Friday, December 19, 2008

PUNK

In 1976 the emergence of Punk sent the culture into a moral
panic from which it has never fully recovered. It was twenty
years ago this month that saw the Sex Pistols appear on the
Bill Grundy ‘Today’ show and stun the British public with
remarks like ‘You Dirty bastard’, and ‘You dirty fucker’. And
it was this event more than any other that catapulted Punk from being a
musical revolution to an assault on each and every cherished institution. And
eventually into a mainstay of the tabloid press.
Over the space of a year—from the Sex Pistols’ first London show in
February of ’76—to the first ‘proper’ Punk single (The Damned’s ‘New Rose’),
to the long delayed release, and rapid withdrawal, of the Sex Pistols’ first single
in November, Punk had put a stamp on its time as few movements have
managed to do. By the end of the following year the Punk style had ossified
into a uniform (as John Lydon, aka Rotten, had ruefully remarked ‘Become
a Punk, join the army’) and the Sex Pistols were within a fortnight of breaking
up for good. Many purists would later claim that they were finished as
a band by January of 1977—when Glen Matlock was ousted—but it is also
true that it was only after they had become a spent force musically that they
were to perfect their Style.
And the Style was, of course, the thing. It was to be a style that laid
the ground rules for street credibility for the next fifteen years; and it was
the stylised slogans of ‘Anarchy’ and ‘Destruction’ that created a template
for all future political dissatisfactions. This style was so much more than a
restrictive dress code, though it was that as well: it was a potent bundle of
inescapable attitudes. For one whose mind-set was created during this time
only the itchy hair-shirt of socio-political anxiety would seem real, would
seem psychologically well-dressed.
It was this that became the great legacy of the Punk explosion. To be
authentic was to be hunted into the shadows of one’s bedsit. There was a
gentle crackle of paranoia that could be heard underneath everything—the
hiss in a telephone, an open line through to the apocalypse.
The previous ‘hippie’ mentality was swept away, along with the San Francisco
light that had given birth to it. Punk thrived best in the gloom of
London. Rubbishy skies, pissing rain, and the litter of urban fear blowing
through the streets. Perhaps this was why Melbourne, more than any other
Australian city, took Punk so to heart. Melbourne was the closest thing that
Australia had to the suicide-skies of London. But Melbourne had something
else as well: it was an intellectual city—and Punk was quintessentially an
intellectual movement.
Of all of the journalistic misunderstandings of Punk this is one of the
greatest: that Punk was a dumb and semi-literate movement. In reality it
was neither. The misunderstanding arises because journalists easily believe
their own news stories, and the story of the time was that the Sex Pistols
were the creators of Punk—and the Sex Pistols were dumb. As a consequence
(it is thought) the movement died when they separated—under the weight,
presumably, of their collective stupidity.
Malcolm MacLaren and John Lydon have gone to great lengths to promote
this conception of their respective starring roles—while simultaneously
denying the cause by talking-up their IQ’s. But even writers like Jon Savage—
who should know better—have been unable to resist the idea that Punk was
over by late 1978.
But Punk did not start with the Sex Pistols and it didn’t end with them
either. And its creative ambitions were not limited to theirs. One of the great
anthems of the Punk movement was Richard Hell’s ‘Blank Generation’ and
it was written by March of 1975—before the Sex Pistols had even formed.
And Patti Smith’s album ‘Horses’ was released in 1975, itself some three
years after the first Roxy Music album—and both could lay claim to being
proto-punk.
In fact Richard Hell was even responsible for the standard Punk hair
cut—the razor-slashed tuft that was the regulation hair style of the late 70’s,
until it was dyed black and grew out (and up) to become the look of the
early Eighties. The latter became the style for The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen,
Nick Cave, Siouxsie Soux, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Church
and scores of others. And Richard Hell had copied the look from a famous
picture of the very young, Nineteenth Century French poet, Arthur Rimbaud.

He had even taken his name from Rimbaud’s longest poem, A Season in Hell.
The literary connections, particularly with the French bohemians, run
through Punk from the beginning to its end. Richard Hell’s confr`ere in Television
changed his name to Tom Verlaine because ‘Verlaine’ was the name
of Rimbaud’s best friend. The Cure not only took the theme from Camus’
The Outsider as the basis for an early song, they even lifted one of Baudelaire’s
poems and used it (uncredited) as the lyric to a song.1 In fact most of
Maclaren’s political slogans were taken directly from the French anarchists
Situationist Internationale. Even the ransom-note style lettering of the Sex
Pistols’ album came from this group. And it is hard to think where Punk
would have been without the plays of Samuel Beckett—even if they had, by
that time, been processed through the television show Steptoe and Son.
But if Punk was never as dumb as it seemed, it is certainly true that there
were conflicts within it that made it hard to decode—even for Punks themselves.
How well did the Nazi iconography—the swastika arm-bands, the SS
badges, the Hitler salutes—go with the Left-wing rhetoric taken from the
Situationist Internationale? The confusion this caused was so great in 1977
that skinheads of the National Front thought that Punks were with them one
hundred percent. It took a lot of fast talking byMacLaren and others to convince
people that Punk was out to destroy everything—but in a good way!
The consequent back peddling from all concerned ultimately led to everyone
trying to outdo one another in political correctness. Mick Jones was a case
in point: he had been in a band called London SS in 1976 but by ’77 found
himself fronting The Clash—the most ideologically correct band of its, or any
other, time.2 (It was The Clash’s manager, Bernie Rhodes, who had fallen out
with MacLaren over The Swastika Issue—Rhodes’ mother was a Holocaust
survivor.)
In truth the Swastika imagery was chosen for purely aesthetic reasons.
Put simply it was felt to be sexy. This was an integral part of the culture of
the times, and is now easily forgotten. Liliana Cavani’s film The Night Porter
was made in 1973 and was playing in Art House cinemas the world over for
the next ten years—and Pasolini’s Salo was made in 1975. The ineluctable
sexiness of the SS was a Theorem of the culture of the time. The National
Front—literal-minded clods that they were—mistook all of this for a political
1Homework exercise hint: it is on the Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me album.
2Incidentally, London SS eventually turned into Tony James and Billy Idol’s Generation
X. Idol has since been immortalised as the plain original of Buffy’s Spike (William, the first
name of both). Tony James later renewed the SS connection by forming the band Sigue Sigue
Sputnik.


In reality Punk was an almost purely aesthetic movement. Those who
took the politics seriously—whether on the left or the right—showed a certain
naivet´e in reading the cultural messages. The band that understood all of
this the best were The Birthday Party—they didn’t succumb to the easy political
pieties of The Clash or The Jam. They remained supremely contemptuous
of everything.
Not only was British Punk not essentially political it was also—contrary
to its own pronouncements—downright patriotic. If the music was fuelled by
anything it was by a revulsion for American West Coast Rock—The Eagles,
Jackson Browne, etc—and a desire to return to a more raucous version of
British Mod. In fact Punk was Mod shorn of its Soul and R & B roots.
Rattled out at breakneck speed it was picking up the thread of The Kinks’
‘You Really GotMe’ and The Who’s ‘My Generation’. And just as with Mod,
Union Jack flags were worn on everything. Nor could the little twist of irony
that was added, disguise the feeling of pride that London was once again the
Style Capital of the Universe.
But Punk added something new and lasting to its cocktail of ’60s influences.
The idea that all culture is simply trash—to be used and disposed
of—would have been completely unthinkable in the Sixties—except perhaps
to a few duffle-coated odd-balls in the Art Colleges. Irony, particularly in the
culture of Pop music, was in very short supply. Punk changed this for the
next twenty years. All culture—even youth culture—was detritus. There was
nothing to believe in—and there was nothing that was any good. There was
3The whole issue of Punk’s relation to Fascist imagery needs an article to itself: it was
Maclaren—himself half-Jewish—who had first promoted the Swastika imagery through his
shop Sex. By 1978, however, tolerance for this kind of posturing was beginning to get thin.
Late in that year Julie Burchill—then only 19—wrote a scathing review of Siouxsie Sioux,
chastising her for anti-Semitism. ‘I keep seeing,’ she wrote, ‘Siouxsie up there in her swastika
armband making nothing but a fashion accessory out of the death of millions of people.’
When the Red Wedge—think Billy Bragg—effectively took over in 1981, Punk had split into
an aesthetic movement on one side—think Goth—and a political movement on the other. The
latter made Communismmore loved in theWest than by then it was in the East: it became very
uncool then to mention the Soviet Gulags, or the Communist-world’s persecution of writers.
And that same self-loathing and airy arrogance that led middle-class children to embrace a
philosophy in which they piously hoped that someone would come along and take away their
every freedom became the chic-schtick of the next twenty years. Still is.
(As a side-note: it was Siouxsie Sioux who had been the object of Bill Grundy’s lust before
the television show in 1976, and that had caused the Sex Pistols to hurl abuse at him on
camera. She was part of the Pistol’s early entourage, and, though she was not wearing a
swastika arm-band on that occasion, another in the entourage was, and it was plainly visible
on camera.)
4
just the shuffling of Styles in ever more elaborate recombinations.
As an artistic credo this could have been a liberating idea—and for many
it clearly was. But for the audience it caused—and continues to cause—an
odd kind of paralysis. How can I like something that says that there’s nothing
to like? In what ways am I allowed to like it? If I like it, don’t I betray it?
The standard psychological response to this paradox is to resort to irony,
or shudder, quotes. I “like” this even though nothing is really worth liking.
Ultimately these shudder quotes have taken over the world. They book-end
every sentiment. They age everything—sitting like crow’s feet at the edge of
the world.
Irony has become a kind of marinade in which trash culture can be enjoyed
without the need to believe that it is good. Melrose Place and Barbie
Dolls and Brit Pop and Grunge fashion and so on and on. . . These are all
the continuation of Punk culture. Punk didn’t die, it became everything. And
irony is the ghost of Punk.
Or should I say: Irony is the “ghost” of Punk.

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