Summer Of Punk
or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cash
NOTE: I wrote this in 1996 after seeing the reunited Sex Pistols perform. It was intended for WFMU’s Lowest Common Denominator program guide but never saw the light of day. Until now.
“No fun to hang around – around here by myself.”
Is it possible to be a punk rocker or in a hardcore band and make money? Lots of money?
Decades ago, punk rock – born of boredom, alienation, poverty, anger, frustration, a healthy sense of injustice and a liberal helping of art-school romanticism – climbed out of suburban basements in backwater towns across two continents to launch a full-frontal attack on the rampant corruption and inherent emptiness of the quote unquote music business.
Pioneers like the Velvet Underground, MC5, New York Dolls, Television, the Patti Smith Group, The Modern Lovers, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, The Ramones, and – most significantly – The Stooges, were not interested in selling records or being rock stars so much as generating a big, ugly life-affirming noise. Theirs was the sound of nerves being rubbed raw in a frantic bid for honesty amidst monumental musical deceit. If fame and fortune came via a search for truth, well, who would be stupid enough to turn away a buck? It was a desperate kicking against the pricks. And destined to fail.
"You think it's swell playing Max's Kansas...."
The greatest punk rock failure, the Sex Pistols – an experiment developed and fostered by a brilliant con man, Malcom McClaren – churned out some incredible music while convincingly advancing a program of political, social and economic hopelessness. They spoke directly to their disaffected peers, creating a well-planned ripple wherever they spat and making the tabloids daily and six o’clock news nightly simply by virtue of their novelty: "The Sex Pistols (arched eyebrow, tiny snicker) and their leader, Johnny Rotten (shaking of head, slight chuckle) reportedly started a riot last night when a member of the group, Sid Vicious (exaggerated look of bemusement) apparently struck an audience member over the head with his instrument."
But theirs was actually an unapologetic money-grab, a self-labeled “swindle” and quest for “Cash from Chaos”, dollars hewn from hype. They came to America in 1978 and self-destructed before the end of their tour. Any money earned – and all involved claim there wasn’t actually much – was fought over endlessly in a serious of lawsuits second only to the litigation kicked off by the Beatles break-up.
Through the gates the Sex Pistols kicked open came more British broadsides in an ever-widening circle of influence and homage, stolen riffs and borrowed phrases, pirated postures and assumed attitudes: The Clash, The Damned, The Cockney Rejects, The Buzzcocks, The Jam, X-Ray Spex, Sham 69 and a thousand more tried valiantly to leer and sneer their way through short, sharp, shocks and straight into the hearts of the fickle record-buying public. Some even got to the top of the English charts. None ever cracked the American Top 40. Or got rich.
Punk rockers and those playing hardcore in the 1980’s faced a serious moral dilemma: making any money from music was definitely considered gauche. The accepted, unspoken standard was for punk/hardcore sincerity and commitment to be gauged by the absence of wealth. The poorer you were the larger your badge of true punk/hardcore corps de sprit. Being rich and in a punk/hardcore band was not only unseemly, the two states were considered antithetical. Beastie Boys had to transmute themselves into white rappers and leave their punk trappings behind before they could become unabashed rock stars. This left punk rockers and those in hardcore bands in a real quandary. Outwardly desiring legitimacy, inwardly resenting their inability to convert Coors-quaffing Mellencamp-shimmying frat boys into fans, they lapsed back into their perpetual secret-society status, kept afloat by only the most ardent practitioners, rabid independent record labels and dedicated followers (of fashion).
"I'm so ugly . That's okay 'cause so are you."
The comatose corpse of punk rock arose yet again a few years ago, revived by an unkempt blonde outcast, pouring his heart out over a pounding beat and slashing guitars. Pulling off a neat trick at which thousands of unkempt outcasts before him had failed, he wafted an energetic, riff-driven little ditty to number-one all over the world. Blasting out of stereos, jukeboxes, Z28s and Walkmans from here to Tokyo, Smells Like Teen Spirit was the My Sharona of 1991:, a bonafide summer hit, as unavoidable as the sun. The secret to Nirvana’s success? A little re-tooling (“Punk” and “Hardcore” was out, “Grunge” was in) and a marketing phenomenon previously unapplied to the furtherance of the punk/hardcore cause: MTV. The frat boys put down their Silver Bullets and gladly jumped into the mosh pit, assured their rebellion had gotten the ultimate stamp of approval.
"A little group it's always been – and always will be until the end."
And then the tortured songsmith of Seattle blew his fucking brains out.
In that shotgun blast were a thousand screaming guitars, a legion of pimply empty rebel white boy bands with names like Green Day and Rancid and Offspring and Goo Goo Dolls, among others. And MTV was their meal-ticket, delivering a payday heretofore unimagined in the annals of punk/hardcore. One relentlessly-repeated video was all it took to drive a little unit from obscurity to Lollapalooza headliner. And if lots of video games and jeans and cologne got sold to that all-important 18 – 24 set in the process? Well okay, then.
"And you thought we were faking – that we were all just money making"
Cash from Chaos Part 2: 1996 and the lure of greenbacks bring the Sex Pistols crawling out from beneath a rock
"We are rrrruled by none – ever, ever, ever!"
Johnny Rotten, at a press conference in England: "We love our beer bellies and you will, too."
Back and more bloated than ever, the original line-up of Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glenn Matlock (Johnny, at the same interview: "Sid was just a clothes hanger – he filled up a space on the stage.") were mounting an extravaganza cynically (and with a nod to tradition) labeled "The Filthy Lucre Tour". The four middle-aged pensioners freely admitted to wanting a nice payday for their bother (Johnny, same interview: "You think just because we're working class we should all be poor. I say bollocks."). And MTV was there to help set the cash registers a’ringing.
At New York City’s Roseland on a Thursday night the Sex Pistols ‘96 packed in a schizophrenic “Summer of Punk” crowd composed of equal parts bifocal-wearing former bad boys, leather-jacketed, leather-faced, pot-bellied civil servants, bored-looking Smashing Pumpkins-weaned teenagers and spandex-clad, bleached-blonde, stilleto-heeled secretaries. The badge of honor for the evening was the proudly and oft-repeated “I saw them at blah blah blah in ’77”. Consuming prodigous amounts of alcohol and marijuana, the reverent rabble hobnobbed, trading old war stories, displaying battle scars and holding its collective breath in hopes of a brief deliverance from the mundane, a last grab at quickly-fading symbiotic glory.
Then the band took the stage.
Plowing through Never Mind the Bollocks and its ancillary “hits”, the old-timers pranced and prattled for forty minutes, evoking shouts of “Fuck you, Johnny!” and “What’s with that fucking hair?!” (see photo, above). The crowd knew every word and proved it by singing along, non-stop. At the mid-point of Bodies, three thousand voices, raised in unison, intoning the immortal lines “Fuck this and fuck that – fuck it all and fuck the fucking brat – she don’t want a baby who looks like that – I don’t want a baby who looks like that.” forcibly drove home three unavoidable conclusions: 1) Nostalgia and Nihilism are an unworkable combination, 2) “Autumn of Punk”, while not nearly as evocative, would’ve been far more accurate, and 3) stripped of all significance and devoid of any context, punk/hardcore is now as dangerous as Jimmy Buffet.
Maybe less so.