Not So Pretty, Hardly Vacant 

For those of you who weren’t around, the mid to late seventies in London were grim and bleak.  While Britain shook off the austerity of the war, Baby Boomers who experienced childhood in the fifties were seduced by the effervescent promise of the sixties.  In a nutshell, the seventies were a bit of a let down. 

Graduating in 1973, I took a then less than customary ‘year off’ or what is now more euphemistically called a ‘gap year’.  My parents were less than thrilled.  They had been looking forward to the day when my shoulder length hair would be shorn and the spirit of Samson would be suited and booted and duly ensconced in a solicitor’s office.  In point of fact the experiences that I had and the lessons that I learned from bumming around the States have stood me in good stead ever since.  But that is for another time and another blog. 

Back in London, 1974 opened to the miners’ strike and the three day week.  Totally skint, I took what work I could get until I could start the six month course of study for the solicitors’ exams.  I started by counting tiny electrical terminals into plastic packets by torchlight for a pittance.  That was followed by two terms as a supply teacher at a local comprehensive.  Nevertheless, I remained more or less skint for some time to come – as were many of those around us.  Top end entertainment had to be budgeted for and concerts carefully chosen.  I still rue not having enough in hand to cover the cost of tickets to see Bob Marley at the Rainbow in 1977.  I made do by listening to my now worn copy of ‘Natty Dread’ and repeatedly borrowing a friend’s ‘Catch a Fire’.

Conditions in the country got progressively worse.  Between ’76 and ’78 inflation peaked at close to 25%, the country was continuously plagued by industrial action and an inept Labour government clung on precariously to power in a curious pact with the Liberals who, at the time, boasted a total of 13 MPs.  In spite of what was going on around me, I secured my professional qualification, got married, became a father for the first time (in 1979) and even managed to scramble up the lowest rungs of the property ladder. 

For some, the highlight of the decade was the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in the summer of 1977.  The pomp and circumstance was played out for most on television under the watchful eye of one or other of the ubiquitous Dimblebys.  Jubilee Day itself was as grey and as gloomy as many others of that so-called summer. There was no street party in Ashdown Drive, Borehamwood, a modern development of maisonettes tucked away at the edge of the green belt and backing on to the main railway line.  Most of the other young couples with whom we had become friendly had headed off to sunnier climes.  The rest of the residents maintained their policy of splendid isolation.

1977 was also the year in which the Punk Movement reached its peak.  Emerging two years earlier from the economic and social depression that cast its shadows over the decade, the Punk philosophers mixed an angry cocktail of nihilist, anti-establishment outpourings.  Social commentators decided that this new youth movement was a reaction to the Peace and Love vibe that had acted as a compass to those of us who had navigated our way to adulthood over the previous few years.  Music critics - and even they along with the policemen had got younger – praised Punk’s musical elements as a necessary and inevitable reaction to the emergence of corporate rock.  Short songs with jagged lyrics played at pill-fuelled breakneck tempos on seemingly out-of-tune Stratocasters sent their audience manically pogoing and the rest of us reaching for the paracetomol and a darkened room.

In retrospect, Punk was a perfect metaphor for the dissatisfaction of the era that ultimately erupted with the summer rioting of 1981.  Listening now to tracks such as The Sex Pistols’ anthemic ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘God Save the Queen’ the music seems pretty thin, the message somewhat muted.  As with any musical style that emerges as a beacon of rebellion, there are always those who take the underlying vocabulary and turn it into something different.  As with earlier iterations of the Rock ’n’ Roll spirit, Punk itself became homogenised.   

The music of the original rocker, Bill Haley, was blamed for the first wave of teenage rebelliousness.  Cinemas in America were trashed as riots were sparked by showings of ‘Blackboard Jungle’ that featured Haley and his Comets’ ‘Rock Around The Clock’.  However, within a relatively short time, elements of the music had been distilled into a socially more palatable format and wrapped up as a more consumer friendly commercial offering.  Elvis Presley’s initial impact as an anti-establishment teen icon was over the minute he joined the army and then started turning out cheap, trashy Hollywood romances.  Elvis was joined in the hit parade by wilder elements who helped set the defintions of rock culture.  Jerry Lee Lewis transported a 13 year old cousin across state lines and married her.  Gene Vincent’s affection for leather stage garb defined an earthy sexuality that deliberately challenged the morals of Middle America.  However, the musical message of Rock ‘n’ Roll, an African-American slang term for sexual intercourse, was soon bowdlerised, watered down and purveyed by the likes of a string of good-looking, clean-cut teen idols such as Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and a gaggle of assorted Bobbys – Rydell, Darin, Vinton and Vee.

Two decades later, the guitars were louder, the rhythms more frenetic, but, like its predecessor, the original Rock ‘n’ Roll, Punk intentionally put its finger up to older generations – both musically and in the message it conveyed.  However, the stance of punk and the public platform on which its key band, The Sex Pistols, played out their carefully choreographed anti-establishment rantings, also gave birth to some great music which had a broader and enduring appeal.

Although there were some punk bands who deliberately espoused their inability to tune a guitar and who made a virtue of not being able to sing, I can’t now remember their names.  Sid Vicious who became the Pistols’ bass player always struck me as totally talentless and without any redeeming feature either as a musician or as a human being.  Many of the others have disappeared into the dustbin of rock history.  On the contrary, there were other bands who emerged from under the cloak of Punk who produced great music that has endured.  

The Clash told the story but in a way that excited even sixties relics like me.  Unfortunately, they were foisted with the moniker of ‘The Only Band That Matters’ by their label, CBS, the progenitors of corporate rock.  I never understood how The Stranglers were lumped into the Punk movement.  Songs like ‘Golden Brown’ and ‘No More Heroes’ combined intelligent lyrics with catchy melodies and sparkling musical arrangements; the thinly veiled heroin association of the former and the political comment of the latter offended no-one. 

The Punk movement in the States was more about fashion and drugs and the music itself and less about self-aggrandising, pseudo-politicking and social comment.  As in the UK, the essence of Punk was similarly bifurcated between the musically digestible and some that was less so.   The likes of The New York Dolls created a challenging synthesis of the discordant and the menacing that nevertheless owed much to what had passed before – The Stones and the like.  Yet, despite their anti-establishment stance they, too, passed into the commercial mainstream of major labels and fabled producers. 

Two American bands who arrived in the midst of the Punk era that made the biggest impact were The Ramones and Talking Heads.  The Ramones took the concept of the two minute song and raised it into high art.  Mixing simple declarations such as ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ and ‘She’s a Sensation’ with more potent observations such as ‘I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’ and ‘Psycho Therapy’, the lyrics were simple and sharp and the riffs were catchy.  No-one can resist tapping their feet to The Ramones.  Accessible to both Punks and other music fans, their records are classics. 

In no way should the art-house chic of Talking Heads be lumped in with punk; yet early critiques often referred to their association with the mid-seventies New York punk scene.  Under the leadership of multi-talented David Byrne, the Heads made a series of fine albums and continued as a unit until the early nineties when Byrne decided that he didn’t need to be in a band to realise his multi-faceted artistic output.  ‘Psycho Killer’, ‘Life During Wartime’, ‘Burning Down The House’ and ‘Road To Nowhere’ are all great songs that endure.  ‘True Stories’ which contains the band’s versions of the songs on the soundtrack to Byrne’s 1986 first feature as a director remains a favourite.  In the mid-nineties I advised David Byrne on sorting out some of his UK contracts.  Highly intelligent and very charming he was as far removed in his demeanour and sense of aesthetics as one could be from the popular image of punk. 

The ‘real’ British punk was born of the social malaise of the seventies.  Like other musical expressions of teenage angst that preceded it, the underlying popularity of the genre soon mutated into the mainstream.  As seventies ennui was replaced by the brash new Realpolitik and upward mobility of the eighties, the discordant thrashing of the real punk faded into the footnotes of contemporary rock history. 

‘Natty Dread’ by Bob Marley and The Wailers is a vinyl album released in 1975; ‘Catch a Fire’ is a CD reissue from the late 1980’s of the 1973 original vinyl release. Bill Haley and his Comets’ ‘(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock’ and ‘Razzle Dazzle’ feature in my collection on 78 RPM wax discs albeit that I have nothing to play them on.  They are both on the Brunswick label and no date appears on them.  Presley ’The All Time Greatest Hits’ is a 2CD set released by RCA in 1987.  The Stranglers ‘Friday The Thirteenth’ is a live album released by Eagle Rock in 1997 on which I advised Eagle in the negotiations with the band. The Ramones Anthology is a 2CD set released by Warner Brothers in 1999. ‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ (1978) by Talking Heads is a 33 RPM vinyl import on the Sire label.  Talking Heads’ ‘Stop Making Sense’ (1984) and ‘True Stories’ (1986) are vinyl albums released by EMI.  The Best of Talking Heads is a CD released by Sire in 2004.