"I had never seen anyone put on a show like that ...it was just shocking...he looked like a real street kid...that show really changed my life...I was overwhelmed by Elvis, I was overwhelmed by the musicians. I could feel the playing." Jerry Nolan (Heartbreakers, New York Dolls) from the book 'Please Kill Me'
Yep welcome to Elvis Presley and a thousand other rockabilly cats riding the crest of a teen culture and rebellion. Money and leisure and advances in technology were opening up an untapped market of the teenager. The parents hated it but the kids loved it. The first barbarians were at the gate. 24 years seperate us from Punk76. 24 years to that previous was Elvis. We tend to see Elvis as a bloated drug addict dying on the toilet and dismiss his songs through over exposure, but its weird how he can catch you off guard.Elvis was young, sexy and mixed up blues and bluegrass and everything else. Hearing Heartbreak Hotel at high volume it can suddenly hit you just how good he was and how radical he was. But check out his Sun Sessions album (Mystery Train, Good Rockin Tonight, Thats All Right) and tell me the boy don't rock. Music and clothes that were different could give teenagers identity and annoy. At the same time as Elvis came Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard; hard rockers like Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps and of course Eddie Cochran. Mix in black singers like James Brown and you start to get the over the top singing and the wild front man. Rock'n'roll was dangerous and it was rebellious. Years later Malcolm Mclaren would resurrect these times and clothes in his shops and use it as a basis for his own teen revolution.
Elvis and rock 'n' roll was the start of the US relationship with the UK music scene which would see us trade sounds and ideas... well basically for ever. Rock'n'roll brought the birth of the teenager and as such brought the idea of teenage rebellion and a desire to forge your own identity through clothes and music. Music was a rush, it was a bout cars, clothes, love, shagging and dancing... three minutes of a slice of youth without responsibility. Rock'n roll had a profound influence on England where to celebrate we slashed cinema seats. It also gave us shite like Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard, The Dakotas and worst of all The Beatles.But the Beatles once they dropped their early leather gear and became loveable mop tops made music more accessible which, allied with advances in technology, meant greater exposure for bands. Music began to exert an influence and generate publicity. Rock'n'roll was dangerous it was rebellious and it sold. As the shock of the new began to wear off capitalism like the all consuming beast it is absorbed the rebels and their clothes and styles and made them popular and made money while awaiting the next attack which wasn't long coming.
As rock'n' roll collided with the blues, bands like Them, The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds absorbed blues and rock'n'roll riffs (Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry for instance), dirtied and speeded them up and appropriated the gruff mannerisms of black blues singers to produce songs like 'Gloria' and 'Satisfaction'.
In a curious twist Jagger sang like a Yank who in turn was exaggeratedly copied by US bands to produce those lovely thuggish sneering acid vocals that The Standells (left) and others used while mixing it up with rockabilly, the surf music of Dicky Dale and Link Wray (right). Elvis, blues and rockabilly influenced The Beatles, Stones and Yardbirds who in turn on visiting the USA became the catalyst for an explosion of bands who sprouted up like psychedelic mushrooms.
These bands popped up everywhere in a garage scene that took the dirtiest elements, fuzzed them up and spiked it with psychedelia. The music had a look and a sound. This really was a golden period. Bands formed overnight and hundreds of singles were released in an explosion of creativity.Lets face it the Yanks thrashed us here . We started them off with the Stones and they gave us a whole magical trip while we ended up with the shite like Traffic,The Move and the bloody Beatles spewing their pap. Yep the USA gave us Count 5 performing songs like 'Psychotic Reaction' as covered by The Cramps and Radiators from Space ( and an early cover version the Sex Pistols did), The Trashmen gave us 'Surfin Bird' as covered by The Ramones. The 13th Floor Elevators lead by Roky Erikson, who escaped a sentence for drugs with electric therapy and was made a virtual veg, gave us the classic 'You're Gonna Miss Me'. Or The Seeds, featuring Sky Sunlight Saxon, doing 'Pushing Too Hard'.
This period is just filled with numerous gems some of which were collected by Lenny Kaye on the famous Nuggets album and which should be in every persons collection. Other great bands to watch out for include The Standells, Love, Chocolate Watch Band, The Sonics and Electric Prunes (left). There's a lot of similarities with punk 77 style... explosion of bands, small labels, a counter culture of look, sound and teenage rebellion. These bands would heavily influence later American punk bands.
Having influenced the Yanks we gave them some more to chew on. This time it was fashion based culture and angry young men with the destructive power and feedback of those sharp Shepherds Bush hipsters The Who, the distorted two chord fury of The Kinks and the glorious Small Faces. The Pistols used to include Faces and Who songs in their set and early rehearsals featured covers from both bands.
Its a fair comment that the Stones (named after a Muddy Waters song) were the Anti Christ's to The Beatles and thank god for that. R&B riffs, dirty blues and Jaggers mock American vocals made them dead certs for success in Uncle Sam land. They got up everyone's noses and the kids loved them. Beatles or Stones ? Compare their version of I want to Be Your Lover complete with Blues slide guitar. Pisses all over The Beatles. The Beatles were pop. The Stones were R&B. Early songs showed their influences of Chuck Berry, Willy Dixon, gospel and country.
While the Beatles were loveable mop tops the Stones looked like Neanderthals and they played it to the hilt. They portrayed themselves as vulgar, arrogant and aggressive causing parental and establishment disapproval with their attitude including peeing against garage walls and allegedly snacking on confectionary from the hairy cup. 'Satisfaction' their theme toon railed against advertising while hinting at unrequited sex and the nihilism of youth. The authorities hated them. Punks with money, women and prestige.. Their contribution to punk has never been truly acknowledged probably because of what they became. From the nihilism of Paint It Black thru the garage punk of Be Your Lover, Satisfaction and Jumping Jack Flash. Where would the Dolls have been without Richards hairstyle and jaggers lips and unusual dress sense ??? The link between The Blues, Rock'nRoll and garage.
We can even laugh at their ludicrous attempts to mimic the Beatles with their dreadful Satanic Majesties Request album. But all power to them they came back with Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet ( the original cover was going to be a manky graffitied urinal !!!)... two near perfect albums and as spiky as ever. Like the Beatles reality intervened at Altamont when instead of being Lucifer, Jagger and his cohorts were just jumped up rock stars out of their depth in the reality of a death. Unfortunately that was it.. as America drugs and money beckoned they progressed to become a drug addled super group going thru the motions and embodying the worst excesses. But for a golden period they were the bollocks. Now a corporate monster and freak show to despise. A living waxworks.
Dirty fuzzed up guitars twisting old blues licks. Songs about cars, girls and of course psychedelics set to some wacked out garage sound. Three minutes of snappy pop punk to set those feet a tapping, those girls a running and those snakes writhing on the wallpaper. Distortion............... hip but not hippy
The Sonics. There was none dirtier or majestic than The Sonics. This band had it all, fuzzed up guitars, great riffs, screaming vocals akin to Little Richard. This band rocked from 1964-67 giving us classics such as The Witch, Strychnine (later covered by The Cramps), Boss Hog, Psycho and Louie Louie.
"IF our records sound distorted, its because they are...they were always overdriven. My Brother Larry ... he was disconnecting the speakers and poking a hole in them with an icepick. That's how we ended up sounding like a train crash." Sonics bassist.
Essential super fuzz. A tough new sound blending rock 'n' roll, singers like James Brown and the Yardbirds and early Stones.
Count 5. Immortalised in Lester Bangs book 'Psychotic Reactions' they trod a path of never ending weirdness into the outer fringes of lunacy. Their debut album here sees them standing over a grave while the music contains the classic Psychotic Reaction (covered by The Cramps and Radiators from Space) fuzz and flange to great effect while romping thru tracks such as Big Mouth. Recommended.
The Seeds. Long before Richard Hell... was... Sky Sunlight Saxon (what a name to give to the dole !!) and his merry men The Seeds. This album features their righteous two chord toon Pushin' Too Hard and (as covered by The Vacants) along with Can't Seem To Make You Mine (covered by The Ramones).... a perfect piece of proto punkery and an essential to hear. Like our other pals here Sky went a bit batty, lived in a caravan and collected 8 track cassettes because he thought that was the future...mmmmmm...
13th Floor Elevators. My personal favourites for what its worth. They were without doubt before the fate that befell their leader Roky Erikson definitely orbiting another planet. The sleeve notes of their first album contain pure gibberish about the lyrics but f**k me the music is excellent. Tracks like 'Fire Engine' and 'Monkey Island' and of course the sublime 'You're Gonna Miss Me' all make up a great album. What can you add to fuzzed up guitars and psychedelic lyrics..... mmm the sound of a jug.. and they did! Well they were good ole Texas boys!
By the next album 'Easter Everywhere' they had moved onto the next solar system but still produced magic tracks like 'Levitation' (covered by Julian Cope) and without doubt their epic 'Slip Inside This House' (mercilessly slaughtered by Primal Scream). I haven't the faintest idea what Roky is talking about but I know when a song is good and it is.
Roky was busted for one dope joint and to escape a sentence elected for shock therapy which left him absolutely f****d. Its heartrending to read the interview with Nick Kent in his book 'Tales from the Darkside' where minutes elapse between q's and the answer is just 'uhhh'. Roky now is scared to go on stage repeats the same song over and has been left a virtual pauper having been ripped off by record companies.
If there was any justice those arseholes who give out those lifetime achievement awards to muppets like Metallica would recognise Roky and the Elevators. All respect to ZZ Top who contributed to the covers tribute album (they all knew each other in Texas! Just to show how wacked out they all were to visit the drummers website... he is still on another planet !! However he publishes chapter by chapter his story of the band and its bloody interesting.
Made In England...
The Who, Kinks, Yardbirds & Small Faces
The following bands were quintessentially English and their influence was felt both across the Atlantic and down the years to the Pistols. They incorporated the distorted blues of Bo Diddley and mixed in pop and a healthy dose of youth nihilism to give their music an edge.
The Who. Fuck me this is what it was all about. Cool clothes , attitude and a visceral aggressive sound of fury. In 1965 Townsend wrote "My personal motivation onstage is simple. It consists of a hate of every kind of pop music and a hate of everything our group has done...I don't see any career ahead." An awesome band with the love / hate relationship of Daltrey ( "I would have been a criminal if I hadn't been a singer") and Townsend and the totally lunatic Keith Moon on drums. Feedback instrument destruction and some classic songs. The archetypal leaders of a youth culture... Mod .. but the template for later heroes. The first band to capture teenage angst.
Unfortunately the 'Hope I die before I get Old' refrain of My Generation turned to ashes as even aged 90 they are still trundling that song out to their generation. Worse than that they gave us Tommy which was part of pops dark ages but we'll come to that., Lets instead celebrate some classic early stuff like I Can't Explain, I Can See For Miles, Substitute and I'm a Boy. Classic pop nihilism !!. Check out any early footage of Townsend destroying his instrument, arms windmilling as he hits the guitar, Daltrey swinging the mike and Mooney going nuts. Play loud. Then look at the Jam and say I wonder who their influences were.
The Yardbirds. How important were the Yardbirds ?? Here's Lester Bangs..."They came stampeding in and just blew everybody clean off the tracks ...they were so fucking good in fact, that people were still imitating as much as a decade later...." from 'Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung'. Feedback heavy fuzz.... this band induced a cultural shift in America similar to when The Ramones first toured the UK. Band lasted only short time and launched the careers of jimmy Page and Eric Clapton but then again shit happens. Tracks to check out... Shape Of Things To Come..(covered by The Ramones), Train Kept A Rollin (covered by Motorhead), Heartful of Soul and For Your Love.
The Small Faces.
Riding along of the same mod wave as The Who were The Small Faces. Again pure youth music and the sound would form part of the rock'n'roll pub rock culture that would continue on as part of the UK music scene. Even more when The Small Faces split to become The Faces featuring Rod Stewart complete with boogie style gravel guitar. Check out Watcha Gonna Do About It (covered by the Pistols & The Jolt) along with All Or Nothing and Sha La La La Lee), Stay With Me, Three Button Hand Me Down and Lazy Sunday Afternoons. Cock Sparrer owe a lot to the Small Faces !!!
Art Or Revolution?
Then suddenly it was over...1967 was a magical year we are told because an album came out that changed peoples lives. For some the greatest album of all time by the most influential group of all time that regularly tops readers charts.....yep that album was Velvet Underground and Nico. oh yeah another album came out Sgt Peppers Crappy Hearts Club Band and music would never be the same coz all that's bad in music comes from ... The Beatles. We will explore their legacy in later parts but before we leave there's one other vital band we should mention as they contribute to the next phase with their sound.
Along with the VU (left) the other band commonly singled out as being influential were those lovable political rockers the MC5 from Detroit (seen right). Between them they created different notions of a pop underbelly, of a pop angry and politicised with a sound to boot that could incite as well as excite. Great music didn't have to be comfortable or in tune. Guitars could be set on stun and discordant. They were in a minority. They sold bugger all but their influence still stretches over 30 years !! not bad...They are last link to The Yardbirds etc before rock moves in a more metallic direction.
What we see is the pop song as a three minute burst of youth and spontaneity being dragged to an intellectual mind numbing album length of concepts to be explored. So where did it all go wrong ? Well musicians became rock stars who suddenly had the desire to be taken seriously... they didn't want to get old before they died...they started touring to ever larger amounts of people becoming ever more distant from their record public, becoming richer and fatter. They wanted to be recognised as artistes pursuing a valid form of expression.
So as we progress what we have got ? A drug addled generation of free lovers who have lost the plot in a welter of mysticism and pretentiousness. Its the birth of stadium rock, hard rock and giant egos and super bands. We started with 3 minute burst of youth and spontaneity and we leave with Cream turning Robert Johnson's majestic blues of Crossroads into a 17 minute guitar torture, John & Yoko in bed, concept albums and a desire to be taken seriously. Dark days indeed.
Yet something odd happened in England. We never lost the notion of small bands playing raw rhythm and blues/ 12 bar and that was something that was going to have a large impact in later years but I'm getting ahead of myself. Next part into the seventies via 1969.... God what a nightmare - ridiculous album sleeves, ridiculous makeup, ridiculous lyrics and plenty to laugh at... and that's just the men !
Jim Morrison puts our first look at Punk Rock in perspective with this quote from 1969 "The thing they called rock, what used to be called Rock'n'roll -it got decadent. And then there was a revival sparked by the English. That went very far. It was articulate. Then it became self conscious, which I think is the death of any movement... It became incestuous. The energy is gone. There is no longer a belief."
The Velvet Underground
Quite simply everything about The Velvet Underground was astonishing. Take a female drummer with one beat (Mo Tucker), a classically trained Welshman (John Cale), a blonde German beauty who couldn't sing (Nico), and two buddies from Syracuse University (Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed) who all collided together as a band formed to promote Lou's song 'The Ostrich' !!!! Add another blonde who painted soup cans, a name derived from a novel about sado-masochism and Verve as a major label and you arrive at the VU a band who rewrote the rules for music as we know it.
The band looked and sounded like no other. Dissonant, atonal, provocative and featuring sometimes the tortuous vocals of Nico (God help us she was dire !!!!) contained in mainly classic songs featuring among other subjects heroin, bondage, more heroin, transvestites and oral sex...Forget The Beatles pissing about with backward tape loops stoned here was Cale running a chair into metal plates to simulate glass smashing !!! Forget that piano note of 'A Day in a Life' that goes on forever here was the sound of pure white noise as the blues were turned inside out for 'Run Run Run' with a wall of feedback. While people developed studio professionalism here was Cale and Reed turning their instruments up to try and drown each other during their behemoth 'Sister Ray' while developing the prototype punk guitar sound everyone wanted in '77. Forget love and peace here was a band who on their second album had a cover featuring soldiers going over the top bayonets fixed and with a title about mainlining drugs ! If you don't think 'Venus in Furs' is sublime then you have no idea about music and if you listen to 'Sister Ray' all the way thru nodding wisely then you are not much better.
Classics include 'What Goes On', 'Pale Blue Eyes' and 'Sweet Jane' . They were the first band to recognise and incorporate the underbelly of life into rock'n'roll and yet able to write emotional & tender songs with Reed's voice almost breaking at times and yet not sounding twee or sugary. Their first two albums 'VU with Nico' and 'White Light/White Heat' probably sold 30 copies put together but their influence is still felt today. After those first two albums they declined as Cale left and they attempted to take a more commercial direction that failed.
Lou's solo career basically carried off where the Velvets ended. Lou Reed is a complex character and it is no suprise that a bloke who is a total asshole should have been given this talent for music !! Lou is a bit of a mystery who started sucking knobs, married his press agent, went out with and married a transvestite ,allegedly f***ed Bowie and so on and with a healthy dollop of drugs added at various times. His sexuality was as confused as his music which ranges from the crap to the sublime - to the white noise of Metal Machine Music to the anger of Blue Mask with Robert Quine from the Voidoids on guitar to the epic Street Hassle with Bruce Sprinsteen.
While hippies were singing about flowers and the Beatles were boring us rigid with St Peppers the Velvets were sticking a spike in their arm and 'too busy sucking on a ding dong'. They gave us a vision where it wasn't all harmony sweetness and light love and the long winding road. Music could appal as well as appeal to.
For that we love them. Their influence stretches for ever thru Iggy, Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith, Television and Bowie thru punk, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Sisters of Mercy and every alternative band in the universe. It comes as no surprise that 'Waiting For My Man' was the most covered UK Punk toon done by among others Eater, The Wasps, Slaughter & The Dogs and the UK Subs.
The Beatles
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As we have already said 1967 was a momentous year as the Velvet Underground's first record was released. Unfortunately another album was also released and we've never had a moments peace from it and the band who made it. Yep Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and below are some quotes from dodos at the time commenting on it.
"It was strange. You found that there was other music behind it. You were hearing other music behind it. You were hearing secret harmonies I suppose, echoes of something else."
"The words...They were about something. It was much more intelligent.."
"It wasn't just an LP, it was a complete experience !"
"Until Lennon rock'n'roll had rarely been so abrasive, confessional, otherworldly, primal, political or so deeply moving and thought provoking" Q magazine on Lennon Aug 1999.
My arse it was ! It was complete shite and how many forests have died as journos worked themselves into a frenzy over the 'experience' of it all for the past 35 years !!!
Look !!!! By 1967 the Beatles were addled by success and adulation and fast disappearing up their own backsides in a welter of mysticism and pseudo intellectualism. They wanted acceptance intellectually...to elevate pop to a kind of art and legitimise themselves in the eyes of the very people pop was supposed to upset. Unfortunately they did it. Replacing excitement and energy with torpor and studio tricks (that magical bit where the piano chord sounds forever.... god help us) they and their producer came up with an album that they could never perform live and which would hang round the necks of future generations like a mile stone as 'the greatest album ever 'etc yawn ... 'the defining music of the sixties' etc yawn. This myth of the Beatles has been expounded year after year and still manages to provide journalists with copy, income and a license to fuel the myth. Why?
Sgt Peppers received the accolades they craved being compared musically to Beethoven and Schumann and lyrically to TS Eliott and Joyce. It all seemed a long way from Chuck Berry and Elvis. At best Sgt Peppers is a collection of reasonable tunes. At worse whimsical and lyrically embarrassing.. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds....wow LSD. They were clever boys to write that ! They are responsible for every other musician thinking he is an artist and that his music means something intellectually. They are responsible for concept albums and studio boredom. In short the 3 minute toon nearly died with the Beatles but would re-surface again in a few years but the seeds were sown for rocks dark days. They sucked all the fun out of music and gave us pretentiousness and progressive music. They bought into Eastern religion and found the purveyors and gurus as corrupt and as shallow as themselves before moving on to the next big thing. As if we cared !
And what was the sum of all their cleverness.. a pregnant woman dying of multiple stab wounds on the orders of a nutter who took the words of Helter Skelter and other lyrics off the White Album as his own blueprint. That's when the real world collides not some crappy boat on tangerine skies. Like the Stones at Altamont reality hurts... and kills.
As they shuffled off and split the Beatles went back to what they did best second hand rock'n' roll tunes and skiffle beat. They made some good tunes...some great tunes even...but then so did Abba....and come to think of it so did the Smurfs.
The Seventies
As we reach the end of the sixties its perhaps a good time to stop and make some observations. Now it probably seems seem like the history of punk is all cause and effect i.e. that one band influences another band who influences another and so on until we get the Sex Pistols.
However like history itself, this is never true. There is a pool of bands like the MC5 and Velvet Underground, The Who and Stooges who are making seminal contributions to punk yet are making their own way and their own sounds and not necessarily influenced by each other. We have the development of non commercial dark or political music and confrontational commercial music. Something the Sex Pistols would exploit in their alliance with major record labels. Remember an artist wants to be heard or their music is redundant. It's the paradox of the artist that it relies on its audience no matter how much it despises it.
As we begin the seventies music is coagulating into different groups. Its the era of super groups; of playing to giant stadiums of people, of money and remoteness by being strung out on drugs and playing music that bears no relation to anyone's lives...anyone for the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway then? These bands were serious bands playing serious music and attracting a fanbase of hippies and musos which is perhaps a little unkind. Following on from Tommy and Sgt Peppers rock was the new classical music and could be listened to as serious music.
In direct contrast and at the same time influenced by acts such as Lou Reed, David Bowie, T Rex and Alice Cooper popular music throws up one of its most bizarre twists when it gives us a genre of brickies in makeup that we remember fondly as glam and glitter rock. An expression of sexuality as marketing that is a perverse twist on the lack of women in music at the time. However what can't be doubted was that Glam made some fucking raucous music that still amazes me was played on the radio then and helped pave the way for the punk look and even sound.
While undoubtedly the genre threw up a number of classics it also had it downside. Glam and theatrics permeated every part of the music business... gave muppets like Queen and Kiss ideas of extravagance and opened up another market of saleability. The fact that artists like Sweet and Suzi Quatro all had their hits made and produced for them by the Chinnichap producing and writing team also supported Glam as a marketing idea. Worse years later, influenced by these glam bands and a Johnny Thunders haircut, we would get a wave of USA bands lie Poison, Kiss, Motley Crue and their ilk inflicting pain on our ears.
Why do men like prettying themselves up to look like women ? Now the fans followed suit with earrings, makeup and spiky short hair a la Bowie. Women, however, still had no real outlet in music beyond the teen fantasies being sold to them by the industry and magazines. Suzi Quatro is the one female musicians with, to pardon the expression, balls and will influence many female musicians afterwards.
Alice Cooper
We think of Alice Cooper now as some relic from the past still on the treadmill of the rock circus. Back in the early seventies thought Alice was lewd, crude and most definitely shocking. I still my remember my dads distaste at my sister's poster of him and horror (he was a schoolteacher) at Schools Out and other records. Why's he called Alice ? was parents most repeated question. Deliberately named with a feminine name Alice set out to shock. Remember them on the Whistle Test. Extravagant make up, torn leotard, high boots ,undone zip down to his bollocks.... singing songs that ranged from death to rebellion...they weren't the Beatles and you wouldn't bring him home to tea !
His shows featured guillotines, his pet boa constrictor, decapitation and so on. The music was hard and abrasive and topped off with that Alice growl. Drugs and drink as per usual took their toll and the visuals became more extravagant as the music became worse before he was revitalised in the mid eighties and accepted into rocks mainstream. Behind the facade Vincent tho was a golf loving man who liked hanging out with presidents but don't let that cloud the fact that as Alice he was cool and as outrageous and made Mr Manson seem like Def Leppard.
Songs to check out
Eighteen, Schools Out, Elected, Under My Wheels...in fact any early Alice up to about 1975.
Eater covered Eighteen renaming it 15 !!! and lets not forget Mr Rotten's audition for the Pistols in Malcolm's shop miming to Schools Out on the jukebox...poor sod !!!!!! Notice also the similarity to the clothes and makeup in the Clockwork Orange film .....Alice was ultraviolence
David Bowie
Where does one start when analysing the influence of the thin white one ? Bowie's impact on the whole spectrum of rock'n'pop and then even soul and ambience throughout the seventies and into the early Eighties was nothing short of apocalyptic.
Wayne County alleges in the book Please Kill Me that Bowie ripped of the whole glam/transvestite thang from him. If he did then good luck to him coz he had the genius to pull it off. Bowie rescued rock. Rock again became dangerous, sexy, confusing, rebellious and annoying to parents. And of course it sold !!! More than this Bowie was bisexual.
Ziggy Stardust was the one that broke the mould after David Jones had spent years warbling away hippily with an acoustic guitar and singing about laughing gnomes. It took gender fantasy into the boudoirs of teenagers and post teenagers alike with its combination of sassy spaced out introspection and strange costumes leaving one nipple and leg exposed and the lunchpack on display. Suddenly everyone wanted to make love with their egos and make up sales rocketed. It also introduced the world to Hang On To Yourself and a bass line the Ramones would base a career on. The role of rock star had to be examined anew aided by the guitar of one Mick Ronson so beloved of later punk bands like Slaughter & The Dogs and Shanne from the Nips who swore he had the sexiest handshake !
Aladdin Sane took the androgyny further silver body paint an all while Diamond Dogs proved you could chant blankly while the world expired.
Ever the chameleon, Bowie then switched to smooth white soul for Young Americans and Station To Station before coming up trumps again in 77 with the magnificent soaring Heroes. Sadly duets with Queen and Mick Jagger and selling himself to Pepsi sold the dream off piece by piece while The Tin Machine and drum and bass forays have attempted to repair the damage.
Without doubt 75% of the challenging and unconventional in music comes from Mr Bowie; from the whole of glam rock thru to Mr Manson.
Hawkwind...Pink Fairies
The Sound of Ladbroke Grove and a long way from Glam !
At first glance featuring Hawkwind here may go counter to everything I've said earlier . They appear to feature a lot of the attributes that would make them boring hippies but my friends that is to misunderstand the beauty of Hawkwind. You won't see them mentioned in rock histories or perhaps just in passing but Hawkwind are one of the forgotten greats. By now they will have released over a hundred million albums , and will have been playing live for over thirty years. Essentially a drug fuelled band they have plied their trade through so many incarnations and styles of music that they have become timeless and in a genre of their own. Christ they even had a top 30 hit with Silver Machine . Their next single Urban Guerilla was released at the time of an IRA bombing campaign and was banned !!!! Them's the knocks for our space heroes..
The central point of the band has always been Dave Brock At their peak round about Space Ritual they featured Lemmy and playing extended jams all based on a loose space theme featuring , saxophone, weird sonic instruments and a naked dancer Stacia. It may not sound appetising but try it. Dave Brock's proto punk guitar, Lemmys amphetamine driven bass, complete with double drummers. Punkadelia is the best way to describe it. Constant free gigs at festivals, support for various causes, some more radical than others, and completely unpublicised and a complete anarchist lifestyle. They were different. They stayed different and perhaps unique in popular music they stayed true to their ideals an still do. Punk didn't affect them at all it re-energised them. Listen to Death Trap of PXR5 for an all out punk sonic attack.
Johnny Rotten used to go and see them often and play their records. Pete Shelley (and Magazine) was influenced by Space Ritual, Shanne from The Nips wanted to play bass like them and Monster Magnet even sound like them now.. In an era of stadium rock they went out and played for free to people at any place that would have them...they never conformed. I love Hawkwind its as simple as that.
Glam & its evil children
You should never have opened that door !
Ah Glam...the forerunner to punk...the New York Dolls...punk before the time...seminal...without them the Pistols would never have happened. Blah Blah Blah...makeup...controversial...
Before you get all smug just remember this...thanks to glam and the Dolls this went and bloody happened...
I love you love .............Gary Glitter. Jesus Christ an overweight porker with a chest rug dressed in cling foil, the bouffant hairstyle ...the cruelest parody of the dolls on hamburgers ....and we fell for it. He was about 40 at the time setting the world alight with sub tribal drumming boot boy vocal choirs and the simplest of riffs that demanded he strut. No sexual ambiguity here Gary was all man and just fucking hideous at that. Little kids however proved to be his downfall later on and we'll leave it at that.
Glam USA style...In the seventies glam completely bypassed the US of A where they contented themselves with endless guitar solos and buying Fleetwood Mac and Peter Frampton albums by the million. Around the early Eighties though they suddenly remembered it and all of a sudden boys who do girls like their boys appeared in their droves complete with cowboy boots and tight spandex pants and boy did we suffer. Poison, Motley Crue, early Bon Jovi, Faster Pussycat, LA Guns and Guns & Roses were just a few while over here we had those lovable clowns in makeup Wrathchild and Tigertailz ...you had to be careful at gigs and check for stubble !!! Who do I blame ...the New York Dolls...... They don't mention this in punk books but I do coz its hilarious.
Sweet, T Rex & Roxy Music
You'll probably find it suprising to see these three together. They share a heritage of what was commonly known as Glam but three very different sides of the coin (3 sides ??!!). However they all had driving toons, sexuality and a bit of spice .
Roxy Music. Verging on the almost serious side but mixing art with glamour. Here was this glitzy offbeat art ensemble, with Brian Ferry screwing up his eyes like he was having a good wank and calling it style and a Eno looking like a reject from Jupiter who thought music was for wobbling. Roxy put together a mishmash of half formed but essentially visionary ideals about being Continental, being from somewhere else and being weirdly sexy, and the result was an extraordinary debut album. Roxy brought a notion of sophistication to pop, once they realised this as what people saw in them and this was their downfall. As Ferry developed into a crooner par excellence as the band produced ever more polished romantic ballads and their sleeves which for a time always featured models became more interesting than the music. Their first album, their decadent image and stance definitely had an effect on punk particularly members of the Bromley Contingent. Off looking, offbeat and weirdly sexy... the perfect antidote to Emerson Lake & Palmer and their ilk. Listen to Virginia Plain at full blast and appreciate!
T REX. Another hippy warbler who from producing records with unfeasibly long and silly song titles suddenly with the help of Toni Visconti (who when asked how Bolan became so successful only knowing 3 chords replied .."If U were Marc three was all you needed) produced Electric Warrior, an album of breathtaking brilliance, that catapulted him into the charts. Electric Warrior mashed Chuck Berry riffs, mystical lyrics, nonsensical lyrics, fat simple crunchy riffs to a sexy groove and makeup for our little elfin one. An album where every song was a peach was followed by a stream of classic, intoxicating, pure pop singles.
Unfortunately as glam receded so did Marc and he became an overweight parody of himself before punk and his influence on it gave him the chance to bounce back. The Damned supported him on tour and his comeback TV show featured acts such as Generation X while he mixed with artists like Siouxsie and Raped. A carcrash robbed us of him. Yet again his influence was felt on people such as Siouxsie, The Damned, Buzzcocks, Blondie and not least The Ramones who recognised that a simple pop melody works every time and that 3 chords is all you ever need to know !!!!
Highlights....Children Of The Revolution, Rip Off, Telegram Sam, Metal Guru, Solid Gold Easy Action, 20th Century Boy ( as covered by Siouxsie) and Jeepster as covered by Eater.
The Sweet. Originally churned out pap like Coca dressed as native Americans these boys hit the big time with the Winnichap writing team who gave them, like Suzi Quatro, a string of perfect pop punk glam monsters which they promptly went and had hits with. On stage the boys faced a bit of a problem though. As good looking boys in makeup they attracted the younger teeny bop crowd but as real musicians with a risque stage show to boot they often found themselves in hot water. The sound was up tempo more akin to post punk power pop but songs like Hellraiser and Ballroom Blitz would have fitted in seamlessly into 1977 but by then they were serving up shite like Love is Like Oxygen.
Genesis, ELP & Yes
Know thine enemy. While Glam at least was proving some light relief from bands who had grown massive like the Stones, Who and Led Zeppelin there were an even more pretentious wave of bands who espoused the view that rock was serious and who were dominating the serious weekly music papers. Prog-Rock was mostly listened to by grubby polytechnic students who wore flares and dufflecoats and never had any girlfriends and who would sit cross-legged at gigs on the floor bonged out of their brains. They would gather in bedsits drinking coffee out of chipped mugs and ponder the meaning of the universe while listening to Yes, Van Der Graaf Generator, Camel, Gentle Giant, Caravan, Greenslade and a thousand others. These people knew what they wanted ..lots of windswept guitar histrionics, gushing key boards, lyrics full of mystical allusions and song titles bearing no relation to the music and almost as long as the music itself ! As you read these you can see why punk had to happen. Weighed own by the weight of its own pretensions the scene was set for someone to point out that the emperor in fact had no clothes on. Read on and learn the horrible truth..........
Genesis
Were a full blown prog-rock band, inspired by musical bluster and arcane philosophies, capable of churning out as much barking nonsense as any of their early Seventies contemporaries, including the magnificently daft Yes. Under the direction of the consummately eccentric Peter Gabriel, Genesis indulged in all manner of theatrical buffoonery and special effects. While the group turned on the pomp and pyrotechnics, Gabriel would nonce around the stage in a variety of costumes as illustrated. The peak of their absolute foolishness came with the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, a virtually incomprehensible narrative about spiritual awakening spread over a double album. beloved of sixth formers with long hair and greycoats who had too much time on their hands.
No-one could understand what Genesis were prattling on a bout including Gabriel !!! This is the wittering old fool trying to explain a song called " I know what I Like (In Your Wardrobe) to an understandably fuddled hack " ..he lives a life that is pre-conceived by the people around him, and the only time that his identity comes out is when he's actually on the lawn, mowing the grass. I mean I get this tremendous buzz from the sensation of the cutters slicing thru a whole layer of grass. There's a sort of therapeutic ultra-violence simply in the act of mowing the lawn...." What a dickhead.
Unsurprisingly Gabriel left the band only to be replaced by something far worse in the shape of the scheming and diminutive Phil Collins who took over and tuned them into a withering bland AOR machine b4 going solo and torturing us with even more 80's style blandness, bad fashion and songs about his wife shagging some other bloke. Phil Collins is without doubt the Anti Christ. Destroy all Genesis and Phil Collins records.
Emerson, Lake And Palmer.
Even the name sounds like a gang of lawyers or estate agents. They were prog rocks most vulgar trawler men. Their first public appearance, at the Isle of Wight Festival was prefaced by a thunderous cannonade loud enough to wake the long time dead. This was an appropriate fanfare for a group that would be become internationally famous for its bombastic extravagance. ELP produced the ugliest music the world has yet to endure "Pictures at an Exhibition", Brain Salad Surgery and even a triple live album of dross. Everything they did as dragged own by the weight of their own bloated pretensions, their vivid idiocy, the stupifying grossness that was their unique contribution to early seventies rock. Tipping over a Hammond and stabbing it with a knife to make distorted sounds does not excitement make. For the punter so far back he can see fuck all it might as well be a baboon jumping down on the keyboards. Unable to come up with anything resembling a decent tune, they regularly vandalised the classics sending several dead Europeans spinning in their graves. The ridiculousness of their music is just so far fetched that you can't help but laugh and wonder at Mark P and Danny Baker who praised them . God ELP were stupid.
Yes .
Like Genesis they managed to produce an extra bastard son to terrorise good taste in the shape of Rick Wakeman. Without doubt the stars of the progressive genre if only for the sheer long windedness of everything they have ever done. The icon for the era has to their magnum opus Tales from Topographic Oceans luckily they made every album identifiable with the godawful Roger Dean designed covers so there was no way you could buy one by accident and you could warn your mum. If by chance you do want to buy them its a credit to Yes that you can buy their whole back catalogue in secondhand record stores for about £5 as people realizing later on in life what shite they had bought turned them in their thousands. Topographic Oceans had all of prog rocks defining characteristics in spades.
It also had the funniest sleeve notes ever written. This is Jon Anderson explaining the inspiration for the album "We were in Tokyo on tour and and I had a few minutes to myself in the hotel room before the evenings concert. Leafing through Yoganada's Autobiography of a Yogi, I got caught up in a lengthy footnote on page 83. it described the four pat Shastric scriptures which cover all aspects of religion and social life as well as fields like music, art and architecture. For some time I had been searching for a theme for a large scale composition. So positive were the Shastars that I could visualize then and there four interlocking pieces of music being structured around them. That was in February. Eight months later, the concept was realised in this recording." Says it all!
Tommy, Jethro Tull, King Crimson & Rick Wakeman
Tommy. Rock operas....f***ing hell the term is enough to give me the shivers. And what did The Who give us..Tommy... without doubt the most singularly pernicious and damaging influence on the shape and future direction of pop since Sgt Pepper. Tommy was the final betrayal of the three minute single. After Tommy no one wanted to say in 3 minutes what they could drag out over as many hours. Tommy introduced the era of the rock opera and the concept album, the most celebrated vehicle of prog rocks demented pretensions. Fuelled by vaguely visionary ideals Townsend shared the Beatles craving for artistic legitimacy, wanted to bring pop to some sort of maturity. He has forgotten of course that pop should always be young.
At the same time as espousing this maturity he and the band acted like juvenile pricks on tour and when his own life hit the rocks mister maturity armed with evangelical zeal tuned to a needle and drink. Wow some hero ! So with Tommy The Who sacrificed the incendiary dynamics of My Generation and I Can See For Miles. Townsend conscientious but intellectually gullible didn't anticipate the demon spawn from his tale of a deaf dumb blind boy but that doesn't excuse him. In fact when you consider the legacy of Tommy that glut of rock operas and concept albums that deluged the early amid mid seventies, the atrocities foisted upon us by Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, War Of The Worlds and even up to those bores in disguise Radiohead... Townsend should have been lynched. A travesty of a legend.
Jethro Tull.
Even the most hardened nostalgic will wince at memories of Jethro Tull. They started out as a blues group but quickly developed a taste for the theatrical and portentous at which point the groups megalomaniac leader started dressing up in riding breeches, hair like catweazle, sporting cod pieces standing on one leg while puffing into a flute and conducting the group through the hard labors of pieces like Thick As A Brick Aqualung and Passion Play. What these were all about was anyone's guess. A mystery to me.
Rick Wakeman.
Genesis had Phil Collins. Yes had Rick ( with a silent capital P) Wakeman. Rick couldn't tread a book without wanting to turn it into a musical. Not content with the cosmic indignities heaped on man by Yes he embarked on a series of solo projects whose tastelessness and stupidity have since become legendary. The most outlandish presentation in a career that specialized in the comprehensively stupid as "Myths and legends of King Arthur and The Knights Of The Round Table", an elaborate piece of crass symphonic absurdity written originally for rock group and orchestra. Rick had the bright idea of staging this at Wembley and as an Ice spectacular. I think it will be very tasteful Rick told the MM "We've had a complete castle built with with turrets...and ice ballet can be so beautiful, I think. There are so many different time changes that even s single skater on the ice will enhance the music with out being outrageous" What a load of bollocks !
King Crimson.
We can only suppose that it was Robert Fripp used to sit on a stool and refused to indulge in the usual guitar histrionics while the rest of the group always looked vaguely like students at the local polytechnic that the Ghastly King Crimson managed for so long to be thought academically respectable. Their admirers would never concede that the lyrics were ranked among the most preposterous of prog rock poeticisms or that Fripps conceptual blatherings were as vacuously daft as anything muttered by Jon Anderson or Peter Gabriel.
Fripp seemed to induce an unwarranted awe among his critics. Listed to this piece of bilge "...listening to an early test pressing round Bob Fripps flat the other day it was impossible not to be awed by the sheer scope and size of the music. It has scale and grandeur unparalleled in rock, and its inner complexities rival those of the great classical composers. You get the feeling that if Wagner were alive today he would be working with King Crimson." What a load of tosh ! He also married Toyah. Say no more!!!
The Birth Of Punk
The US Mid Seventies - Part 1
Ah yes the old US and UK punk debate.....'I mean after all we were PUNK magazine. We had come up with the name and had defined punk as this underground American rock & roll culture that had existed for almost 15 years with the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, the MC5 etc etc.'
Legs McNeil - Please Kill Me
Except that’s not quite right though. As we've seen as we've trawled through rock music since Elvis there’s no exclusivity here but there is both sides of the Atlantic adding to the unholy punk brew that was coming. Its like saying England invented heavy Rock with Cream.
'Hey if you want to start your own youth movement, fine but this one’s already taken.' Sorry Legs there was no owner. Just the next to carry the torch.
I think its time to reassess US Punk in the mid seventies and make some radical claims.
My first claim is that there was no US punk scene as such until the UK’s influence began to seep back into the US in early 1977. Here are my reasons:The US punk scene leaving out Iggy etc seemed to involve only a handful of bands over a period of 3 years from 1974 – 1977 and mainly New York based. They were and in no particular order and not a complete list:
Television, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Heartbreakers, Blondie, Talking Heads, Dictators, Pere Ubu and Dead Boys.
In this time there was no coherent youth movement around these bands, no style of dress associated, no particular sound associated. In fact the only thing that linked these bands apart from temporally was they played CBGB’s or Max’s or both. Out of these bands how many of them kickstarted a generation? I'd argue that The Ramones initial influence was minimal due to poor sales of their records.
A scene also implies a turnover of new bands coming into existence and providing propulsion forward but did this happen?
It’s a telling fact that Legs quotes in Please Kill Me that there were about 100 people into the scene and out of that 100 50% were arty types who liked hanging out.
So no NEW audience and no new bands - just insularity. This was reflected in the content of Punk magazine that concentrated on the above bands, had no coherent philosophy, and featured bands that were not punk at all. Apart from Punk magazine what other magazines formed to capture this mythical scene. If I’m right none. So that leaves no sound, look, new bands or media. Oh sorry I forgot Richards Hells haircut and clothes. Big deal!
The one thing these bands do share with the Dolls, VU and Iggy apart from Patti Smith is an unbroken line of commercial failure and the American public ignoring them. The other key point is these bands played the record companies game, played them at their own rules and lost.
Pub Rock
Pub Rock was the '70's first megastar backlash. Some regarded it as a welcome return to tap roots for an audience confused by '70s androgynous overkill For most, it was no more than a cheap night out with friends. Mainstream, rock had from the start of the decade escalated into a spectator sport, with Glam Rock, Heavy Metal Panzers, Techno-flash and dry ice machines dominating the international arena to the exclusion of almost everything else. Image, theatrics and box office grosses were of prime importance.
The local club scene that had once flourished (often on licensed premises) throughout Britain during the mid-'60s had almost become non-existent, partly because bands had priced themselves into the theatres. Aspiring bands without the record company backing that had become customary, had little chance to build up from grass-roots venues. The saloon bar proved to be a temporary salvation.
Pub Rock was primarily a traditionalist movement restricted to Greater London with some overspill into the Home Counties, and, at its genesis, a means of sporadic 'employment' for musicians beached by loser '60s bands. Later it became evident that pub rock was a geographical reality rather than an artistic one and, with few exceptions, proved to be the downfall of most bands working the circuit.
American Country-rock band Eggs Over Easy were the precursors of the movement when sometime in late '71/early'72 they broke the jazz-only policy of The Tally Ho pub in Kentish Town, North London. They were quickly joined by another country-rock outfit Bees Make Honey, Aussie expatriates Max Merritt & The Meteors, and the nomadic Brinsley Schwarz, who had suffered from precisely the big venue hype-a-star style against which Pub Rock was a reaction.At the peak of popularity (1973-1975), it seemed that nearly every large pub in London, especially north of Regents Park where the supply of unspoiled Victorian pubs was plentiful, was supplying live music along with hot snacks and the - occasional stripper. Following the Tally Ho came The Cock, The Brecknock, The Lord Nelson, The Hope and Anchor, The Greyhound, The Red Lion, The Rochester Castle, and more. (Later the Albion Agency took over the booking for The Hope, The Red Lion; and The Nashville.
The whole premise of Pub Rock was to inject an atmosphere of "good-time" into a music scene that had begun to take itself far too seriously for its own health. Except for a few mavericks, most pub bands chose to mine three motherlodes. Hard-nosed R&B revivalism (Dr. Feelgood, Kilburn & The Highroads, Ace, Ducks Deluxe, The Winkies, Roogalator, Michigan Flyers); Fatback Funk (Kokomo, Clancy, FBI, Moon, Cado Belle, G.T. Moore & His Reggae Guitars, Palm Beach Express); Country Rock (The Brinsleys, Kursaal Flyers, Byzantium, Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers).
Fundamentally, the pub circuit was (and is) a training ground where only the very strong survived. Bands proliferated by the score, many disbanding and reforming under different names between gigs. It was music for bellying-up-to-the-bar, but aggressive enough to make itself heard over chit-chat, pulling birds, rumbles and throwing up. In reality, after a few pints even the most mediocre and derivative bands sounded much better than they really were (Depends whether you can take your drink, squire -Ed) while with few exceptions, most pub bands were visually dull. That didn't prevent the copy-hungry media latching onto Pub Rock and promoting it as The Next Big Thing. -
Few pub bands transcended the gap between performing for 300 half-pissed punters sweating profusely in the public bar and 3,000 seated non-drinkers in the. Hammersmith Odeon. Even fewer came remotely close to recapturing the ethos in a recording studio. Nevertheless, record companies chose to believe, what they read instead of what they heard and promptly started signing up anything that reeked of best bitter, shoving them in the nearest studio before the band was ready.
To aggravate matters, there seemed to be a lack of producers who knew how to transfer the music from pub to tape; a malady currently afflicting new wave groups. As a result, most pub rock releases died the death. Ace were a prime example. That one good song, "How Long", may have been a transatlantic chart-topper but they had little with which to follow it. Kokomo's recording career was as short-lived as the band itself, and the same applied to Ciancy, The Kilburns, The Winkies and Chilli Willi. The Brinsleys and Ducks Deluxe were just unlucky, and their records deserved a better response than they received. The only band that seemed to be able to operate on all levels was Dr Feelgood, yet it wasn't until they released their third album, their concert souvenir "Stupidity", that they fulfilled their potential. As quickly as bands like the Brinsleys and Ducks DeLuxe folded, they were replaced by much younger aggregations such as The Count Bishops, Eddie & The Hot Rods and The 101'ers - the latter spawning Clash-man Joe Strummer.
Despite the demise of many pub bands, many of their musicians went on to achieve greater success elsewhere. A prime example was when ex-Ducks DeLuxer Martin Belmont, ex-Bontemps Roulets' Andrew Bodnar and Steve Goulding, and Brinsley Schwarz himself, assisted by former employee Bob Andrews, amalgamated behind Graham Parker to form The Rumour. Ducks DeLuxe bar-room bully Sean Tyla re-appeared with the' Tyla Gang, while his former cohorts Nick Garvey and Andy McMaster went on to mastermind The Motors. Recently ex-Kilburn Ian Dury staged a spectacular comeback, while The Winkies' Phil Rambow looks like being a favourite in the current list of runners.
One person who certainly made good was Brinsley stalwart Nick Lowe, who, apart from establishing a reputation as Stiff Records' house producer, has also become a solo artist to be reckoned with. Flip City may have been one of the more obscure pub attractions, but their singer Elvis Costello has also done quite well for himself.
What was originally typecast as being pub rock may have, in many instances, promised much more than it delivered, but as an assault course for young groups the circuit has by no means outlived its initial purpose. And though the music may have undergone a change, the venues have remained. Pubs like The Nashville and The Hope & Anchor have been instrumental in helping the careers of acts like The Damned, The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, Boomtown Rats, 999, The Jam and Elvis Costello.
To paraphrase a brewery commercial: There's more going on at your local than you think!
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