Punk 1976-1978 Punk Britannia

'Hello and best wishes, everyone,

'and happy birthday, Mary and Jean, begins this batch of dedications.

'This is a record for you all from the people

'who sent the message, Down By The Lazy River, with the Osmonds.'

# What are you doing tonight?

# You got no place to go... #

1976.

Britain seems half asleep.

This programme contains strong language.

'It was awful. The main colours were orange,

'brown'

and mustard.

'People weren't as sussed as what they are today.

'People weren't as well travelled

'and we were still stuck in this little hole

'as British people, I thought.'

You think of the '70s as being modern times,

but they were very backward and people's attitudes were very backward.

'There was one or two TV channels.

'Everything seemed to end at 11pm. There were no jobs,

'there was no future...'

There was a sense in those early years of boredom.

'You don't remember your youth as being populated by these guys

'who looked like the worst kind of bureaucrat from 1952.'

Those were the people who still ran the country.

Welcome to boring Britain.

A young generation has been locked out.

But in a small pocket of the London music scene,

something is stirring.

The UK is about to be rudely awoken.

'For mash get smash.'

-Dirty bastard.

-Again.

-You dirty fucker.

-What a

-BLEEP.

'Who do you think you're kidding, Mr Hitler,'

If you think old England's done?

In the scorching summer of 1976,

the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned

were beginning to ignite.

# I don't want a holiday in the sun

# I want to go to the new Belsen

# I want to see some of history

# Cos now I got a reasonable economy

# Now I got a reason Now I got a reason

# Now I got a reason And I'm still waiting... #

As word gradually spread through the country,

London was becoming a place of pilgrimage for the curious few.

'There was this feeling that something was going on in London. There'd been a couple of reviews

'of the Sex Pistols in the music papers and we thought,

'"Hello! This sounds good."

'Then you saw this photo of Rotten just looking incredible, mean and nasty.'

Finally, someone who's looking different and challenging.

'Looking like we felt! I think trying

'to get a punk band together in Torquay at that time was never going to happen.'

I was always escaping the suburbs

and gravitating towards the centre of London.

If you're brought up in the suburbs,

with all that ultra-conservatism that goes on there,

there's a lot to kick back against.

'I thought London was central to everything.'

There wasn't a music scene in Woking.

Meeting people my own age represented a place where you could be yourself.

At that time we were playing social clubs

to disinterested punters really, who just wanted the bingo.

Maybe they'd have a dance towards the end of the night, when they're pissed enough.

# I got no reason It's all too much

# You'll always find me

# Out to lunch... #

'I read this review in the NME of the Pistols and thought we've got to see this band.

'We travelled up and went to this all-nighter, where we took speed for the first time.'

The effect of the pills and seeing this band was like, "Wow! This is it, this is our time."

# We're so pretty Oh so pretty... #

'It was such a closed, small scene,

'maybe there was 500 people in the whole of England,

'maybe, who knew about it?'

It was very small, you knew the faces you saw every week.

'What Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer, etc, were expressing,'

was so absolutely instantly recognised right across the land.

'There was this punk rock explosion.'

# Pretty

# Pretty vacant. #

News of the small scene that had been incubating

in the heart of the capital was slowly spreading.

# We don't care. #

We were aware of a core of punk bands

that were starting to, sort of,

move out, get out into the provinces,

and we would go and see them, you know.

ROUSING GUITAR

But with virtually no support,

punk wasn't reaching its audience through established channels.

It was all about word of mouth.

# Mystery man

# Be a doll, be a baby doll... #

It was just like,

you went there once,

there was the first few

curiosity seekers and so on,

and the next time you come,

it would be really considerably different.

It just grew, I think, because the UK is such a small place,

it was able to spread.

# Can't afford a cannon

# Neat neat neat She can't afford a gun at all

# Neat neat neat She can't afford a cannon

# Neat neat neat She can't afford a gun at all. #

I remember Redcar, playing at the Coatham Bowl. It was great.

But the Flaming Groovies are the headliners.

That's who you want, isn't it?

Converting a few Flaming Groovies fans was one thing.

But punk at the tail end of '76 only really

existed in the minds of the converted few.

But all that

was about to change.

They are punk rockers.

The new craze, they tell me.

Well, there's a conservative.

They are as drunk as I am.

He was the institution,

and we were not.

They are a group called the Sex Pistols..

Bill Grundy was the host of a pre-watershed news programme

called The Today Show,

on which the Sex Pistols were a last-minute booking.

They are heroes,

not the nice clean Rolling Stones.

Queen were going to go and pulled out at the last minute, so there

we were, short notice,

and Bill Grundy didn't want to interview us.

I didn't know that Steve had found a bottle of Blue Nun

and gone to another room and drunk the lot.

Suddenly millions of viewers, sitting down to their early evening

TV dinners, were confronted by something a little bit unexpected.

-BILL GRUNDY:

-What about you girls behind?

'We didn't have a clue what was going to happen.'

Bill Grundy was just so

contemptuous of them.

It's what?

Nothing. A rude word. Next question.

No, no. What was the rude word?

Shit.

'There he is. He's the one goading us into it.'

He definitely had an eye on the young ladies in the bin liners.

-Always wanted to meet you.

-Did you really?

-Yeah.

We'll meet afterwards, shall we?

You dirty sod.

I was being,

"Ooh, I've always wanted to meet you", - not really(!)

So, he had a real attitude.

He picked the wrong guys, and then halfway through the interview,

Steve's bottle of Blue Nun kicked in.

You know, it was a recipe for disaster.

Go on, you've got another five seconds,

say something outrageous.

-You dirty bastard.

-Again.

-You dirty fucker.

-What a clever boy!

-What a fucking rotter.

-That's it for tonight.

Swearing on prime-time television

just didn't happen in 1976.

I mean, the reaction the next day in the newspapers,

was just like, "What?"

"The Filth And The Fury", and it was like,

exclamation mark. Front pages.

Far from revelling in the scandal,

Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren was initially very worried.

Malcolm was ghostly white, like, "You've ruined everything

"I've been working for. You've just destroyed a year's

"worth of work by swearing on television."

The next morning, he saw all the front pages

and realised it was a good idea.

Next day, punk rock was a national phenomenon.

# I am an Antichrist

# I am an anarchist... #

Fresh from their Grundy Show appearance,

the Sex Pistols embarked on the Anarchy In The UK tour

with The Dammed and The Clash.

But they quickly discovered that being the centre of national

attention wasn't necessarily a good thing.

# Anarchy-y-y. #

I remember it felt great

on the Sex Pistols' first tour that was no tour.

We had a crate of beer and I was drunk.

But the next day, that's like,

"No, that's just not right.

"Why are we banned?"

Relationship with God and a right way with God in this world.

This protest is to make Wales know, to let the people of this town

know, that we do protest.

On the rare occasion a town council

allowed the Pistols to play,

they were met with a mixture of local protesters,

and the odd curiosity seeker, who managed to break through

the picket line.

# I want to be-e-e

# Anarchy-y-y. #

It's lowering the standard of our people in Caerphilly.

It's degrading and disgusting for our children

to hear and see such things.

PROTESTORS SING

How do you feel about the crowd opposite?

There are entitled to do what they want.

It was strange

to be part of something where venues were being

withdrawn where you can't play, you're being censored.

You felt persecuted.

Lines were drawn, and you chose what side you were on.

How do you react to the reputation that your group is the most

revolting in the country?

Look, our group is creating a generation gap for the first

time in five years in this country

and a lot of people are feeling genuinely threatened by it.

We ain't even being allowed to play.

'There was so much going on,'...

..so much vicious hatred towards us,

because we were doing something completely new,

'we looked like nothing most people had ever seen.'

I try so hard to be nice.

It taught me that the British are, by nature, very conservative.

# Anarchist

# I get pissed

# Destroy-oy. #

Almost overnight, punk had become public enemy number one.

Punk rock has become almost a battle cry in British society.

For many people, it's a bigger threat to our way of life

than Russian Communism or hyperinflation.

What I'm concerned about is the manner in which certain groups

behave onstage.

Now they're bringing out these freak punk rock groups.

We're not going to have this punk rock brigade.

It's all wrong! HE BURPS

ROUSING GUITAR

But for much of Britain's youth,

punk meant something else entirely.

# I want it with you

# Wishing your love will see me through. #

I want it to do something for me.

Look at me now, I'm nothing.

That's what punk is.

Punk was our time.

This was our music and our generation.

There was a real sense of

these people are going to destroy civilisation.

If you get a bit up for it, that's bloody hard luck.

We're never going to back down.

It didn't matter about class, but a lot of it was largely

working class,

but it mattered about what your ideas were like.

# This is the future. #

There's people branding us. They're saying I'm vile and obscene.

Do I look vile and obscene?

People looked on in horror, because they just didn't understand

what we were, but what we really were was a by-product of what was happening

and we threw it back at them, and actually, it was quite a laugh.

I think punk was a time

when all the freaks,

misfits and outlaws,

had their moment, their moment in the sun.

As '76 gave way to '77,

punk's clarion call had been sounded.

A new generation was sick of waiting for its turn.

There was still this whole idea

you could only advance if you put in the years,

and that was across the board -

industry, art, commerce.

# Paint by numbers. #

A new do-it-yourself spirit was beginning to take root.

# So break up, make up. #

Punk was about being an active participant, rather than just

a passive consumer.

It made you think, "Well, I can do that,"

so the next question is, why the hell don't you do it?

# Make-up. #

-Are you a singer?

-Yeah.

-Have you sung before?

Not on stage, no.

Suddenly the spotlight belonged to anybody who wanted it.

With very little resources,

we were very resourceful.

-What did you sing?

-The Lord's Prayer, via Twist & Shout,

Knockin' On Heaven's Door,

and a bit of Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles.

There is a way, so long as you're persistent and aggressive

and beat the hell out of them.

MUSIC: "Make Up To Break Up" by Siouxsie & the Banshees

The whole idea you needed someone's permission to do these things

was destroyed. People were starting record labels and magazines.

# Foundation starts to tremble... #

We thought we had something to offer.

There was a climate for things to be radically shaken up.

# Cracking up - up, up

# Face is cracking up. #

We said, "We don't have to ask anyone else's permission".

We can just go ahead and do it.

MUSIC: "When I Need You" by Leo Sayer

Everything old and established

was now open to attack,

and if the record industry didn't get it...

MUSIC: "Breakdown" by The Buzzcocks

In January 1977, a young band from Manchester called The Buzzcocks

decided to release an EP...

themselves.

We worked out that for £500,

we could press 1,000 singles,

and a picture sleeve.

We decided to do an EP cos people brought out EPs.

The Beatles had loads of EPs and things.

It was good cos it had four songs on.

If you just have a single, you've just got two sides.

We went in and we did four songs.

# I'm going to breakdown Got to break it down, yes. #

I suppose we released our own record

because it was the easiest way of doing it.

And went into the college and put it on,

and watched people's expressions - "What the hell is this?"

I still do think it's one of the most tremendous records ever made.

Before that, it had been ageing hippies giving you the impression

that you shouldn't go out and play a guitar,

unless you'd been at it for 30 years.

As far as punk was concerned,

rock'n'roll had spent two decades

growing ever more pompous.

Punk's mission was to simply start all over again.

We started referring to the bigger bands as the "dinosaurs",

rejecting the past.

MUSIC: "You're In My Heart" by Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart and people like that were getting to look sillier

as the years went on.

They just looked like Louis XIV.

And someone had to cut their head off.

HE LAUGHS

# You're in my heart You're in my soul

# You'll be my breath Should I grow old. #

It's got nothing to do with them any more.

Rod Stewart starts going on with his string orchestra.

It's not what you feel like,

so you've got to have some music what you feel like.

Otherwise you go barmy, don't you?

MUSIC: "1977" by The Clash

The Clash's song 1977

captured this desire to wipe the slate clean.

# Sten guns in Knightsbridge

# Danger stranger

# You better paint your face

# No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones

# 1977. #

But the Year Zero mantra hid a contradiction.

Punk defined itself as the future of music,

but equally championed a return to rock'n'roll's past.

Three chords. Three-minute songs

played loud and fast.

# No Elvis, Beatles

# Or the Rolling Stones. #

It was more about an ideal, 1977,

rather than to be taken literally.

I loved the Beatles,

but I loved also the Rolling Stones and the Kinks.

The line of rock'n'roll that goes right back to Elvis.

When Elvis first came out,

that was like nothing they'd seen before.

When the Pistols came out, it was like nothing you'd seen before,

in the same way.

A lot of us... I still had Deep Purple albums.

People do forget, when they look back,

we weren't from outer space!

Everybody liked these people, really.

I never met anybody that didn't like the Stones.

If you don't like the Stones, what are you doing in rock?

What are you doing in a rock'n'roll band?

We weren't consciously lying about the rejections part,

but it was important to define what punk was about.

To actually start differentiating,

in a way that gave punk its identity

to the wider public.

To be a punk in 1977

was to set yourself in opposition

to society in any way possible.

MUSIC: "Identity" by X-Ray Spex

# Identity is the crisis - can't you see?

# Identity

# Identity

# When you look in the mirror Can you see? #

One of the things I had made for me at the time

was this rapist mask.

I used to wear this out in clubs. It was a great look.

I got a pair of leather trousers,

and I wore them for six months without taking them off.

I'd end up dyeing things in bathtubs.

I'd dye one side of a shirt pink -

it was supposed to be red but came out pink,

and the other side yellow, and wear it.

It was wearing stuff that used to arrive in brown paper envelopes

on the street.

Not just wearing it in the privacy of your bedroom or dungeon.

The effect was fabulous, and the girls looked great in it.

The dog collar - what an amazing accessory.

"OK, you give us nothing.

"We've got no jobs, nowhere to go, we can't afford to buy clothes.

"We'll wear these fucked-up old tights.

"And, what's more, we'll look great while we do it."

It was like, "Fuck you. We can wear what we like.

"I know this might upset you. Who gives a damn?"

But notoriety came at a price.

Now that punk was a matter of national controversy,

many of the pubs that had nurtured the pub rock scene

only a year earlier,

had shut their doors.

In those days you couldn't go in the pubs, man.

You couldn't go in clubs.

They were reluctant to put punk bands on,

because they didn't want that type in there.

Punk needed a home.

A place where it could truly express itself.

It was in the middle of Covent Garden.

It was like the surface of the moon.

The only people that you saw

were punks and opera-goers.

To me, it's central - the Roxy was the heart of it.

The Roxy, in all ways,

was the most important pilgrimage you could make.

The whole essence to the place was punk.

# We're talking into corners Finding ways to fill the vacuum

# And though our mouths are dry

# We talk in hope to hear something new. #

The place held, officially, 160. We had maybe 360 in there.

So it was mayhem, but fun.

We were getting phone calls from bands.

"Are you a punk band?" "Yeah."

Where are you from?" "Sheffield." "You're playing next Thursday."

Simple as that.

# Bored teenagers Seeing ourselves as strangers... #

When you'd see those kids jumping up and down,

it wasn't about getting hurt or having fights.

No-one had done that before. There had never been that seething mass

of frustration and anger.

The Roxy was where many of punk's new set of manners

were given space to evolve.

Why nod, when you could pogo?

Why cheer, when you could hurl an arc of phlegm?

There's no option but to accept the fact

people will gob on you.

It almost became the defining sign

that this isn't the way things were before.

It all began with The Damned's Rat Scabies.

I was watching the Pistols.

Jonesy was gobbing all over the stage and he fucking gobbed at me.

And I gobbed back.

The audience just saw it as a great leveller.

What would have been unthinkable a year earlier

was now the norm.

Gobbing was the new applause.

I remember one night I was singing,

and there was this double-headed spit coming at me.

I was trying to get out of the way. This way -

and I could still see it.

I was trying to go that way. I didn't know which way to go,

and "Boosh!"

It was the most revolting thing.

If they didn't spit at you, it means they didn't like you.

# Bored out of our heads Bored out of our minds. #

Every new movement needs somewhere you can all gather.

The Roxy was that place.

The place where it all fomented, and started happening.

But despite having found a common cause,

and a place to call home,

the punk scene in '77

was far from being a happy family.

Within the movement, there was lots of different tribes,

but that made for healthy competition.

That's what was special about the scene.

You had these different camps trying to one-up each other.

MUSIC: "Ambition" by the Subway Sect

"My band's better than your band. You're shit. We're the business."

It wasn't like some big commune of people working together

for the greater good.

God forbid.

Punks didn't like each other. No camaraderie whatsoever.

At all. None.

It was all competitive.

All these bands of people I'd known - mates,

were all incredibly oppositional.

It was really jealousy that was driving it.

They wanted to outdo the Pistols.

So, constantly fighting that.

Punk wasn't a unified movement.

It was a bunch of really jealous people

trying to outdo each other.

But although the scene appeared fearless and free,

a young band from Woking would show that punk was already becoming

something of an exclusive club.

The Jam were a band playing the same gigs as punk bands,

and had the same energy in their music.

Turning up in suits and all that was seen as a bit silly.

I don't know why, but we'd always dressed the same onstage.

I'd made everyone go to Burton's and get suits.

I'm only laughing cos some of them were atrocious!

HE LAUGHS

Like split-level loons and satin jackets,

but that's another story, folks.

Yeah, it was to stand out. To be different from everyone else.

When everyone else was covered in safety pins and all that shite.

MUSIC: "In The City" by The Jam

# In the city there's a thousand things I want to say to you

# But whenever I approach you You make me look a fool

# I want to say

# I want to tell you

# About the young ideas

# You better listen now You've said your bit. #

We used to take the piss out of them for tuning up,

which Paul Weller hated.

I used to get a lot of flak for that.

They thought it was kind of too "muso".

# We want to say

# We're going to tell you

# About the young ideas

# You better listen now You've said your bit. #

The Clash and the Pistols seemed to me like an upper-middle-class

kind of Kensington Market kind of thing.

With the Jam, you knew exactly where they were coming from.

I think we appealed to people who were like us.

I think we appealed to a lot of people from the suburbs.

We weren't really part of a hip London niche.

That was the same all over the country, really.

I think the songs I was writing,

people understood, cos they saw themselves in those songs.

Despite appearing as outsiders to the punk scene,

The Jam were most definitely inspired by it.

The Pistols played short, spiky songs.

I think from that experience,

I went back and started writing in that style a little bit.

It was only really listening to The Clash, and reading their lyrics,

that I started to think about what's going on around me.

Prior to that, I'd just written about, you know, girls.

In May 1977, The Jam appeared on Top of the Pops.

# In the city there's a thousand things I want to say to you. #

APPLAUSE

At the forefront of a new rock phenomenon known as "New Wave",

there go The Jam and In The City.

But as the record industry slowly woke up

to punk's commercial potential,

a tension at its heart

began to emerge,

between staying independent and gaining mass exposure.

Any record deal we signed in those days,

I'd seen them straightaway as the enemy.

They'd sign us. They'd give you the right smiles.

They'd go, "Oh yeah, we love what you're doing.

"Sign on the contract", and two days later, it's a list of demands.

The Pistols' attitude

had ensured they had already been dropped by two labels

by mid-1977. Punk and the record industry

were not the easiest of bedfellows.

MUSIC: "EMI" by the Sex Pistols

"Wouldn't it be nice if you wrote a song about this, that or the other?"

"Would it be?

"Yeah, it might be nice.

"But this is what I'm doing.

"This is what I was paid to do."

# A&M. #

MUSIC: "Complete Control" by The Clash

When The Clash signed to CBS,

punk found itself at a crossroads.

Could they have their cake and eat it too?

I can remember a serious debate within The Clash

about whether they should sign to CBS.

If it was important to get the message out

to as wide an audience as possible,

or if you should do it on an independent label,

and risk that 14-year-old in Newcastle or Glasgow

never getting the message.

I said punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS.

I felt they would have made such a massive statement

if they had made their own records,

through their own independent record label.

Yeah, it's all a business.

Does it shock you that you wanted to destroy it

-and it still is a business?

-Well, we signed up with them.

We weren't going to go into a hippy thing,

and stay in one corner of the world and no-one hears about you.

If you want to come out of that corner,

you have to deal with the real world, and that's business.

MUSIC: "White Riot" by The Clash

In May '77, The Clash embarked

upon the White Riot tour,

with the Buzzcocks, Subway Sect, and the Slits.

The tour would quickly cement them

as the new voice of Britain's dole-bound generation.

# White riot - I want a riot

# White riot - a riot of my own

# White riot - I want a riot

# White riot - a riot of my own

# Black man got a lot of problems

# But they don't mind throwing a brick... #

Mainly it's remembered for the fact

it was the first time that punk had played in a big place.

It was like a bunch of crazy kids,

all on holiday together - like on a Butlin's.

It was like, "We're all going on a summer holiday" type thing.

Me and Mick Jones were going out together,

and breaking up on-and-off

throughout the tour, so it was all very dramatic!

The first night of the White Riot tour,

at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park,

was just chaos.

The most scary-looking mean guys walking round,

in nothing else other than DMs,

Y-fronts

and an old overcoat.

At the bus stop. They didn't even wait till they got in the gig!

2,000 uninitiated people turned up that night.

It was the most incendiary and scary gig I've ever been to.

There was a few chairs smashed.

Like with the Teddy Boys,

when they ripped up the seats at Bill Haley.

So that was like the same thing.

It was fairly harmless.

Disengage the seat in front and throw it into the orchestra pit.

And we had to pay for it.

HE LAUGHS

# White riot - I want a riot White riot - a riot of my own! #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

DUB REGGAE PLAYS

While The Clash were inciting white riots all over the UK,

punk and reggae

were beginning to find common cause.

It was interesting to see how my culture

was turning on my white contemporaries.

They dug the bass lines.

They dug the musical reportage aspect of the lyrics.

They dug the anti-establishment vibe.

Didn't mind the weed, either.

At punk gigs, the only thing that made it bearable for me

was that DJs would play quite a lot of reggae

and roots reggae and dub, which was the golden period.

Phenomenal music that is just earth-shattering.

One of the key tracks played on The Clash's White Riot tour

was White Man In Hammersmith Palais.

By assimilating reggae into their songwriting,

The Clash were beginning to reach out

and expand punk's musical borders.

# Midnight to six man

# For the first time from Jamaica... #

We couldn't do it just straight.

It was cos we didn't understand it.

It was like we sort of understand it differently.

We had to put ourselves into it.

# Ken Boothe, UK pop reggae

# With backing band sound system... #

I actually took Strummer to Hammersmith Palais

the night he was inspired to write White Man In Hammersmith.

Reggae lyrics was like the currency of street speak.

It was like slogans. Under Heavy Manners.

"Cramp and paralyze them and those that worship Babylon."

Punks really dug that kind of lyricism.

There was a great similarity,

in terms of they were both rebel musics.

# They ain't got no roots rock rhythm. #

MUSIC: "God Save The Queen" (National Anthem)

As Britain prepared itself for the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations

that summer,

the Sex Pistols prepared to release their second single.

Of course I wrote God Save The Queen. I wrote the rewrite!

# God save our gracious Queen

# Long live our noble Queen. #

The original lyrics were unacceptable.

# God save the Queen

# The fascist regime

# They made you a moron

# Potential H-bomb

# God save the Queen

# She ain't no human being

# There is no future

# In England's dreaming. #

It came about quite easy.

It was just an ongoing thought process.

Finally, I decided to put pen to paper.

Ran to the rehearsal studio, really proud of it.

Knew the band wouldn't catch on what I was saying.

And somehow managed to squeak it onto vinyl.

# We love our Queen

# God saves. #

It was the poetry of the street.

The poetry of new England.

The poetry against the Silver Jubilee.

It was a great challenge to that ghastly kind of arse licking

of the monarchy that was going on.

# We love our Queen

# God saves. #

To promote the single,

manager Malcolm McLaren arranged for the Pistols

to perform a gig on the Thames,

to coincide with the Queen's own river procession.

Punk had its perfect stage.

But the band were getting sick of McLaren's art school pranks.

# We mean it, man. #

By that time, the band were on full collision course

with Malcolm - particularly John.

John had a lot of power over Malcolm,

but Malcolm controlled the purse strings.

There were a lot of conflicts.

Ever get the feeling you've been trapped?

I was woken up that morning, told there was a boat trip.

I didn't really want to go, but went anyway.

Sid felt the same.

'Steve and Paul felt the same.'

I've had enough of your bullshit.

They weren't talking to each other.

They weren't happy. They didn't just have contempt for the audience -

they had total contempt for themselves.

It was a very unhappy little trip.

MUSIC: "Problems" by the Sex Pistols

# Problems. #

The public outrage that the Pistols' appearance

with Bill Grundy had unleashed

was insatiable.

So there we were. Before we knew it,

the police boats were all around us saying, "Stop, desist, come in."

The police go, "Which one's Johnny Rotten?"

"Oh, I cannot tell a lie, 'occifer',

"it's him down there, innit?"

HE LAUGHS

The ultimate reward.

They don't even know the demon that they're chasing.

Malcolm McLaren was coming down the gangplank,

and shouting out

the kind of stuff that Malcolm would shout.

"Fascist pigs" and "bully boys", and all that.

I just heard a copper say, "Where's McLaren?"

And they gave Malcolm a hammering.

They spun him round like a top and smashed him.

# Problem

#Problem

# Problem

# Problem. #

It reflected what had happened to the whole scene.

It had got really nasty and violent.

Played out. Too much, too soon.

But that was the time when I thought,

"Hang on a minute. This isn't actually fun any more.

"This is a turning point."

The real topper was the Pistols had reached number one

with this alternative national anthem,

and it had been erased from the charts,

which is a wonderful situationist,

and kind of surrealist achievement.

To have a number one that didn't exist.

For many, the God Save The Queen boat trip

had been a stunt too far.

The moral provocation that the Pistols had revelled in

was turning ugly.

Round about the summer of '77,

Johnny Lydon was attacked,

and it got nasty.

There's always outside infiltrators

that want to do you harm late at night.

We used to walk down the King's Road.

Someone would say, "There's 40 Teds coming from Sloane Square."

And it was a regular thing

on a Saturday afternoon

that kids were being beaten to a pulp.

There were all these different factions. Tribes everywhere.

It was always some sort of war going on against someone.

MUSIC: "A-Bomb In Wardour Street" by The Jam

# Where the streets are paved with blood... #

But there was more than youthful pride at stake.

Racial tension in the UK

was coming to a head.

Two months after the Jubilee,

in Lewisham, south London,

the Anti-Nazi League would clash violently with the National Front.

# It's not my scene at all There's an A-bomb in Wardour Street

# They're calling in the army They're calling the policemen... #

Politics, particularly with young people, were coming to the fore,

because of the rise of the National Front.

Unthinkable as it is now, at the time it was broadly believed

that people of colour could be rounded up and "sent back".

That's what we were fighting against.

We weren't fighting to defend our multi-cultural society,

they were building the boats.

# A-bomb in Wardour Street

# It's blown up the West End

# Now it's spreading through the city. #

Though the gigs were exciting

- not just ours, but all the gigs around that time -

they were also fucking very scary.

It was a very, very violent time,

but our music reflected that as well, I think.

Set against this backdrop,

a new generation of punk bands were emerging,

which were all about their working-class audience.

MUSIC: "CID" by the UK Subs

# One false move, you could be dead

# Cos he's an underground undercover agent for the CID

# CID, CID

# Got a loaded .44 Walking armoury store. #

The earlier punk scene,

we was almost like ponces.

We were into fashion,

and into that sort of aesthetic.

There was two waves which came along.

The Sex Pistols' audience

were art school and very snobby.

Very middle class.

And we were working class.

If the first wave of punk was the theory,

the second wave was the reality of council estate Britain.

For many, the godfathers of this second wave

were a band called Sham 69.

MUSIC: "Borstal Breakout" by Sham 69

# And all I can think of is baby I think of you

# Don't worry, baby I'm coming back for you

# There's going to be a borstal breakout

# Going to be a borstal breakout

# Going to be a borstal breakout

# Going to be a borstal breakout. #

Sham 69 was, I think, incredibly important.

Jimmy Pursey was a very complex character,

who had this understanding of the white

council house kid.

When I heard Sham 69, I thought, "These are the real punks.

"Cos they're real working-class kids

"from horrible areas.

"And they've got nothing else."

I mean, that's punk.

Probably more pikey than fucking working class.

I had that observational way of saying,

"He's the kid that's going to get the sack.

"He's the kid that's this character."

Of course, those working-class kids are 70% of our country.

The one thing I gave them was that belief -

if I believed in me, they could believe in themselves.

But Sham 69's raw street appeal

was beginning to attract certain unwanted elements

to the punk scene.

The National Front, or the British Movement.

They saw a recruitment drive being able to take place,

because of the working class kids coming to our gigs.

# There's going to be a borstal breakout. #

-Thank you.

-APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Jimmy Pursey quickly found himself

being the unwilling icon of a resurgent right wing.

Once the press had said,

"National Front, British Movement, skinheads

"at this gig",

it invited them all to come.

So, of course, it's catch-22.

I was damned if I did, or damned if I didn't.

Jimmy Pursey was trying to lessen the angst

of what was happening to the white council house estate.

Leaning out into the audience and talking to these kids.

And saying you don't have to become racist

to handle what's going on.

There's another voice, another way of articulating this.

MUSIC: "If The Kids Are United" by Sham 69

It was the most emotional period.

Hell's Angels, punks, whatever.

Every different tribe was around me,

saying, "Jimmy,

"where are we going?"

# United! United! #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I'd never seen anything like it in my life before.

I'd never felt that emotion.

Harder, rougher and less art-school than the first wave,

it was arguably the second wave of punk bands

that truly reflected the sound of Britain's troubled streets

in '78.

In Northern Ireland, groups like Stiff Little Fingers

were tapping back into punk's revolutionary rhetoric.

# An alternative Ulster

# Grab it, change it, it's yours

# Get an alternative Ulster

# Ignore the bores and their laws

# Get an alternative Ulster

# Be an anti-security force

# Alter your native Ulster

# Alter your native land. #

The reality of life, it was just boring.

Bands wouldn't come and play.

They were either frightened to, or nobody thought to invite them.

The security forces at the time

had a ring of gates and fences round the city centre,

which were locked from about six-thirty, seven on

in the evening.

A world away from the increasingly trendy London scene.

This wasn't rebellion for its own sake.

Punk in Northern Ireland made sense,

because kids had something very real to rebel against.

# They say you will never be free. #

It was all the kids

were going to concerts together, and clubs.

There was some meeting together.

A good excuse for Catholics and Protestants to get together.

It was a huge explosion,

and everybody was playing at the same time.

From that point of view,

it probably did bring the communities together.

But it wasn't a conscious thing.

It was just simply that people wanted to go see those bands.

# Alternative Ulster

# Go and get it now! #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

But there was a growing sense by 1978

that punk's nihilism and attitude

was becoming nothing more than a costume.

# Walking down the King's Road

# I see so many faces

# They come from many places

# They come down for the day

# They walk around together

# And try and look trendy

# I think it's a shame

# That they all look the same. #

Is imitation the greatest form of flattery?

Is it?

It ain't.

Punk had sort of outgrown itself, within a year, I thought.

I remember walking down the King's Road

and seeing all these stereotype punks

with their mad Mohicans and tartan kilts

and all that caper.

Doing photos with the American tourists.

I thought, "This ain't what it's supposed to be about."

# They heard John Peel play it Just the other night

# They'd like to buy the O Level single... #

The idea that you had to wear your Nazi armbands,

and follow the fashion.

To me, punk was about rejecting fashion.

You told me to go and look at the punk rock scene,

which I'm afraid I didn't know very much about.

There's a great piece of film of Derek Nimmo going into Seditionaries

to be kitted out as a punk rocker,

which I think sums it up a little bit.

LAUGHTER

There was no escaping it.

Punk was becoming as orthodox

as the world it had set out to destroy.

MUSIC: "Babylon's Burning" by The Ruts

# With anxiety

# Babylon's burning Babylon's burning

# With anxiety

# Babylon's burning Babylon's burning... #

You wear those clothes, and you drink snakebites,

and you vomit all over the place,

and you gob.

It was like, "Oh God, don't bring it down to this - to these rules."

I found it very disturbing, really,

because the whole ethos of punk was you did what you want.

The media cliche became an accepted cliche.

You forget that this isn't what we were doing.

We were trying to get rid of all that.

# Babylon's burning Babylon's burning

# Babylon's burning. #

Once something becomes easy to copy,

then it loses its power.

In January of 1978,

at the height of their popularity,

the Sex Pistols pushed the self-destruct button.

Oh yes, the last Sex Pistols gig in San Francisco.

Yeah.

Funny how these things just...

trip off the end of your tongue.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Good night.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

I meant it.

I was so fed up with the idiocy of the management,

and the dissipation of the band.

For many, punk died the day the Pistols split up.

But, by pulling the plug, they neatly sidestepped a problem.

Punk was everywhere. It had taken centre stage,

and its oppositional stance was now unsustainable.

One of the great achievements of the punk movement

was to blow away some cobwebs.

It was a great kind of full stop.

But you can't look at punk unless you understand

that its nihilism and its anarchy

was the seeds of its own destruction.

There was a feeling in the air of, "This is all going downhill."

By the end of '79, it wasn't fun.

I think if you're not having fun, you should stop.

The bands that remained faced a dilemma.

If punk was no longer rallying against the status quo,

then what should it do?

You only began to see light at the end of the tunnel

when The Clash brought out London Calling,

and it's like, "Ah! We're free."

You can actually embrace all the world is offering.

That was a milestone record.

Because it broke the shackles of punk rock.

# London calling

# To the faraway towns

# Now war is declared And battle come down

# London calling

# To the underworld

# Come out of the cupboard You boys and girls... #

There was a feeling that punk music

had really painted itself into this corner.

We were thinking along the lines of,

"It's about all music."

We were just playing all the music that we liked.

# Of that truncheon thing

# The ice age is coming The sun's zooming in

# Meltdown expected The wheat is growing thin

# Engines stopped running but I have no fear

# Cos London is drowning

# I live by the river. #

The Clash survived,

because within the language of The Clash

is this desire for change.

But it wasn't just The Clash learning how to leave punk behind.

# I'm down in the tube station at midnight

# Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

# I first felt a fist

# And then a kick I could now smell their breath... #

Things outstayed their welcome, didn't they?

We took what we wanted, and what we thought we could use.

And we did our own thing with it.

# An amateur band rehearse in a nearby yard

# Watching the telly and thinking 'bout your holidays

# That's entertainment

# That's entertainment

# Ah... #

We learned to develop, really.

It took us a couple of albums to do that.

# Let's get together Before it's too late... #

Some of punk's original class of '76

were even beginning to carve out careers as bona fide pop stars.

A lot of people that had served their apprenticeship

in the punk rock era

had learned a thing or two.

I certainly did.

# So unlock the jukebox And do yourself a favour

# That music's lost its taste

# So try another flavour

# Ant music... #

I certainly became a pop singer.

Punk was over.

My intention was to just to get this thing sounding,

looking, different from everything else around me.

MUSIC: "Hong Kong Garden" by Siouxsie & the Banshees

# Harmful elements in the air

# Cymbals crashing everywhere

# Reaps the fields of rice and reeds... #

It's weird. My first reaction

to Hong Kong Garden -

when we first wrote it -

I just thought, "Ooh, it's too poppy."

When I thought about it, I thought,

"I love pop music."

MUSIC: "Arabian Nights" by Siouxsie & the Banshees

# They said I'd be impressed.

# Arabian nights

# At your primitive best. #

There are some curveballs

within the realm of pop.

So really, it's a perfect

platform for anything, really.

MUSIC: "Your Generation" by Generation X

# Well, that's your generation

# Oh yeah.

# Time for generation... #

We thought, "Let's use the radio.

"Let's use the TV. Let's use the newspapers."

# Bring hell from above

# Because in the midnight hour

# She cried, "More, more, more!"

# With a rebel yell

# She cried, "More, more, more!" #

It certainly gave me a future.

MUSIC: "Public Image" by Public Image Limited

# Hello. Hello... #

In a little over two years,

punk had both torn down the walls of the establishment,

and imploded. But how would the generation of bands that followed

face the questions that had been thrown up post-punk?

# You never listen to a word that I say

# You only see me for the clothes that I wear

# Or did the interest go so much deeper?

# It must have been the colour of my hair

# The public image. #

# What you wanted was never made clear

# Behind the image was ignorance and fear

# You hide behind this public machine

# You still follow the same old scheme

# Public image. #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd