punk princess

At first glance featuring Hawkwind here may go counter to everything I've said earlier . They appear to feature a lot of the attributes that would make them boring hippies but my friends that is to misunderstand the beauty of Hawkwind. You won't see them mentioned in rock histories or perhaps just in passing but Hawkwind are one of the forgotten greats. By now they will have released over a hundred million albums , and will have been playing live for over thirty years. Essentially a drug fuelled band they have plied their trade through so many incarnations and styles of music that they have become timeless and in a genre of their own. Christ they even had a top 30 hit with Silver Machine . Their next single Urban Guerilla was released at the time of an IRA bombing campaign and was banned !!!! Them's the knocks for our space heroes..


His cohort of the cosmos..Bob Calvert (deceased)



Stacia..you don't get dancers like these on Top Of The Pops !!!
The central point of the band has always been Dave Brock At their peak round about Space Ritual they featured Lemmy and playing extended jams all based on a loose space theme featuring , saxophone, weird sonic instruments and a naked dancer Stacia. It may not sound appetising but try it. Dave Brock's proto punk guitar, Lemmys amphetamine driven bass, complete with double drummers. Punkadelia is the best way to describe it. Constant free gigs at festivals, support for various causes, some more radical than others, and completely unpublicised and a complete anarchist lifestyle. They were different. They stayed different and perhaps unique in popular music they stayed true to their ideals an still do. Punk didn't affect them at all it re-energised them. Listen to Death Trap of PXR5 for an all out punk sonic attack.

Johnny Rotten used to go and see them often and play their records. Pete Shelley (and Magazine) was influenced by Space Ritual, Shanne from The Nips wanted to play bass like them and Monster Magnet even sound like them now.. In an era of stadium rock they went out and played for free to people at any place that would have them...they never conformed. I love Hawkwind its as simple as that.
Check out any compilation of them or these three albums below...essential tracks...Born To Go....Death Trap...Quark Strangeness & Charm...Urban Guerilla....High Rise (gives Magazine a run for the money)...Silver Machine....25 Years...the list is endless.

Where does one start when analysing the influence of the thin white one ? Bowie's impact on the whole spectrum of rock'n'pop and then even soul and ambience throughout the seventies and into the early Eighties was nothing short of apocalyptic.

Wayne County alleges in the book Please Kill Me that Bowie ripped of the whole glam/transvestite thang from him. If he did then good luck to him coz he had the genius to pull it off. Bowie rescued rock. Rock again became dangerous, sexy, confusing, rebellious and annoying to parents. And of course it sold !!! More than this Bowie was bisexual.

Ziggy Stardust was the one that broke the mould after David Jones had spent years warbling away hippily with an acoustic guitar and singing about laughing gnomes. It took gender fantasy into the boudoirs of teenagers and post teenagers alike with its combination of sassy spaced out introspection and strange costumes leaving one nipple and leg exposed and the lunchpack on display. Suddenly everyone wanted to make love with their egos and make up sales rocketed. It also introduced the world to Hang On To Yourself and a bass line the Ramones would base a career on. The role of rock star had to be examined anew aided by the guitar of one Mick Ronson so beloved of later punk bands like Slaughter & The Dogs and Shanne from the Nips who swore he had the sexiest handshake !

Aladdin Sane took the androgyny further silver body paint an all while Diamond Dogs proved you could chant blankly while the world expired.

Ever the chameleon, Bowie then switched to smooth white soul for Young Americans and Station To Station before coming up trumps again in 77 with the magnificent soaring Heroes. Sadly duets with Queen and Mick Jagger and selling himself to Pepsi sold the dream off piece by piece while The Tin Machine and drum and bass forays have attempted to repair the damage.

Without doubt 75% of the challenging and unconventional in music comes from Mr Bowie; from the whole of glam rock thru to Mr Manson.

We think of Alice Cooper now as some relic from the past still on the treadmill of the rock circus. Back in the early seventies thought Alice was lewd, crude and most definitely shocking. I still my remember my dads distaste at my sister's poster of him and horror (he was a schoolteacher) at Schools Out and other records. Why's he called Alice ? was parents most repeated question. Deliberately named with a feminine name Alice set out to shock. Remember them on the Whistle Test. Extravagant make up, torn leotard, high boots ,undone zip down to his bollocks.... singing songs that ranged from death to rebellion...they weren't the Beatles and you wouldn't bring him home to tea !

His shows featured guillotines, his pet boa constrictor, decapitation and so on. The music was hard and abrasive and topped off with that Alice growl. Drugs and drink as per usual took their toll and the visuals became more extravagant as the music became worse before he was revitalised in the mid eighties and accepted into rocks mainstream. Behind the facade Vincent tho was a golf loving man who liked hanging out with presidents but don't let that cloud the fact that as Alice he was cool and as outrageous and made Mr Manson seem like Def Leppard.




Love It To Death album
Songs to check out

Eighteen, Schools Out, Elected, Under My Wheels...in fact any early Alice up to about 1975.

Eater covered Eighteen renaming it 15 !!! and lets not forget Mr Rotten's audition for the Pistols in Malcolm's shop miming to Schools Out on the jukebox...poor sod !!!!!! Notice also the similarity to the clothes and makeup in the Clockwork Orange film .....Alice was ultraviolence.
Zigzag 1971 Interview

"Sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds don't want to hear jazz . . . they want to hear rock. And they want a sex image - an anti-heroic image. Our music is energy, high energy . . . that's the main thing about it. That's what third generation rock is . . . look at us, the MC5, and the Stooges - it's all high energy music. When you leave the concert, you don't leave thinking "wow, what a heavy guitar solo", you leave thinking "whew!" You sweat a lot - and that's what rock is; rock should be sweat. It should really be high energy electricity and sex music. ..'Eighteen'? That song worked because people really liked it - they got into the whole idea of being 18 . . . the frustrations. It's sort of like an updated version of 'My Generation'. But a hit single is 'dangerous', because we're drawing ten times as many people. And when all those kids are coming to see us, then going 'Wow, I think I'll go home and put on some of Mom's eye make-up ' . . . and their dad's a cop . . ."

The seventies were a confusing time. After the positivism and energy of the early sixties subsided into the negativity of the late sixties and early seventies music became weird. Altamont and the Vietnam war had blown apart a few dreams. As we proceed thru the seventies various world and domestic events with strikes and inflation and cost of living and growing unemployment seem to reflect in music. Music attempts to grow more serious but loses touch with everyday living with its escapism. At the same time it just becomes bigger and bigger losing sight of the audience in front of it. Take a look at the covers of serious music of the time...fantasy images divorced from reality (Led Zep 4).
At the other end Glam rock is decadent, peripheral, its sexuality is confused. Its 3 minutes of songs celebrating lust, teenagers, vacant thoughts and peripheral transitory dramas. Meanwhile there were still areas of rock fermenting revolt and excitement. In America the flame is still held by Iggy and Lou Reed and the New York Dolls who are about to influence other bands just forming like the Ramones who themselves loved Sweet and T Rex and who will eventually collide with UK punk along with the glam era. A band like The New York Dolls tho will achieve mythical status. Definitely not contrived, this band will bring back to rock the excitement, sex and danger and encourage a certain Mr McLaren to pursue his idea of the ultimate teenage angst band.

The essential films of the era are Clockwork Orange; violence, rape & amorality. The Night Porter and Cabaret; stylish sexual decadence to a Nazi theme of disintegration and Death Race 2000 - again death as meaningless as competitors race around gaining points killing people. Elements of these films would be incorporated into the fashion of the Sex Pistols earliest followers.
While all this swirls the central protagonists in British punk are growing up and soaking up these influences to a greater or lesser extent to throw into the great punk melting point of fashion and music. Music that could provoke both by its sound and by the clothes its audience wore, music of people who were different, music that demanded participation. All that was needed was the flames to be fanned by some bands across the water in the US of A and a grass roots reaction in the UK in pubs and boy were the blank generation ready to rumble with the greatest music ever heard in the history of mankind.....or something along those lines !!!

The Seventies Part 2


As we reach the end of the sixties its perhaps a good time to stop and make some observations. Now it probably seems seem like the history of punk is all cause and effect i.e. that one band influences another band who influences another and so on until we get the Sex Pistols.

However like history itself, this is never true. There is a pool of bands like the MC5 and Velvet Underground, The Who and Stooges who are making seminal contributions to punk yet are making their own way and their own sounds and not necessarily influenced by each other. We have the development of non commercial dark or political music and confrontational commercial music. Something the Sex Pistols would exploit in their alliance with major record labels. Remember an artist wants to be heard or their music is redundant. It's the paradox of the artist that it relies on its audience no matter how much it despises it.



The Sweet- make up, glaml, androgyny and ready for the teenage rampage! As we begin the seventies music is coagulating into different groups. Its the era of super groups; of playing to giant stadiums of people, of money and remoteness by being strung out on drugs and playing music that bears no relation to anyone's lives...anyone for the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway then? These bands were serious bands playing serious music and attracting a fanbase of hippies and musos which is perhaps a little unkind. Following on from Tommy and Sgt Peppers rock was the new classical music and could be listened to as serious music.

In direct contrast and at the same time influenced by acts such as Lou Reed, David Bowie, T Rex and Alice Cooper popular music throws up one of its most bizarre twists when it gives us a genre of brickies in makeup that we remember fondly as glam and glitter rock. An expression of sexuality as marketing that is a perverse twist on the lack of women in music at the time. However what can't be doubted was that Glam made some fucking raucous music that still amazes me was played on the radio then and helped pave the way for the punk look and even sound.

While undoubtedly the genre threw up a number of classics it also had it downside. Glam and theatrics permeated every part of the music business... gave muppets like Queen and Kiss ideas of extravagance and opened up another market of saleability. The fact that artists like Sweet and Suzi Quatro all had their hits made and produced for them by the Chinnichap producing and writing team also supported Glam as a marketing idea. Worse years later, influenced by these glam bands and a Johnny Thunders haircut, we would get a wave of USA bands lie Poison, Kiss, Motley Crue and their ilk inflicting pain on our ears.

Why do men like prettying themselves up to look like women ? Now the fans followed suit with earrings, makeup and spiky short hair a la Bowie. Women, however, still had no real outlet in music beyond the teen fantasies being sold to them by the industry and magazines. Suzi Quatro is the one female musicians with, to pardon the expression, balls and will influence many female musicians afterwards.

"It was strange. You found that there was other music behind it. You were hearing other music behind it. You were hearing secret harmonies I suppose, echoes of something else."

"The words...They were about something. It was much more intelligent.."

"It wasn't just an LP, it was a complete experience !"

"Until Lennon rock'n'roll had rarely been so abrasive, confessional, otherworldly, primal, political or so deeply moving and thought provoking" Q magazine on Lennon Aug 1999.
My arse it was ! It was complete shite and how many forests have died as journos worked themselves into a frenzy over the 'experience' of it all for the past 35 years !!!



Pretentious....moi ??? Look !!!! By 1967 the Beatles were addled by success and adulation and fast disappearing up their own backsides in a welter of mysticism and pseudo intellectualism. They wanted acceptance intellectually...to elevate pop to a kind of art and legitimise themselves in the eyes of the very people pop was supposed to upset. Unfortunately they did it. Replacing excitement and energy with torpor and studio tricks (that magical bit where the piano chord sounds forever.... god help us) they and their producer came up with an album that they could never perform live and which would hang round the necks of future generations like a mile stone as 'the greatest album ever 'etc yawn ... 'the defining music of the sixties' etc yawn. This myth of the Beatles has been expounded year after year and still manages to provide journalists with copy, income and a license to fuel the myth. Why?

Sgt Peppers received the accolades they craved being compared musically to Beethoven and Schumann and lyrically to TS Eliott and Joyce. It all seemed a long way from Chuck Berry and Elvis. At best Sgt Peppers is a collection of reasonable tunes. At worse whimsical and lyrically embarrassing.. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds....wow LSD. They were clever boys to write that ! They are responsible for every other musician thinking he is an artist and that his music means something intellectually. They are responsible for concept albums and studio boredom. In short the 3 minute toon nearly died with the Beatles but would re-surface again in a few years but the seeds were sown for rocks dark days. They sucked all the fun out of music and gave us pretentiousness and progressive music. They bought into Eastern religion and found the purveyors and gurus as corrupt and as shallow as themselves before moving on to the next big thing. As if we cared !

And what was the sum of all their cleverness.. a pregnant woman dying of multiple stab wounds on the orders of a nutter who took the words of Helter Skelter and other lyrics off the White Album as his own blueprint. That's when the real world collides not some crappy boat on tangerine skies. Like the Stones at Altamont reality hurts... and kills.


You would have to be insane not to like the Beatles !! Charlie Manson
Give me Money, women and 4 gullible Mop tops !
As they shuffled off and split the Beatles went back to what they did best second hand rock'n' roll tunes and skiffle beat. They made some good tunes...some great tunes even...but then so did Abba....and come to think of it so did the Smurfs.

Quite simply everything about The Velvet Underground was astonishing. Take a female drummer with one beat (Mo Tucker), a classically trained Welshman (John Cale), a blonde German beauty who couldn't sing (Nico), and two buddies from Syracuse University (Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed) who all collided together as a band formed to promote Lou's song 'The Ostrich' !!!! Add another blonde who painted soup cans, a name derived from a novel about sado-masochism and Verve as a major label and you arrive at the VU a band who rewrote the rules for music as we know it.
The band looked and sounded like no other. Dissonant, atonal, provocative and featuring sometimes the tortuous vocals of Nico (God help us she was dire !!!!) contained in mainly classic songs featuring among other subjects heroin, bondage, more heroin, transvestites and oral sex...Forget The Beatles pissing about with backward tape loops stoned here was Cale running a chair into metal plates to simulate glass smashing !!! Forget that piano note of 'A Day in a Life' that goes on forever here was the sound of pure white noise as the blues were turned inside out for 'Run Run Run' with a wall of feedback. While people developed studio professionalism here was Cale and Reed turning their instruments up to try and drown each other during their behemoth 'Sister Ray' while developing the prototype punk guitar sound everyone wanted in '77. Forget love and peace here was a band who on their second album had a cover featuring soldiers going over the top bayonets fixed and with a title about mainlining drugs ! If you don't think 'Venus in Furs' is sublime then you have no idea about music and if you listen to 'Sister Ray' all the way thru nodding wisely then you are not much better.
Classics include 'What Goes On', 'Pale Blue Eyes' and 'Sweet Jane' . They were the first band to recognise and incorporate the underbelly of life into rock'n'roll and yet able to write emotional & tender songs with Reed's voice almost breaking at times and yet not sounding twee or sugary. Their first two albums 'VU with Nico' and 'White Light/White Heat' probably sold 30 copies put together but their influence is still felt today. After those first two albums they declined as Cale left and they attempted to take a more commercial direction that failed.

Lou's solo career basically carried off where the Velvets ended. Lou Reed is a complex character and it is no suprise that a bloke who is a total asshole should have been given this talent for music !! Lou is a bit of a mystery who started sucking knobs, married his press agent, went out with and married a transvestite ,allegedly f***ed Bowie and so on and with a healthy dollop of drugs added at various times. His sexuality was as confused as his music which ranges from the crap to the sublime - to the white noise of Metal Machine Music to the anger of Blue Mask with Robert Quine from the Voidoids on guitar to the epic Street Hassle with Bruce Sprinsteen.

While hippies were singing about flowers and the Beatles were boring us rigid with St Peppers the Velvets were sticking a spike in their arm and 'too busy sucking on a ding dong'. They gave us a vision where it wasn't all harmony sweetness and light love and the long winding road. Music could appal as well as appeal to.
For that we love them. Their influence stretches for ever thru Iggy, Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith, Television and Bowie thru punk, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Sisters of Mercy and every alternative band in the universe. It comes as no surprise that 'Waiting For My Man' was the most covered UK Punk toon done by among others Eater, The Wasps, Slaughter & The Dogs and the UK Subs.

Then suddenly it was over...1967 was a magical year we are told because an album came out that changed peoples lives. For some the greatest album of all time by the most influential group of all time that regularly tops readers charts.....yep that album was Velvet Underground and Nico. oh yeah another album came out Sgt Peppers Crappy Hearts Club Band and music would never be the same coz all that's bad in music comes from ... The Beatles. We will explore their legacy in later parts but before we leave there's one other vital band we should mention as they contribute to the next phase with their sound.
Along with the VU (left) the other band commonly singled out as being influential were those lovable political rockers the MC5 from Detroit (seen right). Between them they created different notions of a pop underbelly, of a pop angry and politicised with a sound to boot that could incite as well as excite. Great music didn't have to be comfortable or in tune. Guitars could be set on stun and discordant. They were in a minority. They sold bugger all but their influence still stretches over 30 years !! not bad...They are last link to The Yardbirds etc before rock moves in a more metallic direction.
What we see is the pop song as a three minute burst of youth and spontaneity being dragged to an intellectual mind numbing album length of concepts to be explored. So where did it all go wrong ? Well musicians became rock stars who suddenly had the desire to be taken seriously... they didn't want to get old before they died...they started touring to ever larger amounts of people becoming ever more distant from their record public, becoming richer and fatter. They wanted to be recognised as artistes pursuing a valid form of expression.

So as we progress what we have got ? A drug addled generation of free lovers who have lost the plot in a welter of mysticism and pretentiousness. Its the birth of stadium rock, hard rock and giant egos and super bands. We started with 3 minute burst of youth and spontaneity and we leave with Cream turning Robert Johnson's majestic blues of Crossroads into a 17 minute guitar torture, John & Yoko in bed, concept albums and a desire to be taken seriously. Dark days indeed.

Yet something odd happened in England. We never lost the notion of small bands playing raw rhythm and blues/ 12 bar and that was something that was going to have a large impact in later years but I'm getting ahead of myself. Next part into the seventies via 1969.... God what a nightmare - ridiculous album sleeves, ridiculous makeup, ridiculous lyrics and plenty to laugh at... and that's just the men !

Jim Morrison puts our first look at Punk Rock in perspective with this quote from 1969 "The thing they called rock, what used to be called Rock'n'roll -it got decadent. And then there was a revival sparked by the English. That went very far. It was articulate. Then it became self conscious, which I think is the death of any movement... It became incestuous. The energy is gone. There is no longer a belief."

The Sonics. There was none dirtier or majestic than The Sonics. This band had it all, fuzzed up guitars, great riffs, screaming vocals akin to Little Richard. This band rocked from 1964-67 giving us
classics such as The Witch, Strychnine (later covered by The Cramps), Boss Hog, Psycho and Louie Louie.

"IF our records sound distorted, its because they are...they were always overdriven. My Brother Larry ... he was disconnecting the speakers and poking a hole in them with an icepick. That's how we ended up sounding like a train crash." Sonics bassist.

Essential super fuzz. A tough new sound blending rock 'n' roll, singers like James Brown and the Yardbirds and early Stones.

Count 5. Immortalised in Lester Bangs book 'Psychotic Reactions' they trod a path of never ending weirdness into the outer fringes of lunacy. Their debut album here sees them standing over a grave while the music contains the classic Psychotic Reaction (covered by The Cramps and Radiators from Space) fuzz and flange to great effect while romping thru tracks such as Big Mouth. Recommended.

The Seeds. Long before Richard Hell... was... Sky Sunlight Saxon (what a name to give to the dole !!) and his merry men The Seeds. This album features their righteous two chord toon Pushin' Too Hard and (as covered by The Vacants) along with Can't Seem To Make You Mine (covered by The Ramones).... a perfect piece of proto punkery and an essential to hear. Like our other pals here Sky went a bit batty, lived in a caravan and collected 8 track cassettes because he thought that was the future...mmmmmm........  

13th Floor Elevators. My personal favourites for what its worth. They were without doubt before the fate that befell their leader Roky Erikson definitely orbiting another planet. The sleeve notes of their first album contain pure gibberish about the lyrics but f**k me the music is excellent. Tracks like 'Fire Engine' and 'Monkey Island' and of course the sublime 'You're Gonna Miss Me' all make up a great album. What can you add to fuzzed up guitars and psychedelic lyrics..... mmm the sound of a jug.. and they did! Well they were good ole Texas boys!

By the next album 'Easter Everywhere' they had moved onto the next solar system but still produced magic tracks like 'Levitation' (covered by Julian Cope) and without doubt their epic 'Slip Inside This House' (mercilessly slaughtered by Primal Scream). I haven't the faintest idea what Roky is talking about but I know when a song is good and it is.
Roky was busted for one dope joint and to escape a sentence elected for shock therapy which left him absolutely f****d. Its heartrending to read the interview with Nick Kent in his book 'Tales from the Darkside' where minutes elapse between q's and the answer is just 'uhhh'. Roky now is scared to go on stage repeats the same song over and has been left a virtual pauper having been ripped off by record companies.

If there was any justice those arseholes who give out those lifetime achievement awards to muppets like Metallica would recognise Roky and the Elevators. All respect to ZZ Top who contributed to the covers tribute album (they all knew each other in Texas! Just to show how wacked out they all were click here to visit the drummers website... he is still on another planet !! However he publishes chapter by chapter his story of the band and its bloody interesting.

The Who. Fuck me this is what it was all about. Cool clothes , attitude and a visceral aggressive sound of fury. In 1965 Townsend wrote "My personal motivation onstage is simple. It consists of a hate of every kind of pop music and a hate of everything our group has done...I don't see any career ahead." An awesome band with the love / hate relationship of Daltrey ( "I would have been a criminal if I hadn't been a singer") and Townsend and the totally lunatic Keith Moon on drums. Feedback instrument destruction and some classic songs. The archetypal leaders of a youth culture... Mod .. but the template for later heroes. The first band to capture teenage angst.

Unfortunately the 'Hope I die before I get Old' refrain of My Generation turned to ashes as even aged 90 they are still trundling that song out to their generation. Worse than that they gave us Tommy which was part of pops dark ages but we'll come to that., Lets instead celebrate some classic early stuff like I Can't Explain, I Can See For Miles, Substitute and I'm a Boy. Classic pop nihilism !!. Check out any early footage of Townsend destroying his instrument, arms windmilling as he hits the guitar, Daltrey swinging the mike and Mooney going nuts. Play loud. Then look at the Jam and say I wonder who their influences were.
On the punkometer influence Patti Smith ,The Drones and Suburban Studs covered My Generation. Raped used to cover I'm A Boy and the Sex Pistols of course did Substitute and I'm A Boy.

The Yardbirds. How important were the Yardbirds ?? Here's Lester Bangs..."They came stampeding in and just blew everybody clean off the tracks ...they were so fucking good in fact, that people were still imitating as much as a decade later...." from 'Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung'. Feedback heavy fuzz.... this band induced a cultural shift in America similar to when The Ramones first toured the UK. Band lasted only short time and launched the careers of jimmy Page and Eric Clapton but then again shit happens. Tracks to check out... Shape Of Things To Come..(covered by The Ramones), Train Kept A Rollin (covered by Motorhead), Heartful of Soul and For Your Love.

The Small Faces. Riding along of the same mod wave as The Who were The Small Faces. Again pure youth music and the sound would form part of the rock'n'roll pub rock culture that would continue on as part of the UK music scene. Even more when The Small Faces split to become The Faces featuring Rod Stewart complete with boogie style gravel guitar. Check out Watcha Gonna Do About It (covered by the Pistols & The Jolt) along with All Or Nothing and Sha La La La Lee), Stay With Me, Three Button Hand Me Down and Lazy Sunday Afternoons. Cock Sparrer owe a lot to the Small Faces !!!

We can't leave out The Kinks not least for their contribution to the sound of punk with You Really Got Me (audio clip) and All Day And All Of The Night or Van Morrison & Them with the garage classic 'Gloria' covered by everyone from Hendrix to Patti Smith and all points in between.

10 great UK tracks to blow your mind

1 Who - My Generation 6 Stones - Satisfaction

2 Small Faces - Whatcha Gonna Do About It 7 Them - Gloria

3 Yardbirds - Shape Of Things To Come 8 Kinks - You Really Got Me

4 Stones - Paint It Black 9 Small Faces - Lazy Sunday Afternoon

5 Them - Here Comes The Night 10 The Who - Substitute  

As rock'n' roll collided with the blues, bands like Them, The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds absorbed blues and rock'n'roll riffs (Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry for instance), dirtied and speeded them up and appropriated the gruff mannerisms of black blues singers to produce songs like 'Gloria' and 'Satisfaction'.In a curious twist Jagger sang like a Yank who in turn was exaggeratedly copied by US bands to produce those lovely thuggish sneering acid vocals that The Standells (left) and others used while mixing it up with rockabilly, the surf music of Dicky Dale and Link Wray (right). Elvis, blues and rockabilly influenced The Beatles, Stones and Yardbirds who in turn on visiting the USA became the catalyst for an explosion of bands who sprouted up like psychedelic mushrooms. These bands popped up everywhere in a garage scene that took the dirtiest elements, fuzzed them up and spiked it with psychedelia. The music had a look and a sound. This really was a golden period. Bands formed overnight and hundreds of singles were released in an explosion of creativity.

Lets face it the Yanks thrashed us here . We started them off with the Stones and they gave us a whole magical trip while we ended up with the shite like Traffic,The Move and the bloody Beatles spewing their pap. Yep the USA gave us Count 5 performing songs like 'Psychotic Reaction' as covered by The Cramps and Radiators from Space ( and an early cover version the Sex Pistols did), The Trashmen gave us 'Surfin Bird' as covered by The Ramones. The 13th Floor Elevators lead by Roky Erikson, who escaped a sentence for drugs with electric therapy and was made a virtual veg, gave us the classic 'You're Gonna Miss Me'. Or The Seeds, featuring Sky Sunlight Saxon, doing 'Pushing Too Hard'.
This period is just filled with numerous gems some of which were collected by Lenny Kaye on the famous Nuggets album and which should be in every persons collection. Other great bands to watch out for include The Standells, Love, Chocolate Watch Band, The Sonics and Electric Prunes (left). There's a lot of similarities with punk 77 style... explosion of bands, small labels, a counter culture of look, sound and teenage rebellion. These bands would heavily influence later American punk bands.Having influenced the Yanks we gave them some more to chew on. This time it was fashion based culture and angry young men with the destructive power and feedback of those sharp Shepherds Bush hipsters The Who, the distorted two chord fury of The Kinks and the glorious Small Faces. The Pistols used to include Faces and Who songs in their set and early rehearsals featured covers from both bands.

Rock has always been about social and cultural conflict ever since its birth in the boogie blues of artists such as John Lee Hooker. The social alienation and angst of the black experience permeated the predominantly white middle class rock 'n' roll. That was until whitey in the shape of Elvis took control and introduced new brands of alienation like parents, society and girls along with clothes and attitude to symbolise that alienation.

"I had never seen anyone put on a show like that ...it was just shocking...he looked like a real street kid...that show really changed my life...I was overwhelmed by Elvis, I was overwhelmed by the musicians. I could feel the playing." Jerry Nolan (Heartbreakers, New York Dolls) from the book 'Please Kill Me'

Yep welcome to Elvis Presley and a thousand other rockabilly cats riding the crest of a teen culture and rebellion. Money and leisure and advances in technology were opening up an untapped market of the teenager. The parents hated it but the kids loved it. The first barbarians were at the gate. 24 years seperate us from Punk76. 24 years to that previous was Elvis. We tend to see Elvis as a bloated drug addict dying on the toilet and dismiss his songs through over exposure, but its weird how he can catch you off guard.

Elvis was young, sexy and mixed up blues and bluegrass and everything else. Hearing Heartbreak Hotel at high volume it can suddenly hit you just how good he was and how radical he was. But check out his Sun Sessions album (Mystery Train, Good Rockin Tonight, Thats All Right) and tell me the boy don't rock. Music and clothes that were different could give teenagers identity and annoy. At the same time as Elvis came Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard; hard rockers like Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps and of course Eddie Cochran. Mix in black singers like James Brown and you start to get the over the top singing and the wild front man. Rock'n'roll was dangerous and it was rebellious. Years later Malcolm Mclaren would resurrect these times and clothes in his shops and use it as a basis for his own teen revolution.

Elvis and rock 'n' roll was the start of the US relationship with the UK music scene which would see us trade sounds and ideas... well basically for ever. Rock'n'roll brought the birth of the teenager and as such brought the idea of teenage rebellion and a desire to forge your own identity through clothes and music. Music was a rush, it was a bout cars, clothes, love, shagging and dancing... three minutes of a slice of youth without responsibility. Rock'n roll had a profound influence on England where to celebrate we slashed cinema seats. It also gave us shite like Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard, The Dakotas and worst of all The Beatles.

Tommy Steele - What a rebel !!!!....Not!!!

But the Beatles once they dropped their early leather gear and became loveable mop tops made music more accessible which, allied with advances in technology, meant greater exposure for bands. Music began to exert an influence and generate publicity. Rock'n'roll was dangerous it was rebellious and it sold. As the shock of the new began to wear off capitalism like the all consuming beast it is absorbed the rebels and their clothes and styles and made them popular and made money while awaiting the next attack which wasn't long coming.