This is how excited I am that I'm writing a blog post about a book I'm not even 1/3 of the way into. It's Johnny Lydon's autobiography, Rotten, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. He's a cultural hero of many a confused teen; ex lead singer of the Sex Pistols and reluctant figurehead of a generational pop cultural movement.
Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) has always and will always be a contrary little sod. That is his charm. Here was I thinking that 'Punk' was about 'tribe' when all along all Johnny ever wanted was for people to be themselves; to be individuals and in that sense to be different. When punk came along music in the UK was in a bit of a state according to John. There was David Bowie and The Beatles - oversimplifying things as only John can.
Punk, a term coined by music journalist Caroline Coon for reasons known only to her began with a bunch of poor kids from different inner city centres in the south east of England, mainly Bromley and London that were into art. They didn't have any other talents except that they were bored with the status quo so they invented looks and hung out together in gay clubs - the only sort that would let them in. So punk owes its success to gay disco- this was the setting for its incubation. It's brilliant really when we consider what the world would have us think about the movement. Intolerant. Violent. Small minded. It was the opposite of that and the only violence was the sort invented by the press when stories of mayhem resulted in more papers being sold. I'm not saying there weren't scuffles but when has a scuffle made the front pages without the help of embellishment here and there.
God Save the Queen came out a couple of months before the Queen's silver jubilee totally by chance. These kids had no idea of the timing and even if they had they were 17 - they wouldn't have understood the business sense of releasing a single of that name at that time. It was all a wonderful set of coincidences. It was chaos and that is definitely a driver of the punk mentality so in a roundabout way it was all meant to be.
The most wonderful thing of all was reading about places that I know intimately and discovering that Sid (Vicious) and John had rented a flat in Sunderland Avenue (West London) at the same time I lived there as a very young child (5 years old). I wonder whether either of those two ever patted me on the head in passing? It would explain how 13 years later given that I was going down the Hip Hop route, I suddenly detoured into punk for no apparent reason.
The biggest surprise was that punk was not a political movement. Most of its members wouldn't have known politics from shoe polish, certainly had they had any notion they would not have chosen the swastika as their emblem and not surprisingly this imagery disappeared early on (subsequently adopted by the skinheads who were on another trip altogether).
This was not a bunch of intellectuals making a statement - that sort of thing was always a hippie trait. They were more into the 'politics' of situation. Absurd, random sloganeering e.g. I hate Pink Floyd - that sort of thing with no real thought behind it. In many ways it's the dictionary definition of 'the teenager'. Hip Hop would would provide the vehicle for this next but not for another 10 years.
More than anything punk was something to do. There was no talent just boredom that led to invention (the mother of all necessity). It was its very lack of structure that gave punk its edge. When The Clash came along it all became too musical for the likes of Johnny who was deeply subversive in the most immature and directionless sense. He has since moved to California of all places. It had nothing to do with selling out but instead to do with finding respite from the British Bobby who in the 80s had nothing better to do than raid Rotten's house for no good reason other than perhaps their own 'punk' mentality - how deliciously ironic. Of course punk really was dead by then so it didn't matter. It was a moment in time where the moment and time were integral to the impact the band had on youth culture and society, impossible to reproduce and foolish, utterly moronic to even try but generation upon generation still does and thank god. Life really would be boring otherwise.
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