The Seventies – The History Of Punk
As we reach the end of the sixties, it’s 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 (and many more) 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 noncommercial 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 and 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 its 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 like 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 musician with, to pardon the expression, balls and will influence many female musicians
Right – the superb Suzi Quatro!
The seventies were a confusing time. After the positivism and energy of the early sixties subsided into the negativity of the late sixties and early seventies music became weird. Altamont and the Vietnam war had blown apart a few dreams. As we proceed through the seventies various world and domestic events with strikes, inflation, the cost of living and growing unemployment seem to be reflected in music. Music attempts to grow more serious but loses touch with everyday living with its escapism. At the same time it just becomes bigger and bigger losing sight of the audience in front of it. Take a look at the covers above of serious music of the time…fantasy images divorced from reality.
At the other end, Glam rock is decadent and peripheral, and its sexuality is confused. It’s 3 minutes of songs celebrating lust, teenagers, vacant thoughts and peripheral transitory dramas. Meanwhile, there were still areas of rock fermenting revolt and excitement. In America, the flame is still held by Iggy and Lou Reed and the New York Dolls who are about to influence other bands just forming like The Ramones who themselves loved Sweet and T Rex and the Neon Boys with Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine who will become Television and who will eventually collide with UK punk. A band like The New York Dolls though, will achieve mythical status. Definitely not contrived, this band will bring back to rock the excitement, sex and danger and encourage a certain Mr McLaren to pursue his idea of the ultimate teenage angst band.
The essential films of the era are Clockwork Orange; violence, rape & amorality. The Night Porter and Cabaret; stylish sexual decadence to a Nazi theme of disintegration and Death Race 2000 – again death as meaningless as competitors race around gaining points killing people. Elements of these films would be incorporated into the fashion of the Sex Pistols’ earliest followers the Bromley Contingent.
While all this swirls the central protagonists in British punk are growing up and soaking up these influences to a greater or lesser extent to throw into the great punk melting point of fashion and music. Music that could provoke both by its sound and by the clothes its audience wore, music of people who were different, music that demanded participation. All that was needed was the flames to be fanned by some bands across the water in the US of A and a grassroots reaction in the UK in pubs and boy were the blank generation ready to rumble with the greatest music ever heard in the history of mankind…..or something along those lines!
I bow down to the Stud Brothers, a pair of mighty fine writers, from The Melody Maker who sometimes used to make me cry with laughter. Some of this punk history has been lifted directly, some changed and added to, from their 8 part series from 1987…. Pop – The Glory Years.
For a mighty fine history of glam check out this site
TalkPunk
Post comments, images & videos - Posts are checked and offensive or irrelevant ones will be removed
