Fame: Jon Savage’s Secret History Of Post-Punk 1977-81 – Q&A 

[Record Collector Magazine - Unpublished Q&A with Ged Babey]

‘Fame’ seems a perverse title? ‘I’m gonna live forever …’

The title came from John Kertland. It was a 1979 fanzine produced in Telford which was spiky and bolshy in the spirit of the time and the time’s music – eg the Prefects and many of the tracks on the comp.

No PIL? Magazine?, Subway Sect? Nothing by the Fall? Licensing complexities I imagine but which of the conspicuously absent would you have liked to included?

I would like to have produced a double cd but as you know, things are hard to license (money, finding the rights holders and then getting some/any sense out of them). It’s a long and tedious job and John has my thanks. Sometimes the choices just run out. I’d have loved to include a track by Chrome, from “Alien Soundtracks”, or something by PiL. Oh, and Rema Rema, who fell by the wayside. And I still love Subway Sect, but they’ve been well comped.

Given that categorisation is ( arguably ) a necessary evil – Where do you draw the line between what is punk and what is post-punk.

Well punk stripped everything down to the basics and then became a Ramonic straightjacket so Post Punk opened everything out again. So it was a period of great discovery.

What a joy to hear Noh Mercy and Nigel Simpkins again – any particular tracks you are extra-delighted to have unearthed?

The Screamers, a great lost group. And I love the sheer brutal rhythmic drive of Mars’ 3E and the Method Actors’ The Method.

Was there really any need to include a Joy Division track, and why choose Autosuggestion?

Well these were the tracks I actually liked at the time and the compilation, as they often do, came out of a couple of post punk CD-Rs that I made for my own and my friends’ amusement. Joy Division were a very big part of that time and Autosuggestion was a very important record for me. I liked the fact it was 6 minutes and so claustrophobic: it racked alongside PiL’s Home Is Where The Heart Is and impLOG’s Holland Tunnel Drive. Then you have the very short tracks: Noh Mercy, the Middle Class “Out Of Vogue EP”, the Urinals “Sex” – all about a minute or so. Anything went.

So where would you place Fame in the Top Ten of Post –Punk Compilations? (see below)

Not up to me, but I would say that it is cross label and genuinely independent.

Is Englands Dreaming on the National Curriculum yet?

No. But thanks for asking. It’s very strange what an issue punk has become. But I did think it might become so at the time.

One of the responses to Englands Dreaming has been biographies by Andy Blade (of Eater) and The Lurkers drummer Esso (Pete Haynes). Have you read either?

No. I’ve recently read John Robb’s Punk Rock – An Oral History and Paul Marko’s The Roxy, London WC2, both of which I enjoyed.

* the other nine being:

Posted on October 31, 2008 at 3:10 pm