One chord wonders : power and meaning in punk rock

225 Pages·2015·6.569 MB·English

by  Dave Laing, TV Smith

ONE CHORD
WONDERS
Power and Meaning
in Punk Rock
Dave Laing
Foreword by TV Smith
One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock
© Dave Laing
This edition © 2015 by PM Press
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright owners of illustrations used in this book. If
any have been inadvertently overlooked, they should contact the author and publisher
ISBN: 978-1-62963-033-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014908071
Cover: John Yates/Stealworks.com
Layout: Jonathan Rowland
PM Press
P.O. Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan
www.thomsonshore.com
Contents
Foreword by TV Smith v
Preface vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
One Formation 9
Two Naming 55
Three Listening 69
Four Looking 103
Picture Section 123
Five Framing 141
Six After 149
Seven Conclusions 167
Eight Chronology 181
Appendix 1 Song Titles 191
Appendix 2 Punk Singles in Top 30 Charts 193
Appendix 3 Select Discography 195
Bibliography 199
Notes 201
Index 209

Foreword
W
hat just happened? That’s what I was thinking when my band the
Adverts broke up at the end of 1979 after two years of being in the
forefront of the UK punk scene. What was punk anyway? I had been
writing songs since I was at school, I’d had various bands that went nowhere, and
then suddenly it all changed. I wasn’t just in a band anymore—I was in a punk band,
part of a movement that I was helping create even as I was simultaneously swept
up in it. People were suddenly interested in what my band was doing, even though
we were just beginners and as musicians strictly amateur. Now—and this had been
inconceivable just a year earlier—the question of how well or badly we could play
didn’t matter anymore, apart from to a few old-school critics who were clinging des-
perately to the sinking ship of pre-1977 rock. For the rest of us, the so-called profes-
sional musicians had nothing we wanted, nothing we could relate to. The doors had
opened for people with ideas; the renegades and mavericks who took an alternative
view of the way bands should look and sound, and what their songs could be about.
Lack of conventional musical talent was a spur to try harder, not a handicap. In
January 1977, within months of forming the Adverts, I found myself on stage at the
Roxy club in London in the company of kids—on stage and off—who were desper-
ate for music made by people like themselves, ‘normal’ people talking about ‘normal’
lives—not an untouchable and self-indulgent rock ’n’ roll elite living a life of absurd
extravagance paid for out of their audience’s pockets. Many of those watching us
that night went on to form bands themselves, no longer intimidated. After just a
few gigs we were signed by Stiff Records and were able to put out a single, ‘One
Chord Wonders’. By the summer of 1977 we were in the UK top twenty with ‘Gary
Gilmore’s Eyes’ and appeared on mainstream television’s Top Of The Pops, previously
the heavily defended territory of the old guard music business, the very people who
a short time earlier had scorned punk rock and actively tried to stop its progress.
v
vi | One Chord Wonders
So, what happened? Why now? What led up to this? What had changed? And
for a movement that still has powerful resonance nearly forty years later, why did
it all fall apart so quickly? These are some of the questions Dave Laing addresses
with impressive rigour and objectivity in this fascinating book, and in developing
his argument tells us something about not just punk rock but also the social and
political landscape that brought it about, as well as giving us a razor-sharp insight
into music, and the music business, in general. There are many books that describe
what happened during the punk rock era. A few even dare to ask questions about it.
Here at last is one that provides some answers.
TV Smith
Preface to the PM Press Edition
O
ne Chord Wonders was originally published in 1985 and after about a de-
cade it was out of print and very difficult to find. Over recent years, I have
had many requests from scholars and fans for copies and, if only for their
sake, I’m pleased that PM Press have decided to bring out this new edition. I’ve taken
the opportunity to correct a few misprints and expand the index. Otherwise, the
book is unchanged.
Thinking about republication, I considered whether to add new material but
soon realised that punk has taken so many new forms and new directions since the
1970s that it would be impossible to do justice to them in a few pages. In addition,
there have been numerous chronicles and analyses of that later history of punk and
its derivatives. I shan’t mention any here, but I will recommend a few studies that bear
directly on the music and the era that One Chord Wonders attempts to illuminate.
First, Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols And Punk Rock (1991), which
was published several years after my own book and also places the Sex Pistols at
the centre of the scene. Unlike me, Jon was an active participant and so brought a
more direct perspective to the evocation of British punk. Another participant was
the singer, songwriter, guitarist and scholar Helen Reddington. Her The Lost Women
Of Rock Music: Female Musicians Of The Punk Era (second edition, 2012) opens up a
highly important topic that is only briefly touched on in One Chord Wonders. A third
book, that goes into greater depth on another aspect, covered in chapter 6, is Rip It
Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 (2005) by Simon Reynolds. I’ll be thrilled
if my book finds its place alongside these, and other, excellent chronicles of punk.
vii
Acknowledgements
Although nobody else should be held accountable for the ideas put forward in this
book, I have benefited greatly from the ideas and arguments of a number of people in
the process of writing it. They include Phil Hardy and Mike Flood Page, with whom
I collaborated in the late 1970s; Martin Jacques who allowed me to develop my ideas
in the pages of Marxism Today; Dave Harker and Richard Middleton who are crit-
ical and constructive editors; in discussions on general and specific points, Simon
Frith, Gary Herman, Deborah Philips, Jenny Taylor, Penny Valentine and Richard
Woodcock; and Sally Quinn for her encouragement and friendship.
viii
Introduction
I
n the mid-1980s, punk rock is in danger of being taken for granted. Like Elvis or
the Beatles, the term is used in a way which assumes we know exactly what it was
and what it meant. The music which in 1976–8 caused uproar and alarm among
critics, politicians, media pundits and record company executives has now become
one more convenient landmark in the conventional periodization of recent British
musical and cultural history. We are in a ‘post-punk’ world, it seems.
One aim of this book is to question the assumptions upon which punk’s land-
mark status is based, to make it problematic and even unrecognizable. To do that
means questioning the various identities that have been provided for punk rock both
by close observers and participants and by critics and theorists. Punk was particu-
larly well-served by contemporary observers, notably in the books by Caroline Coon,
Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, and Fred and Judy Vermorel, which are listed in
the Bibliography. The more considered explanations are often less rewarding, though
those of Dick Hebdige, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau and Simon Frith are all of
value.
In the present account, ‘punk rock’ is used in no special sense. Its meaning is that
established through the consensus of users in the 1976–8 period, a consensus made
up of the authors listed above together with musicians, journalists and other par-
ticipants in published discourse. Chapter 5 deals directly with the range of nuances
within this consensus, while elsewhere ‘punk rock’ refers to a complex of artefacts,
events and institutions which flourished in the years 1976–8. The artefacts include
the many hundreds of recordings and many dozens of ‘fanzines’ and other published
writings, plus the items of visual style that make up the material archive of punk
rock. The events of punk were both the live performances of the era and certain other
key incidents, such as the notorious television interview involving Bill Grundy and
the Sex Pistols and the series of concert cancellations and acts of censorship that
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