It’s hard to believe punk rock has turned FIFTY years old. Man, I so distinctly remember hearing the Sex Pistols and Ramones for the first time: I was equally staggered and amazed, and it’s fair to say they changed all of my concepts about music. I recently found this book in my town’s public library (!) and immediately checked it out. How’s that for the legitimacy of a music style that was...well…largely shit upon by the press, radio, much of the music business and most music fans.
Phil Strongman was a fixture in Malcolm McClaren’s Glitterbest office and was mates with many of the players, both in management and in bands. It’s a main reason why I found this inside take so compellng. It’s not an encyclopedia, and does not “try” be the ultimate take on punk rock — although it just may be in some camps. At only 259 pages, it is very readable and full of inside fun facts I did not know.
It begins by laying the foundation of musical influence for punk rock, and it’s one of the best I’ve read. From the Velvet Underground, to The Stooges and the MC-5, to the New York Dolls and Patti Smith, it’s a brief but excellent take on their influences, both musically and culturally. This led to a “new scene” focused on Max’s and CBGB and brought us Debbie Harry and The Stiletto’s, Johnny Thunder’s Heartbreakers, Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell’s groundbreaking Television, and, of course, The Ramones.
Fashion, also, was a huge part of punk rock. Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood owned SEX, a provocative boutique where John Lydon would mime an audition for the Sex Pistols gig. Stovepipe (peg) jeans, torn shirts graffitied with various slogans, plastic shirts and safety pins would rule the day. The “King’s Road fashion” was an extension of the “Street theater” of the Cold War years, when the working class felt that how they looked was all they had.
However, it is the insider tidbits in the book that I found so fascinating. We learn that, although Glen Matlock wrote all of the music for “Anarchy In The UK,” and Rotten wrote the opening lines, designer Jamie Reid was “accused” of writing it, and McClaren now says it was “the marriage of a lot of people.” Speaking of Reid, who designed the “Never Mind The Bollocks” album cover and is given credit for the “ransom note” logo of the Sex Pistols, it’s suggested that it was “borrowed” (and perhaps improved upon) from a young girl who was helping the Pistols by designing handouts for gigs. Reid’s original artwork for “God Save The Queen' featuring swastika eyes was rejected by Virgin. The t-shirt featured Her Majesty with safety-pin eyes, provoking outrage and a flood of angry letters to newspapers.
Oh..and one of my favorite stories is that the Pistols had demanded — and got — a thousand beers as part of their deal with EMI. Never heard that one before…and what was sent was intentionally a "weaker" beer!
It is said that not many people actually saw the band live, but virtually everyone who did started a band. And, like the earlier mentioned foundational music punk was built upon, Strongman provides a nice concise and informative roundup of The Clash, The Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Damned and many others for proof of life.
It ends, of course, on a bad note with Sid Vicious’ destruction. His murder of Nancy Spungen led to his demise but according to Strongman, Sid did not kill Spungen. Instead, his story is that a drug dealer gave Vicious a very stong shot, and then killed Spungen after Sid passed out, as the dealer had learned she was stealing from him. She was dead and Sid was out — until he woke up with blood everywhere and a dead women at his feet.
It gets juicier. His mother — herself an addict and the person responsible for introducing Sid to the drug — would pick him up at prison, and then provide him with heroin, including allegedly administering his final, fatal shot. A last, largely unwritten note, however, is the kicker. Did you ever think where Sid Vicious might be buried? Sid's mother herself would die of an overdose but not before scattering his ashes at Heathrow Airport, another lurid detail I had never heard. I mean...seriously? Yuck.
Highly recommended.
