Punk Rock John Tobler
Punk Rock by music journalist John Tobler was a 64 page soft covered A4 size book that came out in 1977 making it one of the earliest books on the subject. It attempts to explain what is Punk rock, its history, how it came to be, the major players on both sides of the Atlantic and then features on the smaller bands that are shown on the back cover.
Unlike other punk books from the period, it doesn’t talk about fashion, clubs or feature punks on the street (bar the stock Bromely picture at the Screen On The Green). It’s full of pictures, well written and gives a potted history and musical reference points for each band who are placed in alphabetical order so start with The Adverts. All in black and white bar the cover with a striking spraypainted ‘Punk Rock’ and manic Rotten close-up by Jill Furmanovsky. There was also a Dutch edition with a slightly different cover.
This is the opening blurb…
Punk is the most energetic, exciting and forceful music to hit rock since the great British beat boom of the ’60s. Despite newspaper headlines screaming about violence and swearing, safety pins and outrages, the music and the people who make it are a growing force that cannot be ignored Punk rock is the music of the ’70s.
This is the complete rundown on punk. In 64 pages all the important punk or New Wave artists — 35 in all — are featured in detailed biographies. British bands range from the Adverts to the Stranglers (including, of course, the Clash, the Damned, the Jam and the Sex Pistols); American New Wavers take in Blondie to Television by way of the Heartbreakers, Mink DeVille, Tom Petty, the Ramones and Jonathan Richman. In addition, the great New Wave influences — the New York Dolls, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Patti Smith — have their own features. And, to top it all, there’s the full story of punk from the Sex Pistols’ first eruption onto the scene to their latest chart-breaking singles.
Here is punk rock in all its extraordinary power — the fashions, the fanzines, the records, the groups and the stars.
John Tobler is a music journalist, writer who along with Pete Frame (he of those music family trees fame) set up Zigzag magazine in 1968. It aimed to focus on the underground music scene and Tobler interviewed many of the leading rock and folk bands and personalities on both sides of the Atlantic
Zigzag were also dipping their toes into punk waters having interviewed Iggy, reviewed The Stranglers and had Eddie & The Hot Rods on the cover but it wasn’t until they took on their own ‘hip young gunslinger’ Kris Needs that the magazine went fully punk in mid 1977.
John Tobler As far as I can recall – it was 1977, and I was doing stuff for a company whose name I have forgotten, and a bloke who worked at this company was Jeremy Pascall (real name Jeremy Zuppinger) and he suggested the punk rock book. For many years I read the music weeklies (MM, NME, Sounds, Record Mirror, etc).
As a reader of the weekly music press, I knew all about the Pistols, Clash, Damned, Stranglers, Sham 69 and others. I didn’t listen to it for pleasure at that time. 1977 was a big year for me – I was working mainly @ Radio One, but as an interviewer, definitely not as a DJ, and during that year, I interviewed all five Eagles when they were here for the Hotel California tour.
As you say, I was linked mainly to ZigZag, but I also wrote at various times for all the weeklies and for anyone who would pay me. I have no idea of how anyone reacted to it, and it probably contains factual errors, but it was 47 years ago. Punk77 email, January 2024
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