The image has cracked

People do messed up things when they’re drunk don’t they. Most times you get away with it with just a red face and some humble pie. Other times the effects are more long lasting. Take Steve Jones for example. The Sex Pistols gonzo guitarist was always destined for infamy of one kind or another, but the planets really lined up when the band was invited onto the Bill Grundy Today show on 1 December 1976 as a last minute replacement for Queen. Steve and crew were dumped in the hospitality room with free food and booze and no adult supervision. By the time the five minute call arrived Steve was well into his second bottle of wine.

As you can see, Bill Grundy himself was a jaded old windbag with nothing but contempt for the motley crew of urchins that soon draped themselves across his furniture, followed by a gaggle of equally dodgy looking supporters forming a ring behind them. One of said supporters is the soon-to-be-infamous-in-her-own-right Siouxsie Sioux, who quickly caught old Bill’s eye. After a gnarly clip of the band performing No Fun, some brief and fairly mindless banter with the band ensues, before Bill receives some lip from our Siouxsie when he turns his attention the supporter’s way. Not missing a beat he quickly fires a sleazy pass at her as a come back. That's the cue for Steve (who is obviously a gent deep down inside) to come to her aid with a volley of beepable bullets aimed directly at old Bill’s head, abetted by Bill himself giving it the old “is that all you’ve got” bravado. Quality entertainment! But not in 1976. The reaction in the press was just north of completely over the top. People just didn’t swear on the telly back then old bean.

From that moment on the otherwise invisible street phenomenon known as Punk Rock became tabloid fodder and became engraved in the history of the world as Bad Music played by Bad People.

The reality was that groups of young kids in Britain and America had been making music on a DIY level for at least two years prior to the Pistols appearance on the Grundy show, but none of them had a label for what they did. This was probably because each of these groups had quite different approaches to their creative endeavours. You couldn’t throw a net around them all and say “that’s punk rock” like you could two years later. In New York everything was centred on CBGBs where groups as varied as The Ramones, Suicide and Mink DeVille treaded the same boards, with the only similarity between them being that none of them sounded like Linda Rondstat. In Britain the Pistols were in the audience at 101ers gigs where pre-Clash Joe Strummer was playing lumpy R&B, while down the road polio victim Ian Dury was breaking all the rules by singing in cockney slang. Throbbing Gristle were melding primitive electronics with nihilistic performance art while up north Mark E Smith and the Fall were performing poetry pieces over simple Casiotone-and-guitar backing music. None of this was a threat to the established order and it probably would have stayed that way if Steve hadn’t hit the Blue Nun quite as hard in the Thames TV green room.

As Punk Rock had now been labelled as A Risk To Society it needed to be formally identified. The media obliged by defining Punk Fashion so that old ladies would know who to avoid in the street. Punk rockers themselves got into the football crowd mentality by defining their own take on the music, willingly supported by kingpins like Johnny Rotten who threw down the lines of acceptable punkness for everyone punk enough to follow (including members of his own band as it turned out). Anything identifiable as being un-punk was disparaged and banished from the new punk order. Trenches were dug in society around the new stink in town, protests were held, music was banned, letters flew at the editor. The end result on the street was if you were punk you were either in or out based on the simple recipe of having short fast songs with no guitar solos and no fancy words. That was the uniform and badge you wore. That and short hair. It was ironic that a DIY movement initially based on creativity and individuality was overtaken by an omnipresent facism that banished individual creativity in favour of mob rules.

So why are we worried? Well, we’re not really, but the lesson here is that unless you are determined, your attempts at individual expression will be threatened by turdheads with their own barrow to push. Not even muti-national corporate turdheads, but the turdheads in your very neighbourhood (I feel a song coming on, don’t you…).

For those who are interested in recordings made before punk became a dirty word there are a few recordings that are well worth checking out. The aforementioned 101ers and Ian Dury. The Fall. The initial output of The Damned, ATV and The Boys in the UK. Likewise The Ramones, Television and The Modern Lovers in the States. All high energy music providing all important teenage kicks without the unimportant Rules. Don’t get me wrong, all of the stuff produced during the initial punk explosion was vital music, and its impact went far and wide, but it became very derivative very fast and by 1978 was virtual self-parody. Fortunately there were enough creative geniuses in that first wave of punk to move on into completely new territory without getting bogged down. Some astonishingly good music was recorded in the period 1978-1982 in all different corners of the world.

It’s geniuses like those that eliminate the gravity that might otherwise hold the Hopkinsville Goblins down. How high do they fly? Check out the links below and judge for yourself:

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