|
2001 | 23.3 |
Scott Stalcup
A big misconception about Punk is that it first happened in
America, then crossed over to Great Britain when the Ramones played there on
America’s bicentennial. While the date provides a romantic readymade, the
truth is Punk on both sides of the Atlantic arose at the same time and had what
one might describe as a symbiotic, yet adversarial relationship. As Steve Jones
told Alan diPerna, “There’s a real resentment I feel from that New York
crowd” (“Sexual Healing” 47). Johnny Rotten (nee Lydon) agreed,
writing in his autobiography:
I didn’t like their image, what they stood for, or anything
about them.They had absolutely nothing to do with life in Great Britain. . . .
I only found out about Richard Hell when he came over to England after
the Pistols’ failed “Anarchy in the U.K.” tour. (118)
Both however, were born out of the same
circumstances, boredom with the hippie culture, or what it had become, as the
sixties drew to a close.
While, as diPerna wrote in “Revolution Calling,” the
“rawness of British Invasion groups like the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, and
the Yardbirds, were valued” (50), all had become members of the establishment
toward the end of the 1960s. The music they turned out in their prime was more
important on their home soil, as demonstrated in the songs attempted by the Sex
Pistols. “Apart from liking London bands such as the Stones and the Kinks, for
some reason I always had a working knowledge of the Small Faces,” wrote
bassist Glen Matlock in I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol (134). “Through My
Eyes” and “Painter Man” by the Creation could also be counted in their
repertoire of covers.
One found American Punk’s ground zero though by going—to
draw a quote from one of the Clash’s songs off their eponymous debut—“back
in the garage.” One hit wonders such as the Count Five and the Shadows of
Knight were of greater importance. Journalist/future Patti Smith Group guitarist
Lenny Kaye compiled the aforementioned bands with others on his Nuggets
compilation, which Elektra released in the early 1970s. “[M]ost of these
groups . . . were decidedly unprofessional,” Kaye wrote on the album’s liner
notes. “The name that has been unofficially coined for them— ‘punk rock’
—seems particularly fitting . . . for . . . they exemplified the berserk
pleasure that comes with being onstage outrageous.”
The British bands’ Achilles heel, at least in the extreme they took it
to as song length increased, was the blues influence. On the other hand, the
garage bands’ twice removed nature “whited out,” for lack of a better
term, the black influence. As journalist Legs McNeil explained in Jon Savage’s
England’s Dreaming, “In the sixties, hippies always wanted to be
black. We had nothing in common with black people at that time: we’d had ten
years of being politically correct and we were going to have fun, like kids are
supposed to” (138).
Another difference between the British punks and American
punks was the American bands’
disdain for taking any political stance. “I couldn’t give a shit about folk
music,” said John Cale to McNeil. “I hated Joan Baez and Dylan— every song
was a fucking question!” (4). Cale, along with Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison and
Maureen Tucker became the Velvet Underground, the house band for Andy Warhol’s
Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Where the hippies on the other side of the country
were looking inside themselves to find meaning, those on the East Coast looked
inside and saw nothing. Their message was not of peace and love, but of
boredom and frustration. They were the first major stirring of the Punk
movement.
“By 1965, Lou Reed had written ‘Heroin’ and ‘Waiting
for the Man,’” said Cale (4). Both would surface on the band’s first album
The Velvet Underground and Nico. The songs took listeners on a much more
concrete journey into the drug culture. On “Heroin,” Reed declared,
“Heroin / It’s my wife and it’s my life,” while on “Waiting for the
Man,” he narrated a drug deal. In 1967 though, no one cared about the means to
the end. In the liner notes to the Velvet’s boxed set Peel Slowly and See
appears Brian Eno’s arguably truthful phrase that, “[H]ardly anyone bought
the [Velvet Underground’s] records when they first came out, but those who did
all went on to form their own bands” (4).
In his interview with McNeil, Iggy Pop (nee James
Osterberg) verifies Eno’s claim: “The first time I heard the Velvet
Underground . . . I just hated the sound. Then about six months later . . . . [t]hat
record became very key for me, not just for what it said, . . . [but] I heard
people who could make good music— without being any good at music” (18).
Alongside Ron and Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander, Iggy’s band the Stooges
generated songs that served as banners for the movement, with titles such as
“No Fun” and “Search and Destroy.” While the hippies in Haight-Ashbury,
and later at Woodstock, thought they were changing the world, Iggy reiterated
the boredom voiced by Reed—but from a Midwesterner’s perspective—in
“1969,” the first song off the Stooges’ self-titled release, singing
“Another year for me and you / Another year with nothing to do.”
Also evolving in Midwest isolation were groups in Ohio such as
Pere Ubu, the Electric Eels, and the Mirrors. The most famous of these Ohio
groups would form at Kent State, an appropriate site considering the hippie
bloodbath that took place there in the early 1970s. “We just looked at
everything around us and decided . . . things were falling apart,” as Mark
Mothersbaugh told disc jockey George Gimarc, who later compiled his interviews
onto the Punk Diary CD. With his brothers Jim and Bob, Mothersbaugh,
along with Jerry and Bob Casale, formed the De-Evolution Band, or DEVO. Unlike
other punk bands, the band developed its sound by experimenting with
synthesizers, reaching into the future rather than back into the past. On their
signature song “Jocko Homo,” DEVO asked and answered its own question which
was the same as the title of their debut, “Are we not men? We are DEVO.”
Clad in yellow uniforms, the band’s clone-like image did not sit well with the
public. On Halloween night, 1975, DEVO opened for Sun Ra . Playing “Jocko
Homo” live for the first time, the group incited stoned hippies to invade the
stage. As Jerry Casale wrote in the liner notes to LIVE: The Mongoloid Years,
“They threatened ‘[We’re going to] beat the shit out of you
assholes!’” (6-7). So much for peace and love!
While it was not the thigh from which Punk sprang fully
formed, New York was a hotbed of activity in the early 1970s after the
Velvets’ demise. According to George Gimarc, a group known as Actress,
coupling the influences of 1960s girl groups with the Rolling Stones (2), after
the addition of singer David JoHansen and drummer Jerry Nolan, evolved into the
New York Dolls, a group existing in glam’s death throes (4). The Dolls
reaffirmed the ethos established by the Nuggets bands.
As Johnny Ramone told the Ramones’ biographer Jim Bessman, “We saw
them, and realized that they were a great band and . . . didn’t play well at
all” (19). Others in the New York scene included poet Richard Meyers, who
joined with Tom Miller. The two changed their names to Hell and Verlaine
respectively, and formed Television. “I felt I was seeing the reality of human
existence,” as Hell told Savage. “The best way to reach people, I thought,
was with a Rock ‘n’ Roll band. When I was a teenager, there was a feeling of
radio as a secret network” (88). Hell anchored his bulletin in “(I Belong to
the) Blank Generation,” which also was the title of his first album with the
Voidoids upon leaving Television, by singing, “I was saying let me out of here
before I was even born.” Emphasizing the emptiness of his generation, on the
chorus, “I belong to the blank generation and I can take it or leave it each
time,” Hell dropped “blank” on the refrain.
Bubbling in Punk’s cauldron began elsewhere in the East in
Boston, where a teenage Jonathan Richman, bored with the epic-length material of
progressive rock bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, joined with bassist Ernie
Brooks, and future Cars drummer David Robinson and Talking Heads keyboardist
Jerry Harrison to form the Modern Lovers. Richman hero-worshipped the Velvets,
borrowing Lou Reed’s half-spoken/half-sung delivery, along with John Cale
producing the demos that comprised the band’s posthumous, self-titled release
on Berserkley (1). Richman’s songs dealt with being a “red-blooded but
sensitive, teenage American male” (2). His finest moment came, not in a
teenage love song, but in the car song, “Roadrunner.” In the details of his
“Drive past the Stop n’ Shop with the radio on,” Richman captured the
alienation of post-1960s teens, singing “I don’t feel so alone ‘cause I
got the radio on” (3). Like the Velvet Underground, whom Richman tried so
desperately to emulate, the band would be heard by all the right people,
including the Sex Pistols, who, according to Matlock covered “Roadrunner”
before it was even released (134).
Of all the bands to come out of American Punk in the 1970s,
the most recognizable was composed of four twentysomethings from Queens. Jeff
Hyman, John Cummings, Douglas Colvin, and Tommy Erdelyi, clad in leather jackets
and ripped jeans, would change their names to Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy
Ramone. Joey Ramone told Daniel B. Levine and Andy Aledort, “In the ‘70s,
everything was 20-minute keyboard and drum solos!” (11). As Johnny explained
to Alan diPerna, “When the Ramones started out, we’d always say ‘We
can’t do that, that’s hippie shit.’” I tried to avoid all the things I
didn’t like, . . [like] tuning up on stage” (“Revolution Calling” 50).
Image formatted, the Ramones built upon Jonathan Richman’s anthems of teenhood.
“We’d write about teenage problems,” as Johnny told Jim Bessman. “Songs
about growing up, being nobody . . . boredom. We just brought out the humor”
(51). The Ramones’ buzzsaw guitar sound set the standard which bands on both
sides of the Atlantic would copy (16).
The Ramones’ British equivalent came in a group started by
Steve Jones and Paul Cook. “I was really into the Faces,” Jones told diPerna.
“I would go to a lot of their gigs. I went to one where the New York Dolls
were opening . . . [a]nd I thought ‘Fuckin’ ‘ell, this is brilliant”
(“Sexual Healing” 56). Bassist Glen Matlock joined the two, but not until
John Lydon entered the fold did the Sex Pistols gel properly. After being
spotted on the street due to his “I HATE Pink Floyd” t-shirt, John Lydon was
asked to come to Malcolm McLaren’s fetish store SEX. As Matlock wrote, “We
put a few records on and got him to mime along. One of them . . . was Alice
Cooper’s ‘Eighteen.’ He was John Rotten from that very first moment”
(61).With the line-up complete, the Sex Pistols began writing songs that would
earn their place in Punk. “[T]he important thing was to get across the idea
of the band in the songs,” wrote Matlock (80). Another matter was Jones’
lack of proficiency on the guitar, which dictated simplicity (82).Finally, the
songs’ content had to be negative (91). “For me, [ ‘Pretty Vacant’ ]
encapsulated everything we were about. We’re pretty vacant and we don’t
care, so fuck you, pal” (90).
Any hope for commercial success of the Sex Pistols had a stake
driven through its heart when they appeared on the British Today show
with Bill Grundy. The interview went badly from the start, but when Grundy hit
on Siouxsie Sioux, a tagalong fan, Steve tore into him. According to Savage’s
transcription, Steve called Grundy “ a “dirty old man,” a “dirty
bastard,” and a “dirty fucker” (258-59). “[I wondered] why did he keep
pushing John and Steve to swear?” Matlock wrote. “[Maybe] he just didn’t
think we were worth giving the time of day to” (136). “[Afterward,] no one
was interested in hearing us play,” as Jones told diPerna. “It wasn’t
about the music anymore” (“Sexual Healing” 49).
Early in 1977, Matlock left the band. “I was just fed up
with being in the same place as John,” he wrote (155). Lydon’s friend Sid
Vicious (nee John Beverley) replaced Glen. The next year, the Sex Pistols
invaded America, touring in the Deep South. Their motive, according to Lydon
was, “[I]t would have been silly to go play New York. . . . They had already
decided that they hated us” (237). The tour, and the group, ended on January
14, 1978, at Winterland in San Francisco. After the Stooges’ “No Fun,”
Lydon asked the audience, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
“[That] was the truth. I had felt cheated,” Lydon wrote (326). “When Sid
joined, it got really dark and gloomy,” Jones told diPerna. “Like the circus
is in town” (“Sexual Healing” 49). A little over a year after the Sex
Pistols’ demise, Vicious would die of a heroin overdose.
During their lifetime and afterward, the Pistols influenced
many youths, including Pete Shelley (nee MacNeish) and Howard Devoto (nee
Trafford), who saw the band play High Wycombe. Shelley told diPerna,
“Howard . . . and I were writing before the Sex Pistols, but it was more . . .
just fooling around” (“Revolution” 100). The two joined with drummer John
Maher and bassist Steve Diggle to form the Buzzcocks. According to Gimarc, the
group, with a loan from Pete’s father, cut the first independent record of the
Punk era, the four-song Spiral Scratch EP (46).
Another important step in the evolution of Punk comes courtesy
of the London S.S. collective. According to Gimarc, anyone not already in a band
at the time of the Sex Pistols claims to have been in the London S.S. (24).
Brian James and Rat Scabies (nee Chris Millar) had been playing with Mick
Jones and Paul Simonon before hooking up with ex-Johnny Moped bassist Captain
Sensible (nee Ray Burns) and former gravedigger David Vanian (35). The
quartet formed the Damned. “It was boring, and apathetic, and nothing going
on,” as Scabies told Gimarc. “I wanted something of my own to listen to.”
Visually, the Damned contained a similar cartoonish quality as one found in the
Ramones, delivered mainly by Captain Sensible, as well as Vanian, whom Savage
described as possessing a “Hammer horror” appearance of pale skin and
head-to-toe black (215). In February 1977, the group released the first
full-length British punk album. Clocking in at a little over half an hour, Damned
Damned Damned was England’s answer to Ramones.
The remnants of the London S.S. approached pub rocker Joe
Strummer (nee John Mellor). “One morning I was signing on,” Strummer
recalled to Savage. “[A]nd there were these people staring at me on the bench.
I thought there was going to be a ruck” (172). Two of the party’s members
were Paul Simonon and Mick Jones whom Strummer later met and formed a group with
on the spot. After several band names were suggested and rejected, Simonon came
up with the Clash (172). Nicky “Topper” Headon would assume the drum throne
and the Clash cast themselves the chief rivals of the Sex Pistols for the
British Punk crown (305). Though the Clash’s lyrics were, according to Lydon,
“[A] few trendy slogans stolen here and there from Karl Marx” (106), the
Clash would win by default after the Sex Pistols’ demise.
The majority of the press would have it that Punk was trapped
in a state of hibernation after the Sex Pistols broke up until the late 1980s or
early 1990s. When Punk records failed to sell to the millions who bought Peter
Frampton and Fleetwood Mac, the doors began to close. “[B]ands were starting
to think they would never get signed on their own terms. There was heavy
pressure for bands to start wearing skinny ties (which the punks had disavowed
by then) and become ‘new wave,’” as Jello Biafra told Search and
Destroy writer V. Vale. Biafra (nee Eric Boucher) would form the Bay
Area Punk band Dead Kennedys. “The major labels co-opted this term ‘new
wave’ and used it to market a new type of pop music, thus successfully selling
Blondie, Talking Heads, the Cars and the Knack” (iv). Early on in the
movement, the terms “Punk” and “New Wave” were used interchangeably. Now
the two differed as much as Little Richard from Pat Boone. “That term New
Wave was the kiss of death!” wrote John Lydon. “Elvis Costello into Joe
Jackson into Tom Robinson. . . . These were all just imitators jumping on [the]
bandwagon and trying to mellow it out so they could go for the big bucks and the
easy life” (252-53).
Nonetheless, several veterans continued through the 1980s.
According to Jim Bessman, the Ramones survived drummer changes and Phil
Spector’s production on End of the Century (108). Next-state neighbors
DEVO also continued, though they were tainted by the “New Wave” tag. At the
same time, many of the bands snatched up in the great feeding frenzy of the
1970s were dropped after one album. The Clash, the Buzzcocks, and the Damned all
survived to varying points in the 1980s, though British Punk was largely ignored
in favor of the video-friendly New Wave artists. While American punk managed to
keep going, its apolitical stance was hampered by the socio-political climate of
1970s America.
Jon Savage quotes then-California Governor Jerry Brown, who
said “[E]ven a superficial reading of history indicates there has rarely been
a period of such self-indulgence on such a mass scale as there is in America
today” (433). Sixties hedonism had exploded in smiley-faced shrapnel. The Bee
Gees and disco as a musical genre emphasizing pure pleasure via antiseptic
robotic rhythm ruled the charts (433). For those who did not wish to boogie the
night away, they had the other options, to paraphrase the Sex Pistols’
American tour manager Noel Monk, of arena rockers like Queen and the Eagles or
staying home with singer-songwriters like James Taylor on the stereo (29). The
problem with all the subgenres was that they separated the audience from the
performer in an unbridgeable distance, though no one was angry enough to do
anything about it.
John Holmstrom, who worked both for High Times as well
as founded one of the era’s magazines, Punk, alleged government
tinkering to Savage, as to why Punk differed in its impact in America as opposed
to England:
The country picked up on the conservative end of the hippy
thing . . . which was typified by the culture of the early 1970s, the Allman
Brothers, who eventually had links with the government. I think there was some
government tinkering. . . . They didn’t like what happened in the 1960s and
they wanted to make sure it didn’t get resurrected with Punk. Carter said
during a jazz concert or similar [event] on the White House lawn that he wanted
to stop Punk. (434-35)
Biafra corroborates Holmstrom’s
suspicions regarding government intervention, telling Vale, “I’ve always
wondered whether Robert Fripp was right when he was quoted as saying that Jimmy
Carter had had a pow-wow with record-company executives . . . . Was that true? I
don’t know, but coincidence or not, no more punk bands were signed until
Husker Du [in the late 1980s]” (iv).
Whether it was
government intervention, poor sales, or both, Punk’s survival depended on
those working in the underground. “That’s what fueled my ambition to take
any extra money I might earn, start a record company and [network with
others]” (Vale v). As the genre itself existed to subvert the norms of pop
music, the history of Punk is also subverted. The most recent history is the
least documented. The Buzzcocks’ song “Boredom,” off Spiral Scratch,
perfectly summarizes the punk movement after the Sex Pistols’ onstage
implosion at Winterland: “I’ve taken this extravagant journey or so it seems
to me / I just came from nowhere and I’m going straight back there.” That Spiral
Scratch was independently released reinforces the kairos of
Devoto’s lyrics. The story of Punk, from the beginning of the 1980s on up to
present day, is a story told on record sleeves hand-drawn and folded by band
members, sold out of the backs of vans at shows.
Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles led the assault within the
hippie capital. His band, Dead Kennedys, were equal opportunity offenders during
the Reagan/Bush years. No one was safe, either to or from them.
Jello laid down ideals punks would turn their backs on a decade later, tearing
into the infant medium of MTV in “MTV Get Off the Air!” off the band’s
album Frankenchrist, when he sang, “How far will you go? How low will
you stoop? To tranquilize our minds with your sugar-coated swill? / You turned
rock and roll rebellion into Pat Boone sedation. / Making sure that nothing’s
left to the imagination.”
Were the Sex Pistols influential in their political stance on
American Punk? After their demise, the socio-political climate in America began
to approach that of the England in which they formed. The Carter administration
had fallen due to the rise in unemployment and double-digit inflation. Reagan
used this against Carter to win the presidency. Of course, matters did not
improve when Reagan assumed power. Punk in the 1980s, at least American Punk, as
the lens panned away from New-Wave enamored England, took on a decidedly
political tone. The stench of the 1960s corpse had dissipated to where even the
erstwhile apolitical Ramones released “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg,” their 1985
criticism of President Reagan’s wreath-laying at a German cemetery where Nazi
shock troops were buried. “What Reagan did was fucked up,” as Joey told Jim
Bessman. “How can you fuckin’ forgive the Holocaust?” (131).
As for the independent aesthetic, other labels throughout the
country followed Biafra’s lead. Also in California, Greg Ginn and Chuck
Dukowski of Black Flag founded SST Records. On the East Coast, Ian MacKaye of
the Washington D.C. band Minor Threat founded Dischord Records. Once again, the
Midwest saw flowerings of the Punk movement in the Twin/Tone label out of
Minnesota, where the major labels’ next great feeding frenzy would take place
in the 1980s. While fellow statesmen Husker Du were signed to SST, Twin/Tone was
home to bands such as Loud Fast Rules, who became Soul Asylum, and the
Replacements.
“I think the Replacements presented this ideal like, ‘We
don’t give a shit,’” Paul Westerberg told Creem’s Chris Nadler
after the group’s break-up. “I can think back to when the band played its
fourth gig, at a roller rink in Duluth. We smashed our gear after 30 seconds
because we were so wound up and didn’t know how to perform” (74). When the
group was still together, Westerberg explained their origins to another Creem
writer, Bill Holdship. “[W]e heard punk rock and said ‘Yeah, this is cool.
This is easy” (20). Their material was, according to Nadler, “loaded with
sophisticated, but street-wise insights you didn’t expect from a bunch of
drunken deadbeats” (75). Like the Sex Pistols before them, the Replacements
came off “like some charismatic bank-robbing gang” (74). Also like the Sex
Pistols, the Replacements, as well as Husker Du would sign with Warner Brothers
in the late 1980s. On January 18, 1986, the band performed on NBC’s then
recently-rejuvenated Saturday Night Live. According to Michael Corcoran,
between songs, the members traded clothing with each other (33). The spectacle
would be documented by Spin magazine as one of the “Thirty-Five
Greatest Moments in Rock and Roll on Television.” In addition to Westerberg
was Tommy Stinson, who joined the band at age twelve. His step-brother, Bob,
shared guitar duties with Westerberg and was the designated clown of the bunch.
Bob’s absurdist nature caused him to be sacked by the band and ironically
“replaced” by Slim Dunlap. Drummer Chris Mars was the Glen Matlock of the
bunch. After the band exercised extreme hypocrisy by ejecting Mars for drinking
too much, The Replacements folded early in the 1990s.
The next rumblings of Punk came out of the Pacific Northwest
on the independent Sub Pop label in the late 1980s and early 1990s. David Grohl
of Washington D.C.’s Scream joined Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain’s band
Nirvana. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the opening track of their second album Nevermind,
exposed the masses to Seattle’s “grunge.” Rolling Stone writer
Anthony DeCurtis described the song as “[A] defining moment in rock history .
. . it was ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ for a new time and a new tribe
of disaffected youth” (30). The only intelligible words are “Here we are
now. Entertain us.” Minimalism is one of the foundations of Punk, but
how so much could be derived from six words is phenomenal! Was it Punk? Despite
the grunge groups’ Replacementsesque flannel shirts, those coming before and
after had problems with its classification.
“I don’t think it changed the rules as much as everyone
would like to think— all it did was inflate advances for new bands,” Husker
Du’s Bob Mould told Leslie Gaspar of Reflex (35). “Sounds like Black
Sabbath to me,” Steve Jones told diPerna (“Sexual Healing” 58). “Yeah,
Sabbath or something. Deep Purple-type shit,” agreed Green Day bassist Mike
Dirnt in a separate diPerna interview (“Young, Loud, and Snotty” 180). Mould
predicted to Gaspar in 1992, “I don’t think Nirvana’s going to go that
much further.” In 1994, Cobain shot himself.
After Nirvana’s collapse, the “new” sound of alienation
emerged yet again from California. “The turning point was when Maximumrock’n’roll
released Turn it Around, a compilation of slower-tempo, more melodic
punk,” Biafra recounted to Vale. “Now we had a different definition of what
punk should sound like” (v). MTV readily latched onto this new sound of
alienation which certain members of the community might have labelled “bubblepunk.”
“The record labels figured out that they could make money from it . . . making
it into the flavor of the month,” Pete Shelley told Chris Gill (54). Ever the
ray of sunshine, John Lydon condemned current punk bands to diPerna, saying,
“They come at it from the nice melodies angle rather than the content. There
are some serious subjects out there . . . [but] none of the punk bands want to
know about them” (“Sexual” 54). Biafra concurred to an extent, telling
Vale:
Of course! If you want to be on a major
label, crank out love songs! Let’s diffuse all this rage that got rid of
George Bush . . . . People weren’t called “Slackers” and “Generation
X” until after they got off their butts and got rid of George Bush— then
it was time for major media to brainwash them. (v)
Doubters of the elders need only look at one of the bands to
come from the Berkeley scene the Maximumrock’n’roll compilation
documented. They sound closer to the bloated-before-their-time pop stars their
forefathers wanted to get rid of. In regard to Lydon, Green Day frontman Billie
Joe Armstrong said to diPerna, “He really sounds old” (“Young, loud,a nd
Snotty” 38). Armstrong focuses more on cash than chaos, lambasting Black Flag
frontman Henry Rollins. “Henry Rollins has a stick up his ass . . . .
Basically he’s complaining because we’ve made more money” (36). Driving
the nail in his coffin as a “serious artist,” Armstrong said, “We need to
redefine ourselves” (40). Green Day, along with other California bands like
the Offspring and Rancid, do sound musically like carbon copies of their
elders. “Rancid is a hilarious example of uniform grabbing,” Lydon told
diPerna. “The tartan bondage pants . . . . The ‘punk jacket’ thrown over
the top. It’s bullshit” (“Sexual Healing” 54).
After soldiering on for seven years following Dee Dee’s
departure, the Ramones decided to call it quits in the summer of 1996. As the
decision was made, the Sex Pistols reunited with Matlock in tow. “Nothing’s
gotten any better,” said Paul Cook on Canada’s MuchMusic Spotlight.
“That was the inspiration, knowing that we can do it better still.” Seven
years earlier, the Buzzcocks reunited. “Internally, our songs have changed,”
Pete Shelley told Daniel Fidler, “but the idea isn’t to compare them with
what’s gone on in the past” (38). The Damned reunited three years after Guns
‘n’ Roses covered “New Rose,” which, according to Mark Blake, prompted
Rat Scabies to declare he was not ready “to be anybody’s favorite uncle just
yet” (15). Iggy, Lou, Bob Mould and others never went away. “Punk is still
around because it was a gradual revolution,” Pete Shelley told Gill. “[The]
revolutions that prevail are the gradual ones because nobody is controlling them
and there are no leaders— only heroes” ( 54). Punk has had many. Steve Jones
remarked to diPerna that Punk “came and went, but it made a dent”
(“Revolution Calling” 47), but the last four decades show otherwise.
Scott Stalcup
Department of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
Works Cited
Bessman, Jim. Ramones: An American Band. New York: St.
Martin’s, 1993.
Blake, Mark. “England’s Dreaming.” Creem. Mar.
1994: 15.
Buzzcocks. Spiral Scratch. Document, 1991.
The Clash. The Clash. Epic, 1977.
Corcoran, Michael. “Thirty-Five Greatest Moments in Rock
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Dead Kennedys. Frankenchrist. Alternative Tentacles,
1983.
DeCurtis, Anthony. “Kurt Cobain 1967-1994.” Rolling
Stone. June 2, 1994: 30.
DEVO. Are We Not Men? We Are DEVO. Warner Brothers,
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