"New York, 1975, a city close to bankruptcy and a place that was no fun at all." "London, 1975, not much better." "Both cities had lost their way, and for a group of young musicians and fans so had rock." "On both sides of the Atlantic, they wanted to reconnect with rock's true spirit." "The toughness, the rawness, the total rawness." "The simplicity of it." "The not messing about, you know." "So, for a brief period, music was played that had passion and fury." ""Punk"" "Punk was a conversation between two cities." "London learned from the attitude and style of New Yorker's like Patti Smith, and was inspired by the minimalist sound of the Ramones." "When I heard the first Ramones album it was like I'd plugged my finger into an electric socket." "It was..." "Ahhhh!" "But London band's, like the Sex Pistols and The Clash, then created a punk rock that was uniquely British." "They sang in their London, cockney voices, about things they knew about in the language of the street." "And it felt truthful and honest and passionate." "The Sex Pistols were sneer and swagger combining in a music that was confrontational and angry." "It's not put on, there's no airs or graces about it." "We suffer, and you can fuck off for it!" "What both cities had in common was a desire for punk to become music you controlled, where you could be yourself by doing it yourself." "You just thought anything went." "The door was open to do what you wanted to do." "If you had an idea you could get on and do it." "And we kind of put the key in the door." "In this tale of two cities, from the worst of times came the best of times, and the Third Age of Rock." "I try so hard to be nice." "In the summer of 1974, four misfits from Queens began to play at a new club on New York's Lower East Side." "The club was called CBGBs, the band were The Ramones." "# I don't wanna walk around with you" "The first time I ever saw the Ramones play" "I think they did about 16 songs in 12 minutes, or maybe 12 songs in 16 minutes." "We didn't want to bore the audience." "We wanted to get out there, do our thing and leave..." "People have lives to live, you know." "We don't have to waste their times, we just wanted to do our thing and... get it over with." "# I don't wanna walk around with you" "# I don't wanna walk around with you" "# I don't wanna walk around with you" "# I don't wanna walk around with you" "It was so funny but smart, so mad with determination, and so serious and intense, you know, it was really just... they were great." "Always have been, I mean, I loved them from the first." "Those insanely revved up tempos, the look, the sound, the attitude, without the Ramones, this program probably wouldn't exist." "We're the Ramones, and 'you're a loudmouth baby, you better shut it up'." "The Ramones were proud to be rough and ready." "And that's what I had always hoped, that when kids see the Ramones that they feel that they can go out there and do this too." "That's what rock 'n roll was supposed to be about." "Late 60s things got away from that, people started overindulging with long... solos and... you watched someone like Jeff Beck or Jimmy Hendrix and you felt like you'd have to practice for 20 years to be able to play this song." "The sound that came from the guitar of Johnny Ramone, defined the band." "The thing about Johnny was that... since he wasn't going for the usual virtuosity, he created his own virtuosity which was downstrumming very fast." "The songs were so crude, no solos, only bar chords, but they were so catchy at the same time." "But the lyrics were so crazy, Queens street kid, about sniffing glue and beating on the brat with a baseball bat." "It was like brilliant, I loved it." "# Now I wanna sniff some glue" "# Now I wanna have somethin to do" "# All the kids wanna sniff some glue" "# All the kids want somethin to do" "We wrote about things that affected us, you know, directly." "Songs were like a release for our frustration and... getting out our aggression and uh..." "Songs dealt with feelings of alienation and isolation and all kinds of... just feelings, you know." "Everything sort of happened without any really uh... conscious effort." "We just fell into our style as we went along." "We wanted at first to... we thought we were playing bubblegum music." "Sort of like a sick bubblegum music, which became punk." "A year later, in London, another group of rock outsiders began their own campaign to rip it up and start again." "The Sex Pistols formed on the King's Road, Chelsea, when a boy named John was seen wearing an unusual T-shirt." "It was 'cause I had an 'I hate Pink Floyd' T-shirt on, you know, for a laugh." "I didn't have many clothes but I did have a Pink Floyd t-shirt and I just wrote "I hate" on it." "And look, it launched a career." "Is that luck?" "What is that?" "At "Sex", the fetish shop of one Malcolm McLaren, an unusual audition took place." "The boy from Finsbury Park mimed to the shop's juke box." "They did have an Alice Cooper song called 'I'm Eighteen' which I did know 'cause I liked Alice Cooper." "It was that fine man." "Nobody wore a corset quite like him." "# I'll go runnin in outer space" "The other boys in the band looked at Johnny and knew straight away that there was..." "something about him." "It was an odd scenario, I mean, miming to somebody else's record to these blokes you've hardly met." "And he was embarrassed, but he put on this kind of weird..." "front, which was interesting." "He couldn't sing for a toffee, but there was something about him." "# I get confused every day" "# Eighteen I just don't know..." "I couldn't sing a note, never ever tried." "But I liked it." "I grabbed it by the testicles and ran with it, from thereon in." "I know... hence the squealing high tones." "The Sex Pistols found themselves a rehearsal place up West," "Denmark Street, Soho." "Tin Pan Alley, historic home to London's finest pop hustles." "We had a base, you know, we could leave our gear set up, we had somewhere to hang out, somewhere to practice." "And we did... we were there practically every day." "We could hear nothing because of the horrible noises we made, but maybe that was kind of good." "Do we know any other fucking songs that we could do?" "Here they learnt how to play by covering 'mod' classics like 'Substitute' by The Who." "# You think we look pretty good together" "# You think my shoes are made of leather" "Into 1976, the Pistols had begun to perform live attracting a growing reputation with their chaotic performances and unlikely venues, like the '100 Club', on Oxford Street." "The Pistols were not really like a typical performance, or a typical concert where you pay your money, you go, you're entertained." "It was more like some sort of spontaneous confrontational art happening." "Get out!" "Get out!" "Fucking ol' hippies!" "You learn your chops on stage, you know, you do." "You learn all your stage movements away from where the bottles are coming from." "And there was an awful lot of that." "People hated us." "# If you could see..." "oh God, fuck off..." "# Ayanlouisiannayaya New Orleans" "But for the Sex Pistols to be more than a covers band, they needed to write their own songs." "# ..." "Johnny B. Goode" "# Agogogogogogo Johnny B. Goode" "# Agogo, go Johnny, gogogogogo" "To find the first flashes of inspiration, the Pistols' manager, Malcolm McLaren, persuaded them to look at a band he'd recently met in New York." "This was 'Television', formed by Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine." "Television were painfully serious about making music as provocation." "It had to do with aggressively not looking to please the audience." "Playing songs that are kind of psychotic..." "The way the world felt." "But also lyrical, but really loud and physical." "And everything ragged but... intense." "# Now Little Johnny Jewel" "But equally important is the art punk intensity of the music," "Richard Hell had a clearly thought out image for the band, and this impressed McLaren." "Malcolm saw Richard with his chopped up clothes and his hacked off hair and his gorgeous sunglasses." "And thought this is the look of the future, this what rock 'n roll is gonna look like." "McLaren was also struck by the nihilistic message of a song Hell wrote called 'Blank Generation'." "I did think it would be interesting and fun to try to distinguish the way things look like to me from hippies or beatnicks or whatever." "This next number's called 'I belong to the blank generation'." "'I was sayin' let me out of here before I was even born.'" "'It's such a gamble when you get a face.'" "'It's fascinating' to observe what the mirror does but when I dine' 'it's for the wall that I set a place.'" "# But when I dine it's for the wall that I set a place" "# I belong to the blank generation and" "# I can take it or leave it each time" "# I belong to the ______ generation but" "# I can take it or leave it each time" "'Triangles were fallin at the window as the doctor cursed.'" "'He was a cartoon long forsaken by the public eye.'" "'The nurse adjusted her garters as I breathed my first.'" "'The doctor grabbed my throat and yelled, "God's consolation prize!"'" "# I belong to the blank generation and" "# I can take it or leave it each time" "# I belong to the ______ generation but" "# I can take it or leave it each time" "It avoids clarifying 'blank', you know, 'cause that's the whole point." "It's empty, it's blank, it's uh..." "It's up to you to make it up." "Back in London, the Pistols took Hell's idea of a blank generation but now put it in a very British context, where not just a city, but a whole country seemed in crisis." "There was this raw air of desperation." "There was practically a hung parliament, there were power cuts, there was rubbish piled up on the streets." "And.. you know, the three day week." "I mean, there was just a real feeling of despondency, and I saw this blank generation idea and I thought, "Yeah, you know," ""I could use it somehow", and came up with this 'Pretty Vacant' idea." "As for nailing the riffs, base player Glen Matlock playfully dipped into a very un-punky, not very arty, influence," "ABBA." "In one of their songs there's a bit in it, and it doesn't have that riff in it... but it has a thing it goes..." "And you can hardly hear it, but it just set me thinking." "# Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find" "The most moronic riff you can get is... but... kind of there, it's just not-- it's the same note." "So I'm fooling around, you know, what is it?" "Off..." "I've got a riff." "It's the most straightforward, moronic, dadaist kind of riff to go with this idea." "'Pretty Vacant'." "It was one of the very first Pistols' songs and dealing with... something other than what your normal pop group will do." "Something kind of a bit of a..." "manifesto somehow." "You know, our mission statement." "# There's no point in asking us you'll get no reply" "# Oh just remember a don't decide" "# I got no reason it's all too much" "# You'll always find us" "# Out to lunch!" "# Oh, we're so pretty" "# Oh so pretty vacant" "# Oh, we're so pretty..." "With 'Pretty Vacant', the Sex Pistols weren't just talking about their generation but to them." "They began to change lives." "As someone the same age, you'd got what he was saying." "You didn't feel like, "Ooh, he's scary," ""shouting at me, he's telling me to fuck off."" "No, you understood that he was saying," ""Get off your arses." "Do something." ""I'm not doing it the same way everyone's done it before," ""and like it or piss off."" "It was so new that you realised you'd have to go home and start... shedding quite a lot of the bands you took around with you." "It was like being re-programmed." "Seeing the Sex Pistols was the spark that brought together another punk band," "The Clash." "Their singer, Joe Strummer, saw the light after the Pistols were support to his old band, pub rockers, 'The 101ers'." "I remember the Pistols' show was uh... curtailed suddenly by a fist fire, that actually spread from the stage." "And we all saw this, and it was like..." "it kind of outshadowed, in a way," "Joe's performance afterwards, so it was like the old and the new, singing in the same place." "And I know it was a marking point for Joe." "He went like, "This is the new thing it's coming now." "I can see that."" "You can't change the way that things are going." "And he said, "I'm gonna get on..." "get with this.", you know, the new thing that was coming in." "By 1976, there was another influence from New York, this was a singer who made it very clear that anything might now be possible, if you had the passion." "This was Patti Smith." "She was one of this very strong poet performers." "And with a razor-sharp mouth that would deliver." "# Wild card up my sleeve" "Visceral..." "It was about language, just language." "Never mind what the music's doing, the music's doing fine, but the language is spitting out something that goes right into your head." "It was very good." "# I-I walk in a room # you know I look so proud" "# I'm movin' in this here atmosphere..." "The Patti Smith band fused performance poetry with 3-chord rock." "They took the 60s garage band classic, 'Gloria', added a little wrapping, and then punked it up." "It was fairly natural, the way she read poetry seemed to have a rhythm and a melody to it." "So it was very easy to attach chords and rhythm underneath it." "# oh, she looks so good, oh, she looks so fine # and I got this crazy feeling and then I'm gonna ah-ah make her mine" "And having grown up with rock 'n roll, those three classic chords, we gravitated toward that." "It was fun, I mean, we enjoyed the sense of twisting this form." "# and her name is, and her name is," "# G-L-O-R-I-A" "Patti Smith was absolutely astonishing." "She was absolutely vital to laying the foundations of punk." "Her voice, her clothes, her stage presence, her movements." "She was almost like a freestyle rapper." "The sentiment she was voicing" "'Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine'," "# Jesus died for somebody's sins" "# but not mine." "Absolutely iconic imagery." "It had a street realism that was unmistakably punk, couldn't be anything else." "The Patti Smith band recorded their first album at the studios immortalised by Jimmy Hendrix', 'Electric Lady', in Greenwich Village." "They asked the Velvet Underground's John Cale, to produce the record." "It was a punk spirit which informed the song at the heart of the album," "'Horses'." "# ...suddenly Johnny gets the feeling he's being surrounded by" "# Horses, horses, horses, horses" "Is it a punk song?" "Well, it's got three chords." "Because they were really easy to pulse." "You could just go underneath and it would kind of provide a soundtrack." "You could talk over it, sing over it, slow it down," "and then you could get really fast." "And it allowed the song to travel." "# Do you know how to pony like Bony Maroney" "It builds, it even changes rhythms from like sort of a shuffle feel to that sort of garage... band's straight four and four feeling." "There is no syncopation." "It's not funky." "It's very, you know... made by honkeys for honkeys, you know." "# ...pen knives and jack knives and" "# Switch blades..." "'Horses', when it was released, had an immediate impact." "The album cover with photography by Robert Mapplethorpe, was something quite new in the iconography of rock." "She's wearing a man's shirt, she's got a man's jacket over her shoulder, her tie is loosened." "She's very... extremely slender." "It was a shock at that time to see a woman be proudly a woman and yet so androgynous." "And not caring whether she was gratifying of traditional... male expectations of what a woman needs to be to be sexy." "# ...a place called space" "# It's a pretty little place..." "The punk attitude of Patti Smith was a revelation to those in the UK looking for new idols." "It was utterly mindblowing." "It was uh..." "Everything she sang about, the way she released all the words, the free flow, the strength of it, the passion of it, and the utter contemporariness of it all, it was like, this is it, this is my soul on record." "In May, 1966, British fans were able to see their heroin for the first time." "The Patti Smith band played a sellout gig at the Roundhouse, in London." "They recorded a session for the BBC." "# Horses, horses, horses, horses" "# Coming in in all directions" "# White, shining, silver studs with their nose in flames" "# He saw horses, horses, horses..." "# Do you know how to pony like Bony Maroney" "# Do you know how to twist, well it goes like this, it goes like this" "# Baby mash potato..." "They then accepted an invitation to see the Sex Pistols in their underground lair at the 100 Club." "Someone, I think it might have been Chrissie Hynde, said," ""You have to go down and see this band." ""They're called the Sex Pistols."" "I thought, "Wow!" "Interesting name."" "We went down to this grungy, underground pub," "I think it was the Club 100, and they took the stage and they... immediately, before they even started playing, you know, Johnny Rotten started saying," ""Oh!" "Did you go down at the Roundhouse the other night?" ""And see the hippies shaking a tambourine?" ""'orses, 'orses, 'orshit!"" "And I thought, "Man, that was a quick 15 minutes."" "It's like we're already obsolete!" "The taunting of these darlings of New York art punk made clear the differences between the two cities." "The London bands were younger, they had a lot less art theory, they had, not necessarily more politics, though some did, but they had a lot more class rage." "No matter how unfocussed or unexpressed, it was class rage." "Fundamentally, the New York punks were bohemians, or aspired to be, the London punks were "yobs", or aspired to be." "The Sex Pistols took their one band search and destroy mission nation wide when they traveled to the Manchester studios of Granada TV." "You can hear them warming up in the background even now." "For their first TV appearance, they played their second great anthem," "'Anarchy in the UK'." "# I am an antichrist" "# I am an anarchist" "# Dont know what I want but" "# I know how to get it" "# I wanna destroy the passer by cos I" "# I wanna be anarchy!" "Lydon's performance was driven by cold fury." "His lyrics, a brutal expression of rage." "# Anarchy for the UK" "# It's coming sometime and maybe" "# I give a wrong time stop a traffic line" "# Your future dream..." "I was an angry young man, I still am probably, an angry old man." "You're not gonna take that away from me." "I don't think my feelings about how society's downtrodden my kind of working class people," "I don't think those are false emotions at all." "It's not put on, there's no airs and graces about it." "We suffer, and you can fuck off for it!" "# How many ways to get what you want" "# I use the best I use the rest" "# I use the enemy I use anarchy cos I" "# I wanna be anarchy!" "When the Pistols appeared on that program playing 'Anarchy in the UK', it seemed almost inconceivable that the performance was gonna stay inside the TV set." "It was like Rotten was gonna crawl out the screen and into your living room, and be right there in the room with you." "It was one of the most utterly immediate things I've ever seen on TV." "# ...the IRA" "# I thought it was the UK or just" "# Another country" "'Anarchy in the UK' singalled a real intent to take on the rock establishment." "It's anarchy in the UK, and so that shows an ambition." "Here was a group that was not afraid to say," ""Right, we are going nation wide." ""This is it." "This is about the whole of the country." ""It's not just about a couple of clubs and a couple of hundred kids in London," ""or Manchester or whatever." "It's actually, this is about the whole country."" "Now, in the summer of 1976, in London and beyond, there was an explosion of creativity." "Brian James, playing with his new band," "'The Damned', noticed something in the air." "It was a growing thing, you'd see like... first of all there'd be like a few people, and you'd talk to them after the gig, you know, and stuff like that." "And then, the next day you'd see them, and there'd be another couple." "And it would be the same out in the streets." "There'd be maybe one punk amongst all this sea of long hair." "And then there'd be a few more." "And then, just gradually built and built and built and you'd see people making their own clothes, which was the cool thing, and they made their own statements." "You know, sort of living out their fantasies, if you like." "That was the cool thing about it." "That was a very, very cool thing." "The audience become part of the whole show, become part of the whole event, you know, the experience." "Punk was taking rock back to where it belonged." "It was about self interpretation, empowerment, individuality." "Doing your own thing..." "I can't tell you how much this DIY thing, how important it was." "I mean, it worked for me." "I reinvented myself through the whole punk-rock thing." "When it kicked off and everybody's picking up a guitar," "I wanted to pick up something too, but... very quickly the stage was full up, so I picked up a super-8 camera and reinvented myself as a film maker." "And super-8 films, they only lasted about three minutes, and luckily for me, everything the punks had to say, fitted into three minutes." "Even when I interviewed them, they usually ran out of things after about 2 and a half minutes." "So it was hard and fast and stripped down." "Bands began to form outside London," "'The Buzzcocks' in Manchester now proved that you could take this DIY approach and apply, beyond fashion and street culture, to make punk's first DIY record." "The recording was..." "I don't know, I could believe we did it in half an hour." "My memory is the overall budget for the whole thing was... everything was about 500 quid." "It wasn't intended to be a statement or anything, but it adhered the principles of what punk was." "And that was... if you can do it yourself, then what's stopping you?" "And that because it's not polished, it's not pristine and perfect it doesn't mean it's not any good." "In fact it could have its own quality." "That being imperfect it has more character, more life." "One Buzzcocks' song, with its ironic, playful twist on punk's taste for alienation, became a classic." "# Yeah - well" " I say what I mean" "# I say what comes to my mind # because I never get around to things" "# I live a straight - straight line" "# You know me" " I'm acting dumb # you know the scene - very humdrum" "# Boredom - boredom" "# Boredom" "Well, 'Boredom' was a... that was gonna be a safe topic." "That would be in style, that was to be the kind of thing one would think about, and one would write about." "# Boredom, boredom... boredom." "We wanted it not to be pleasant and easy listening, but to be a bit challenging in a way." "I would just play around with things and see what sounded right." "# Because my future ain't what it was # well I think I know the words that I mean" "'Boredom' was sophisticated," "'Boredom' had stops in it." "The song stopped and we hadn't had that before." "When it came to the guitar solo," "I wanted a parody of a guitar solo." "So instead of playing lots and lots of notes" "I just repeated the same tune." "Doing..." "A guitar solo which didn't rock all the rolls of what a guitar solo was supposed to be." "But it works because of the idea of boredom, having something which is... adds nothing to it at all, which goes on and on and on..." "It fitted in with that concept." "The decisive influence on the early sound of band like Buzzcocks in the UK, was the revved up minimalism of The Ramones in NY." "The Ramones recorded their first album in a matter of days at a studio in Radio City Music Hall." "That was done quickly, inexpensively, and it sort of suited our ways of working anyway." "With the impatience of the band and everything so..." "In a way it lent itself to the sort of lo-fi interesting quality of what it became." "So the first album is sort of a statement of its own." "The first song on the album was one of the greatest to come out of this punk uprising." "'Blitzkrieg Bop'" "Take it Diddy." "I was walking down the street and it just occurred to me, it'd be great if The Ramones had a chant song." "# Hey ho, let's go Hey ho, let's go" "# They're forming in straight line" "# They're going through a tight wind" "# The kids are losing their minds" "# The Blitzkrieg Bop" "# They're piling in the back seat" "# They're generating steam heat" "# Pulsating to the back beat" "# The Blitzkrieg Bop" "I was in this loft actually." "It happened in this loft." "I was..." "I was playing Joy's guitar, and as I was playing it, I just started playing 'Blitzkrieg Bop', it just came up to me..." "it just came to me." "And that night I went home and I wrote the song." "I put together the 'Hey ho, let's go' with that, and I took it to the next rehearsal." "And that was 'Blitkrieg Bop'." "# Pulsating to the back beat" "# The Blitzkrieg Bop" "Songs like 'Blitzkrieg Bop' had immediate appeal to bands forming during the UK summer of punk." "It was like that kind of..." "like a rallying call." "You know, "Hey ho, let's go"." "Not really philosophical lyrics, but it was about doing things." "Talking about punk being about action, really rather than just... theorising." "# The Blitzkrieg Bop" "# Hey ho, let's go" "When we first heard The Ramones' album, how influential that was, because it was just like totally... like... really short songs, really hard attack, no nonsense." "It was just like cut down bare to the bone, you know, and that was inspiring." "Inspired by the stripped down formula of The Ramones," "The Clash played their first gigs." "# They offered me the office, offered me the shop" "# They said I better take anything they got" "# Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?" "# Do you wanna be, do really wanna be a cop?" "They looked great as a three man frontline." "Strummer's a great front man... as good as Lydon." "So visually very strong, and it was very hard and fast." "One 2 minute wonder after another." "'What's my name', 'Cheat', 'Career opportunities'... just really good." "Fantastic song." "# I hate the civil service rules" "# And I won't open letter bombs for you" "# Career opportunities are the ones that never knock" "# Every job they offer you is to keep out the dock" "# Career opportunities, the ones that never knock" "Although The Clash took inspiration from New York, they took their music in a completely new direction." "They created a punk that was a kind of protest music, engaged with the world." "While John Lydon, Johnny Rotten, had a rage against the system," "Joe Strummer had a more evolved, more finely tuned sort of political awareness." "He regarded his ancestors as people like Woody Guthrie." "He regarded himself as a leftist." "Whereas John probably regarded himself as a 'Johnnist'." "# Career opportunities, the ones that never knock" "I think the difference between us and the Pistols was that they had their massive impact but they didn't offer the same kind of hope that we did." "The Clash wrote songs of experience." "Near where they were living in West London, summer's end, 1976, the Notting Hill Carnival ended with fighting between black youth and the Police." "Joe Strummer and Paul Simenon from the band, were caught up in the mayhem." "So The Clash sat down and wrote a song inspired by the incident:" "'White Riot'." "We was down there, me and him, we got searched by policemen, looking for bricks." "And then later on we got searched by Rasta looking for pound notes in our pockets, so..." "And all we had was bricks and bottles." "# 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 gotta lot a problems" "# But they don't mind throwing a brick" "# White people go to school" "# Where they teach you how to be thick" "# An' everybody's doing" "# Just what they're told to" "# An' nobody wants" "# To go to jail!" "# 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" "The song was about white people getting up and doing it for themselves, because... their black neighbours were doing it for themselves, and so it was... the riots and whatever." "So it was time for... the white people to get on with their own situation, which I suppose was the beginning of the punk thing." "# White riot, I want a riot" "# White riot, a riot of my own" "# White riot, I want a riot" "# White riot" "# I do..." "# 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" "But late in 1976, outrage and hype threatened to destroy the achievements of the early punk groups." "The Sex Pistols were booked to appear live on an early evening news show." " Now, I want to know one thing." " What?" "Are you serious or just trying to make me laugh?" "No, it's all gone." "Gone." " Really?" " Yeah." "No, but I mean about what you're doing." " Oh, yeah." " You are serious?" "Beethoven, Mozart, Bach have all died..." " They're all heroes of ours, ain't they?" " Really?" "What do you say, sir?" " They're wonderful people." " Are they?" " Oh, yes." "They really turn us on." " But they're dead!" "Well suppose they turn other people on." " That's just their tough shit." " It's what?" "Nothing, a rude word." "Next question." "No, no." "What was the rude word?" "Shit." "I accidentally took some amphetamine sulfate two days before," "I didn't mean to..." "And, I'm speeding up my nut and so, you know, the whole thing was tense to me and I was goaded into swearing the 'shit' word." "Was it really?" "Good Heavens!" "You frighten me to death." " Oh alright, Siegfried..." " What about you, girls, behind?" "Enjoying the occasion was soon to be Banshee, Siouxsie Sioux." "Are you worried or are you just enjoying yourself?" "Enjoying myself." " Are you?" " Yeah." "So I thought you were..." " I always wanted to meet you." " Did you really?" "We'll meet afterwards, shall we?" "You dirty sod." "You dirty old man!" "Keep going, chief." "Keep going." "Go on, you've got another five seconds, say something outrageous." "You dirty bastard!" "You dirty fucker!" "What a clever boy!" "What a fucking rotter." "Well, that's it for tonight." "Well, it did make us popular..." "Well, no, it made us hugely unpopular, which was much more fun." "But it wasn't undeliberate, all right?" "And in the chaos of it, somehow or other, whatever message we had, got out." "The word's out now, the game's up." "The phoneys can leave the stage 'cause the real deal is about to enter the world." "And that's how it was." "The Sex Pistols, supported by The Clash, already had a nation wide tour scheduled." "Now, there was real trouble." "Fleet Street were now chasing us." "And it just... just changed." "And then, a day or two later, we run off on the 'Anarchy Tour' and we were pursued up and down across the Penines by a flotilla of press cars." "It was stupid." "Along with tabloid frenzy, there was moral outrage and revulsion." "I think it's degrading and disgusting for our children to hear and see such things." "Local worthies did their best to put a stop to this punk nonsense." "This protest is to make Wales know, to have the people of this town know that we do protest." "The thing is they're outside, freezing." "For a clean living, holy living, and proud living." "They're entitled to do what they want." "I think we had like 16 dates booked and... as we went up the motorway the dates got less and less." "And I think we ended up doing only four." "Into 1977, an unhappy Glen Matlock left the group." "He was replaced by Sid Vicious." "Sid was the perfect cartoon punk in terms of standing there in his leather jacket, pulling comic angry faces in photographs." "After they got rid of Glen they had some great photos taken but they never again wrote a decent song." "Increasingly unable to play live, the revamped Pistols recorded the last great song writing collaboration between Matlock and Rotten." "# God save the queen" "# The fascist regime" "# They made you a moron" "# Potential H-bomb" "'God Save the Queen' is just a rant." "It's chorusless but it seems to be... a proper song, but it ain't." "And I like that." "Rules are for fools." "# Don't be told what you want" "# Don't be told what you need" "'God save the Queen' was released during the summer of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, promoted by a brilliantly anarchic marketing campaign." "# God save the queen" "# We mean it man" "With all that build-up, with all that feeling, it's incredibly exciting, it's incredibly well drilled." "Everybody is..." "on it like that." "# God save the Queen, # for tourists are money" "And it has just fantastic lyrics." "'England's dreaming' and 'Tourist's are money', and 'the mad parade'." "Wonderful lyrics." "There was one inspired publicity stunt, a boat trip on the Thames the evening of the Jubilee celebrations." "We did know what we were up to." "Singing 'Anarchy' and 'God Save the Queen' outside the Houses of Parliament as loud and raucous as you like... was a good thing." "A good statement." "A good day out in Rotten World." "And then it has this rather desolate and very emotional chant of 'No future' at the end, where the rest of the band join in." "And that was kind of very touching as well." "# And England's dreaming" "# No future" "# No future" "# No future for you" "These were subjects never discussed before." "To even think of the Royal Family as subject matter in a song in any way but lauding their wonderfulness, was..." "I don't know, considered a crime." "Into 1977, punk's spirit of adventure was picked up by bands fronted by women, like Siouxsie Sioux, who'd been close to the first punk pioneers." "The whole point about punk for me was... it had to be new." "Something new." "Something that hadn't been done before." "As soon as you saw Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Slits... this is something new." "No girls had made that kind of noise before." "# He is a boy" "# He's very thin" "# Until tomorrow" "# Took heroin" "# Don't like himself..." "Viv Albertine, so inspired by the example of Patti Smith, now had the chance to do it herself, with the all-girl band The Slits." "It didn't matter in the early days that we couldn't play." "It just mattered that you had the passion..." "And we could play well enough just to all start at the same time." "We didn't play well enough to all finish at the same time." "We all looked great, we hammered away, we shouted what we... what we wanted to say and..." "The energy was absolutely wild." "We just made it up as we went along and each time we learnt a new chord we'd put it in a new song and write a new song about it... around the chord." "The Slits were willing to embrace new sounds and rhythms." "# Typical girls get upset to quickly" "# Typical girls can't control themselves" "# Typical girls..." "The boy bands in punk were very much rock music, you know, 4/4 time, based on 12 bar blues rhythm, and we felt very much that as girls we didn't feel this rigid kind of rhythm within us." "We felt much more... we wanted to get across our feminine rhythms." "'Typical Girls' was this weird lolloping sort of rhythm but... that's what we felt we wanted to get across." "This is who we were, you know." "Punk was open enough to allow us to do that." "Into 1978, the Sex Pistols, faced with continuing problems in the UK, decided to break America." "To show the yanks who were the real punks." "Instead, America broke the Pistols." "Photographer Bob Gruen, was a witness to the band's very public self destruction, with Vicious the leading man." "I had decided not to be in front of the stage." "I tried to get on the side and watch the action from a little bit of distance, 'cause I didn't want to be in the... the fray." "It was like a battleground in front of the band." "And one night I remember Sid had this interchange between these girls in the front and... at one point a girl kind of motioned for him to come a little closer and he leaned over and she punched him right in the nose." "And he had blood pouring out of his nose and down his face and chest... and a big smile on his face." "Like he really enjoyed it." "I'd never seen anybody react that way to being punched in the nose." "And then he started taking the blood and splashing it back at the girl, and she was spitting it back at him and... then the blood started to dry up and... he went over to his amp and took a bottle and he smashed on the amp" "and starting cutting his chest, basically to make more blood, I think, to keep the game going." "They ended their last gig in San Francisco playing 'No fun', a nod to the godfathers of punk, 'Iggy Pop and the Stooges'." "You'll get one number and one number only 'cause I'm a lazy bastard." "This is 'No fun'." "# No fun, my babe no fun" "# No fun, my babe no fun" "# No fun to be alone" "# Walking by my self" "# No fun to be alone" "# In love with nobody else" "# No, no fun, no fun" "I suppose all of us felt that it was no fun." "It was really no fun at all." "We really got the pain of that song." "We took it to the extreme edge of really no fun." "Oh, bollocks!" "Why should I carry on?" "This is really not fun..." "and it wasn't." "# It's no fun at all" "# No fun" "Ever get the feeling you're being cheated?" "Good night." "At the very last gig, "ever get the feeling you're being cheated?", was directed straight at the whole world, including us." "Because I was feeling cheated by that point." "By the time the Sex Pistols finally broke up, there was a feeling that punk had become the very thing it had set out to destroy." "It was predicable, boring." "Tired of this conformity, Howard Devoto left Buzzcocks, but Pete Shelley stayed, fusing punk attitude with a taste for a good tune, to write the perfect pop song." "A new one from our next album," "'Ever Fallen in Love (with Someone You Shouldn't've)'" "It wasn't ***" "It was just down to the songs, let the songs have good melodies and... that's fine." "# You spurn my natural emotions" "# You make me feel like dirt" "# And I'm hurt" "# And if I start a commotion" "# I run the risk of losing you" "# And that's worse" "# Ever fallen in love with someone" "# Ever fallen in love" "# In love with someone" "# Ever fallen in love" "# In love with someone You shouldn't've fallen in love with" "It was The Clash who tried to keep punk honest remaining close to their fans and continuing their political commitment." "But they were impatient to move on musically." "We do the same thing... who wants to know... after a while?" "It makes people sick in the head to do that." "So we have to always try new things and like everyone's a load of like sheep going, "It's horrible", or "It's nice"." "But they don't fucking know." "The Clash decided to explore a range of influences from rockabilly to reggae on their 1979 album, 'London Calling'." "# London calling and I don't wanna shout" "# But while we were talking I saw you nodding out" "# London calling, see we ain't got no high" "# Except for that one with the yellowy eyes" "# The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in" "It was really The Clash who having begun as a defining punk band, then attempted to see what else they could turn their hands to, apply their talent to a whole other bunch of styles and influences, and demonstrated that while you still have the punk gene," "as long as you don't lose it, you can take it anywhere." "By the time of 'London Calling'," "The Clash had traveled from the extremeties of punk into the rock mainstream, where they became for a while the most important band in the world." "# The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in" "# Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin" "# Engines stop running, but I have no fear" "# Cause London is drowning and I, live by the river" "# London calling, yes, I was there, too" "# An' you know what they said?" "Well, some of it was true!" "# London calling at the top of the dial" "# And after all this, won't you give me a smile?" "# I never felt so much alike, like-a, like-a..." "As for John Lydon, after the Sex Pistols, punk's most provocative performer formed a new band." "With 'Public Image' Lydon moved into his post-punk future, with something more personal, deliberately left field, surprisingly arty." "I loved the idea of just getting into things without any rules at all." "Going to much madder sounds." "Infinite varieties of textures, tones, drones, caterwauls." "Experiment." "# Drive to the forest in a Japanese car" "# The smell of rubber on concrete tar" "# Hindsight does me no good" "# Standing naked in the back of the woods" "# The cassette played pop tones" "This was music created in punk's true spirit of liberation, which guaranteed that from now on anything was possible in rock music." "# I can't forget the impression you made" "# You left a hole in the back of my head" "Next week on 'Seven Ages of Rock', things get heavier as 'heavy metal' weighs in." "To find out more about 'The Seven Ages of Rock' and see some extra stories featuring artists in the series, go to "bbc.co.uk/sevenages"." "Transcription and synchronization by Fry."