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- [00:00]
Narrator
When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing. You can do anything so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. It's 7 June 1977, in London. It's been a day of high celebration in the capital as Britain came together for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Now, as evening draws in, the street parties continue long after the pomp and circumstance has passed. For one day, the country has felt united. Or most of it, anyway. Out on the river on a small boat chugging along the choppy waters, the mood is distinctly different. Amid a vibrant crowd of around 100 people, a young man stands on the deck. Bleached blond hair gelled up in jagged spikes and face as pale as the moon. He grips the rail with one hand to steady himself as the boat rocks beneath his feet. Like everyone aboard, he's been drinking most of the afternoon, swept up in the excitement, until he found himself on this private boat, hired as a floating stage for the punk band the Sex Pistols. Right now they're cruising the Thames, playing a live concert for this party of fans, friends, entourage and a few selected journalists. As a fan, listening to the band's anarchic new single, God Save the Queen, live is a defining moment in the young man's life. As the bass thuds into his chest and the guitar slices through the air, the young punk grins, shouting the lyrics along with the song. He's not quite in time, not quite in tune. Who cares? Ahead, the outline of the Houses of Parliament looms against the fading light, the harsh thumping music bouncing off its ancient walls. Suddenly, from behind, a police launch cuts across the river towards them, sirens blaring, blue lights bouncing off the water. The young man turns, squinting into the dim light. Other people begin to notice now, pointing and jeering over the rails. The fan holds on tight as the weight from the police boat rocks the deck. For now, the band keeps playing, loud, fast and defiant, but the atmosphere has changed and the boat is already slowing as the police draw alongside and officers clamber aboard. The music collapses into a piercing whine of feedback, followed by sudden silence. The stage lights flicker and die. Police shout at the fans, who give as good as they get. The band themselves cry prejudice while their manager Malcolm McLaren protests that he's paid good money to rent the vessel, but it all falls on deaf ears and soon they're being escorted back to the dock. There, McLaren is arrested and led away, while the musicians are corralled through a line of police officers. In the glare of press flashbulbs and shouted questions. The party is over, but the moment has left its mark. In the celebrations today, two versions of Britain have collided. One rooted in tradition and ceremony, the other restless, angry and refusing to wait its turn to be heard. By the mid-1970s, popular music had become a huge, polished beast. Rock stars were playing to vast stadiums, but the gap between performer and audience felt wider than ever. At the same time, many young British people felt locked out of life. The country was struggling, the future uncertain. And for a generation coming of age, there was a growing sense that no one was listening. In cities across the nation, and in parallel scenes in America and beyond, young people decided to make themselves heard. Picking up instruments with little training, forming bands with no expectation of success, they created something raw, fast and confrontational. Punk was a movement that burned brightly, fractured quickly and left a legacy that far outlived its brief, explosive heyday. But why did punk resonate so powerfully with a generation that felt shut out? Who were the artists and activists who drove it and the fans who embraced it? And how did something so chaotic and short lived go on to reshape music, culture and identity for decades to come? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser podcast network. This is a short history of punk. In the mid-1970s. Much of the Western world feels unsettled. The optimism and energy of the post war decades have given way to economic uncertainty, political strain and a growing fear about the future. In Britain, that mood is especially potent. Inflation is rising and industrial conflict is deepening. For many young people, especially in working class communities, opportunities seem narrow and uninspiring. Matthew Worley is a British academic and author of no Punk Politics and British Youth Culture.
- [06:03]
Matthew Worley
In Britain in particular, there was the post three day week ramifications. There was an increase in industrial conflict, there was social tensions, there was a sense in which the government, which was by 76, 77 is a minority government, a Labour government that can't quite really govern the sense of, of ungovernability. You've got inflation going through the roof, the national front on the streets, a global oil crisis. So there are lots of things that suggested the world was in a very unstable position.
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Narrator
Cities feel run down and neglected and there is a real sense of distance between ordinary people and those in power. But the malaise is cultural too. Popular music has drifted away from its roots. Progressive rock bands like yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer may be selling out stadium shows, but ticket prices are beyond many pockets. And even when audiences can afford the shows, the music itself feels overblown. With long solos and elaborate stagecraft, rock has become more about spectacle than authenticity. The problem is, little else in the charts seems to be hitting the right notes either.
- [07:17]
Matthew Worley
So glam's kind of had its day. Progressive rock's kind of almost getting parody of itself and ridiculous. Top of the Pops is inundated or dominated by trite novelty records. Do Be the Disco Duck and all this kind of stuff. It's aimed as much at your mum and dad as it is at the kids on the street. So I think there was certainly enough people beginning to feel a sense that rock had lost touch with its grassroots. It was a general disaffection that something exciting and new was needed to kind of re enliven and reignite popular music in the 1970s.
- [07:50]
Narrator
Across the west, bands are arriving at a similar idea. That rock music needs to be stripped back, sped up and made raw again. By the mid-1970s. That impulse needs a name. Punk was once a term of insult, suggesting something worthless, unruly or juvenile. But it's now reappropriated as a title for this harsh back to basics art form and the attitude that comes with it. From Australia to Paris, the roots of punk are starting to emerge. In clubs like New York's cbgb, artists such as Patti Smith, Television and the Ramones are showing that music doesn't need polish or virtuosity to have value. Far from turning people off, being as direct and abrasive as possible is what draws the crowds. And because New York and London are linked by constant exchange of people, records and ideas, each scene helps energize the other. You thought this was your Run Club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about Run Club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Athletic Brewing Company crafts award winning non alcoholic beers for those who want to be part of every round. With over 185 flavor awards, they're exceptional NA beers that fit your lifestyle and any social occasion. Summer's full of good Times. And Athletic fits right in. Go to athleticbrewing.com to have brews delivered to your door. Or find them at a bar, restaurant or store near you. Near Beer Athletic Brewing Co. Fit for all times. When punk emerges into public view in Britain, its sound has already been shaped in the margins on both sides of the Atlantic. And in 1976, it suddenly comes of age.
- [10:11]
Matthew Worley
1976 is when the IMF crisis means the British economy looks at its most vulnerable. And people are talking about economic collapse. A run on the pound. Inflation's 25% unemployment passes 1 million for a first time. So you've got all those kind of socioeconomic things, too. It's also the year in which someone like Mick Farren for the NME writes a famous article called the Titanic Sails at Dawn. Basically saying, rock and roll is lost. We need something new. We need something to kind of save it.
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Narrator
Against a backdrop of strikes, rising unemployment, and a national mood of decline. Punk steps defiantly into the space that has opened up.
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Matthew Worley
It did the opposite of everything that was the prevailing tropes of the time. So as albums were usurping singles, punk was back to short songs released on 7 inch singles. The fact they were short songs, not long songs. The fact that it was rough and ready, not well produced. The fact that it didn't put an emphasis on musical sophistication. The rougher the better, the rawer the better.
- [11:21]
Narrator
Bands like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned and the Buzzcocks begin to attract attention, first in London and then further afield. It's all about being real and relatable. With lyrics drawing unashamedly from daily life, warts and all.
- [11:37]
Matthew Worley
British punk takes on a particular form, I think, again, relating to some of the politics and the aesthetic. And the way in which bands like the Clash spoke to peculiarly British concerns. So if you listen to the first Clash album, it's full of references to the bakerloo line and the career opportunities working for the BBC. It's very kind of specific to its place.
- [12:00]
Narrator
But British punk is not confined to London. It spreads quickly to places like Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, where local scenes form and begin to take on identities of their own. Part of its force lies in how open it feels. With its roots in rock and roll, glam, garage rock and reggae. Punk doesn't require or ask for permission. It thrives on amateurism, the idea that anyone can pick up an instrument, start a band, make a fanzine, or simply claim a style and a point of view.
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Matthew Worley
The most important thing that punk did was make people think the cliche is, you know, do it themselves, do it yourself. And you see that very quickly the Sex Pistols play and people think, either they're rubbish, I could do better than that, or they're brilliant, I want to do that. And as we all know, there's also a load of people just thought it was terrible and didn't want anything to do with it. Which is great as well, because it creates a kind of frisson that can blow things up. But that sense of agency to not be spectators, but to participate, to do it rather than consume it. That's where when people talk about the politics of punk, that's the politics of punk. It created the impulse to do something. It gave people a belief that they could do something themselves.
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Narrator
While men still dominate much of the music industry, punk's disruptive, anti establishment nature means that women aren't just watching from the sidelines, but helping define what the movement looks and sounds like. Susie sue, who first comes to attention as part of the so called Bromley contingent of fans following the Sex Pistols, quickly transforms herself into a striking and confrontational presence. With her heavy eye makeup and unflinching stare, the cold, controlled Persona she creates is a deliberate counterpoint to the anarchy around her. Meanwhile, as lead singer of X Ray Specs, Polly Styrene arrives from a very different place. The daughter of a Somali born father and a Scottish Irish mother, she brings a voice that is fresh, urgent and unmistakably her own. Rejecting the polished image expected of female performers, she wears braces, writes lyrics about consumerism and identity, and delivers them with a restless, almost breathless intensity. This new breed of artists challenges the assumptions that of who gets to be loud, visible and culturally relevant. Across the country, teenagers form bands and small independent labels begin pressing records Quickly and cheaply. Photocopied fanzines appear, documenting local scenes as they spring up across the country, people start booking their own shows, making their own artwork and creating their own networks. It's still fragmented and underground, but that is precisely what gives it its force. Punk is loose and fast moving, passed between fans by word of mouth and scrappy hand drawn flyers. It shows a generation that culture isn't something handed down from above, but something you can make yourself. And the shared language they use to that end is defined as much by style as by music. Everything from clothes and hairstyles to posture and attitude becomes part of the statement. Safety pins, ripped fabric, mohawks, bleach dye slogans and bondage trousers are all part of an aesthetic designed to outrage. Much of that visual language is sharpened in West London by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. McLaren is a former art student fascinated by antagonism and performance, who understands the power of publicity. Restless, talkative and drawn to disruption, he is less interested in music for its own sake than in the spectacle that can form around it. Westwood, by contrast, is more grounded and exacting. A former primary school teacher, she's a self taught designer with a keen eye for the politics of appearance, whose clothes draw on fetish wear, street style and historical fashion.
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Matthew Worley
The importance of people like Malcolm McClaren and Vivian Westwood was in framing what the Sex Pistols were doing. They gave it a point and a purpose. They kind of conceptualized it really. A lot of people talk about that they were a manufactured band. I don't think they were manufactured. I think they were conceptualized. That's what they did.
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Narrator
Punk is still chaotic and spontaneous, but figures like McLaren and Westwood help give it direction by defining its look and focusing its presentation and meaning. That framing is reinforced by the work of graphic designer Jamie Reed, whose artwork gives punk some of its most enduring images.
- [16:47]
Matthew Worley
I think Reid's the most important in some ways because just that poster for Anarchy in the uk, a picture of a Union Jack torn to pieces, held together by safety pins and bull clips. That's what I mean when I talk about punk reflecting the time. Because in 1976, if you talked about anarchy in the UK, anarchy could either mean the country falling into total disrepair because there's industrial action and inflation and the IMF bailing it out. But it's also anarchy was a cult to freedom and excitement and that kind of double meaning of are we on the cusp of something amazing, the world opening up? Or are we on the cusp of everything collapsing in on us and descending into misery and chaos of a different sort? So with Jamie Reed's framing of the Pistols creating that aesthetic around it, it suddenly made a brilliant rock and roll band, an incredible rock and roll band and something more akin to a kind of cultural intervention rather than simply great music to listen to.
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Narrator
The look and the sound are now inseparable. Together they give punk a recognizable identity that outgrows its spaces in the fringes, the clubs and the record shops. And the moment it finally bursts well and truly into the broader culture is broadcast live on early evening television. On 1 December 1976, the Sex Pistols appear on Thames Television's Today program, a tea time chat show. They're there almost by accident, booked at the last minute after the rock band Queen cancelled. With the band in the studio are figures from the Bromley contingent, a loose circle of young fans and followers from southeast London, including Susie Sue. What follows becomes one of the most notorious interviews in British television history. The host, 53 year old Bill Grundy, introduces the group as being, in his words, as drunk as I am, and is patronizing and goading from the outset. Apparently keen to get a rise out of his guests, he teases them about their image and attitude and then flirts awkwardly with Suzy sue, prompting guitarist Steve Jones to label him a dirty old man. Instead of bringing the interview back on course, Grundy doubles down, pressing Jones to say something shocking. The musician duly obliges, unleashing a few choice expletives. The swearing lasts only a few seconds, but on live television it in 1976, it detonates like a grenade. Within hours, the press have mobilized, denouncing punk as filthy, degenerate and out of control. What was a growing underground movement becomes front page news.
- [19:29]
Matthew Worley
The Grundy thing at the end of 1976 is the point in which punk and the Pistols stop being of interest to people who read the music press and become part of the broader cultural fabric. The Grundy moment serves as the moment when punk moves from being a subterranean, slightly left field and oppositional to something that is infusing popular culture.
- [19:54]
Narrator
On one hand, the notoriety is exactly what the bands have been looking for. Headlines condemn the band as foul mouthed and dangerous, and punk quickly acquires a reputation for disorder and trouble. Some of that image is exaggerated, some of it actively cultivated, but once attached, it proves hard to shake. Venues grow nervous and some local authorities begin to talk about bands. But the more it's condemned, the more popular it grows. And the music press helped to spread that sense of difference.
- [20:27]
Matthew Worley
We're so familiar with how punk looks nowadays and spiky hair and whatever. But when you're peeling through the NME in 1976 and every page has got somebody with a beard and someone with long hair and someone wearing a denim suit, flared trousers, posing on stage in a certain way. And then you turn the page and there's suddenly Johnny Rotten. You really get a sense of how different it looks.
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Narrator
Punk isn't, however, just about shock value. Beneath the headlines and the outrage is a deeper expression about class, power, boredom and belonging. Its lyrics, imagery and attitude speak to youth alienation, to distrust of authority, and to the feeling that the country has nothing to offer the people coming of age within it. One phrase in particular comes to capture that mood. No future. Made famous by the Sex Pistols, the sentiment is easy to interpret as pure sneering nihilism. But it also identifies a generation's sense that the promised future of stable work and social progress is beginning to slip out of reach. And the very real sense that the nation is not working as it should. Meanwhile, those in power appear distant from the frustration on the streets. They're still speaking the language of order and national pride. While much of the country feels neglected, tense and stuck. The disaffection reaches a fever pitch in 1977 as Britain marks the Queen's Silver Jubilee with bunting and pageantry. The Sex Pistols release God Save the Queen.
- [22:07]
Matthew Worley
I think God Save the Queen is the kind of high point of the Pistols being seen as anti establishment thing, where you could put the politics word to them in that he was a willfully proved, provocative, seditious, very insightful critique of where Britain was at in the mid-1970s. This is a country that's. Its empire is dissolving and disappearing. It's just entered Europe, so it's into a new phase. It's come out that optimistic swinging 60s and all the talk of the white heat of technology. And yet it finds itself in the kind of economic problems in the mid-1970s.
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Narrator
To release a song like that in Jubilee Year feels to many like a deliberate act of desecration. For supporters it is thrilling. For critics it is offensive to the point of unforgivable.
- [22:57]
Matthew Worley
They made for brilliant theater and a brilliant, spectacular response to the mad parade of the Jubilee. And again, see crucial to it. I mean, Rotten's lyrics are fantastic, but it's also Jamie Reed framing it with that brilliant cover of the Queen, muted and blinded with blackmail lettering across it, which really just added to the idea that they weren't just antisocial delinquents who swore on television, they were actually trying to bring the whole thing down.
- [23:24]
Narrator
Punk presses directly on the fault lines of British life, poking at class authority, identity, nationalism and race. Yet even as bands and fans rail against the scene system, punk never speaks with one clear political voice, with different people drawing different meanings from does, however, create a space in which people can stake out a position for themselves and insist that their voice matters.
- [23:52]
Matthew Worley
It's not like punk had an ideological position explicitly, but implicitly. The whole thing about punk, about being yourself, doing what you want to do, being who you want to be, having a voice lent itself to a particular kind of politics. Like I say, the politics of punk were really bound up in the fact that it gave people a sense of agency, a belief that they could do something, that they weren't actually worthless and useless, that they'd had something to say. They could say it.
- [24:19]
Narrator
That openness is part of punk's power. But it is also where the trouble begins. Because once a movement defines itself through provocation and the right to offend, it becomes harder to control who can and should be provoked and offended. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now@palmolive.com the most memorable gifts aren't found, they're made. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you pick any product, a mug, a card, a tote, a phone case, and make it personal. A photo, a name, an inside joke. The kind of gift that actually fits the person. That's what 30 million customers have been coming back to Zazzle for over 20 years to find right now. Save 25% on your first order at Zazzle.com that's Zazzle.com make it zamazing. By now, the far right National Front political group is experiencing a surge in popularity, exploiting economic anxiety and racial tension with a message of white nationalism. In many parts of Britain, that racism is lived as intimidation, harassment and street violence, especially for black and Asian communities. From the outset, punk has been associated with a rejection of establishment values, but that antagonism towards the status quo also attracts those who want to turn grievance into something more exclusionary. Punk is being pulled in very different political directions and some of them are openly racist.
- [26:21]
Matthew Worley
I think it's a mistake to think punk had a definite politics. I think the politics of punk are always contested and you can read different types of politics into it. We're talking ideology or anything like that. I think over time, punk then manifests quite a lot of different types of political responses. To the extent that you've got Bazaar Crass, really taking anarchy seriously and creating an arcopunk thing. But you've also unfortunately got a load of kind of right wing bands who created a whole, let's face it, bands like Screwdriver played punk rock and did it in a way that venerated Nazi politics and race politics.
- [26:55]
Narrator
Some of this overlap comes from youth subcultures already mixing and colliding on the street, punk does not emerge in a vacuum. It rubs up against existing skinhead and football cultures. And while some of that is rooted in working class pride and local identity, other aspects become increasingly entangled with racism and the far right. The original skinhead scene drew heavily on Jamaican music and multicultural working class life. But by the late 1970s, parts of that culture are becoming decidedly nationalistic. And while swastikas are worn by some as a way of aggravating respectable society rather than as a coherent statement of belief to others, they offer a true representation of deeply held ideology. But in a climate of rising racism and far right activity, punk's taste for scandal becomes harder to defend as mere theater.
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Matthew Worley
I always think for me, the way in which McLaren and West produce the swastika is always in juxtaposition with other things. So the famous Destroy T shirt is a swastika with an upside down crucifix and a picture of a postage stamp with the Queen's head being decapitated and Destroy above it. And so you're destroying the three pillars of authority, religion, politics and monarchy. You can read that in a more sophisticated way, but people just wearing a swastika to shock people, and it's more problematic.
- [28:19]
Narrator
For many, that ambiguity becomes intolerable. They don't want their culture to be captured, stained or confused with fascism, which they see as just another facet of an establishment they want no part of. Plenty of punk music straddles racial lines, with bands like the Clash drawing openly on reggae influences. Black and white youth are meeting in clubs, at gigs and on the street, even as the National Front tries to turn British people against each other. So when prominent musician Eric Clapton drunkenly voices support for Enoch Powell, the conservative politician notorious for his anti immigration rhetoric, many in the music community decide that enough is enough. Rock Against Racism is formed after activists publish a letter condemning Clapton's outburst and calling for a visible anti racist response. It starts as a loose network of gigs and soon grows into a movement that brings together punk bands, reggae artists and anti racist activists in open opposition to the far right. It's April 1978. Near Victoria Park, East London. A vast column of protesters is on the move, thousands strong, their voices and banners filling the streets. Among them, a 16 year old girl in a scuffed leather jacket, tartan miniskirt and laddered tights is carried along, her hair stiff with cheap hairspray and back combing. She came in by tube with two friends from South London, clutching a hand painted Rock Against Racism sign she made on her bedroom floor last night. Now, after hours on the move, her legs ache and her throat hurts from chanting. But her energy, and that of the sea of people she's part of, shows no sign of running out. All around her are punks in ripped shirts and leather jackets, while trade union banners bob above the crowd. Black and white teenagers, veteran activists, women with children, children on their shoulders, students and socialists all blur together as locals leaning from windows watch them pass. The sound is constant as voices rise and fall in waves, and chants are taken up and lost again to laughter and chatter. Up ahead, a drumbeat sets a rhythm. Below it all, police sirens pulse and fade as the march slows. At a junction, the noise changes with a burst of aggressive shouting erupting from the pavement ahead. She cranes her neck to see a small knot of men gathered behind a line of police skinheads, faces hard, arms folded, waving Union Jacks and National Front placards. One of them cups his hands and yells vicious slurs while another spits towards the demonstrators. The police hold the line, shoulders squared, as the march pushes past in a wave of jeers, raised fists and lobbed bottles. Confronted by this common enemy, the punks are reinvigorated. After all, this is exactly why they're here, a show of strength against these fascist thugs and everything they stand for. Their chance start up again, and the girl joins in with enthusiasm, louder than ever, drowning out the abuse. By the time they reach Victoria park, the march has swollen into an enormous crowd. People pour through the gates and out across the grass, spreading in every direction. The air smells of beer, smoke and sweat. At the center is a stage and an enormous sound system, and as a band gets started, it sends out a deep, rolling throb of reggae bass that rises through the soles of the girl's boots and into her ribs. She stops for a moment and turns slowly in a circle, taking it in. There are skinheads here, too, braces bright against their shirts, and again she feels that flicker of uncertainty. But one of them lifts a Rock Against Racism's sign above his head, and another is already dancing to the baseline, laughing as the crowd surges toward the stage. Up ahead, the platform is rough and makeshift, but the force gathering around it is immense. The march, the jeering, the police lines, the threat hanging over the streets outside, all of it has funneled into this one place. Outside the park are men who want Britain smaller, whiter and meaner. In here, for one afternoon, another version of the country is making itself heard. Rock Against Racism shows that punk can do more than just provoke outrage. It can also build alliances, draw lines, and help imagine a different kind of Britain. By the end of the 1970s, punk is past its outrageous first wave and its momentum is splintering off in different directions. Which isn't to say it's failed as a movement, but more that it has opened too many possibilities to remain one unified thing.
- [33:44]
Matthew Worley
One way of thinking about the Sex Pistols was almost like a kind of kamikaze mission into the heart of the music industry. To blow it all up and just get rid of all the rules and the expectations that people had about pop music and rock and roll. And then it was up to people to then put the pieces back together in the way that they wanted to.
- [34:02]
Narrator
That is exactly what begins to happen. Some artists take punk's principles into politics, some into pop, some into art, experimentation and electronics. The result is not one future for punk, but many.
- [34:17]
Matthew Worley
Of course, you can mix punk with bit of free jazz and a bit of funk and become the pop group. Of course, you can take a punk attitude to things and put really harsh electronics on it and think about paranoia and deindustrialization. Become Cabaret Voltaire. And of course, punk doesn't have to be four boys in a band. It can be the Slits or it can be the Raincoats or something like that. And of course, punk rock doesn't just have to be three chords played quick. You can bring reggae in there. Reggae are singing about what's happening to the black community. So we're going to sing about what's happening to our community. And then it's our community's black and white. So we think about what's happening to both of us and it just breaks everything down and gets re put into place.
- [34:56]
Narrator
But while punk is opening out into new forms, the band most closely identified with its early days is beginning to fall apart. The Sex Pistols have burned fast and hard, generating scandal wherever they go. But by the time they reach the end of a chaotic and demoralizing US tour, they're coming apart at the seams. Bassist and singer Sid Vicious is sinking deeper into heroin addiction. Manager Malcolm McLaren is pushing the band ever harder. And lead vocalist Johnny Rotten has grown bitter, exhausted and increasingly convinced he's being used. As the final gig of the tour rolls around, it all comes to a head. It is the 14th of January, 1978, in the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco. A young fan, a student near the front of the packed room, braces himself against the crush and looks up at the band on stage. The Sex Pistols have come to the end of their American tour. Which has been a strange, combustible run through the Deep south and beyond. Now, in San Francisco, they should be finishing the tour with a bang. But tonight the atmosphere feels brittle. The band members barely acknowledge one another. There is no sense of shared momentum, only the feeling of four people forcing themselves through the mechanics of a performance. The student at the front takes a swig of his drink as the guy next to him sloshes beer down his shirt. On stage, the band crash into their next song, no Fun. The sound is raw and ragged. Steve Jones could tar snarls, Paul Cook's drums drive hard, and Sid Vicious lurches through the lyrics with the same wounded instability that has followed the whole tour. John Lydon, or Johnny Rotten as he's known, stalks the front of the stage with a look that is part disgust and part exhaustion. The student in the crowd can sense something is wrong, even if he can't name it. This doesn't feel like the band he's come to love. It feels like a group of people expending the last dregs of their energy and enthusiasm. In public, each one of them looks exhausted, tetchy and almost resentful. He looks around. Some people are cheering wildly. Some just stare at the band as if infected by the same malaise. But others are apathetic, talking over the music, buying drinks and pushing through the crowd as if this is just another night. Lydon steps to the microphone. For a second, the room hangs there with him. He's breathing hard. Sweat glints under the stage lights. Then he asks the ballroom. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? It comes across half as a joke, half as an accusation. There's some laughter and cheering, though many in the crowd don't seem to understand what they've just heard. But to the student, the bitterness in the Englishman's tone is unmistakable. And then, just like that, it's over. With no grand farewell or final pose and no triumphant encore. The last gig has ended and the band have walked off. The house lights flare up, the amplifiers hum, and the crowd begins to disperse, oblivious to the fact that they have just watched the last performance of the band that defined a movement. Punk will go on to fracture, evolve and rebuild itself. But for the Sex Pistols, this is the end. And their final collapse was sudden, sour, theatrical and unexpected. Everything it was meant to be.
- [38:55]
Matthew Worley
Looking back, I think the Sex Pistols splitting up when they did was probably a good thing, because it meant that them as a focal point of them seeming to embody what punk meant for many people. So for them to split in January 1978, to all extents and purposes was a really good thing, I think, because it left them with just these four great singles on an album as a testimony to what they'd done. It meant they were never going to, at the time, going to go off and become dreadful and release a bad record. It also created this big vacuum after them where some people had to fill it in.
- [39:30]
Narrator
The space left behind. New directions emerge as the genre continues to mutate out of punk grows post punk, new wave, hardcore and goth in Britain and in parallel scenes across America, bands like Public Image Ltd. Suzy and the Banshees, Gang of Four, the Slits and the Raincoats take punk into stranger and more ambitious territory. As this new landscape develops across the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, the political mood sharpens too. And with Margaret Thatcher's rise to power, some of punk's anger begins to find a clearer target.
- [40:09]
Matthew Worley
Punk's disaffection before Margaret Thatcher is far more diffuse and in many ways, and again without over intellectualizing it, quite existential. It's just the world's rubbish, pop music's rubbish, telly's rubbish, that pub's rubbish, the road looks rubbish, prices are going up, I don't like it, I'm going to do something else. There's a lot more just general disaffection. Margaret Thatcher brings real focus. You got someone to throw your eggs at.
- [40:34]
Narrator
For some bands, the music becomes more explicitly political, more focused in its opposition. In different cities, local scenes pull punk in new directions. Manchester's bands strip the sound back even further or turn it towards something colder, artier and more self consciously experimental. In Sheffield, musicians begin folding in drum machines, synthesizers and a harsher industrial mood. The scene around Eric's club in Liverpool produces bands that keep punk's energetic core, but add more melody and pop instinct. And over the Irish Sea in Belfast, where everyday life is already shaped by sectarian tension and army patrols, punk carries a different charge altogether, becoming a space where young people can step outside the rigid identities of the Troubles. But its evolution creates a new problem. The more it spreads, the easier it becomes to imitate, package and sell. This June on the Noiser Podcast Network, a brand new show lands on your podcast app. Hosted by Clark Peters. Founding An American Dream takes you on a deep dive into how the United States was born. Real dictators returns. Traveling to Yugoslavia for the story of Marshal Tito. On Real Survival Stories, we're in the sweltering heat of Greece and on the mountain trails of Colorado. On Short History of We'll explore the head banging history of punk and tread the mean streets of East London with the Cray Twins. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes receives a peculiar letter concerning an alleged blood sucking creature in the Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. Get all of these shows and more early and ad free on Noiserplus. The scale of its success begins to change its heart. By this point, the defiant anti establishment movement has proved too big an opportunity for the commercial mainstream to ignore. Record companies move in and punk fashion, once defined by rebellion, now starts appearing in high street shop windows. Even the media, which has previously treated punk as a threat, now begins to repackage it as a trend. And nowhere is that tension clearer than around Malcolm McLaren. From the start, he has presented himself as punk's provocateur, an impresario and master manipulator who understands how outrage can be turned into attention and attention into money. By the end of the 1970s, that is making him a more divisive figure. To his admirers, he is a brilliant strategist who helped stage punk's eruption. To critics, he is increasingly the man who commodified it, making it something more palatable and marketable by tearing out its soul. Even Vivienne Westwood's designs begin to move into a more rarefied world of fashion and high prices. What started as an attack on consumer culture now risks becoming just another expensive thing to buy.
- [43:48]
Matthew Worley
It can be the most shocking hot band in the end, but ultimately your record company's going to flog a dead horse. It's going to release some product. Whether the rock and roll swindle was Malcolm McLaren getting a few quid, or actually the swindle was the record industry. Turning a dangerous cultural form into mere product is open to questions. But punk does very quickly get appropriated, and the signifiers of punk get emptied of their meaning and simply positioned as fashion statements or aesthetics or whatever. And the energy of punk is sometimes retained, but the provocations and willful, unsettling nature of punk is diluted.
- [44:24]
Narrator
But even as the industry is turning punk into a capitalist venture, the people at the heart of it still retain its spirit as their visual codes are lifted out of context and sold to the masses. The answer for many artists shaped by punk is not to defend the old form forever, but to keep changing before the culture industry can pin them down.
- [44:48]
Matthew Worley
It planted a seed in people to think right. As soon as people recognize what this is, it has to be something else. We have to find a way to constantly being inventive. So you have to dress up and reconfigure yourself monthly in order to stay ahead of the game. Because if you stand still for a minute, the press will get you and they'll codify you, and your cultural brilliance will be transformed into mere commodity.
- [45:11]
Narrator
One of punk's deepest legacies is that refusal to stay still long enough to be neatly packaged. In the years that follow, it becomes clear that punk's true impact reaches far beyond its brief, explosive beginning. It reshapes music, strips away old assumptions about who gets to make culture, and it leaves its mark on fashion, politics, and everything in between.
- [45:40]
Matthew Worley
Punk plays a pretty long game, I think, in terms of the impact that, if we're talking in the British context, Sex Pistols have just in terms of inspiring a whole generation of musicians to come up with really constantly evolving and interesting and exciting forms of music and musical presentation.
- [46:02]
Narrator
Its influence threads through the decades, surfacing in indie, grunge, riot, grrrl and alternative music. And later, it shows itself in the DIY spirit of online culture, where people create, share and challenge the mainstream on their own terms. What punk left behind was a way of thinking. It showed a generation that they didn't have to wait to be chosen, that they could make something themselves, say what they meant and claim their space. In that sense, punk is less a genre than an invitation, a lasting reminder that culture can be shaped from the ground up by anyone bold enough to have a go.
- [46:41]
Matthew Worley
Punk's most lasting impact on British color culture at the time was that it opened up a space for lots of people who previously probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to do creative things, and to do creative things in ways that fundamentally changed the culture of Britain and the world.
- [47:06]
Narrator
Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of the Kray twins.
- [47:12]
Matthew Worley
Home life in the east end in the 40s and early 50s was brutal. They were being bombed by the Germans. They were having to rebuild once the war was over. There was poverty, extreme poverty, and they were fighting for survival in so many ways. And their circumstance and the world they grew up in sent them into this life of crime. And then they made a choice to follow that path, path. And they made incredibly bad choices along the way and got caught. So they chose to be criminals, they chose to be villains. And they did a really bad job of that because they got caught and they both died having spent most of their lives behind bars. Nothing about that is heroic.
- [47:58]
Narrator
That's next. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of Right now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noiser plus, just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiza.comsubscriptions to unlock more episodes.