Punk meant a thousand different things to a thousand different people but to me, a sixteen year old boy kicking against the oppressive, colourless shades of 1976 Britain, it represented absolute freedom. Punk said ‘believe in yourself and if others don’t like it they can fuck off’. In fact, the sound I remember the most is not the everlasting thrash of buzzsaw guitars, but the everlasting fuck off-ness of it all, because punk was the ultimate ‘Fuck Off!’
It was the outsider aesthetic writ large, an explosion of negatives and the rejection of old values; dark, tribal, alien and full of black humour. Punk attracted all those who had been cast out, those who felt useless, unworthy or ashamed, bringing together Bowie victims, teenage misfits, gays, artists, disco slaves, junkies, football hooligans, intellectuals and outsiders from every class. And I was one of those outsiders.
I’d left school as soon as I could and signed on for £9 a week. I’d never had it so good. Desperately seeking excitement, it was inevitable I would become intrigued by the Sex Pistols and the whispers of punk, the stars finally aligning on Tuesday, 29th June 1976 when five of us scraped the cash together for a trip to their 100 Club show. In my youthful mind London was still Dickensian and mythical so that alone was excitement enough, but when the Pistols hit the low stage, I changed forever.
I‘d never seen or heard anything like it and from that first second knew I could be whatever I wanted to be, and do whatever I wanted to do. Spellbound, we returned home, cut our hair, reconstructed our flares into drainpipes, sprayed our shirts, pierced our ears with needles, snorted our first lines of amphetamine sulphate and speeded into an uncertain future. It really was as simple and quick as that.
From then on I lived each day with no thought of the next, my huge leap into the everlasting present of the teenage an incredibly intense rite of passage that became almost messianic. Punk was a secret society with the most glorious soundtrack, the coolest clothes, the fiercest debates and the most idealistic politics. My life was full of incident and adventure lived at a million miles an hour, fuelled by crazy, bug eyed, chemical induced energy, cheap drugs, crap sex and riotous live shows.
One of the many myths perpetrated in punks twisted history is that it was an entirely London based revolution hanging on the every word of McLaren and wearing every costly stitch of Westwood. It’s true that with the capital just a 30 minute train ride away, Reading itself never had much of a scene. But what should be remembered about towns like Reading in the seventies was not the physical difference from London, so much as the mental distance. Until the filth and fury of the Pistols hit the headlines in December 1976 there were never more than twenty of us, even with some of the hipper Chelsea boot boys latching on to scare the prole’s in punk disguise.
Like any youth movement, punk carried with it the seeds of its own destruction. We knew it even then. There was a period just after the moment of high punk in June 1977 when, stoked by a seething, outraged, media, Joe Public started to attack and it became incredibly dangerous to go anywhere. The thrill and fun evaporated and punk descended into a miserable, violent, abyss; a squalid, caricature of its once glorious self. It was time to move on.
In reality my involvement with punk lasted for little over a year and yet those twelve months or so helped me to lay the foundations for the rest of my life. Punk was about freedom of spirit and gave me the belief to do whatever I wanted to do and the confidence to say no even when working within the confines of the machine as most of us ultimately have to do. Punk shouted out ‘have a go’ and that feeling of freedom and possibility has reverberated ever since. Occasionally, particularly as I get older and older, that has proved something of a curse. And yet, almost fifty years later, I still try and live by all that stuff.
01. THE RAMONES ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ (Ramones LP June 1976)
02. THE SAINTS ‘I’m Stranded’ (A Side September 1976)
03. THE MODERN LOVERS ‘Roadrunner’ (The Modern Lovers LP October 1976)
04. THE DAMNED ‘New Rose’ (A Side October 1976)
05. RICHARD HELL ‘Blank Generation’ (A Side November 1976)
06. SEX PISTOLS ‘Anarchy In The UK’ (A Side November 1976)
07. THE BUZZCOCKS ‘Boredom’ (Spiral Scratch EP January 1977)
08. THE DAMNED ‘Neat Neat Neat’ (A Side February 1977)
09. THE CLASH ‘White Riot’ (A Side March 1977)
10. THE JAM ‘In The City’ (A Side April 1977)
11. THE BOYS ‘I Don’t Care’ (A Side April 1977)
12. THE ADVERTS ‘One Chord Wonders’ (A Side April 1977)
13. WIRE ‘12XU’ (Live At The Roxy LP Recorded April 1977)
14. THE CLASH ‘Janie Jones’ (The Clash LP April 1977)
15. THE RAMONES ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’ (A Side May 1977)
16. SEX PISTOLS ‘God Save The Queen’ (A Side May 1977)
17. THE HEARTBREAKERS ‘Born To Lose’ (B Side May 1977)
18. THE VIBRATORS ‘Into The Future’ (Pure Mania LP June 1977)
19. THE ONLY ONES ‘Lovers Of Today’ (A Side June 1977)
20. SEX PISTOLS ‘Pretty Vacant’ (A Side July 1977)
21. THE ADVERTS ‘Bored Teenagers’ (B Side August 1977)
22. THE CLASH ‘Complete Control’ (A Side September 1977)
23. GENERATION X ‘Your Generation’ (A Side September 1977)
24. THE SLITS ‘Vindictive’ (John Peel Session September 1977)
25. SEX PISTOLS ‘Holidays In The Sun’ (A Side October 1977)
26. ULTRAVOX! ‘Rockwrok’ (A Side October 1977)
27. WIRE ‘Mr Suit’ (Pink Flag LP November 1977)
28. SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES ‘Love In A Void’ (John Peel Session November 1977)
29. 999 ‘Emergency’ (A Side January 1978)
30. BUZZCOCKS ‘What Do I Get’ (A Side January 1978)
31. MAGAZINE ‘Shot By Both Sides’ (A Side January 1978)
32. WIRE ‘I Am The Fly’ (A Side February 1978)
33. SUBWAY SECT ‘Nobody’s Scared’ (A Side March 1978)
34. BUZZCOCKS ‘Fiction Romance’ (Another Music In A Different Kitchen LP March 1978)
35. PENETRATION ‘Never’ (B Side May 1978)
36. ALTERNATIVE TV ‘Action Time Vision’ (The Image Has Cracked LP May 1978)
37. THE CLASH ‘White Man In The Hammersmith Palais’ (A Side June 1978
38. X RAY SPEX ‘Identity’ (A Side July 1978)
39. SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES ‘Hong Kong Garden’ (A Side August 1978)
40. PUBLIC IMAGE LTD ‘Public Image’ (A Side October 1978)