A Little Something Punk

By Sheldon Kessel

            My interest in the development of punk rock was first sparked during my years as an undergraduate music major when, as part of a degree in composition, I had to write numerous papers describing, in turn, all the different music that had influenced me, topped off with every student’s nightmare – a synthesis capstone paper.  Since then, as a college instructor, I inadvertently reexamine my own roots at the beginning of each semester when, on the first day of class, I ask my new students about their own influences.   They always return the favor, and ask about mine.  “The styles that have been with me my entire life are straight-up top 40 pop, and hip-hop, though at different periods in my life I’ve been obsessed with pretty much every sub-genre of popular music out there.”  It’s my standard answer.  As they prod further, interest always peaks when they discover that their tie-wearing teacher once had blue and purple hair, multiple facial piercings, and played in a punk rock band.  

            Indeed, I once thought of myself as a punk.  Now, though I still hold my punk-rock idealist ethics dear, I am much less confrontational – less idealist, more realist.  I do still love punk music, punk style, and still admire the punk kids for their idealism, but all old punks get to a point in their lives where they need to ask, “am I still punk?”  What is punk?  It might help answer these questions to do a little examination of the history of this thing called punk.  …so that’s what I did. 

            I decided to focus on two proto-punk bands that exhibited many of the widely accepted “punk characteristics.”  I didn’t want to explore too far back in time – any study of musical evolution could be traced back hundreds of years, and I wanted to end the study at punk-year-zero – 1977.  To get an idea of popular punk opinion, I asked other punks who they thought were the “first punks.” I expected everyone to say “The Sex Pistols,” but I was hoping for more.  I was more interested in those who exhibited some of the punk characteristics without self-consciously trying to “be punk.” 

            Like my own popular music interests which might seem arbitrary but have gone through a logical progression based on certain artists’ influences, and their influences in turn, punk rock evolved culturally and musically from everything that came before.  Rock music has, supposedly, always been about rebellion.  Punk took the idea a step further to rebel against rock.  Punk tried to dismantle the “rock star” ideal of celebrity and excess to create an ideal of “making art for art’s sake.” 

            The lineage of punk can be traced all the way back to Elvis Presley and the first wave of rock and roll in the 1950’s.  After all, rock and roll was a rebellion against mainstream society, as was punk.  The musical style of early rock and roll was a rebellion against conservative, romantic, sentimental pop music, as was punk.  The differences lie in their reasons for rebellion.  While both grew out of boredom and restlessness, 50’s rock and rollers were bored with prosperity and general societal conservatism, whereas punk grew out of boredom with the nine-to-five drudgery of blue collar life in America and with unemployment in Britain.  They were all rebelling against being told what to do by a society that could have just as easily disposed of them.  Both punk and 50’s rock and roll were an attempt to eliminate the hierarchical structures in the popular music machine and “ultimately - to eliminate hierarchy, period.” ^[1]  They were sick of being force fed music made by musicians and songwriters far removed from “the real world”. “As quintessential rebellion, punk (and early rock and roll) is based on doing the opposite of what is expected.  In that, its raison d’etre is to shock, its point is subversion rather than critique.” ^[2]  In short, the 50’s rockers and 70’s punks were trying to make sense of their world by creating their own reality--making art. 

Pre-Punk History  

            Contrary to popular belief, the first real punk bands were American rather than British.  Also, the movement began in the late 60’s to early 70’s - it was not a sudden explosion in the mid to late 70’s.  The first bands that appeared to have a punk perspective on things and have a lasting influence were The Velvet Underground, Iggy and the Stooges, the MC5, and the New York Dolls--all Americans.  At first glance one has to wonder what these bands have in common.  With the Velvet Underground’s lilting avant-garde art rock, the Stooges’ and MC5’s noisy cacophony, and New York Dolls’ glam schlock, they seem like a disparate bunch.  However, despite their vastly different musical approaches they all shared similar ideologies that revolved around rebellion from the accepted social and musical fabric of society, disdain for highly polished musical skills in favor of pure expression, and a desire for experimentation in music, image, and lifestyle.  “Tying the variations of punk together, from its earliest origins, was a singular yet deeply complex ideal:  that pop music was to reconfigured as a populist art and that art should be both a confrontation with and a negation of mainstream society.” ^[3]  They were the beginnings of the underground alternative to corporate excess.   

The Velvet Underground 

            There is no question that The Velvet Underground was the most influential “alternative” band ever. Period.  Brian Eno was quoted as saying, “hardly anyone bought the groups albums when they first came out, but those who did all went on to form their own bands.” ^[4]  The Velvet Underground formed in New York City in 1965 and was made up of Lou Reed, who had been working as a songwriter in a pop music “songfactory” known as Pickwick Records and was already a seasoned veteran of the music industry when the Velvets formed in 1965;   John Cale, who was a classically trained viola player and composer and had worked with such avant-garde composers as LaMonte Young and John Cage, and who counted Aaron Copland among his teachers;  and Sterling Morrison, a guitar player who met Lou Reed in the Syracuse University dorms and also lived next to Angus MacLise, the Velvets’ first drummer. ^[5]  They were all young pseudo-intellectuals interested in avant-garde art, music, and film.  They seem to have been the first rock band to have made music purely for musics sake, dismissing the prominent attitude of rock and rollers that were in it for money, fame, or sex.  In fact, Angus MacLise was so adamant about not doing it for the money that when the band got its first paying gig -at a high school dance- he quit because he didn’t want to “sell out”. ^[6]  After MacLise quit, they got Maureen Tucker, who was the sister of Lou Reed’s Syracuse University roommate, to play percussion. ^[7]  

            Andy Warhol, in January 1966, saw the Velvet Underground play at a nightclub called Café Bizarre.  Warhol was extremely impressed with their performance and offered to hire them as the resident band for his studio: The Factory.  At the studio they provided music for Warhol’s film productions as well as entertainment for parties held at the space.  Until Warhol hired the band, his experiments with film tended to have very little, if any, sound.  It was the Velvet Underground’s job to provide music for Warhol’s films in an effort to make the films more accessible.  In turn, Warhol attempted to make the band more accessible by convincing them to allow a Hungarian fashion model, Nico, to join them onstage.  Before Nico, the band had been notoriously boring to watch live; they weren’t theatrical, weren’t pretty, and didn’t move around much onstage.  With the blonde supermodel gyrating her hips onstage and occasionally singing, the Velvet Underground began to attract a fan base. 

            Andy Warhol produced the Velvet Underground’s debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico.  There was very little production -- it was recorded live, without overdubbing.  The album formed the ideal of punk records -- to just play without doing anything special for the recording and without overdubbing or doing multiple takes.  

            They eventually went on to record three more albums.  They never got to be anything close to “popular” but that was sort of the point.  They refused to make music they didn’t want to make in order to be digestible to the masses and were always more concerned with making art than making money.  They lived fast and died young - the band went their separate ways in 1970 and were together for a total of five years.  They have since acquired a sort of cult following and continue to influence musicians who dare to be different. ^[8] 

The Detroit Scene 

MC5

Iggy and the Stooges

            Detroit’s MC5 (formed in 1964) and Iggy and the Stooges (formed in 1968) came from blue collar families, whereas the Velvets had elite backgrounds.  “If the Velvets can be considered to have fathered art-rock then Detroit’s two chief rock exponents, the MC5 and the Stooges represented a more primitive tradition - rock and roll as the people’s music, requiring nothing more than a commitment from its participants... (it was) rock honed down to its rawest elements” ^[9] While the Velvet Underground was highly influenced by the avant-garde in art, music, literature, and visual arts, The MC5 and The Stooges counted free-jazz as a primary influence.  They voraciously consumed albums by such jazz artists as Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Pharoh Sanders, Archie Shepp, and Sun Ra. ^[10]  In fact, on the MC5’s first album there is a cover of “Starship” by Sun Ra.  Iggy Pop said of the early Stooges “We weren’t interested in anything like writing a song or making a chord change.  Our early music was flowing and very conceptual.” ^[11]  

            The MC5’s most notable contribution to the punk movement was its political agenda.  They formed the White Panther party, modeled after the Black Panthers and participated in such activities as bombing a CIA recruiting office on the campus of the University of Michigan. ^[12]  “It was a midwesternized version of anarchy.  Tear down the walls, get the government out of our lives, smoke lots of dope, have lots of sex, and make lots of noise.” ^[13]  They paved the way for the politics of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and such present day political punks as Bad Religion and Propaghandi. 

            Iggy and the Stooges were the little brothers of the MC5.  They hung out together, played shows together, and even got signed to Electra Records at the same time. ^[14]  While the MC5 gave punk its politics, the MC5 and the Stooges together gave punk its roaring noise, Iggy Pop of the Stooges gave punk its stage antics.  It was Iggy who did such things as cut himself onstage, roll around in broken glass, spit on the audience and expect them to spit back, have sex onstage, and pass out onstage from various intoxicants.  Iggy Pop, influenced by his friend (and sometime lover) David Bowie, was also important for contributing to the trend of androgyny in 70’s rock stardom.  Speaking of androgyny.... 

The New York Dolls  

New York Dolls

            The New York Dolls formed in early 1977 and began as a bass-less threesome called Actress, determined to bring back the sound of simple blues-based rock and roll.  They were serious about the music, and about being musicians, so they were rehearsing almost daily throughout 1971, even though they didn’t find a bass player until October of that year.  They were, admittedly, poor musicians, but hoped that through constant rehearsing, and by perfecting their unorthodox image, they could shake things up a bit.  They became the house band at the Mercer Arts Center in New York City which featured bands, art exhibits, videos, avant-garde films, and plays.  They gathered a following at the Mercer Center and acquired the funds to embark on a European tour. 

            During the debauchery of their European tour the Dolls’ original drummer died form a barbiturate overdose, but it didn’t slow the band down.  They returned to the States, hired a new drummer, and began work on their debut album which was the culmination of all their gigging and rehearsing up to that point.  Although they did truly want to be better musicians, they still lacked technical finesse, but didn’t try to hide that fact – becoming one of the first bands to display the non-technical instrumental techniques of punk.  They played raw blues, taking rock and roll back to its roots uncluttered by technical bravado. 

So what!?  

            Although there were many more pre-punk bands that deserve mention, including the Ramones, Television, The Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, Suicide, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and Blondie, the four bands that I have included here have had the most lasting influence of all the pre-punk American bands.  They typify the ideals, musical styles, and lifestyles that have come to be known as Punk.