The thick brick I couldn't swallow

Today is the 31st anniversary of the release of Kinnell Tommy, by Ed Banger, on Rabid Records – a punk-related, jokey football song. It reminds us that there was a strong relationship between the working class punk ethos and everyday aspects of life, such as football. And that, very quickly, something like Punk would break down into various elements that people were comfortable with. The same week a year earlier at the height of Punk in 1977 had seen the release of Ain’t Been To No Music School by the same band, then called Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds. Look at the pic sleeve (http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/nosebleeds.htm or watch it on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WzW246mKy8). This is how most provincial Punks dressed in 1976 and 1977. People have an image of leather-clad Punks with brightly coloured cockatoo head-dresses (but this came later and is largely down to the Kenny Everett piss-take, Gizzard Puke, and those postcards you can still buy on London tourist shop stands). Early Punk in the provinces was naïve and innocent. It may have been leather, chains and razor blades at the London Roxy scene, but, elsewhere, it was about wearing what clothes you had in a different way. You didn’t have leather. You couldn’t afford leather. Besides, leather was what bikers wore. Or it belonged to the S&M scene that Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood toyed with in Seditionaries, their clothes shop that kitted out these early Punks. For the rest of us, following on, there was Millett’s hardware store. It was the only place you could get drainpipe jeans that only blokes who worked in cardboard box factories would wear (thanks, Johnny Moped). You borrowed your dad’s pointed suede shoes from the 50s. And wore a sullen expression all of your own. You didn’t spike your hair, you just cut it shorter – very unusual at the time. In school, you pulled your tie into such a tight knot it wouldn’t undo. The trouble with adopting this semi-styled, dishevelled look was that the kids at school who looked naturally like this didn’t appreciate it because they were (a) thick (b) bullies and (c) in and out of Borstal. And this was one of the credibility issues of early Punk. Were you hard enough to adopt what was essentially a rebellious image? Punk was street-wise music for kids wiv no futchah. In order to gain this credibility themselves, some of the bands produced songs aimed at this audience. Band members in their early 20s were shouting about how crap it was to be at school. It may have rung true for the thickos, but, for the likes of me, a certain dumbing down was required. You could see it in certain bands, too. Howard Devoto left Buzzcocks before this happened to him. Another aspect of the credibility factor was the need to have two separate record collections: first and foremost, the collection you’d be happy to show – your growing set of Punk singles; then, hidden away at the back of the cupboard, would be all your pre-Punk, the stuff you really cherished and played on the sly. You’d have to deny this past, yet it was part of what had influenced Punk and brought it into being. For such a liberating sword, Punk didn’t half have some rigid rules. But I always found this school obsession laughable. My experience of school was about getting on so that I could get out, escape this life. You felt that some of the early Punk bands were from the B stream, the lads who played football and did a bit of bullying on the side. There was no intelligence in it. Some bands, like Eater, were still at school themselves. Or, should I say, of school age, because they never attended. Dee Generate was a 14 year-old drummer. The Damned actually supported them at London’s Roxy Club in January 1977, as did Johnny Moped in February, followed by The Lurkers and Sham 69 in March. Some Punk elements never really escaped from this association with school and yoof culture. You wouldn’t want to bump into any of them in a school alleyway. Slaughter and the Dogs, Sham 69. The Jam actually made something of it and helped to generate an anti-Punk mod revival. While post-punk was metamorphosing into miserable raincoats or multi-coloured New Romanticism, the Ska-beat bands, including Madness and The Specials, also had that lads-next-door, I-hate-school, anti-intelligence feel about them. Which is why it always feels ridiculous to me to see these two groups performing songs about teen life live at the age of 50. Andy Blade, Eater’s leader, finally published a book in 2005 called The Secret Life Of A Teenage Punk Rocker: schoolboy by day and low-rent punk rock star by night. This tells us more about what the Punk scene was actually like than any number of weightier, more erudite tomes. It’s the best book on the era I’ve ever read. OK, it’s London-centric and full of contradictions, but it doesn’t attempt to dumb it all down. It has the ring of truth about it. It feels like it’s describing the period I experienced. It remembers it as it was – The Damned came out of glam, The Clash came out of pub rock, The Sex Pistols came out of hell and went back there. The Heartbreakers were junkies. Sid Vicious was a thug but also a little boy lost. Johnny Rotten was an arrogant arsehole surrounded by sycophants. Malcolm McLaren even worse. So much of that scene is blatant lies that it’s refreshing to read a book like this. At times, Blade says strange things like he couldn’t understand why there was such a violent reaction to Punk and Punks. A bunch of London ne’er-do-wells who stole to fund a habit, ran around in gangs and sold their grannies for five minutes of fame (an image that we innocent provincials then had to live up to or live down). But at least he’s honest and tells it with humility. It sounds and feels right. From a Muslim background himself, he makes a great analogy between Punk and Islam. “The West, largely, sees Islam as an angry, confrontational religion and I can understand that. If punk rock had a corresponding religious belief to match its aesthetics, it would have been Islam. The raging, the rallying, the cliquey-ness of different sects, the refusal to compromise and the lack of tolerance for other movements would have been a perfect match….At Muslim meetings, sermons or whatever, the overriding theme appears to be the laying down of some kind of threat, that God is very angry, getting angrier by the minute and wants you to do something about it before it’s too late. There are no such things as hymns in Muslim ceremonies or services, but if there were, they’d probably sound something like the most ferocious punk-rock anthems ever written.” Near the end of the book, there’s an amazing paragraph where he’s glad to see the back of the 80s. “As the 1980s made way for the 1990s, I felt a tangible sense of relief, a wind of change drifting inexorably towards me. I felt no fear or trepidation, just a calm, welcoming acceptance. I was only too happy to shrug off a whole decade, like the discarding of an ill-fitting jacket I’d never wanted in the first place. For me, it had been a decade of misery.” I felt exactly the same. My appreciation of Punk and experience of post-Punk life was similar to yours, Andy. Except that you took the drugs and I took the education. I never pretended I was thick or hard. My big problem with Punk was that this was a credibility requirement. Nevertheless, we can both ask ourselves the question you left us with at the end of your book: “I sometimes wonder how my life would have unfolded had it not been hijacked by punk rock.” Kinnell, Tommy!!

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk

A very influential pensioner

Chris Spedding turns pensioner today. Quite something for a rock, pop and jazz guitarist who had already reached that milestone in the eyes of the up-and-coming of 1976, half a lifetime ago. Back then, if you were over 21, you were too old for Punk. So the likes of The Vibrators, Chris Spedding’s backing band at the famous 100 Club Punk Festival in September 1976, and with whom he released two singles for Mickie Most’s RAK Records in November 1976, quickly became persona non grata. Yet I saw The Vibrators twice in the first six months of 1977 (without Chris Spedding) and I liked them. I was happy to walk around with a little badge with a red ‘V’ on it. After all, the sound of The Vibrators was the sound of Chris Spedding - a driving guitar grind, which somehow recalled Chuck Berry and 50s teens. And I, and many others, had a history with the bloke. I can trace the success of his single, Motorbikin’, in July 1975, as the very beginning of a change in my musical tastes. It was a dull time for music. The excitement of glam had gone. No more Sweet, Slade, Glitter, Mott or Sparks. It was all about waiting around for the next Rolling Stones tour, Led Zeppelin gatefold LP or David Bowie outrage. Motorbikin’ sounds tame now but it was a fast-paced pop single for its time, making a mockery of offerings from Wings and ELO, cutting a different note to the drive of Status Quo. It said that pop could be something different, more energetic, with bite. It paralleled the pub-rock movement which was making Dr Feelgood the cult band of the day. I bought Back In The Night around the same time as Motorbikin’. They went well together. In 1976, I still hadn’t finished with Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Genesis and Van Der Graaf Generator. And David Bowie was very much at the centre of my universe. But Chris Spedding and Dr Feelgood led me onto Eddie And The Hot Rods, the true bridge to Punk for those who had come from the rock route I had. So, by the autumn of 1976, when The Sex Pistols were first outraging the nation and getting banned everywhere, record companies were in a huge hurry to get Punk records out there. And, even at the age of 32, Chris Spedding was in demand. He could play. He’d been playing in bands since 1957 and had worked with the likes of Jack Bruce, Nilsson, Roy Harper, Lulu, Dusty Springfield and John Cale. This man had influence and credibility. He’d played on Brian Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets. He was a customer of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren at their Seditionaries boutique on London's King’s Road. He actually produced the first three-song demo by The Sex Pistols – Problems, No Feelings, and Pretty Vacant - which led to their first single release in November 1976 (he denies playing on the demo). Yet it was his collaboration with The Vibrators that ended this street-cred. Nobody wanted a pop song called Pogo Dancing (it was still two years before The Buzzcocks were to prove that Punk could go pop). It was a slip that the early Punk glitterati never forgave him for. Yes, there was Motorbikin', but we still remembered he was a Womble, in a furry costume playing his trademark Gibson Flying V on a tour around the very same time. He was everyone’s guitarist - and fledgling Punk was very exclusive. The Vibrators had started out as Chris Spedding’s backing band. They played the 100 Club Punk Festival. They were one of the first to play the infamous Roxy Club in London's Covent Garden, open for the first six months of 1977 only. They ended 1977 by playing support to Ian Hunter, solo after Mott The Hoople. But they were influential. Stiff Little Fingers took their name from a Vibrators song. And The Vibrators are still touring today. Singer, Knox, is 63. Almost as old as he looked in 1977. But Chris Spedding had shed his Vibrators mistake and moved on. He escaped to America and, by 1980, he was recording an album of his own again, ironically entitled I’m Not Like Everybody Else. He’d certainly played with everybody else. And that’s how it’s continued. Paul McCartney, Tom Waits, Roxy Music. Now he’s playing blues rock with his own band, Click Clack, at the age of 65. Tonight, he’s live at Nottingham Arena on Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds Tour. So, happy 65th birthday, Chris. It’s thanks to you that I…

Postscript: In late 1976, very few Punk records had been released, so, in order to believe that something was happening, we had to extend the genre to New Wave. Interestingly, below are the first 10 Punk and New Wave singles in order of date of release. The Sex Pistols were actually 7th or 8th into vinyl and not the first in the UK. With Blondie, a band we did not really begin to recognise until mid 1977, there is some dispute over whether X Offender was released on this very day, June 17th 1976 (or December). And the first Ramones single passed most of us by. Also, while we were listening to Eddie And The Hot Rods’ new Live At The Marquee EP, we weren’t sure whether The Saints were Status Quo on speed. Some people will dispute this listing. Where is Iggy Pop or Patti Smith? In reply, I’ll say this: Iggy Pop and Patti Smith were neither Punk nor New Wave, any more than Lou Reed or the New York Dolls were before them (largely an age/generation thing). Iggy was an influence, who outlasted those of his generation such as the MC5 and Velvet Underground, to have an important presence throughout the Punk and New Wave era and beyond, into parody. In 1976, I saw Iggy as a Bowie acolyte. I'm not even going to mention Jonathan Richman or Television, both of whom had singles in 1975. You can't be included in a movement before that movement has begun. For their part, bands like The Stranglers, Talking Heads, The Jam and many others after them - were passengers who surfed the New Wave. But, like them or loathe them (and I liked The Stranglers, seeing them twice in the first half of 1977), they were important to the movement at the time. The following songs and their B-sides you heard at every Punk gig or gathering you went to, because they were the only records available. You have to remember that so much of this hinged on whether The Sex Pistols, the leaders of the movement, would get a UK recording contract in 1976. Had they not succeeded, none of the Americans or Australians would have made it in the UK either and Punk would have fizzled out before it started, instead of becoming the inspiration for a whole host of movements which followed it, from the Ska and Mod revival, to Post-Punk and New Romanticism, early 80s pop and every Indie band since. So, the influence of Chris Spedding is there for all to see. You’ve earned your bus pass, Chris…

FIRST 10 PUNK/NEW WAVE SINGLES

April, 1976: The Ramones: Blitzkrieg Bop/Havana Affair (Sire) US release

June, 1976 or December, 1976: Blondie: X Offender/In The Sun (Private Stock) US release

September, 1976: The Saints: I’m Stranded/No Time (Fatal) Australia release

October, 1976: The Damned: New Rose/Help (Stiff) UK release

November, 1976 Chris Spedding and The Vibrators: The Pogo/The Pose (RAK) UK release

November, 1976: Richard Hell and the Voidoids: (I Belong To The) Blank Generation/(I Could Live With You) In Another World/You Gotta Lose (Stiff) UK release

November, 1976: The Vibrators: We Vibrate/Whips And Furs (RAK) UK release

November, 1976: The Sex Pistols: Anarchy In The UK/I Wanna Be Me (EMI) UK release

January, 1977: The Stranglers: (Get A) Grip (On Yourself)/London Lady (United Artists) UK release

January, 1977: The Buzzcocks: Spiral Scratch EP (New Hormones) UK release

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk