Punk etymology
This was just a moment of enquiry that got out of hand and became an obsession. It is a work in progress. If anyone has any further additions, please send them through. Thanks and credit will be given. (First posted May 2009, additions January 2010 after reading Nicholas Rombes’ excellent “A Cultural History of Punk 1974-1982″
‘Why you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife?’ ‘My lord, she may be a punk, for many of them are neither maid, widow, nor wife’.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure V, 1 (1603/4)
Various dictionary and literary definitiions:
- 1896, “inferior, bad,” also “something worthless,” earlier “rotten wood used as tinder” (1687), probably from Delaware (Algonquian) ponk, lit. “dust, powder, ashes;” but Gaelic spong “tinder” also has been suggested (cf. spunk “touchwood, tinder,” 1582). Meaning “Chinese incense” is from 1870.
- “Worthless person” (especially a young hoodlum), 1917, probably from punk kid “criminal’s apprentice,” underworld slang first attested 1904 (with overtones of “catamite”). Ultimately from punk “prostitute, harlot, strumpet,” first recorded 1596, of unknown origin.
Note the reported exchange in Alexander Berkman, imprisoned between 1892-1906:
‘How can a self-respecting gentleman explain himself to you? But I’ll try. You love a boy as you love the poet-sung heifer, see? Ever read Billy Shakespeare? Know the place, “He’s neither man nor woman; he’s punk,” Well. Billy knew. A punk’s a boy that’ll…’ ‘What?’ ‘Yes, sir. Give himself to a man. Now we’se talking plain’.
“Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist” (Mother Earth, 1920)
For sense shift from “harlot” to “homosexual,” cf. gay. By 1923 used generally for “young boy, inexperienced person” (originally in show business, e.g. punk day, circus slang from 1930, “day when children are admitted free”). The verb meaning “to back out of” is from 1920.
Sample jd mentions in press early 50’s ie: 55 Peninsula Teeners Open Anti Punk drive (2/50), Punks caught robbing safe (4/50), Collier’s Article Discusses SF Punk Problems (4/50), East Bay Punk: Hall of Justice Escaper Identified (9/54)
Note how this meaning goes into fifties nostalgia, especially > Happy Days TV show premieres Jan 1974> direct influence on “Punk Magazine”, see John Holmstrom ED interviews: ‘Legs thought of the name and I thought it fitted what we wanted to do, it had so many different meanings. Happy Days, the TV show, the 50s, leather jackets. I wanted to strip rock’n'roll of all the bullshit.’
Also: Legs McNeil from ED interviews: ‘On TV, if you watched cop shows, Kojak, Berretta, when the cops finally catch the mass murderer, instead of saying, you fucking asshole, I’ll kill you, they’d say, you dirty punk. It was what your teachers would call you. It meant you were the lowest, that you’d never get anywhere. It also meant a complete failure.
POP CULTURE
“16 year old punks on a meth power trip…”
Lester Bangs MC5 review April 1969
‘a landmark exposition of punk rock’
Dave Marsh ? and the Mysterians review Creem 1970
Suicide flyer December 1970 – Punk Music By Suicide (when I went to interview Alan Vega in 1980 he provided me with several hits of amyl nitrate and proceeded to wax lyrical about ? and the Mysterians for quite some while)
‘Well, naturally that’s a great album and the guy what wrote that review was a pompous punk’.
Lester Bangs autocritique of his Amon Duul I review in Creem – from 1971
“On the former the group is content to faithfully recite the original arrangement, which act, in these dark days of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Keith Emerson, and every last punk teenage garage band having its Own Original Approach, is awfully refreshing.”
John Mendelssohn, review of the Faces Long Player RS 18 March 1971
‘my girlfriend had seen them about a half-year before that, and said they were a mediocre punk band with a singer who thought he was Mick Jagger, but wasn’t’.
‘Metal’ Mike Saunders review of Flamin’ Groovies Teenage Head The Rag April 1971
Love it to death they and you may not, but at least like Love It to Death a lot will, especially those with an ear for nicely wrought mainstream punk raunch and snidely clever lyrics’.
John Mendelssohn, Rolling Stone, Alice Cooper: Love It To Death: 15 April 1971
‘Guess Who. ‘Use Your Imagination’, ‘Clock on the Wall’, ‘Gonna Search’ and ‘Don’t Act So Bad’ fit into this mold – good, not too imaginative, punk rock and roll.’
Greg Shaw, review of The Moody Blues: In The Beginning/The Guess Who: Sown and Grown in Canada, RS 15 April 1971
‘all right punk, this is it’.
Lester Bangs James Taylor Marked For Death WPTB 8 Fall/ Winter 1971
‘the spirit of American punk rock certainly lives on in GFRR’
Mike Saunders Rolling Stone Grand Funk review, Jan 6 1972
‘The loosely defined purpose of Who Put The Bomp is to cover the 1958-66 years of rock (pre-1958 having been thoroughly done by oldies mags, and 1967 on by existing rock magazines): forthcoming special issues will be on the English Invasion, Surf and Hot Rod Music, and 1966-7 American Punk Rock.’
Metal Mike Saunders review of US music press The Rag Jan 1972
Lead guitarist Wayne Kramer is wearing a striped Lurex drape jacket that would being tears to the eyes of any self-respecting Ted, and he looks the total epitome of the nasty little rockanroll punk, hoodlum, reveling in the applause.’
Charles Shaar Murray: Teenage Outrage in Croydon: The MC5, Cream March 1972
‘the powerful vocal was charged with echo and energy not unlike a punk’s idea of what Phil Spector should’ve sounded like’.
Dave Marsh, Bob Seger: Doncha Ever Listen To the Radio… Creem May 1972
‘Black Oak Arkansas have the distinction of being possibly the last punk psychedelic rock group in existence, exhibiting characteristics ranging from early Quicksilver to the legendary 13th Floor Elevators.’
Metal Mike Saunders, Black Oak Arkansas: Keep The Faith, RS 25 May 1972
Flash Magazine Punk Rock Top Ten June July 1972
The songs are almost all familiar – Charlie Rich’s ‘Lonely Weekends’, ‘You Can Have Her’, William Bell’s ‘You Don’t Miss Your Water’ – the spirit of each is purely vigorous, and the ambience is just punk enough to make you think you’re listening to rock record even when you know that you aren’t.’
Dave Marsh Jerry Lee Lewis piece Creem July 1972
Bowie is now working in new areas, having been studying the art of punk rock poetry from Lou Reed, while effectively developing his own talents in the realm of his lyrical fascination for science fiction.
Nick Kent review of David Bowie Ziggy Stardust Oz July 1972
‘…their downfall as a punk group was oddly enough Terry Knight…’
Greg Shaw Grand Funk Railroad Track On! Review RS 22 June 1972
Alice (the name of the lead singer as well as the group) plays archetypal punk rock–the pimply music the fifties rock and rollers so excelled in, which the Stones brought to fruition in the sixties. Grace Lichtenstein, The New York Times September 24 1972, “Alice Cooper? David Bowie? Ugh! and Ugh Again!”
This kind of macho/punk presentation is essential to the Alice Cooper process of ditching the drag image, but they didn’t quite take it all the way.
Ben Edmonds review of Alice Cooper Schools Out Creem October 1972
‘the name that has been unofficially coined for them – “punk rock” – seems particularly fitting in this case, for if nothing else they personified the berserk pleasure that comes from being onstage outrageous, the relentless middle finger drive and determination only offered by rock’n roll at its finest.’
Lenny Kaye, Nuggets sleeve notes, autumn 1972
And they look like punks too: Roky, his brother Donnie, and drummer John like all look as if they’d never seen 1967, coiffed as they are in stunningly short haircuts by 1972 standards.
Mike Saunders review of 13th Floor Elevators reunion 1972
Pure punk shit, but one of the best fantasies of the decade. So now the Five are trying to come back from Europe and they’re still the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world after the Stones.
Lester Bangs overview of Detroit’s Rock Culture Phonograph Record, December 1972
‘Sounds like On The Waterfront. (Imitating Brando) “Let’s face it. That’s all I am. Just a punk.”
Ray Davies interview by Glenn O’Brien, January 1973
‘Punk Rock at its best is the closest we came in the 60’s to the original rockabilly spirit of Rock’n Roll’, ie Punk Rock The Arrogant Underbelly of Sixties Pop
Rolling Stone review of Nuggets, Jan 4 1973 by Greg Shaw
‘Nuggets… proves that psychedelia and punk zap are just as much a real cool time now as they were when we might have invested some emotional space-born significance in them’
Lester Bangs review of the Raspberries, Rolling Stone January 4 1973
The group was a vehicle for the ideas of the producer-writer, Dan Penn, and Chilton’s raspy, young punk voice was the focal point.
Bud Scoppa review of Big Star No 1 Record in RS 1 Feb 1973
DION WAS the original punk. Stand him up next to his contemporary male teen idols – Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Bobby Vee, Brian Hyland, Bobby Rydell, Adam Wade, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Mark Valentino, etc – and the difference is obvious.
Greg Shaw review of Dion and the Belmonts, Reunion, RS 29 March 1973
It’s like if delta blues oughta be played by old black men, and if fag rock oughta be played by real queers, then it stands to reason that punk-rock oughta be played by punks!
Mark Shipper, liner notes for The Sonics Explosives Compilation, April 1973, quoting Wayne Davis (looking up from his copy of the April issue of Leather Thighs Monthly)
Getting into the music, ‘I Felt Like Smashing My Face In A Clear Glass Window’ may be the punk rock song of the month. Great music, some great lyrics on the level of the Stooges; a genuine punker.
Metal Mike Saunders: review of Yoko Ono Approximately Infinite Universe in Phonograph Record April 1973
McGovern’s election theme is translated (its vacousness exposed) into the language of punk: We’re going to win this one, take the country by storm We’re gonna be elected You and me together young and strong / We’re gonna be elected.
Simon Frith review of Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies Let It Rock May 1973
Iggy similarly benefits, double and even triple-tracked, his voice covering a range of frequencies only an (I wanna be your) dog could properly appreciate, arch-punk over tattling sniveler over chewed microphone.
Lenny Kaye on Raw Power, Rolling Stone 10 May 1973
For once, all this punk noise and contempt has got a focus – Nixon’s America.
Simon Frith review of Tubular Bells and Raw Power in Let It Rock August 1973
Their punk swagger, “Kick ‘em in the ass” attitude and the overpowering hardness of the music might seem better suited to skull-laced leathers and a Harley-Davidson, but this volatile marriage of primped flash and toughness is the source of their strength.
Ben Edmonds The New York Dolls Greatest Hits Vol 1 Creem October 1973
Blue Oyster Cult is an older, more aloof group than the Dolls, and its music is much more late ’60s American than the British-influenced flash that the Dolls like to play. The Cult members do solos; their songs are heavy metal and long; their dress is grubby motorcycle punk; their lyrics are a cross between beat poetry and a Skylab press release.
Dave Marsh, Various: New York New Wave Melody Maker 6 October 1973
Let me leave you with this as you’re turning the page: Suzi Quatro is, to my knowledge, the world’s only female punk rocker. Meditate on that mantra.
Charles Shaar Murray on Suzi Quatro, Quatro Lib NME 13 October 1973
Actually, there is a new tone to this album. One of mindless rote, of unwillingness to face the reality that they simply aren’t and can no longer hope to be what they think they are. They’re going through the motions, and it shows, ugly and pathetic under the crumbling façade of their punk image.
Greg Shaw disses The Rolling Stones Goat’s Head Soup in Phonograph Record November 1973
Listen kids, you may think you’ve got your identity crises and sexual lateral squeeze plays touchdown cold just because you came out in rouge ‘n’ glitter for Dave Bowie’s latest show, but listen to your Papa Lou. He’s gotta nother think for you punk knowitalls.
Lester Bangs: Lou Reed A Deaf Mute in a Telephone Booth, Let It Rock November 1973
It is to Townshend’s credit that his is not a disengaged overview, pious and self-righteous after all these years. In seeking to understand Jimmy, he apparently is also trying to understand the roots of the Who, its attraction as rallying point and its eventual rejection by such as Jimmy (‘The Punk Meets the Godfather’) and – more appropriately – himself.
Lenny Kaye The Who Quadrophrenia RS 20 Dec 1973
Cruising down Telegraph Avenue trying to score some STP early one February morning, Dickie ran into Randy Holden (brother of Stephen Holden), a guitarist who had fronted one of the better SF acid-punk albums of the era, The Other Half.
Mike Saunders article on Blue Cheer More Pumice Than Lava in ‘Punk’ magazine fall 1973
Cochran had to wait over a year before he got another chance at stardom when ‘Summertime Blues’ made the charts. The lower -middle-class, put-upon punk formula was adopted – and the series of singles that included ‘C’ Mon Everybody’, ‘Something Else’, and ‘Weekend’ poured forth at a rapid rate.
Mick Farren on Eddie Cochran, NME 20 April 1974
Each time Reed returns to the classic punk credo “I guess…I just don’t know” they explode in a gothic arpeggio of sound.
Mick Gold Lou Reed review of Rock N Roll Animal Let It Rock May 1974
Each time Reed returns to the classic punk credo “I guess…I just don’t know” they explode in a gothic arpeggio of sound.
Gary Sperazza review of Roxy Music Stranded in Shakin’ Street Gazette May 1974
School Punks is an extension of that song, a concept album dealing with the attitudes of an archetypal high school hoodlum. Don’t expect any Quadrophenia, though; this music is what it’s about – tough, punky and dumb. There’s nothing as anthemic as ‘Smokin”, but taken as a whole the album’s songs add up to something greater – a fantasy of high school life so primal it takes on an almost mythic stature.
Greg Shaw review of Brownsville Station School Punks Phonograph Record 1 July 1974
“Springsteen does it all. He’s a rock ‘n’ roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a poet joker, a bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer and a truly great rock ‘n’ roll composer. He leads a band like he’s been doing it forever..
Jerry Gilbert feature on Springsteen, It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City, Zigzag August 1974
This is your big chance! Yes, it’s all coming back. Following the rock & roll revival, the surf music revival, and the reggae revival, the punk music revival is now in full swing. Punk rock, of course, is for the form of music which originated in the early 1970’s when rock writers en masse began writing about all the albums they threw away in 1967 (only to scour the bargain bins for in 1971), and which reached its height in 1972 when the Nuggets collection stormed the nation’s charts.
Metal Mike Saunders: The Shakin’ Street Punk Survey, Shakin’ Street Gazette, 7 November 1974
1-2-3-4! The Ramones run through their originals: ‘Judy is a Punk’, ‘I Want To Be Your Boyfriend’, ‘I Don’t Care’, ‘I Can’t Be’, ‘Chain Saw’, ‘You’re Gonna Kill That Girl’, ‘53 & 3’, ‘I Don’t Want To Go Down To The Basement’, and ‘Loudmouth’ (“Well you’re a loudmouth baby; You better shut it up; Well, you’re a loudmouth, babe.” End of song.).
Alan Betrock: Know Your New York Bands: The Ramones, Soho Weekly News 1975
Gene Vincent: Po’ White Punk from the Pool Hall
Mick Farren, feature NME 15 Feb 1975
Australia has Punk Rock bands too y’know…
Anthony O’Grady, RAM, 19 April 1975: AC/DC
A thrilling tale of Ladbroke Grove, loose aggregations, hanging out, and falling about – recounted in loving detail by an actual participant in those glorious halcyon days of punk rock. Plus sensational news – the Fairies may re-form… they’re hanging out, maybe planning a loose aggregation.
Mick Farren, NME, 26 April 1975, The Pink Fairies: Looking Back
‘And the vocals are as perfect rock’n roll punk as ever’: Mark Jenkins, review of “Nils Lofgren”, Creem June 1975
There are basically two breeds of rock and roll musicians. Some are working class and have exploited their inarticulate but expressive origins to the full with an uncompromising punk-image and sound, like Family, Status Quo and Ian Hunter.
Caroline Coon, Bryan Ferry: Putting On The Style, Melody Maker 12 July 1975
Any half-assed aficionado knows the Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’ and ‘I Can’t Control Myself’ virtually wrote the pamphlet on drooling leer-rock of the punk-swagger school.
Gene Sculatti, The Troggs Creem October 1975
CBGB, a small club on the Bowery round about the Bleecker Street intersection, is to the New York punk band scene what the Marquee was to London rock in the’60s.
Charles Shaar Murray, Are You Alive To the Jive of ’75 article about CBGB’s scene NME 8 November 1975
The concepts that lie behind Smith’s performance – her version of rock and roll fave raves, the New York avant-garde, surrealist imagery and aesthetic strategy, the beatnik hipster pose, the dark night of the street punk soul, and so on – emerge more clearly with each playing, until they turn into schtick.
Greil Marcus: Horses, Patti Smith Exposes Herself, Village Voice 24 November 1975
” THE TERM PUNK is bandied about an awful lot these days. It seems to describe almost any rock performer who camps it up to any degree, on or off-stage, or who displays an arrogance and contempt for his audience.
Mick Houghton, White Punks on Coke , Let It Rock, December 1975 (see rest of article below)
‘The epitome of all that is wrong with western civilization is disco. Educate yourself. Get into it. Read Punk.
Punk Magazine editorial, Issue 1 January 1976 by John Holmstrom
This is an outsider’s view. I just want to make that clear. I knew that I was an outsider from the moment I walked into CBGB’s because I kept falling over my high-heeled boots. People who knew were wearing sneakers. One of the Punk magazine editors explained: ‘We don’t believe in love or any of that shit. We believe in making money and getting drunk.’
Mary Harron, The Ramones, Punk Issue 1 January 1976
The first article in this occasional series concerns the Flarmin’ Groovies, the eternal garage punk-rock band, outcasts from the San Francisco music scene of the late ’60s, and in all probability one of the finest American rock’n'roll bands ever.
Andy Childs, The Re-Emergence of the Flamin’ Groovies, Zigzag February 1976
‘Punks? Springsteen Bruce and the rest of ‘em would get shredded if they went up against these boys.
Neil Spencer, Don’t look over your shoulder, but the Sex Pistols are coming’, NME February 1976
By Saturday night we knew. A hero’s welcome in their home town was to be expected. As Salvation, they were a top road band in Scotland, even before they changed their name to Slik. But the band proved at New Victoria that they can play solid, potentially inspiring, music. They are about to boogie us into a Golden Age of Punk Pop.
Caroline Coon, Slik Forever! MM 13 March 1976
Allan Jones of the Melody Maker described it: ‘Their dreadfully inept attempts to zero in on the kind of viciously blank intensity previously epitomised by the Stooges was rather endearing at first … The guitarist, another surrogate punk suffering from a surfeit of Sterling Morrison, played with a determined disregard for taste and intelligence ‘ Taste. Intelligence. “Who’s Sterling Morrison?” asked Steve.
Jonh Ingham, The Sex Pistols are Four Months Old, Sounds 24 April 1976
French magazine, Rock News, May 1976: Special Punk issue: London, Paris, USA 65/68 – front cover strap.
Rock News, May 1976: Punk Psychedelic 65-68: ‘Punk Gold: Count Five/ Psychotic Reaction/ They’re Gonna Get You (Pye) (Question Mark) and the Misterians 96 Tears/ Midnight Hour (Cameo Parkway)’ and many more.
The only question is exactly whose dreams five 16 year old girls playing primitive, snotty rock & roll will plug into. Try this: Those of us old and wise enough to remember the MC5′s Back in The USA, the first Stooges album and Love It To Death Alice. Punk rock archivists whose nirvana would be a double bill of the Troggs and the Count Five.
Ben Edmonds, The Runaways, Phonograph Record May 1976
‘The punk is one of the oldest and most honoured figures in rock’n roll. He dates from the mid ‘Fifties, when Elvis Presley and James Dean first popularized the image of the sullen but vulnerable leather-jacket tough guy, and had been part of the rock scene ever since’: Larry Rohter, “The Time-Honoured Punk Syndrome”, the Washington Post, May 9 1976
The sound is a mean cacophony not unreminiscent of Bowie’s early Spiders, the material a mixture of Anglo-american teen/ punk classics – the Stooges’ “No Fun”, “Substitute”, and a naively perverted re-run of the Small Faces “What You Gonna Do About It” (‘I wancher ter know that I Hate yer baby….”…etc) and furious originals.
Giovanni Dadomo, Time Out gig preview 7 May 1976
TEN YEARS AGO THE PINK FLOYD were a semi formed idea in the mind of one SYD BARRETT. Nine years ago they were the darlings of the Flower Punks and playing games for May at the Queen Elizabeth Hall…
Miles, Pink Floyd: Games For May NME, 15 May 1976
The girls in the front row were jerked from their Bible Belt upbringing into scramming hysteria. They fought to get at the larger than life stud in the gaudy suits and longer sideburns than any hot rod punk.
Mick Farren, Elvis: Well, Bless-uh Muh Soul, What’s-uh Wrong With Me? NME 22 May 1976
Rotten has Tom Verlaine’s charismatic intensity, though without the avant-garde pretentions that put me off in so much of the New York scene. Their sound is a straight blast of tortured punk rock.
Greg Shaw, The Sex Pistols @ the 100 Club, London, phonograph Record June 1976
Ron Ross, Phonograph Record, June 1976: Dr Feelgood: Frighteningly Authentic Punk Posture
The real danger lies in what seems sometimes to be a determined effort on the part of some artists, promoters and sections of the media to turn rock into a safe, establishment form of entertainment. It’s okay if some stars want to make the switch from punk to Liberace so long as they don’t take rock and roll with them.
Mick Farren, The Titanic Sails At Dawn, NME 19 June 1976
Sweet: Sounds Girl In Sweet Nude Bathing Horror THE ERSATZ raunch, bump and grind of ‘The Stripper’ blares out over the Sportshalle in Cologne. Thousands of minute German teenyboppers are creaming in excitement at seeing four would-be punk yobbos from Middlesex tell it like they think it is.
Vivien Goldman, Sounds, 19 June 1976
MAYBE IT WAS no accident that the hottest, steamiest, dirtiest night of the year was reserved for July 4. It’s not every day that we get to see one bona fide legendary band, and a squad of recherche New York punksters gunning for similar status, and a home grown outfit who exhibit enough moody madness to take them somewhere close to the pinnacle of nasty infamy, all playing on the same bill in one of the seediest halls in London.
Max Bell, Flamin’ Groovies/The Ramones/The Stranglers: Roundhouse, London, NME 10 July 1976
The room is cluttered with punk ephemera: leather belts and garbage pulp mags full of archly self-conscious interviews with Big Apple street runts trying desperately to out do each other. The Ramones are a definite part of that schtick; manager Danny has several fingers in both Punk and 16, and those mags like The Bay City Rollers, so you can tell where they’re at).
Max Bell, The Ramones, ‘Waitin’ for World War III’ Blues, the NME 17 July 1976
‘Just how the Dogs see themselves as being like the Pistols, which is how they approached the group, is an entertaining mystery. It is said that on a local radio show they defined ‘punk’ as being a cross between David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. But fuck definitions, Pete Shelly reckons they’re an offence just to the word itself’.
Jonh Ingham, Anarchy in the UK, review of Sex Pistols/ Slaughter and the Dogs/ Buzzcocks Manchester, Sounds July 31 1976
The Ramones are ‘the final extension of the punk-rock movement; a band whose flashy pugnacious stance pushes rock’n roll conventions to the point of anarchy’: Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times 1 August 1976, “The Menace and Charm of Punk-Rock”
Ramones reads like a rock ‘n’ roll reactionary’s manifesto. The kind of driven, primal, mindblasting r&r that fueled Stooges fanclubs and formed the editorial backbone of fanzines from Who Put The Bomp to Punk comes alive in ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ and ‘Chain Saw’. The infusion of the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, fake Mersey accents, DC5, MC5 and BCR into the Ramones’ music is all the more crucial, vital to the survival of rock ‘n’ roll.
Gene Sculatti, The Ramones, Creem August 1976
Punk Rock: Rebels Against the System: JOHNNY ROTTEN looks bored. The emphasis is on the word “looks” rather than, as Johnny would have you believe, the word “bored”. His clothes, held together by safety pins, fall around his slack body in calculated disarray. His face is an undernourished grey. Not a muscle moves. His lips echo the downward slope of his wiry, coat-hanger shoulders. Only his eyes register the faintest trace of life. Johnny works very hard at looking bored. Leaning against a bar; at a sound check; after a gig; making an entrance to a party; onstage; when he’s with women. No, actually, then he’s inclined to look quite interested. Why is Johnny bored? Well; that’s the story. This malevolent third-generation child of rock ‘n’ roll is the Sex Pistols’ lead singer. The band play exciting, hard, basic punk rock. But more than that, Johnny is the elected generalissimo of a new cultural movement scything through the grassroots disenchantment with the present state of mainstream rock. You need look no further than the letters pages of any Melody Maker to see that fans no longer silently accept the disdain with which their heroes, the rock giants, treat them.
Caroline Coon, Melody Maker, 7 August 1976
‘Thanks for the article on “Punk Rock”: it is refreshing to hear about new talent for a change. There is a great need for this sort of good rock/ no frills.
Melody Maker letters page, headline Pros and cons of Punk, letter from Pete Greenwood 21 August 1976
The Ramones out of an East End squat? Indeed, many of the leather-clad Strummer’s new songs were little more than rewrites of this years punk classics. But ‘I’ve Got A Crush On You’, ‘Janie Jones’, and the apocalyptic ‘London’s Burning’ proved there was still power in Strummer’s right arm.
Chas de Whalley, review of the Kursaal Flyers and the Clash at the Roundhouse, September 1976
‘…Lesser Free Trade Hall. There to see a youthful contemporary quartet play the street avant garde music of the sixties in its properly repressed seventies setting. The Sex Pistols. Plenty of ripe s’s in the name, the surging s rock very much inbred into the Pistols controlled chaotic punk muzak’.
Paul Morley, “Sex Pistols”, Out There fanzine summer 1976
‘for iggypops sake take note of your struggling local ‘s’ rock band. Who merely want to WAKE YOU UP, shake you about. Take a sluiced scoot Buzzcock’.
Paul Morley, the Buzzcocks, Out There Fanzine summer 1976
‘punk and punk rockers alike appear to place great emphasis on being against everything except themselves. The establishment, hippies and intellectuals are all equally despised.
James Johnson, The Rotten rock and roll band…., The Evening Standard September 23 1976
‘We’ll ignore the fact that Patti Pretentious is pushing thirty. Smith is representative of the so-called New York punk rock scene. What is going now in the New York area is the amnesty programme for all past teens who ignored punk rock in their youth’: Anthony Cerquira, “Lizzy, Not Patti, is Future of Rock”, letter to Melody Maker, 25 September 1967
“Punk? — We Just Do It” Melody Maker, 25 September 1976: Forget tags like “punk rock.” They are too real and earthy to be associated with such essentially esoteric imagery.
Chris Welch, Eddie and the Hot Rods
THE 600-STRONG line, which last Monday straggled across two blocks outside London’s 100 Club in Oxford Street, waiting for the Punk Rock Festival to start, was indisputable evidence that a new decade in rock is about to begin.
Caroline Coon, Parade of the Punks, Melody Maker, 2 October 1976
‘CHAIN MALE: Punk Rocker Mark shows off the gear that made eyes really pop in the clubs of South Wales. Text: ‘If you thought you’d seen it all, dig this latest line in crazy gear. As you can see, one end of that chain is actually through the nose, the other through an ear…it’s the face of a Punk Rock, Britain’s latest pop trendy’.
Denis Cassidy, LOOK WHAT POP KIDS DO NOW, the People 3 October 1976, picture caption (First bit of UK tabloid press found so far)
‘The scene is a sweltering basement club in London’s Oxford Street, where a band called the Sex Pistols is topping the bill at an evening devoted to Punk Rock, a genre of pop music currently monopolizing the attention of music business bandwagon jumpers’.
New Society, 7 October 1976 (no writer credit), In Decadent Key
The Sex Pistols, the leading British ‘new wave’ group, have been signed to EMI Records.
Sounds news pages, October 16 1976: Pistols Sign EMI deal
archive….possible terms New Wave (McLaren), Punk, Punk Rock (?), Surge Rock (Paul Morley) + ? Rock (Sioux)
John Ingham: the ? Rock Special, Sounds 9 October 1976
A big punk rock concert starring the Sex Pistols – pictured right- is being planned for London next month. The show celebrates the release of the band’s debut single, “Anarchy In The UK”, on November 12.
Melody Maker, front page headline November 6 1976: PUNKS ON THE ROAD
WEDNESDAY HAD been booked as Punk Night at Barbarellas, an excuse, if nothing else, for the club deejay to fall in love with the sound of his mouth flapping. It was the brainchild of the local Suburban Studs, supported by their mentors the Clash. And here lies a story.
Jonh Ingham: The Clash at Barbarellas, Birmingham, Sounds 13 November 1976
THREE WEEKS AGO at London’s ICA, Jane and Shane, regulars on the new-wave punk rock scene, were sprawled at the edge of the stage. Blood covered Shane’s face. Jane, very drunk, had kissed, bitten and, with broken glass, cut him in a calm, but no less macabre, love rite.
Caroline Coon: The Clash, Down and Out and Proud, Melody Maker 13 November 1976
To those who come on trying to impress him, he feigns the expected, sneering punk facade, revealing nothing about himself. He rarely opens up in public.
Caroline Coon, Sex Pistols Rotten to the Core, 27 November 1976, interview with Jah Rotten
Keeping an eye on the charts, watching the medioric rise of London’s new wave punk bands who adolescently emulate the master originals, Ray Davies wonders where the Kinks fit in the scheme of things. Davies can’t continue being everyone’s favorite songwriter, singing to a dedicated but cult-like audience.
Barbara Charone: Ray Davies and the Kinks at 13, Phonograph Record December 1976
And TV personality Bill Grundy was accused of encouraging the language that shocked thousands. He was talking to the “punk rock” group Sex Pistols on Thames Television’s Today programme.
The Sun, ROCK GROUP START A 4-LETTER TV STORM, 2 Decemer 1976
The Sex Pistols, leaders of the new “punk rock” cult, hurled a string of four letter obscenities at interviewer Bill Grundy on Thames TV’s family teatime programme “Today”.
The Daily Mirror, front page THE FILTH AND THE FURY, 2 December 1976
‘They wear torn and ragged clothes held together with safety pins. They are boorish, ill-mannered, foul-mouthed, dirty, obnoxious and arrogant. They like to be disliked.’
The Daily Mirror, inside feature, WHO ARE THESE PUNKS?, 2 December 1976
The Daily Mail, headline Four–Letter Punk Rock group in TV storm, 2 December 1976
the latest pop phenomenon called Punk Rock makes all the rest look like nursery rhymes. It’s the sickest, seediest step in a rock world that thought it had seen it all. Leading the cult is the group Sex Pistols…
The Daily Mail, inside feature, The bizarre face of Punk Rock, 2 December 1976
A top level probe was ordered by Thames Television last night after a “punk rock” group delivered a stream of four letter words on the air.
The Daily Express, Fury At Filthy TV Chat, 2 December 1976
Grundy Goaded Punk Boys Says Record Chief: The Sex Pistols were the first punk rock band, leaders of a violent and ugly pop phenomena.
London Evening News, 2 December 1976, headline
“Punk – Worthless, decidedly inferior, displeasing, rotten – Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English” Punk Rock, which exploded onto the screen last night in a string of four-letter words, is a bizarre movement which combines rock and rebellion.
Evening Standard, The Punks – Rotten and Proud of it!, December 2 1976
And then there was punk. Tonight the Sex Pistols, focal point of the newly dubbed punk generation, take off on their first concert tour of Britain complete with a £40,000 contract with EMI Records, a single entitled ‘Anarchy In The UK’, and a reputation for being insolent and violent — a reputation which was compounded though their use of Thames Television’s Today programme to throw out a few live obscenities which would appal the parents and therefore thrill the kids.
Steve Turner, Sex Pistols: the Anarchic Rock of the Young and Doleful, the Guardian 3 December 1976
the Punk Rock phenomenon may be manipulated by the music industry but it could not exist at all if the so-called “Blank Generation” – the unemployed, under-educated, aimless tribe of vandals to be found on every disastrous concrete housing project – had not been there to feed off’.
Keith Waterhouse, The Punk and the Junk, Daily Mirror, 6 December 1976
‘I was just wondering whether it would be bad form to ask when Sir John Read (EMI Group Chairman) spoke at his share-holders meeting on Tuesday. He described the conduct of the “punk” group as “disgraceful” and aid that EMI will “review its guidelines” on pop records and stated that if the group.
Ronald Butt, The grubby face of mass punk promotion, the Times December 9 1976
Some people have made the connection between the high energy output of the punk rock groups and violence. The Clash rise up united. The kids, they say, just feel really bored and frustrated, get really drunk and then become violent.
Miles, The Clash: Eighteen Flight Rock, NME 11 December 1976
The Sex Pistols/The Clash/The Heartbreakers /The Buzzcocks: Electric Circus, Manchester TO TURN up to a Sex Pistols’ show nowadays is to make a statement to the world that you care about rock ‘n’ roll and don’t give a Bill Grundy what the yellow press thinks.
Peter Silverton, Pistols, Clash etc.: What Did You Do On The Punk Tour, Daddy?, Sounds, 18 December 1976
LONDON – So this is how legends are born. Not with a song, or even a death, but with an expletive.The day before the Sex Pistols, Britain’s premier exponents of punk, were interviewed on Thames Television’s Today program they were known principally to a scattering of hard-core fans and to readers of the British music press. The day after, the Sex Pistols had become Britain’s Number One “bad boys.”
Mick Brown, U.K. Report, Sex Pistols and Beyond, Rolling Stone 27 Jan 1977
‘punknewwavedolequeuerock, so they call it, is only a beginning, a spark. The very nature of establishment rock industry those who control what we listen to what we pay for it and where, means for bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash that they fucked before they start: REF Pistols sacking by E.M.I.’
Glitterbest, Jamie Reid, possibly Sophie Richmond and Malcolm McLaren, notes for Anarchy In the UK magazine number 2 (unpublished), end January 1977
‘PUNK IS DEAD’
Glitterbest, Jamie Reid, possibly Sophie Richmond and Malcolm McLaren, notes for Anarchy In the UK magazine number 2 (unpublished), end January 1977: handwritten note
‘the “roots” of punk. Hah! That’s what we’ve come to…..I am not a punk and never was (too literate, besides no jazz fan can ever be a punk) but I gained a certain amount of notoriety exploiting the phenom before Newsweek knew there was one so hear I am beating a dead horse…Oh, but I’ll show you the roots of punk. The roots of punk was the first time that a kids ended up living with his parents when he was 40…Punk may (may?) be essentially passive. Punk is stupid proud consumerism. Punk is oblivion when it isn’t any fun…Punk is something worth destroying posthaste. Hopefully this article will speed that process….
Fantastic Lester Bangs rant in “Everybody’s Search For Roots”, New Wave magazine August 1977
Mick Houghton White Punks on Coke, continued:
Bowie, Jagger, Ronnie Wood, Iggy Stooge, Freddy Mercury, Todd Rundgren et al. They’ve all been variously branded as punks. But they ain’t punk rock. The popularity of the term dates from Lenny Kaye’s now historic collection, Nuggets! Original Artefacts Of The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, released in 1972. There’s cause for some confusion here too. Psychedelic rock ain’t punk rock either – it may be – but if anything it grew out of the punk rock proliferation between 1964 and 1966, and many groups – it was a group dominated era – were either transitional to or exponents of both arts.
So what is punk rock? In its heyday the punk tag was more a qualitative one. Punk, pungk, adj. – rotten, worthless. Like bubblegum it was seen as the dross of its day. It seemed totally ephemeral and not to be taken seriously. Yet Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets had unleashed a rabid interest in the genre among collectors and writers, and not simply on a kitsch level. There is a certain intrinsic worth in punk rock. It’s certainly the first of the mid-sixties genres to be resurrected. Whither folk rock, acid rock and flower power?
In 1964, the Beachboys, Jan and Dean and other less notable surfers and hot rodders were holding out against the British invasion. The Byrds offered the first apparent consolidated challenge with their hybrid, folk rock. But that challenge was also taken up by a plethora of amorphous garage bands which sprang up in the suburbs of American cities. It is among these groups that punk rock was born, as they made their reputations through live appearances at local teen clubs and battle of the bands competitions. Punk rock was as regional a phenomenon as the British beat and R&B booms that inspired it. But the punk rock process was crucially different in one respect from the British booms. In America local labels soon came into existence to record budding local talent, and, if the primary purpose of cutting discs was local promotion, there was always the chance that a local single might just take off nationwide.
The perfect example is ? and the Mysterians’ ’96 Tears’. They were a bunch of Tex-Mex based in Michigan whose home recorded effort was later taken up by Cameo to give them a number one smash in 1965. ’96 Tears’ propelled them straight out of nowhere and then straight back again. They had a couple of other minor hits (for my money ‘I Need Somebody’ is a better punk archetype) but that was the finish. It was the usual the way of things – viz the Castaways after ‘Liar Liar’ and the Count Five after ‘Psychotic Reaction’. Few punk groups could deliver the goods consistently or diversely enough to withstand the passage of time. Some slipped into other areas: the Seeds into flower power; the Shadows of Knight into bubblegum; the Standells into cabaret. Other punk rockers found individual fame – Todd, Leslie West or Terry Knight – but most just called it a day.
Vintage punk rock is less a style than a lack of style, defined by a crude simplicity – thin sounding Vox organs, 4/4 drumming, barely in time, and primer stage guitar playing, riffy fuzztones and later jangly chords, all fed through cheap Fender amps. The singer’s stance was important, an aggressive swagger to counter his lousy adenoidal weak voice. Ironically, the British invasion groups were probably more aware of the American roots of their music than the high school punk groups. The classic case is the Shadows of Knight on their debut album, Gloria, owing everything to the Stones/Animals/Them conglomeration and nothing to the bluesmen of their hometown, Chicago, as they ran through ‘Boom Boom’, ‘Let It Rock’, ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and ‘Mojo’.
In 1965, following the success of the Byrds, folk rock became a staple punk rock direction for both new and established groups. By their second album, Back Door Men, the Shadows of Knight had the Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ sound brilliantly sewn up. Their blistering version of ‘Hey Joe’, a regular punk anthem, has never been bettered. The Leaves, a typical Hollywood punk outfit following in the wake of the Byrds, made arguably the first rock version of the song. Their album, Hey Joe, is a splendid artefact of 1966 style punk rock derivations, with the Beatles and Stones stepping aside for the Byrds as the new sound to champion. The Leaves do a delightful version of the Searchers’ ‘Goodbye My Love’, in vintage Byrds style, and suggesting the Byrds owed some debt to that most successful Liverpool group outside of Brian Epstein’s stable.
Punk rock songs dealt typically with teenage obsessions, frustrations and hang-ups over love and growing up. “Some of my friends they’ve been in real trouble! And some say I’m no better than the rest! But tell your momma and your poppa! Sometimes good guys don’t wear white.” So reasoned the Standells. ‘Are You A Boy Or A Girl?’ asked the Barbarians; ‘Try To Understand’ pleaded Sky Saxon of the Seeds; and the Blues Magoos, never noted for musical subtlety, gave vent to a boastful threat in ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’: “Nothing can hold us and nothing can keep us down! Someday our names will be spread all over town! We get in while the getting is good! So make it on your own and you know that’s cool.”
Punk rock actually had very few huge hits. Some that were aided by elaborate gimmicks, like the Blues Magoos with their coiffured hair styles and electric blue/flashing light suits, or the deliberation over who was the singer (Rudy Martinez) with ? and the Mysterians. But even local hits made an impact, while a national hit inspired hordes of local imitators. The success of Doug Sahm with ‘She’s About A Mover’ sparked off a remarkable teen club/teen group boom in Texas, perhaps the most interesting of the punk regions and, rarely, one with something approaching a composite local style. Punk rock may have bordered on the realms of bad musical taste but it was the genuine article. Street music, or rather garage music, which was never manufactured behind the scenes. Whatever else, the punk rock groups were people’s groups – and that was important.