastern state. It once again showed the band pushing the boundaries even within the punk genre. After the firing of Jones and Headon, final album Cut the Crap flopped and the band split in 1986.
Overall, one cannot underestimate the individual importance of the Sex Pistols and The Clash to the punk scene. Before the emergence of the former into the mainstream, punk was a developing underground scene. Then, in from 1976 onwards, it exploded into the public sphere and went global. The Pistols were at the forefront of this, effectively introducing the nation to punk with ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and the Grundy incident. But above this, as Wells points out, they came to epitomise the stereotypical punk band from that point onwards:
Other bands (The Ramones and the New York Dolls) might have invented the punk sound. Richard Hell might have been the originator of the punk image. But the Sex Pistols came to define punk. They are THE punk band. They are the band that turned punk from a cool, cliquey, self-referential little rock ‘n’ roll sub-genre into a worldwide musical artistic and literary explosion. The Sex Pistols ripped punk off from New York and made it their own. They made it HAPPEN.
But while the Sex Pistols influenced more people, this is not to say The Clash are second best in the annals of rock history. As the more political of the two great British punk bands, many modern political rock bands can trace their lineage back to them, such as Los Angeles rap metal band Rage Against the Machine, who have become a Clash for the 1990s generation with their attacks on capitalism and globalisation, or Welsh socialist rockers the Manic Street Preachers. Despite emerging after the Sex Pistols, who had offered something totally different to anything else in the music scene at the time, The Clash were the far more radical of the two bands - as Wells infers, ‘Where the Sex Pistols offered nihilism, The Clash offered revolution.’
Beyond both of these legendary bands, there were others that made an impact, including on a political level, but in doing so took punk in a different direction again. One of these was Sham 69, known for their hits ‘If the Kids are United’ and ‘Hurry Up Harry’. They were part of the reaction to the first wave of art school punk bands that became known as the genre ‘Oi!’ due to its down-to-earth nature, reliance on chanting, and populist political orientation. The Northern Irish band Stiff Little Fingers, best known for their 1978 hit ‘Alternative Ulster’, are proof that punk was not purely London-centric. Equally, often the punk movement can be seen as predominantly male, but that would be to overlook the considerable female involvement: Siouxsie Sioux, leader of the Banshees, is the most well-known; X-Ray Spex, who became famed for their 1978 album Germ Free Adolescents, were fronted by the late Poly Styrene; and there were also a number of all-female groups, such as The Slits, that would inspire the 1990s Riot Grrl scene.
But ultimately, the Sex Pistols and The Clash are at the root of all of these bands. They were the trailblazers. The Pistols made the initial breakthrough, and The Clash would pick up the baton as punk’s standard-bearers, pushing the boundaries of the genre as they went. Their influence can still be felt today. As Wells infers, ‘the basic tenet of punk was that anybody could form a rock band. And thousands of kids all over the US and the UK (and later the world) did just that.’ This is something that can still be seen now - almost all rock bands, particularly political rock bands, owe a lot to the two great punk rock bands of Britain.
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