Some Historical Stuff About Punk Rock
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.
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.
