by Neil Rowland
Punk Story
Neil Rowland
Published in 2017 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2017 Neil Rowland
The right of Neil Rowland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder for which application should be addressed in the first instance to the publishers. No liability shall be attached to the author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage of any nature suffered as a result of the reliance on the reproduction of any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in the contents.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
To Paul Hewson
Not necessarily in the right order...
Thanks to Sian Pickard for proofreading
Love to my daughter Anastasia
Special thanks to my dad for telling me to finish this book
Friends and family
All our music heroes past, present and beyond
1. Smells Like Teen Spirit
This a celebration of friendship, a punk band and the thrill ride of music.
Who, where, what was I in 1977? I was eighteen year old Paul Bottle, just about to graduate from the local arts college, still living at home, in our town of Nulton. Shock waves proved something seismic was about to happen in the UK. The situation would change, for the nation, for rock music and for youth, even if we didn’t recognize advance notices.
There were arguments, but they called this movement ‘punk rock’. It was a brat-pop tendency launched during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Year. We were considered a nightmare for the royal family, the government and the establishment. Or most obviously it was The Sex Pistols. How could you ever forgive or forget them?
Punk exploded all my previous ideas about life, everything I’d ever listened to, thought or watched. Music and style, arts and rebellion, identity and growing up, that’s where it began. Soon I was knocking around with fantastic new people who could cuss and play a guitar at the same time. The punks strutted around in their glory, like kings and queens of the street, with hardly a King’s shilling in their ripped pockets. These were tough times for young people, before social media - for good or evil - mostly in terms of jobs. For many of us a ‘career’ was like spotting a unicorn waiting at the bus stop. Eventually I got the idea to become a ‘pretentious music critic’.
Until punk came along school friends would drag me into town on Saturday nights to bad clubs with terrible soundtracks. I’d put on my check sports jacket and flared trousers (chosen for me out of the Co-operative Super Store). Local girls in home-sewn hot pants would either ignore me or give a jump of alarm. They left me under a plastic palm tree at the edge of the floor, incinerated with embarrassment. I’d turn into a snow man if any girl so much as breathed on my neck; which didn’t happen very often. Invisibility didn’t make me feel more comfortable under the flashing hot lights of The Flamingo.
The revolution started when my fellow student Jon got into punk. He went on to form his own band and I was invited to one of the mad gigs. In fact Jon Whitmore was my next door neighbour, who created amazement by emerging in early punk costume. He chose to make a big art school statement, shocking society and changing popular music.
‘You’ll never guess what I’m looking at,’ dad declared. He was peering around the edge of the curtains and nets into our suburban road. ‘Bloody Nora!’
‘What’s aggravating you now, Pete?’ said our mother.
Our dad laughed in baffled fury. ‘Come and look at this, will you,’ he told us. ‘It’s the weedy little kid of them next door. Wearing a bloody dustbin liner. Safety pins through his ears.’ Without unsticking his eyes from the glass, dad gestured for my brother Charles and me to come over. ‘I’ve never seen the like of this. Take a look yourselves, you lads. What’s that little freak up to?’
My family lined up to watch, as if our bay window was turned into the royal box. Jon was strolling about, trying not to notice twitching curtains going along the road. He had a self-conscious yet defiant attitude, with his arms and legs sticking out of that black dustbin liner. Sure enough there were safety pins stuck around his person. Even most babies had stopped wearing safety pins by then.
For me, I was fascinated by what he was trying to say. There had to be a point behind the stunt. I knew it was some kind of ironic provocation. Of course it was working a treat with my family.
‘What’s the problem? He’s got a friggin’ screw loose, that’s what. Stupid little berk,’ dad was saying. Dad - who was big and physically strong from factory work - itched to unbuckle his belt and give Jon a good thrashing. He wanted to teach him a hard lesson of life too.
Satisfied with the bafflement and shock he’d caused, Jon eventually ducked back in doors - probably to get warmed up. Soon a group of neighbours (the Jubilee Street Party organisers) came out and gathered to discuss the possible meaning of the bizarre exhibition they’d witnessed.
***
That evening I got my courage up to call next door, intending to find out the reasons for Jon’s parade. This was radical because I hadn’t even set foot in Jon’s house for ages. This was on account of us taking a boyish, competitive dislike to each other. The fact we studied in different departments at college didn’t completely explain our coolness.
The street was calm again and my family had lost interest in the anti-fashion scandal. Mrs Whitmore let me in to their semi, all surprised smiles and calling to her adored son, ‘Jon, love, you got visitor!’
There was a pregnant silence from above, until a half-hearted grunt finally reached us. So I clumped up the staircase and, edging forward, found myself sat with the provocateur in his pad. ‘Oh, you. A rare pleasure,’ he told me.
Surprisingly his bedroom was still filled with boyhood stuff. My own space had been cleared of toys, games and comics long before. My parents considered him to be a spoiled brat, because he was ‘crippled’ as they put it and his mum and dad (called soft foreigners from Cyprus and Italy) were soft on him. There was some truth to the argument of Jon being spoiled, at least until punk rock came along. I immediately noticed a stack of new 45 records and a new ‘music centre’ in his room. There was also a black cabinet with a cloth fronted speaker and a panel of little knobs. Only later did he explain that this was a little Marshall ‘Master Model’ fifty-watt practice amp. Something was going on, so what was it?
Jon had changed out of the plastic garbage chic, but his hair was aggressively tangled up and there were piercings, including a ring through a nostril. No way would my parents have allowed that. There was a knowing arrogant look in his big melancholy brown eyes. When he spoke his voice had a curious sarcastic whine to it. I sat nervously on the edge of his bed, taking in these changes and waiting for clarity.
What did I understand about the term ‘punk’? Jon brought the subject up challengingly. I’d heard the word in a lot of American movies, used by a macho cop or a cowboy. It was generally understood to be a term of abuse for the scum of society. Who wanted to be considered like that?
‘Even better,’ he told me. ‘The word co
mes from being a prostitute.’ Jon spread himself out in lazy comfort, in black jeans and ripped tee-shirt, over the embroidered spread.
‘So you’re... you know... going on “the game”... or something?’ I barely knew what selling your body consisted of.
He looked shifty as he worked out whether I was deserving of his attention or contempt or pity. ‘Didn’t you hear nothing about The Pistols?’ he asked, with a sneer.
‘Pistols? Oh right. Course I have.’
‘No, Paul, I don’t mean weapons. I mean the band.’
‘What you on about, Jon?’
‘Shit, Bottle, where have you been?’
‘This got anything to do with... your provocative event today?’
He scoffed. ‘Amazing the reaction from standing in your own bloody street,’ he mocked.
‘Yeah, sure Jon... I see... like...’
‘And don’t call me ‘Jon’ anymore, right?’
I stared back disorientated, stunned.
‘Nowadays I go by the name of Snot. Stan Snot,’ he explained.
‘How’d you work that out?’ The old boyhood rivalry and animosity had returned, like the point of a plastic Roman sword under my chin.
‘Stan Snot’ continued to recline on the bed. He was showing off a pair new boots. He hadn’t bothered to take them off in doors. This was one punk sponsored by indulgent parents.
‘Punk’s kicking the establishment,’ he stated, in a deep droll voice.
I shuffled and puzzled. ‘The establishment? Is it?’
‘This country’s nauseatingly complacent.’ His baleful golden eyes turned back to me, in the too large head, under thick black curls.
His bedroom felt uncomfortably small. ‘Sorry, I still don’t get it.’
Snot gave a dry snort. ‘You don’t get it! We’re going to destroy this tedious way of life.’
‘Destroy it? What with?’
‘Noise. Anarchy.’
I puzzled over it. ‘What for?’
‘You wanna work in that Vacuum Factory?’
‘Nah... No, not really.’
‘We’re invisible as a generation. We’re just fodder and scum. You want to stay that way?’ he asked. ‘Invisible?’
‘Nobody wants to be invisible.’
‘Yeah, we want to make our mark. Say “we exist. We got ideas. We’re creative. Listen to us too.”’
‘I can see the point...’
‘They are going to notice us for sure, Bottle. Whether they like us or they don’t like us,’ he warned. ‘They are not going to destroy us, we are going to destroy them.’
‘So when did you get all these ideas?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘What exactly are punks going to do?’
‘Don’t you read the music papers?’ Snot challenged.
The back of my eyes searched the front of my brain.
‘Take careful note, Bottle. It’s about the music scene. I’ve been down to London. Up on the train to Sheffield and Nottingham as well.’ He put his hands behind his head. ‘I’ve been going to gigs by the Sex Pistols. And great bands like the Damned. These groups are the bollocks, my friend. These lads are the godfathers and mothers of punk rock. The bass player, Glenn Matlock, writes the tunes. Johnny Rotten writes most of the lyrics. Rotten’s got amazing stage presence.’
‘So are they going to be a big hit?’
Jon sniggered at my naivety. ‘Big hit? They’re subversive, Bottle. The gigs are like one big fight.
‘A fight? During a concert?’
‘You don’t know what could happen. Then the guitar is jacking up behind Rotten and everybody’s pogo-ing, trying to smash everything. You can feel the whole venue jolting.’
‘Well, right, sounds amazing,’ I admitted. Some of the tension between us lifted.
‘Punk’s going to shake up this whole society. We’re gonna make them choke on their cake... during that stupid street party.’
‘Do the Pistols wear bin liners as well?’ I wondered.
He smiled with sarcastic insight. ‘Not any more. The punk scene’s changing constantly. It’s volatile and shifting. Which is the whole point. Maybe punk will end as quickly as it’s started. Who can tell?’ he speculated.
‘Where did this punk scene start? I haven’t heard anything,’ I complained.
‘Who can say exactly? It could’ve been in New York, like the clubs. Or maybe from the underground scene,’ Snot told me, as if he jetted around the world.
‘Somebody must have started it off,’ I said, ‘or thought about calling it ‘punk’.’
Jon spiked up his thick hair (it wasn’t yet dyed). ‘Where does any anarchistic youth rebellion begin?’ he countered - an insider to an outsider.
‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t have a clue.’ I didn’t.
‘You’d look at the Sex boutique in Chelsea.’
‘Would I?’ I felt the heat in my cheeks, like blobs in an oil lamp.
‘Yeah.’
‘In Chelsea? Sex?’
‘Why not? The Pistols are all hard London lads.’
‘Oh, but... Do they need to be hard?’ I said, perplexed.
‘First of all they tricked the big music companies. Smashed up their offices.’
‘Why they do that for?’ I was literally on the edge of my seat - Snot’s bed - waiting to find out. There was a pile of loud board games behind his shoulder.
‘Punk is a focus for alienation. We’re part of the rebellion,’ he argued.
‘Are we? What are we alienated from?’
‘Open your eyes. Look around.’
‘All right, but what are you rebelling against?’
‘Society. Power. Authority,’ he checked off.
At this moment his Mum called from downstairs. ‘Jon, love, your dinner is on the table soon,’ she called up, with a croon.
‘Always the same ritual,’ he remarked. ‘It’s fucking torture.’
‘Maybe I’d better go soon anyway.’
‘How is it for you, Bottle?’
I nodded glumly. But I didn’t comment on my situation. Anyway I was still thinking about this punk thing.
‘Don’t be long, Jon, love. I got such lovely dessert tonight!’
Stan Snot jumped up and dug around in his wardrobe. He pulled out the offending black bin liner.
‘Want to try it? Put it on,’ he teased.
‘No, thanks, it’d be stupid on me.’
He explained that the bin bag was already passé. His mum and dad though, as ever, had looked on benignly at his punk pranks. They were about the only parents in Britain not shocked or offended by anything punks could say or do.
‘We’re the dogs from hell,’ Snot informed me.
‘You definitely shook ‘em up today.’
‘To destroy is the ultimate creative statement.’
That type of argument looked good in a college essay, but it startled me, and the implications would reverberate over the following months.
‘Jon, love, dinner!’
***
Over the following weeks ‘Stan Snot’ played me his entire punk record collection. There was no danger of exhausting it because he was always buying new vinyl - 45s or EPs. Some of the bands were starting to release LPs as well (you didn’t call them ‘albums’ any more). Before long the records came out in picture sleeves. The inventive graphics of the artefacts was fascinating. Later the music came out on twelve inch singles; a format borrowed from the New York disco scene.
As well as The Sex Pistols and The Clash, it was The Damned, The Stranglers and the Adverts, for starters. I realised that The Clash were more radical, political; and had emerged from the London squat scene, as explained to me. The Adverts came ou
t with weird, unsettling songs that intrigued. That song of theirs, Gary Gilmore’s Eyes, was about the American killer condemned to the electric chair and, apparently, he anticipated the day. The monotonous melody played constantly in our students’ common room. Gilmore, refusing the quicker end of a firing squad, finally fried and turned into a punk anti-hero.
Punk bands could record cheaply and roughly, self-producing on small independent labels. That was the whole DIY point. Stan insisted that kids didn’t need to be good musicians. I was never interested in playing an instrument. I was desperate to get involved, even if I didn’t know how.
My cousin Kevin, ten years older, had showed off his record collection to me. Some of these ‘classic’ albums made an impact, to be honest, but the artists’ image and sound felt very remote from us. Suddenly kids our age were starting their own garage groups, playing small gigs and recording fast and cheap.
Obviously punk had other influences. It had a definite ‘glam rock’ feel, which linked us to those groups we’d idolised at school - bands that had often been rough and vulgar too under their glitz campery. Then there was the huge and varied influence of David Bowie, collected in cassettes. British punks had taken in the New York scene, even though that city could have been Mars. Reaching back there was the Velvet Underground, Warhol and the Factory; I only knew about it years later. To me everything was completely and radically new to experience.
The punks created a furious, repulsive crash and thrash; and fashions to go along with it. The punks were the garbage of society. And I was soon among them.
***
It started like this - during our regular play of new records - Stan dropped a second cultural bomb. ‘Hey, Bottle, how’d you wanna come and hear my band?’
Stunned, confused, impressed, I could only react. ‘Your band?’
‘We’ve got a gig at the college,’ he explained.
‘Really? At Nulton Arts?’
‘Yeah, the principle gave permission. We have to give the money to charity. Maybe there’s a charity for punks, I don’t know.’
‘Does he know about punk? The type of music?’
