Punk: Attitude | Full Documentary | Qwest TV

all you need is one guy or girl to stand up and say [ __ ] this and everyone goes voice of a generation thank you I've been thinking that I never had the gut to stand up and say it and all of a sudden [ __ ] this has a back beat you know what John Lennon always said say what you mean mean what you say put a beat to It Go you only need 5% or less to like Embrace ideas and change it and you know change the way people think all over again there's always going to be people who are artistically inclined who are going to somehow find something that brings them into the same room where they're going to exchange information and then they're going to take that out it becomes a lineage these people find each other and this timeline grows this is a public announcements with [Music] guitar no you're right [Applause] [Music] oh you're kicking ass you're doing something new and you don't give a [ __ ] about [ __ ] commerciality and that's what Punk is it's really kind of philosophical thing about how you look at something originally Punk meant you know a guy in prison who got [ __ ] up the ass and that's still what it means to people in prison I think it starts with Brando in the wild one the famous line for that of course was what are you rebelling against and Brando turns the camera and says what do you [Music] got the rebellious part of it is very important because uh people get too [Music] complacent sh sh and I think the fight against that complacency is punk rock if you look a little back you see it was in 50s rock and roll is really Punk running across the [ __ ] stage on one leg like this duck like doing some duck walk [ __ ] is some punk [ __ ] you know what I [Music] mean there is uh your mom's music and then all of a sudden Here Comes Elvis Presley It's always very important for like icono clastic artists to upset things every culture every century is a handful of these dudes guys and girls who they just go oh no you [Music] don't I but I'm out on the road again the hippies were the real punks if you ask me that was just as punk rock as anything when everyone was against Vietnam and and they were doing their own thing and they were all having parties taking at LSD at Woodstock and all that people were sort of United against the war but they were United generally against the establishment [Music] I always like tippies man I mean this country couldn't go wrong with having a lot of hippies you know they aren't going to hurt anybody they just want to get high hear some music and [ __ ] you know we wanted Punk to wipe out the hippies blow up the whole world to rock and roll and start all over again to many te Dr for one heart to be crying when I was a kid they used to call punk rock like you know like Lenny K's nuggets you know those garage bands that he came out with and that's what I thought punk rock was in his liner notes he said well you know some critics were referred to this as as Punk and right after that you just started sort of seeing that word a little bit they were kind of like you know young kids American kids that were trying to copy what the Rolling Stones were doing and some of the other English bands and weren't really as even as professional as [Music] them I mean I grew up with the British Invasion but there were also really great American bands that kind of got lost in the shuffle like question marking the Mysterion and U the standal and um count five you know Psychotic Reaction you know they're very simple three chord Rock can't get your love I can't get affection oh little girl psyo there is a school of thought that uh has Andy Warhol figuring quite significantly in kind of some of the grooves and scratches that became punk [Music] rock The Velvet stood out from that whole hippie culture with the the dressed in black the wraparound Shades the subject matter of the material the the the literary influences you know the S masochism the drugs it was so attractive and so alluring and I just loved it because it was saying [ __ ] off to the Hipp is as well opening people's minds up to to other possibilities can only be done sometimes with rabid ideas you're really trying to be polite about it in a way and say Hey you know don't you get it generally they don't and you have to like push the boundaries Here [Music] Comes Nico came and and joined the band and this was kind of the first turn that she took in her career she was a a top fashion model everybody knows the she does she's just a little te nobody understood it at the time and that's where I suddenly got a different view of Andy that he had the vision of of of what PR really is and and how to propel image the the astonishing thing about L Talent at the time was the literary background but also uh he could sit down with a guitar and just pop up a song about almost [Music] anything hey white boy what you doing uptown hey white boy chasing all women around but when their record came out it was actually listenable you know and uh it was you know to me it was a beautiful record I mean I played it all the time Lou Reed and his crew making this atonal music coming from art and heroin and death in the middle of of like Feelgood that's punk rock take out theams [Music] [ __ ] pry good I could get CRA the MC5 was part of an entire generation that was in in agreement that the direction the country was going in was wrong we were the ones that were going to have to go to Vietnam we didn't agree with the way they treated people of color in America we didn't agree with the the way they uh suppressed our cultural efforts you know um our ideas about things and we just wanted to be heard happy a good time now he do it all right it all right do it all it all well yeah our basic Outlook was Cultural Revolution by any means necessary including rock and roll dope and [ __ ] in the streets that was number one we uh read in the Black Panther newspaper that uh Huey Newton said there needs to be a white panther party to do parallel work that the Black Panthers were doing and we said that's us we're ready yeah let's go my hand let me kick out the yeah kick out the got one of our songs was called kick out the jams and and we cooked up this intro for the tune where Tiner would scream kick out the jams [ __ ] and we knew it was a little bit Wicked you know and we were kind of breaking a taboo gosh they said a bad word but what the hell you know this is rock and roll and it's all in good fun well when they rushed the album out the programmers heard the [ __ ] and and they lost it man they lost it and it effectively broke the back of of the whole the mc5's entire campaign it's hard to think of today when you almost have to say [ __ ] I mean you're talking about people in a rock and roll band you know we're on acid you know we're smoking 50 joints a day you know around riding in little Vans for hundreds of miles with James Brown playing at 10 on the in the car you [Music] know we had some friends up in an arbor that shared some principles with the MC5 sonically especially and uh they called their band the Stooges Meer little stranger and I give you a give me a danger little Strang and I'll I remember the first time I saw Iggy Pop he was covered with oil and glitter and um and everybody was kind of staring at him going what the hell is this you know it was kind of a really strange different kind of attitude he was kind of jumping around like a [ __ ] you know now you will be my l [Music] Primal beats you know slabs of sound brutally psychologically honest lyrics you know in a metaphor I mean I want to be your dog those kinds of things you know things that he grabbed from the blues now I want to be your dog now I want to be a dog I think the transformative experience that happened to ig was and I was at that show too he saw the doors seeing the doors change them they were they were they were mesmerized you know they just what they saw in that performance gave them a whole new lease on life mil sleep on the side you know these were bands that weren't selling records you know um Iggy sort of claimed as far as he knew he didn't sell any records until he came to New York and met this other this newer generation of like the Ramones and stuff who who were completely informed by the Stooges which I think was shocking for him it seemed like a lot of the people who started the early both the punk and The New Wave bands in America were the only Stooges fan in their town the only velvet underground fan and then we all moved to bigger towns and met each other and started [Music] [Applause] [Music] bands you know rock and roll had becomes this just be denim kind of drum solo kind of thing and what we wanted to do is bring it down to 3 minutes and put that Little Richard drag on top of it and and and that's what rock and roll was to us you know we were just trying to make rock and roll you know punk rock wasn't even a thought at that time I don't think but the the seeds for Punk were certainly being sewn by the dolls and by all the BS that had come uh previous to that such as the velvets and stes and the MC5 andina on the in England there was this thing be this controversy because this guy said what did he say Mock Rock which you know I mean I I could have cared less at the time but I can see how it kind of like galvanized kids who thought like well this is the real deal so where do you know you all fart first of all music from an American group who out of the stones what the monkeys were to The Beatles a pale and amusing derivative these are the New York [Music] Dolls you so fly up in the SK any could ever when I saw them and they're kind of a uh the way that they didn't care about nothing and that just really strapped me straight away you know what I mean it was like something completely different to anything else that was going on there every punk band that I knew in London and I knew all of them they they all had both of the New York Dollar albums no one have told us we had all Impact you know we didn't know anything about it yeah we would have moved to England and stayed here when I say I'm in love you best believe I'm in love [Music] Luv I know this's this thing oh Malcolm McLaren managed the dolls but you know he hung around with us for like the last two weeks of our existence we were like we were going down in flames Malcolm thought like what's the most shocking thing in America they're really afraid of Communism in America so let's make all these red clothes and have a red party then for shock value you put a big flag with a hammer and sickle in the back and they didn't sing about being communists it was just there to irritate people and it sure did it's so funny to think now that you know that communism in the States was like was like child molesting you know so this was it I mean you know In America which we were such a hard pill to swallow you know everyone was booing them you know [ __ ] get off the stage and you know a lot of that stuff we were number number one man and we were way ahead of the pack and that's when we fell and broke our leg and Bam everybody else just the show and that that look was kind of the the final blow and it's sort of interesting cuz that sort of marks the point where glamrock died and punk rock started as the dolls sort of began to wind down and then eventually broke up there were other bands coming in that had been kind of in the C ccle of the dolls and been inspired by the dolls and they started forming bands in New York pre 75 punk rock scene was probably just starting to bubble but nobody knew it was going to be the punk rock scene uh and we were just uh taking notes from the MC5 and taking notes from the Stooges and and uh the The Cauldron was starting to Bubble you know everybody was so fed up with with what was going on with rock and roll which was Deep Purple these big bloated con concerts where they do these organ solos for 20 minutes or these guitar solos for 20 minutes the Bowery was still the Bowery it wasn't cleaned up yet it was still fun and a little dangerous and edgy and it was a you know a different cultural social world back then also everybody was sick of the Vietnam War which started in 1965 and went to 1975 so it was kind of like you know what we don't want to be political anymore you know we want to kind of be about don't step on my Blue Suede Shoes which is probably the most political thing you could say because that's about personal freedom the dictators are a kind of an unknown band and they were they were actually the first they came out in 74 with a an album called dictators go girl crazy with a I'm one we son handsome dick Manitoba was on the cover you know and he had this big afro and he was dressed in this wrestling suit but inside the cover if you pulled it out there was a cover and they were all in black leather jackets sitting at a White Castle hamburger stand and that's when we said yes and we're at the White Castles and [ __ ] and getting drunk and and playing rock and roll and we're going to spit out our culture and what we think is [Music] cool the one seares to you heard a lot about these groups often from word of mouth and from other people on the street and uh a lot of Flyers were up and then people were pressing their own singles you know it was truly alternative because it really was people doing it for themselves and because they wanted to express something we were kind of like uh smashing those Idols you might say of the the the the status quo of the guitar bass and drums and we took them all out and then we had only two guys and um and then the name suicide on top of it and yeah we knew it was different I mean suicide were around at the time that the dolls were around they were pre punk you know and they were doing something that was so completely off the deep end and they were off there like with their radiated radiated glasses and radiated music Alan Vago would come out with this motorcycle chain that was like 8 ft long and Marty started playing and he sing a couple of notes then he' start whipping the floor with this 8ot bull this chain this completely frightened people out of the room so [Music] cute I would have to think that suicide had to be a tremendous influence on absolutely everybody [Applause] motorcy at that time there were only two bars to play that played original music and that was cbgbs and Max's I opened in December 73 as cbgbs which stands for Country Bluegrass Blues I made it a policy the only way they could play here not they could the only way they could play here is they had to do their own music that was the first time I had this new wave of what we call punk music with the group television but they didn't sound good to me I saw television maybe 20 times I think and I saw them I think in some of their very first shows so I I was uh really inspired by that whole scene very early on there's something very French in a way from me about television I don't know why but uh aesthetically they were very different and their music could have extended instrumental passages that would just lift you away and transport you somewhere Jesus died but we had Patty here in the spring of 75 for seven weeks she's one person who sort of really predates punk as far as like being an artist doing performance and doing writing and but at the same time she really informed Punk to such a degree and so she's very significant the way she comes in I thought Patty Smith was the Queen of the Universe I mean the number of times I sat in front of of her first album turned up all the way on my stereo I mean I just thought this is this is it this is rock that I've dreamed about the boy looked at Johnny Johnny wanted to run Johnny wanted to move but the movie kept moving as planned boy gri Johnny he pred him against AA he drove it and he drove it home he drove it deeping Johnny these records were not records that were what you would think of punk rock they weren't sort of you know sped up Chuck Berry riffs and it wasn't it wasn't you know this this kind of hammer uh you know punk rock cording thing these were these were more otherworldly in a way suddenly Johnny gets a feeling he's been surrounded by horses horses there was always an intellectual side to the punk movement lot of those bands from that time we're picking up influences from The Poets and the writers that they had grown up listening to uh rimbo certainly and um actually a big one was um Jack caroak uh you know on the [Music] [Music] road I remember rich hell walking in one night Richard kind of walked in wearing these clothes safety pinned together and Malcolm was totally taken by that idea of like anti fashion he was very bright and he wrote blank generation and when he did that and sang that with television first and then he started Richard hell and the voidoids Malcolm saw that and took it back to [Music] [Applause] [Music] London this some of the safety pins and and and the stapled cuffs and things like that were more of a necessity of people actually trying to hold their clothes together and then in London we'd see these pictures of kids who call themselves punks and they they'd have safety pins all over the place they'd rip the clothing on purpose just so they could buy a whole bunch of safety pins and put the safety pins in the rips all over the place and then we'd have to hear about how they're on the Dole and they don't have any money oh [Music] [Applause] the rones were rehearsing down the hall from us one day and uh in the rehearsal place and uh Joey comes over and he goes oh David come down the hall and you're my band you know so I get down the hall and they start they play me a song and I was like you gotta be kidding like get a job you know I had no idea that they were so fabulous [Music] [Applause] [Music] in the early 70s we discovered uh bands like like the Stooges the MC5 The Velvet Underground then later the New York [Music] Dolls Dei had heard about CBG because didy didy was a friend of Richard hell a few Sundays later we put television in and the Ramones they were worse than [Music] television it was a really interesting set because our equipment kept breaking down and we kept breaking strings and we would get into fights between songs so we hardly ever even finish the song I remember seeing the Ramones and hating them I hated them I walked out so pissed off that my friend brought me here and for 24 hours I could not think of anything else about how mad I was that this guy brought me to see this lousy band the next night I was [Music] back first time I saw the Ramones like the whole set maybe 12 Songs went by in about 16 minutes and I remember thinking like what the hell was that we were missing the essence of rock and roll which was basically what we grew up with was was was the three minute song what happened though was that because we were playing so fast the three minute songs became one and a half minute songs I take [Applause] it [Music] as far as why we're playing so fast that's the way we [Music] play's go let's go let's go let's [Music] go leg mcneel and John Holmes jum had this idea that they started a magazine then they could probably get free records and free drinks and they'd say that they were representing a magazine and since there was no magazine that they could represent because nobody cared about this kind of Downtown Music they started their own magazine and John wanted to call teenage news which I thought was a very stupid idea I didn't realize it at the time but it was from an unreleased New York Dolls record I said okay what do we call a magazine about you know comics and uh fashion and uh funny stuff why don't we call it punk I was like perfect we'll call it Punk the first night we decided to do any kind of interviews we went to cbgb's legs insisted on dragging along his friend Mary Haron and that was the night we met Lou Reed was the first time I saw the Ramones the RS came out and they counted off the wrong song 1 2 3 4 and they all went to the wrong song and they threw down their guitars in self-disgust and it was great I was just like you know completely shell shocked but it was it was so I felt I was seeing something completely new that was the night we met Lou Reed and I went up to him and said oh we're going to interview you for Punk magazine John said yeah we'll put you on the cover and he said oh your circulation must be fabulous I can't seem to face up to the fact I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax I can't sleep cuz my bed's on fire don't touch me I'm a real life one and the media picked up punk rock and started calling television Talking Heads Patty Smith everybody in New York was punk rock all of a sudden psch K none of the Bands call themselves Punk or particularly wanted to be Punk uh the Ramon certainly didn't want to be called that unfortunately I think it was detrimental to us as far as the a straight media was concerned because they assumed we were bunch of hooligans uh and were kind of afraid of us and the bands were so diverse that I don't even know if that's what they were know some of these bands I wouldn't have classified them as Punk but they have a punk attitude like television see I don't feel television but they are I mean they came from the punk uh Patty Smith if you want to take the lyric all right you know some of these things in a sense are Punk uh uh The Dead Boys were more rock and roll than Punk but they certainly had Punk lyrics and a punk [Applause] [Music] attitude when punk crck came out it was very threatening and frightening to some people I even Debbie Harry talks about when she would go to radio stations people were like afraid of her because they heard she was punk rock like she was going to pull out a knife or something hang around with g no so I remember one time seeing Blondie at cbgbs and I think it was harder glass that they were playing and it sounded almost like a disco song and it sounded much more Musical and much more mainstream than any of the Bands had played before and it sounded like something that you could actually start hearing on the radio and what the major labels had done it said okay New Wave is acceptable Blondie The Knack the cars pink neck ties nazy suit jackets and all but we don't want anything to do with [Music] Punk when the UK kind of blew up which was immediately after really or almost at the same time there was a different vibe and we were really you know my friends and I were really interested in that curious as to how how does this same kind of thing uh how is it expressed in a in a somewhat different culture climate my mother called me and said Punk started in England I'm like oh [Music] Mom the political social climate at the time in the 70s was crucial to the formation of punk rock because uh punk rock was talking about the do qu and the winter of discontent the fabric of society that time was that when we first thought it was in our eyes was falling apart we had a three-day week you had rubbish [Applause] strikes you know everywhere you went it was like bad news they were talking about burying people in the at Sea in the Mery because the grave triggers are on site I mean it was that bad God the Queen the time was just right it wasn't orchestrated it was like all the all these elements of people not being happy with what was going on at present so I suppose that probably had quite a strong um push for all of us to say well we better do something for ourselves rather than uh weely on anybody else God the queen she Ain no human being is no future Eng well there's no such word as Punk at the time if I remember the first time I heard that word used in in conjunction with what what we were doing was uh I think it was Caroline [ __ ] or one of these Jos um and I I was I was a little bit shocked to be quite honest because uh you know I thought we were kind of you I didn't really know what we were doing all I knew it was kind of different from the the garbage that was going around at the time what 7475 76 I mean the place to be was you know the King's Road it was the only place that was interesting the one thing that would draw us to the King's Road was Vivian and Malcolm's shop that was one thing you had to go and see and hang out in I've never seen anyone who looked like this ever before in my life she had just just this white this white head stuck out all over the place and these purple eyebrows drawn on and I'd never met anyone like Malcolm and Vivien because they looked so [ __ ] bizarre for a start people like Vivian Westwood or kind of social sponge I don't mean she sponges as in leech I mean sponge as in she soaks up what's going on that the mood line you know she kind of feeds feels all the political and economic moods and then translates it into into her clothes everything the trousers all come with a little loin cloth on the back everybody wants to know what that's for it's just a loin cloth it's just a gesture of some kind of tribalism really you could always point out that maybe this it's got some connection with the fact that this ZIP goes right around the back up the ass as well I don't know first time I went into Malcolm's store hear in and I saw these bondage pants you know where had straps on them where you're supposed to like strap your legs together and it seemed like the dumbest idea in the world to me I mean how you going to walk just kind of Bounce B down the street I thought nobody's going to aware that and I came back to England about six months later and all these kids with their legs strapped together bouncing down the street I don't think Punk would have happened without Malcolm and Vivian to be honest something would have happened and it might have even been called punk but it wouldn't have looked the way it did and the look of it was so important Saturday afternoon people used to flip between AC attractions and um Let It Rock and John was one of that crowd we arranged his meeting for him to come down to meet us for a drink and he got the gig he said what you call he said the Sex Pistols he said that's awful it's so bad I love it Antichrist I am an anist we've been reading about the sex pistols in the nmy a gig at the St mountains College of Art I think it was the one where somebody shouted out from the audience you can't play and one of them said uh so what we read the first um review of The Sex Pistols in nme don't look over your shoulder The Sex Pistols are coming and he said oh look there's a review here for this band in London who do stoes songs nobody did stoes songs they do version of an nor fun we thought oh and there was this fantastic line of well we're not into music we're into chaos I which appealed to Howard and it was those two things that that kind of went with me so with this big this kind of feeling could destroy a nation we successfully saw them twice the weekend we came down to London February 1976 uh I said to Malcolm uh do you want to come and play at our College about 100 people turned up um and I think we know that included morisy half of Joy Division and New Order apparently everybody in that audience started a band uh all seven [Music] million [Music] should pass see much of the future unless we find sh the hundra club punk rock festival was a two-day event that featured bands like the pistols the Damned The Clash Subway sect and Susie and the Benes I think that my first reaction when I went down into the 100 Club was I can't believe they've taken this all [Music] seriously the formation of the bands was quite liquid you know you one minute Tony James would be in the dam and the next minute you know Chrissy hind would you know we'd all be work feeling each other see how it went kind of thing so um Chrissy was in uh an early incarnation of the Damned which she she wanted to call it um Mike Hunt's honorable discharge um a Charming name I've got a new R I got it good yes I knew that I always would I can't stop to mess around they were more like an American punk band than the London bands which were Unfortunately they didn't always have a great sense of humor we used to jump from you know top of tall building to another tall building to steal a flag you know or or to or to get in someone else's hotel room to [ __ ] in their bed you know the these things don't happen anymore unfortunately you know I remember going to see R damned I think and walking back with Mark P who had just started this was starting this fanene sniffing glue you've got to get out there and shove it down people's throats your ideas and if it means being a bit violent you know so okay you know sniffing glue obviously was like the first the Xerox copy fanine it was like an expression of our own thing rather than this more glossy American magazines you know the first issue of Sniff and glue put Blue Oyster Cult on the cover then had the Sex Pistols under cover yeah The Clash the damed and the pistols were all about the same kind of Fame stroke notoriety whatever you want to call it at the time uh until the pistols were lucky enough to be invited on the Grandy show I mean anyone could have gone on and SAR Joe strammer could have done it I could have I'm very good at swearing you know go on you've got another 5 Seconds say something outrageous Dirty Bastard again you dirty [ __ ] what a clever boy what a [ __ ] well that's it for tonight I'll be seeing you soon I hope I'm not seeing you again from me though good night I'm going to complain to my TV I really can't believe the reaction that it had that you know people kick their TV sets in and were outraged the filth and the fury I mean you could never predict that that would go so ballistic that's how they leapt across uh in in the old uh Fame States and and they were the kind that was the filth and the Fury and the front pages and all this stuff I am anti I am don't went completely mad from that point on and we all like set off I think we next day we set off on the Anar tour um the pistols ourselves and uh Johnny Thunder and the Heartbreakers I think we we had like 16 dates booked and uh as we went up the motorway the the the dates got less and less and uh I think we ended up doing only four and then it was back in time just in time for Christmas do you feel the publicity following the temps television interview has been damaging or do you think it's helped you I don't think it's been damaging far from it whether it's helping us is another [Music] matter got [Music] you know a lot of [ __ ] had gone down and things came ahead between me and John I can't have had enough at that stage pistols marked two with Sid bad mistake Nancy went over to England cuz Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers came over and she was good friends with them and she met Sid and it was apparently love at first sight but they were really bad for each other cuz Nancy was you know on the dope when for a long time I saw the transition of what that drug can do to people and courtesy of that horrible girl Nancy spongin I just saw him completely [Music] change I love the pistol because of their again like the Ramones although in in a very not American way the pistols were incredibly reductive to emotions anger three chords you know just the kind of damaged sound of rock and roll being very reduced was so beautiful to me it became clear that lyrics were very important to these bands you know they were they were dealing with um you know everyday matters in a in a in a very um aidite and poetic fashion I thought especially when you got to read the you know Joe strummer's lyrics and things like that you know steel shoes on the stone coold floor I hear the screws screaming in the corridor the bad news and the slaming of the doors what did I do what I here for I took my existing poems and uh and read them at break next speed you know because it seems to me that it was part of the uh part of the house style of punk was uh was fast you know you had to you had to be [Music] fast [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a lot of the influences uh for the English Punk scene were really uh mostly homegrown really kind of Glam bands like the Ziggy Stardust which is DAV Bo and the spiders from Mars M the hoop Sensational Alex Harvey [Music] [Applause] band Tony James and I had a band called London SS that was like kind of before the clash and we used to put an advert in the Melody Maker every week saying anybody who's into the stoes and the MC5 the New York Dolls should get in touch with us BR brought in this kid one day too goodlooking I thought to be in the band um and was an art student and it was Paul simonon and I thought I looked at Paul and Mick together and I thought I got to get out of this now because you know they I could see they were made for each other it was essentially uh Tony James playing bass Mick Jones guitar and Brian James on guitar they formed the bands like the Damned Generation X The Pretenders and of course the Clash Jack forever we started the first Clash album and uh we didn't really want to know anything so we just did what we thought we played our tracks that we had a few tracks that we had basically our set before we made a record the everybody's driving withlight like turn on face everybody watch [Music] television everybody sees the second record Give Them Enough Rope as a transitional record and in that time we we go to loads of places we've never been before and uh see a lot of the world that we hadn't seen before and all that goes in towards our third record London Calling which is uh sort of like when we come into our own [Music] way far away town the war is declared about to come down pistol were like really angry and loud and just yelling about it where the class were angry and loud but questioning about it and whereas the pistol would just like scream about how you know something was wrong The Clash would kind of say well this is wrong but what are you going to do about it where are [Music] gar we come from [Music] gar I remember there were a lot of places that wouldn't let us play up and down the country universities and and that was probably something that they'd read that we we had a song called White [Applause] Riot they thought we were some sort of national front group whereas really the song was about white people getting up and doing it for themselves cuz uh our black Neighbors were doing it for themselves in so far as the riots and whatever so it is time for for the white people to get on with their own situation things got a bit serious after a couple of years when Martin Webster's National front started coming to punk gigs and try to recruit people I think that's why we played The Rock Against RAC gig just to sort of make it clear that we're actually we're on this side of the fence we're not over there what people people called the politicization of the of the Clash was came from two things I would say that Bernard said to us we should write about what we know about and the second thing was the way that Joe was he was always thinking about things like that Strummer thought of the world and the potential of of music as like a you know he's always making references to radio broadcasts and you know this one's going out to to the world he had that kind of Woody guthy thing or a kind of thing that Dylan had and Bob Marley had and and sometimes John Lenin had where they they were aware of that power but they weren't egotistical about [Music] it and he had this sense and he knew and it was true that something he would think of in a small in his basement in ladbrook Grove had the potential of affecting you know young people particularly all over the planet no your [Music] rights these are your rights oh no your right these are your rights y not in July of 76 we went to um uh London and uh we played uh The Roundhouse I couldn't believe it I said this is the audience that the Ramon deser this is the audience that this music needs this is the other half it was just like totally like uh really short songs really hard attack No Nonsense and it was just like cut down bare to the Bone you know and it was that that was inspiring there were members of The Clash The Sex Pistols Sid Vicious learned how to play the guitar by listening to the Ramon and just staying up for three nights on speed and playing along the Ramon's records and the Ramones were the one band I think that the English punks kind of looked up to and I remember saying to Joey and he was like oh they really liked us in England I was like yeah but who cares it's England you know why do we just get why we have we the first rehearsal I went to we had hardly no songs we could hardly play and we started with a Ramon song Blitz Blitz Sak [Music] B the slits were one of the best fans in the in the punk scene um for my money and again they were just so makeshift we were different from other girls because of our lyrics and because of our the way we dressed and our attitude and [Music] everything we did not enjoy any other uh girl images that were around so we stripped down all the conditioning and punk helped us to do [Music] that there was a scene already but the Roxy was the place where it all kind of it was focused in on suddenly you had place to play The Roxy has really officially started on January first 1977 with a clash opening there was a place for where the groups could actually get up on stage and play in front of an audience [Music] [Applause] [Music] music there was a disc jockey at the time Don Le his record collection was heavily based on dub and reggae and there was no real Punk records around it was done diving into his collection and magically it worked he would play the real Roots culture Rock reg the real dub and that's how a lot of the Punky regga evoled later on so reggae was the sort of soundtrack to the whole Punk scene at least it was in London I mean no one listened to anything else that I know [Music] of and it gave you an attitude that you could uh take on to that's how I learned how to play was playing along to reggae records all the guys that were working behind the bar were living up at Forest Hill with Don lets myself we all stayed up there everyone always was hanging out in Dawn's room cuz he had all the records and stuff everyone that was hanging out there gotten some ban or another I know Ariana came up there some of the slits would be up there The Clash would be up there that was the beauty of that scene everyone got a band together and everyone was in a band and everyone you knew was trying to get a band together and You' probably played with half of them open of you 1 [Music] 2 to be honest I found some of the elements of the Roxy quite [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] disturbing I thought I was in hell when I went there like going down to the nether [Music] [Applause] [Music] regions we didn't make any money cuz the most of the bar staff was selling bloody splits behind the bar and not any drink certainly speed I think was the the the drug of choice and when the Heartbreakers came over they were all on they were all taking smack and so of course everyone was in the toilets anyway shooting speed and then when the smack came into the scene that was kind of punk was over after that it only lasted a 100 days officially 100 days at the Roxy because the things went so fast in those days by the time the ball was really going for everybody it was just it was starting to get a little bit cliche suddenly the whole country knew about it and then everybody would turn up at gigs with what they assumed was the punk rock look which meant a safety pin in the cheek uh and like a black bin liner for clothes or something but then again you look at the groups none of those groups had safety pin in their cheeks none of them had a bin liner so this is a whole tabloid thing that was made up it became a little bit regimented later on where everyone was kind of wearing leather jackets with studs and M and all this stuff punk rock itself got actually quite nasty didn't it towards the end especially all the tabloids sort of uh you know all this gobbing spitting hate and Sid killing himself and Nancy and all this weird stuff for the small amount of people that were really in integral to the beginning of it um we I suppose we'd all moved on really Punk inherently was going to have a short lifespan because the beauty of punk music anyway was the fact that no one really could play very good and what happens is if you get into a band and you actually like playing and you want to make music your you know your life or well we didn't think in terms of careers but if you wanted to pursue that then inevitably you got better at your craft it is time for you to stop all of the [Music] you the the pistols in The Clash what was happening there there was an energy there and there was a forcefulness about what they were doing and the determination about it that that really I could tie into the same kind of cultural revolution energy that was in New York there was a difference and yet we were all there was a sense of and now an international kind of community of thought the immigration department tried to protect us from them denying them visas for a few days late in December but now they're here and they're loosed upon the land they're the Sex Pistols the British punk rock group that began their first American concert tour last night in Atlanta they had this whole hype around them where they were the craziest band in history and people were afraid to be in the same room as them so the first half of the tour was cancelled and they ended up opening in Atlanta and the police kept warning them that if they tried pissing on the stage or throwing up on stage or raping any women they're going right to jail it's it's pretty far from what the reality was they were they were not that crazy on stage until they got to San Antonio this place ry's Rodeo was a converted bowling alley and there there was about 2,000 rednecks there who each and every one of them wanted to personally beat the crap out of the sex pistols they didn't help matters because Johnny was wearing a t-shirt that had two gay cowboys having sex with each other and the audience was just throwing full beer cans and food and anything they get to get their hands on at the pistols and the pistols just kept going Sid would take a full beer can right off the teeth and spit on somebody and the crowd loved it they had just done the most successful thing they had achieved what every band wants they came as a new band starting in a couple of clubs ending up the last day playing a huge theater in San Francisco to a giant audience and then broke up here's an interesting thing that happened punk rock boom it comes out then the Sex Pistols break up Johnny lien forms Public Image which to me is infinitely more interesting than the sex pistol you never listen to a you some real musicians came out of punk rock like they really wanted to do some music and all of a sudden uh Howard Devoto morphs out of the buzzcock he has Magazine with a really challenging Brew of [Music] Music they got a bucket full of grief from their fans and you find out that punk rockers were some of the most narrow-minded people on the face of the Earth talk about you grow your hair too long what are you hippie now and we found it in America you try something like you put a guitar solo in a song the song is longer than a minute and a half and all of a sudden like what's that you know Freebird you're like God come on give us a little room [Music] no [Music] [Music] we were very much connected with the whole English Post Punk thing I mean it seemed to me they had they had heard the New York bands I mean it was very similar to the punk thing the rough trade bands the raincoats and the pop group and gang of four I those bands were extremely powerful for us the fall you know in Manchester I mean these were just different ideas coming out that weren't just you know um it wasn't pretty [Applause] [Music] vacant the no wave scene was probably best personified by James chance I remember I beat him up one night I don't know why um and he had two black eyes which actually improved his looks a little bit I'll tell you how it got started um it was one of the first contortions gigs it was in like just this sort of Hall you know where there wasn't any stage or anything and and all these people were just like sitting on the floor and and if there's one thing that I can't stand is people sitting on the floor at one of my shows and so I just started waiting out into the audience and and and pulling them up to their feet you [Music] know and that didn't even seem to get them very upset so I just started like slapping them and stuff you know I just I was really just trying to get a a a reaction out of these people and then later on we had somebody who would come and like like drag me back after I've been in the audience for a while James chance was doing his sort of James Brown thing with people who really were at the time nonmusicians and he liked the idea of them making scratchy scony noise I said it's better than pleasure and it hurts more than pain I [Music] got by 1980 Punk was really over because one all the New York bands got signed and were on tour so there wasn't a scene at cbgbs anymore Patty left the scene television pretty much disbanded Blondie became New Wave if not disco so I don't know I mean um at least as far as I'm concerned it was like well then [ __ ] it I'll start a [ __ ] band and I wanted to challenge people and I wanted to mess with their heads I wanted to [ __ ] them off 1 2 [Music] 3 the no wave scene was was really hated by most people I knew who were into the punk rock scene that's like it was I had friends who were like it's it's not music it's it's ugly it sounds bad it's like horrible if you want to find what the sound of no wave was it was truly DNA it was truly the band that broke completely from every everything that was happening in Punk and with teenage Jesus I mean my God I mean I that it's just undefinable what the hell she was doing very interesting music but not really something you could dance to all right all right who the hell are you with the band the band wears your instruments what the in New York punk rock became really a with with with hip hop in a way and there was a period in the late '70s especially in the early early 80s where those two scenes merged hip hop and and punk rock in New York at least socially like with Rick Rubin getting involved with Run DMC and The Clash getting involved uh with hip-hop you got to fight for your right they had records They had turntables they found two turntables you could take a piece of this song and a piece of this song and that was their [Music] instrumentation hip-hop had a completely different attitude because it really had its eye on being really a a communication tool but at the same time it had no problems with going for the gold and that was the difference in a way that I always noticed that like punk rock sort of was embarrassed by riches [Music] thanks to Glenn brona you have Sonic Youth in my opinion I mean for at least two years no one came to their [ __ ] concerts you know it was their constant perseverance and touring and getting records out and ambiti that drove them to where they [Music] are but that was the point at which the labels just stopped paying any attention to people who in the 60s would have been like Frank Zappa and Captain beefart and that's when the music got really interesting to me that's when the that's when the rubber hit the road and all of a sudden these guys are is going screw you I'm going for the music instead of what you think and what the genre wants now that the the spiky hair is gone I see that you're a well- read guy because now you can do songs that show me that you're a real artist oh I can see that you're into different stuff uh you oh you're a doist now okay I'm very [Music] interested by the end of say oh maybe mid 79 the only people playing punk music left were the people who really wanted to be there and so there was this big split which meant Punk went more underground and got more intense more purist in a way which is both good and bad and more hardcore the genre hardcore it's American as you know fake Wars and apple pie and baseball it's when that [ __ ] yeah guy got a guitar he does that in the 7-Eleven parking lot you what the [ __ ] you looking at that's his band okay now he's got a guitar bands that I loved that I considered hardcore punk it's probably the best way to say where bands like Black Flag Circle joks dead Kennedy's are a phenomenal band they had so much great stuff to [Music] say got this sick sense of humor that other people have but they're not showing in their bands what can I do with [Music] that plus what would happen if I took the horror of Alice Cooper but made it about real things that happen to people instead of vampires and monsters police [Music] brutality you know there was Punk and then there was more extreme Punk and people were calling it hardcore they were Surfers they were skateboarders and in some cases they were very violent Surfers and skateboarders so out Came the song Nazi punks [ __ ] off the dead kennedies also got tagged with that hardcore punk thing most people would concur it was kickstarted by the appearance of the Damned they came here very early in April 1977 caused a sensation the bags came up bags uh the germs uh the weirdos uh the screamers you know that another great band that actually never recorded which is one of these biggest disappeared UND documented Legend of all [Music] time the screamers were one of the most important influences on dead kennedies as I said there was both uh British stuff was influencing us but also there was so many things right in our backyard that are largely unknown the screamer show I think was probably my first punk rock show that I went to official punk rock B punk rock [Music] [Applause] show every scene needs a center every scene needs a set of characters a clubhouse I think without the mask it wouldn't have grown it wouldn't flourished there was uh you know a bit of the the glamrock C from West LA that coalesced around the germs the art school crowd that coales around the [Music] weirdos East Coast dirty cities small a lot of people they you know people living High stacked on top of each other a lot of Street crime polluted Skies the ocean comes up to your ankle and there's a dead guy floating in it to California sun Fun beautiful girls surfing and punk rock how can you have Sun hot chicks surfboards oranges and punk rock a lot of people mistakenly think that because it's happening in California Sunny California where kids are at the beach that they have great lives but you know you could have a messed up life anywhere from the East Co to the West CO got to got to got to go on the East Coast often it's at a little faster beat per minute just cuz East Coast people like what I am we talk faster we we talk more we're more in your face [ __ ] you means [ __ ] you not hey let's do lunch next week it's on and the music reflects it Agnostic Front could have never come out of [Applause] [Music] La it kind of went from Punk to the new wave to The Artsy stuff and we weren't really nothing about that we we wanted just pure aggression you know you start doing the Circle pits and stuff and Slam [Applause] Dancing guys touching each other sweating flesh spectral muscles very homoerotic you say fellas stop fighting get a room get it over with yeah but lyrically now there was changes there was bands like monor threat coming up with saying like there there was a straighted movement you know which they considered no drink no smoke no [ __ ] whatever that was [Music] about the straightest scene was coined same Washington DC with a Teen Idols or Minor Threat we don't drink we don't smoke we don't [ __ ] you know it was it was a way of self-control it was a counterculture to The Counter Culture fugazi it's it's one of Ian makai's many bands Ian had the Teen Idols Ian had Minor Threat which was a huge hugely influential band in this [Music] country fugazi has a few things they they did and did not do which were huge first off fugazi will not do an interview in any publication that has ads that have liquor or tobacco in them so Rolling Stone is like pretty pleaseed do an interview sorry can you do it can you do an issue with no liquor tobacco no then we can't talk to [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] Black Flag was hanging around they were kind of like the second generation of bands they were uh uh this was even preh Henry because Henry was in in Washington DC This was um the first generation of the band Keith Morris we always had this just like go for it attitude like you can't wait around for somebody to do something for you you have to to do it for yourself and I think a lot of that came out in the Black Flag music at first relax get set get the message from time time yeah when black black started in 79 I think Henry Rollins joined um I think it was 8 1982 so Henry's comes into it he's more an East Coast figure you know that his uh I guess Punk credentials came more from the Washington DC side of it there's songs about cops there's songs about killing yourself there's songs about depression the women who leave the car has no brakes and we're flooring it we're going to hit something so what it's Black Flag I walk by your house give you a home they were the first men that were smart enough to tour and you know actually had their [ __ ] together enough to tour and so that really helped them a lot um that helped us all a lot black flags going through the dead canes are going through the independent labels are all swapping records many you know independent distribution is coming along America kind of ignites between summer 79 and summer 81 bam one night a band from Washington came up here and uh they were black band and they were playing well they said they were hard rock band punk band and this was the uh the Bad Brains see I heard people telling me I played hardcore I didn't know what the [ __ ] hardcore was I never even said hardcore in my life I always thought hardcore was porno like triple XX or whatever the bad brain sound is a is is a sound of punk rock from The Dead Boys a combination of Ramon Sex Pistols and Dead [Music] Boys what you got in hardcore is the bad brain starting out playing punk rock and getting faster for some reason if the drum is Bored Earl he want to go talk to a girl he might playing the songs all fast I might be on stage looking at him like dude you pissing me off man come on the next thing you know it be create like a genre you know what I mean like the [Music] speed yeah [Music] music is fast we want to try to play a little faster if the music gets smooth right here we got to make it nice and smooth if the music is going to get Buck Wow right here then it got to get Buck Wow here you had Puerto Rican skin heads you had Jewish skin heads you had black skin heads nobody is going to get up on stage and and be against any of anybody here otherwise they'd be torn off the stage and thrown out I never could really want to hear nobody go [ __ ] that [ __ ] happened to me in England a kid I playing in England he said [ __ ] Yankee [ __ ] go home spit spit on me and [ __ ] I jumped down punched him in the [Music] face Punk was now on the news in the news everybody knew what it was or thought they knew what it was right around 92 everyone just curled up and started having their stomach scratched by Sony and they kind of went and old people like me are going you know back in my day we would have blown that up and they're like shut up you old man you're like okay the corn music to me is very formulaic you have your breakdown section the little rap thing and the DJ guy and like and it's all this I wanted this and that and then because I'm a and the crowds start bouncing that's right you're like this is a no-brainer if I was 17 this would probably be my favorite band and they payoff on those songs when that that that big guitar comes in you can't help it you're like hell yeah let's go wreck [Music] something P completely changed my life it changed my attitude to culture it changed my attitude towards what was possible and I think I learned to go against the system a little bit Punk proved to people and it is now ingrained in people that what they thought was impossible is not impossible you didn't have to wait to start doing something if you wanted to do it you could try doing it punk rock gave me a platform to put a band together and do it my way and that was good for an 18yar old kid kids are still wanting the same thing as as they wanted back then something to express what they're feeling they get all this information from MTV and VH1 and that's their History of Rock and and they find out that like well it's like everything else it's like school you're not really getting the full story they were introduced to it as a package they you know the the the uh the business turned it into a commodity if you will there's a lot of manufactured anger nowadays if you ask me [Music] when you can make a dollar off it it gets uploaded into the cultural lexicon the slang becomes your normal pis of the day you know grunge becomes you know Mom knows grunge now soon as mom knows how to say grunge got to go back then it it was very much considered an anti-establishment and um and it seems like today most of the bands that do form are want to be part of the establish what they pay you for now is being stupid and making people [Music] stupider it's easy for a young person to say [ __ ] you I'm 43 I'm still saying [ __ ] you I'm still like pissed it's something you know whatever you got I'm mad at it where's the political Awakening at this point in on the planet it seems like 80% of the people are [ __ ] asleep you know don't ask me why the cataclysmic state of the environment hasn't uh galvanized and you know mobilized people into doing something the more severe uh the political landscape becomes the more repressive the more valuable that the imagination becomes it's possible that music is not really the expression of it now as as far as uh relating to world what's happening in the world people doing it's people doing Visual Arts people doing literature it's people doing film you know Michael Moore making that that movie against Bush is is really punk punk definitely had a major influence in the eruption of militant anti-corporate activism that first came to light over here in the Seattle protest the the actual whole internet it's a very Punk idea because of the internet the record companies are losing their power to be king makers you can go make your own records you can go put them out yourself you can build your own little websites you can do all these things by yourself [ __ ] you to corporations [ __ ] you to branding everything and [ __ ] you to corporations having dictatorial control over society and [Applause] [Music] governments being able to look people in the eye and say [ __ ] you I don't care what you think I'm doing what I want to do um to have that to hold on to is really important to move forward and that's the that's the whole idea is it's to take the spirit and and the inspiration and and and do your own thing with it all you need is one guy or girl to stand up and say [ __ ] this and everyone goes voice of a generation thank you I've been thinking that I never had the guut to stand up and say it you only need 5% or less to like Embrace ideas and change it you know change the way people think all over again it becomes a lineage these people find each other and this timeline grows no you're right [Applause] all number one you have the right not to be killed murder is a crime unless it was done fire [Music] police oh an Aristo CL Oh no you're right and number two you have the right food my name providing a you don't mind a little investigation humiliation and if you cross your fingers Rehabilitation know your right these are your right hey say [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] way [Music] [Music]

Channel: Qwest TV

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Id: TwL2gDrU8sA

Length: 83min 44sec (5024 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023