Punk rock is an anti-establishment rock music genre and movement that emerged in the mid-1970s. Preceded by a variety of protopunk music of the 1960s and early 1970s, punk rock developed between 1974 and 1977 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, where groups such as the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Clash were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement.

Punk rock bands, eschewing the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock, created fast, hard music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation and often political or nihilistic lyrics. The associated punk subculture expresses youthful rebellion and is characterized by distinctive clothing styles, a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies, and a DIY (do it yourself) attitude.

Punk rock became a major phenomenon in the United Kingdom during the late 1970s; its popularity elsewhere was more limited. During the 1980s, forms of punk rock emerged in small scenes around the world, often rejecting commercial success and association with mainstream culture. By the turn of the century, punk rock's legacy had led to the development of the alternative rock movement, and new punk rock bands popularized the genre decades after its first heyday.

[edit] Characteristics

The Ramones' 1976 debut album "set the blueprint for punk"^[1]

The first wave of punk rock aimed to be aggressively modern, distancing itself from the bombast and sentimentality of early 1970s rock.^[2] According to Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone, "In its initial form, a lot of [1960s] stuff was innovative and exciting. Unfortunately, what happens is that people who could not hold a candle to the likes of Hendrix started noodling away. Soon you had endless solos that went nowhere. By 1973, I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bullshit rock 'n' roll."^[3] John Holmstrom, founding editor of Punk fanzine recalls feeling "punk rock had to come along because the rock scene had become so tame that [acts] like Billy Joel and Simon and Garfunkel were being called rock and roll, when to me and other fans, rock and roll meant this wild and rebellious music."^[4] In critic Robert Christgau's description, "It was also a subculture that scornfully rejected the political idealism and Californian flower-power silliness of hippie myth."^[5] Patti Smith, in contrast, suggests in the documentary 25 Years of Punk that the hippies and the punk rockers were linked by a common anti-establishment mentality. In any event, some of punk rock's leading figures made a show of rejecting not only mainstream rock and the broader culture it was associated with, but their own most celebrated predecessors: "No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977", declared The Clash.^[6] That year, when punk rock broke nationwide in Great Britain, was to be both a musical and a cultural "Year Zero".^[7] Even as nostalgia was discarded, many in the scene adopted a nihilistic attitude summed up by the Sex Pistols slogan "No Future".^[8]

Punk rock bands often emulate the bare musical structures and arrangements of 1960s garage rock.^[9] This emphasis on accessibility exemplifies punk rock's DIY aesthetic and contrasts with what those in the scene regarded as the ostentatious musical effects and technological demands of many mainstream rock bands of the early and mid-1970s.^[10] A 1976 issue of the English punk fanzine Sideburns featured an illustration of three chords, captioned "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band."^[11]

Typical punk rock instrumentation includes one or two electric guitars, an electric bass, and a drum kit, along with vocals. In the early days of punk rock, musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion. According to Punk magazine founder John Holmstrom, punk rock was "rock and roll by people who didn't have very much skills as musicians but still felt the need to express themselves through music".^[12] Punk rock songs tend to be shorter than those of other popular genres—on the Ramones' debut album, for instance, half of the fourteen tracks are under two minutes long. Most early punk rock songs retained a traditional rock 'n' roll verse-chorus form and 4/4 time signature. However, punk rock bands in the movement's second wave and afterward have often broken from that format. In critic Steven Blush's description, "The Sex Pistols were still rock'n'roll...like the craziest version of Chuck Berry. Hardcore was a radical departure from that. It wasn't verse-chorus rock. It dispelled any notion of what songwriting is supposed to be. It's its own form."^[13]

Punk rock vocals sometimes sound nasal,^[14] and lyrics are often shouted instead of sung in a conventional sense, particularly in hardcore styles.^[15] Complicated guitar solos are considered self-indulgent and unnecessary, although basic guitar breaks are common.^[16] Guitar parts tend to include highly distorted power chords or barre chords, although some punk rock bands take a surf rock approach with a lighter, twangier guitar tone. A wild, "gonzo" attack is sometimes employed, a style that stretches from Robert Quine, lead guitarist of seminal punk rock band The Voidoids, back through The Velvet Underground to the 1950s recordings of Ike Turner.^[17] Bass guitar lines are often basic and used to carry the song's melody, although some punk rock bass players such as Mike Watt put greater emphasis on more technical bass lines. Bassists often use a plectrum rather than fingerpicking due to the rapid succession of notes, which makes fingerpicking impractical. Drums typically sound heavy and dry, and often have a minimal set-up. Hardcore drumming tends to be especially fast.^[15] Production is minimalistic, with tracks sometimes laid down on home tape recorders.

The Clash, performing in 1980

Punk rock lyrics are typically frank and confrontational, and often comment on social and political issues.^[18] Trend-setting songs such as The Clash's "Career Opportunities" and Chelsea's "Right to Work" deal with unemployment and the grim realities of urban life. The Sex Pistols classics "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen" openly disparage the British political system. There is also a characteristic strain of anti-sentimental depictions of relationships and sex, exemplified by "Love Comes in Spurts", written by Richard Hell and recorded by him with The Voidoids. Anomie, variously expressed in the poetic terms of Hell's "Blank Generation" and the bluntness of the Ramones' "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue", is a common theme. Identifying punk with such topics aligns with the view expressed by Search and Destroy founder V. Vale: "Punk was a total cultural revolt. It was a hardcore confrontation with the black side of history and culture, right-wing imagery, sexual taboos, a delving into it that had never been done before by any generation in such a thorough way."^[19] However, many punk rock lyrics deal in more traditional rock 'n' roll themes of courtship, heartbreak, and hanging out; the approach ranges from the deadpan, aggressive simplicity of Ramones standards such as "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"^[20] to the more unambiguously sincere style of many later pop punk groups.

UK punks, circa 1986

With Patti Smith as the trailblazer, Siouxsie Sioux, The Slits, Pauline Murray, Nina Hagen, Gaye Advert, Poly Styrene, and other punk rock vocalists, songwriters, and instrumentalists introduced a new brand of femininity to rock music. In John Strohn's description, "They adopted a tough, unladylike pose that borrowed more from the macho swagger of sixties garage bands than from the calculated bad-girl image of bands like The Runaways. They went beyond the leather outfits to the bondage gear of Sioux and the straight-from-the-gutter androgyny of Smith. They articulated a female rage that surpassed the anger of the women's movement of the sixties."^[21]

The classic punk rock look among male musicians harkens back to the T-shirt, motorcycle jacket, and jeans ensemble favored by American greasers of the 1950s associated with the rockabilly scene and by British rockers of the 1960s. In the 1980s, tattoos and piercings became increasingly common among punk rock musicians and their fans.

[edit] Pre-history

[edit] Garage rock and mod

For more details on these topics, see Garage rock and Mod (lifestyle).

In the early and mid-1960s, garage rock bands that would come to be recognized as punk rock's progenitors began springing up in many different locations around North America. The Kingsmen, a garage band from Portland, Oregon, had a breakout hit with their 1963 cover of "Louie, Louie," cited as "punk rock's defining ur-text."^[22] The minimalist sound of many garage rock bands was influenced by the harder-edged wing of the British Invasion. The Kinks' hit singles of 1964, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night," have been described as "predecessors of the whole three-chord genre—the Ramones' 1978 'I Don't Want You,' for instance, was pure Kinks-by-proxy."^[23] Though it had little impact on the American charts, The Who's mod anthem "My Generation" (1965), influenced by the Kinks,^[24] presaged a more cerebral mix of musical ferocity and rebellious posture that would characterize much early British punk rock: John Reed describes The Clash's emergence as a "tight ball of energy with both an image and rhetoric reminiscent of a young Pete Townshend—speed obsession, pop-art clothing, art school ambition."^[25] The Who and fellow mods The Small Faces were among the few rock elders acknowledged by the Sex Pistols.^[26] By 1966, mod was already in decline. U.S. garage rock began to lose steam within a couple of years, but the aggressive musical approach and outsider attitude of "garage psych" bands like The Seeds were picked up and emphasized by groups that would later be seen as the crucial figures of protopunk.

[edit] Protopunk

For more details on this topic, see Protopunk.

In 1969, debut albums by two Michigan-based bands appeared that are commonly regarded as the central protopunk records. In January, Detroit's MC5 released Kick Out the Jams. "Musically the group is intentionally crude and aggressively raw", wrote Rolling Stone critic Lester Bangs, who continued:

Most of the songs are barely distinguishable from each other in their primitive two-chord structures. You've heard all this before from such notables as the Seeds, Blue Cheer, Question Mark and the Mysterians, and the Kingsmen. The difference here...is in the hype, the thick overlay of teenage-revolution and total-energy-thing which conceals these scrapyard vistas of clichés and ugly noise.... "I Want You Right Now" sounds exactly (down to the lyrics) like a song called "I Want You" by the Troggs, a British group who came on with a similar sex-and-raw-sound image a couple of years ago (remember "Wild Thing"?)^[27]

Iggy Pop, the "godfather of punk"^[28]

That August, The Stooges, from Ann Arbor, premiered with a self-titled album. According to critic Greil Marcus, the band, led by singer Iggy Pop, created "the sound of Chuck Berry's Airmobile—after thieves stripped it for parts".^[29] The album was produced by John Cale, a former member of New York's experimental rock group The Velvet Underground. Having earned a "reputation as the first underground rock band", VU would inspire, directly or indirectly, many of those involved in the creation of punk rock.^[30]

On the East Coast, the New York Dolls updated the original wildness of 1950s rock 'n' roll in a fashion that later became known as glam punk.^[31] In Boston, The Modern Lovers, directly inspired by The Velvet Underground, were getting attention with a minimalistic style. In Ohio, a small but influential underground rock scene emerged, led by Devo, The Electric Eels, and Rocket from the Tombs, who in 1975 split into Pere Ubu and The Dead Boys; the latter would move to New York and become part of the city's punk rock scene the following year. In London, the pub rock scene stripped the music back to its basics, and provided a grounding for many of the key players in the later punk rock explosion, including The Stranglers, Cock Sparrer, and Joe Strummer of The 101'ers, who would soon be a cofounder of The Clash.^[32] Bands with a compatible sensibility were coming together as far afield as Düsseldorf, West Germany, where "punk before punk" band NEU! formed in 1971, building on the Krautrock tradition of groups such as Can.^[33]

A new generation of Australian garage rock bands, inspired mainly by the Stooges and MC5, was coming even closer to the sound that would soon be called "punk": In Brisbane, The Saints also recalled the raw live sound of the British Pretty Things, who had made a notorious tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1965.^[34] Radio Birdman, founded by Detroit expatriate Deniz Tek in 1974, were playing gigs to a small but fanatical following in Sydney.

[edit] Origin of the term punk

Preceding the mid-1970s, punk, a centuries-old word of obscure etymology, was commonly used to describe "a young male hustler, a gangster, a hoodlum, or a ruffian".^[35] As Legs McNeil explains, "On TV, if you watched cop shows, Kojak, Baretta, when the cops finally catch the mass murderer, they'd say, 'you dirty Punk.' It was what your teachers would call you. It meant that you were the lowest."^[36] The first known use of the phrase "punk rock" appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 22, 1970, where Ed Sanders was quoted describing an album of his as "punk rock—redneck sentimentality."^[37] Dave Marsh was the first music critic to employ the term—in the May 1971 issue of Creem, he described ? and the Mysterians as giving a "landmark exposition of punk rock."^[38] In June 1972, the fanzine Flash included a "Punk Top Ten" of 1960s albums.^[39] That year, Lenny Kaye used the term in the liner notes of the anthology album Nuggets to refer to 1960s garage rock bands such as The Standells, The Sonics, and The Seeds.^[40] Bomp! maintained this usage through the early 1970s, also applying it to some of the darker, more primitive practitioners of 1960s psychedelic rock.^[41]

By 1975, punk was being used to describe acts as diverse as the Patti Smith Group—with lead guitarist Lenny Kaye—the Bay City Rollers, and Bruce Springsteen.^[41] As the scene at New York's CBGB club (popularly referred to as "CBGBs") attracted notice, a name was sought for the developing sound. Club owner Hilly Kristal called the movement "street rock"; John Holmstrom credits Aquarian magazine with using punk "to describe what was going on at CBGBs".^[42] Holmstrom, McNeil, and Ged Dunn's magazine Punk, which debuted at the end of 1975, was crucial in codifying the term.^[43] "It was pretty obvious that the word was getting very popular," Holmstrom later remarked. "We figured we'd take the name before anyone else claimed it. We wanted to get rid of the bullshit, strip it down to rock 'n' roll. We wanted the fun and liveliness back."^[41]

[edit] Early history

[edit] New York

Music samples:

"I Wanna Be Sedated"

Sample of "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones, from Road to Ruin (1978)

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

"Chinese Rocks"

Sample of "Chinese Rocks" by Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, written by Dee Dee Ramone and Richard Hell, from L.A.M.F. (1977)

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

The origins of New York's punk rock scene can be traced back to such sources as late 1960s trash culture and an early 1970s underground rock movement centered around the Mercer Arts Center in Greenwich Village, where the New York Dolls performed.^[44] In early 1974, a new scene began to develop around the lower Manhattan club CBGB. At its core was Television; "the ultimate garage band with pretensions", their influences ranged from garage psych pioneer Roky Erickson to jazz innovator John Coltrane.^[45] The band's bassist/singer, Richard Hell, created a look including "leather jackets, torn T-shirts, and short, ragamuffin hair" credited as the basis for punk rock visual style.^[46][47] In April 1974, Patti Smith, a member of the Mercer Arts Center crowd and a friend of Hell's, came to CBGB for the first time to see the band perform.^[48] A veteran of independent theater and performance poetry, Smith was developing an intellectual, feminist take on rock 'n' roll. In June, she recorded the single "Hey Joe"/"Piss Factory", featuring Television guitarist Tom Verlaine; released on her own Mer Records label, it heralded the scene's do it yourself (DIY) ethic and has often been cited as the first punk rock record.^[49] By August, Smith and Television were gigging together at another downtown New York club, Max's Kansas City.^[46]

Out in Forest Hills, Queens, several miles from lower Manhattan, the members of a newly formed band adopted a common surname. Drawing on such sources as the Beatles, Herman's Hermits, The Beach Boys, and 1960s girl groups, the Ramones condensed rock 'n' roll to its primal level: "'1-2-3-4!' bass-player Dee Dee Ramone shouted at the start of every song, as if the group could barely master the rudiments of rhythm."^[50] In December 1974, CBGB instituted a "rock only" policy.^[51] The band was soon playing there regularly. "When I first saw the Ramones," critic Mary Harron later remembered, "I couldn't believe people were doing this. The dumb brattiness."^[52]

Facade of legendary music club CBGB, New York

In March and April 1975, Smith and Television shared a weekend residency at CBGB that brought major attention to the club.^[53] Around that time, Richard Hell wrote "Blank Generation", which would become the scene's emblematic anthem of escape.^[51] Soon after, Hell left Television and founded a band featuring a more stripped-down sound, The Heartbreakers, with former New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan. The pairing of Hell and Thunders, in one critical assessment, "inject[ed] a poetic intelligence into mindless self-destruction".^[47] In August, Television—with Fred Smith, former bassist for another CBGB band, Blondie, replacing Hell—recorded a single, "Little Johnny Jewel", for the tiny Ork label. In the words of critic John Walker, the record was "a turning point for the whole New York scene" if not quite for the punk rock sound itself—Hell's departure had left the band "significantly reduced in fringe aggression".^[45]

The first album to come out of the scene was released in November 1975: Smith's debut, Horses, produced by John Cale for the major Arista label.^[54] That same month, Sire Records put out the first recording by the Ramones, the single "Blitzkrieg Bop". The inaugural issue of Punk appeared in December.^[55] The new magazine tied together earlier artists such as Velvet Underground lead singer Lou Reed, the Stooges, and the New York Dolls with the array of new acts centered around CBGB and Max's Kansas City: the Ramones, Television, The Heartbreakers, Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, and others.^[56] That winter, Pere Ubu came in from Cleveland and played at both spots.^[57] Early in 1976, Hell was ousted from the Heartbreakers; he soon formed a new group that would become known as The Voidoids, "one of the most harshly uncompromising bands" on the scene.^[58] That April, the Ramones' self-titled debut album was released. According to a later description, "Like all cultural watersheds, Ramones was embraced by a discerning few and slagged off as a bad joke by the uncomprehending majority."^[59] In August, Ork put out an EP recorded by Hell with his new band that included the first recording of "Blank Generation".^[60]

The term punk initially referred to the scene in general, more than the sound itself—the early New York punk bands represented a broad variety of influences. Among them, the Ramones, The Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and The Voidoids were establishing a distinct musical style; even where they diverged most clearly, in lyrical approach—the Ramones' apparent guilelessness at one extreme, Hell's conscious craft at the other—there was an abrasive attitude in common. Their shared attributes of minimalism and speed, however, had not yet come to define punk rock.^[61]

[edit] Australia

At the same time, punk scenes were beginning to take shape in various parts of Australia. By 1976, The Saints were hiring local halls to use as venues, or playing in "Club 76", their shared house in the Brisbane inner suburb of Petrie Terrace. The band soon discovered that musicians were exploring similar paths in other parts of the world. Ed Kuepper, coleader of The Saints, later recalled:

One thing I remember having had a really depressing effect on me was the first Ramones album. When I heard it [in 1976], I mean it was a great record...but I hated it because I knew we’d been doing this sort of stuff for years. There was even a chord progression on that album that we used...and I thought, "Fuck. We’re going to be labeled as influenced by the Ramones," when nothing could have been further from the truth.^[62]

On the other side of Australia, in Perth, germinal punk rock act the Cheap Nasties, featuring singer-guitarist Kim Salmon, formed in August. In September, The Saints became the first punk rock band outside the U.S. to release a recording, the single "(I'm) Stranded". As with Patti Smith's debut, the band self-financed, packaged, and distributed the single.^[63] "(I'm) Stranded" had limited impact at home, but the British music press recognized it as a groundbreaking record.^[64] At the insistence of their superiors in the UK, EMI Australia signed The Saints. Meanwhile, Radio Birdman was also recording and came out with a self-financed EP, Burn My Eye, in October (some sources say November). Trouser Press critic Ian McCaleb later described the EP as the "archetype for the musical explosion that was about to occur."^[65]

[edit] The UK