PUNK ROCK

Just when rock’n’roll looked as if it had evolved into a respectable, grown-up art form, along came punk. Punk put the rebellion back into rock, adding an injection of raw, enraged energy, laced, at least sometimes, with a smirking humour. Rejecting the overblown sounds of their contemporaries, the punk bands went back to basics, unleashing a barrage of short, sharp songs that struck a chord with a generation of angry, angst-ridden teenagers.

FOUR BOYS FROM QUEENS

The roots of punk lie in the musical adventures of the Ramones, four young hoodlums from the New York borough of Queens. The band formed in 1974, at a time when rock music was becoming increasingly intricate and self-conscious. Armed with three chords and a couple of basslines, the foursome set about bringing rock back to its roots, creating a music that was stripped down to its raw basics. The Ramones’ songs were aggressive, two-minute blasts of pure energy, and their singalong choruses quickly gained the band a devoted following around New York. In 1976, the band released their self-titled debut album, a record that showcased the band’s abrasive sound to the rest of the world. The Ramones’ attitude struck a particular chord in London, where it inspired a generation of bands who were equally frustrated by the staid musical status quo.

By far the most important of these bands was the SEX PISTOLS, an extremely angry, loud, and outrageous quartet whose attitude toward the rest of the world could be summed up by a line from one of their songs: “… and we don’t care!” The band was made up of wild-eyed, orange-haired singer Johnny Rotten, drummer Paul Cook, guitarist Steve Jones, and bassist Glen Matlock. Despite writing the majority of the band’s early songs, however, Matlock was to be replaced by the man who would eventually become the most infamous punk of them all, Sid Vicious.

Dictating the general form and thrust of the band was brash young entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren, who at first envisioned the Pistols as a way of promoting the punk clothing he and fashion designer Vivian Westwood wished to sell in their London shop, Sex. However, the impact of the group’s first two singles, “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen,” and the accompanying album Never Mind the Bollocks proved far greater than even the exploitative McLaren had hoped. Gleefully offending everyone within earshot, the band quickly became a cultural phenomenon. The Sex Pistols were to self-destruct in a flash at the end of their first U.S. tour, with Vicious dead soon after. However, the influence of the band would be felt for years to come.

The Ramones: four punks, three chords, two basslines, one haircut. But they changed the face of music forever.

CLASH CITY ROCKERS

The other great band to emerge from the London punk scene of the mid-1970s was the Clash. The Clash shared the Pistols’ raucous, ultra-aggressive sound, but were also overtly political, playing benefit concerts for the Anti-Nazi League at a time when fascist political organisations were highly active in the U.K. The Clash were also far more willing to incorporate other musical styles into their repertoire. Thus, while their first two albums, The Clash (1977) and Give Em Enough Rope (1978), were straightforward slabs of punk, their later releases such as London Calling (1979), Sandinista (1980), and Combat Rock (1981) incorporated reggae, funk, and rockabilly into the mix. This may have alienated some of the band’s more hardcore fans, but the group’s willingness to experiment resulted in some of their finest recorded and most successful material.

In the wake of these two dominant groups, dozens of punk bands sprang up in the late 1970s. Among the chief promulgators of punk were the Buzzcocks, a Manchester band whose irrepressibly upbeat melodies earned them considerable chart success. Other notable punk bands of the time included the Damned, who diluted their crudity and viciousness with pub-rock looniness; and the bright and breezy Generation X, whose permanently pouting singer Billy Idol went on to earn huge success as a solo singer. The late 1970s also saw two highly influential bands emerge from Northern Ireland: the improbably youthful Undertones, whose debut single “Teenage Kicks” has become a classic among punk singles, and the more overtly political Stiff Little Fingers.

BACK IN THE U.S.A.

America quickly responded to punk’s call and produced its own wide variety of exponents. Perhaps the most influential, and notorious, American punk band were the Dead Kennedys. Formed in San Francisco in 1978, the band took their musical inspiration from the Sex Pistols, but eschewed the Pistols’ nihilistic approach to lyrics. Instead, the Dead Kennedys used their songs to make a savage assault on the political establishment. The band’s debut single, “California Über Alles,” was an aggressive attack on the then governor of California, Jerry Brown, while subsequent releases such as “Holiday in Cambodia,” “Kill the Poor,” and “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” also raised social issues, albeit in rather blunt terms. Unsurprisingly, the establishment bit back. The band’s records were banned from both the airwaves and from certain stores, forcing the band’s eloquent lead singer, Jello Biafra, to become a de facto spokesman for the anti-censorship lobby.

Among other punk bands to tread the same anarchic path as the Dead Kennedys were several groups based in the Los Angeles area, most notably the Germs, Black Flag, and the Minutemen, whose songs, as their name suggests, rarely lasted more than 60 seconds. The turn of the decade saw punk groups springing up in virtually every major U.S. city. On the East Coast, Washington’s Minor Threat led the way, though with their staunch anti-drug, anti-alcohol stance, they were as far removed from the original punk scene as it was possible to get.

Whereas punk lost its impetus in Britain, the genre continued to flourish in the U.S. Artists such as Bad Religion and Hüsker Dü kept the punk flag flying in the 1980s, although somewhere along the line the music began to be known as “hardcore punk” and then simply as “hardcore.” Toward the end of the decade, the hard-edged aggression of punk provided the inspiration for the grunge movement, with grunge standard-bearers NIRVANA owing a particularly large debt to the punk sound.

A cultural phenomenon as much as a musical genre, punk irrevocably changed the direction of rock music. Bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash brought with them an unprecedented sense of danger and excitement, and in so doing set the standard for countless future generations of would-be rebels.

Terry Atkinson