London Calling (62 page)

Genesis was now a targeted man. Earlier in the year the police had already successfully prosecuted him for his mail-art. In
a case reminiscent of the prosecution of the playwright Joe Orton, who was jailed for sticking collage elements on the dustwrappers
of library books, Genesis was prosecuted for sending five mail-art postcards to other artists which the post office deemed
obscene. These included one in which a naked bottom had been stuck on a postcard of Buckingham Palace and another of René
Magritte’s
Time Transfixed
of a train (penis) emerging from a fireplace (vagina), to which had been added an actual copulating couple. The magistrates
dismissed the defence of ‘artistic merit’ as irrelevant and fined him £100 plus costs. He had twenty days to raise the money
or go to jail. Genesis borrowed it. His lawyers cost a further £150. Afterwards the police approached him and showed him an
envelope containing a further twenty intercepted postcards. They told him: ‘We can get you on each of these, any time we want.
And you get twelve months inside then. So watch your step!’

As T G was an attempt to reach a wider audience, they now made themselves more recognizable as a group. Genesis cut his long
hippie hair and they began wearing black T-shirts, leather trousers or jeans. Cosey would sometimes take off her jacket and
show her breasts, covered with fake scars and Chris Carter would slash his arms with a razor, but this was just in the early
phase. They soon settled on a vaguely unsettling military look of camouflaged army fatigues. They already had a reputation
thanks to the scandal surrounding the
Prostitution
show but had no means of capitalizing on it as they had no record label and no record out. A number of record companies were
sniffing around, and Virgin said they would release an album if Cosey was naked on the sleeve but T G wanted complete control
and the only way to get that was to start their own label. They called it Industrial Records and launched it with the witty
slogan, ‘Industrial Records for Industrial People’.

In the early days, they were criticized for an unhealthy interest in and glamorization of Nazi Germany and the iconography
of fascism: they took as their corporate logo a photograph of Auschwitz death camp and Throbbing Gristle adopted a lightning
flash which, though used as the universal symbol for electricity, also bore a resemblance to the lightning flash of Oswald
Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Genesis defended their use of an image of Auschwitz, saying:

We chose Auschwitz as our logo because it seemed appropriate for our music. And it’s also one of the ultimate symbols of human
stupidity. And I like to remind myself how stupid people are and how dangerous they are because they’re so stupid… Humanity
as a whole is stupid to allow anything like that to begin to occur.
⁷

There was no doubt though that the whole band had a fascination not just with Nazi atrocities, but with Charles Manson, mass
murderers and aberrant behaviour in general. Their first vinyl release, as opposed to a small run of cassettes which they
gave away, was in May 1977, with T G’s
Second Annual Report
. It was the beginning of the genre which later came to be known as industrial music. Throughout the later seventies, T G
and the punks ran on parallel tracks, sometimes overlapping and often sharing the same sensibilities. It is only in retrospect
that we can see how courageous Genesis and T G were in taking on the police and the establishment to break new ground artistically,
musically and politically.

My personal view on Punk rock is that it’s disgusting, degrading, ghastly, sleazy, prurient, voyeuristic and nauseating. I
think most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death.

BERNARD BROOKE PARTRIDGE
, Conservative member of the Greater London Council, 1976
¹

Larry Debay, a Frenchman, had a record shop in Paddington called Bizarre which specialized in Iggy Pop, Zappa, the Modern
Lovers, the Flaming Groovies, garage bands; all the coolest material available. He also had a big sideline in bootlegs: Roxy
Music, Iggy Pop, Zappa, the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Hendrix and, of course, Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
As a record distributor he was in partnership with Marc Zermati’s Skydog Records in Paris so Bizarre was the best place to
find Dutch and French releases by Hendrix, Flamin’ Groovies, the Velvet Underground, Kim Fowley, and Iggy and the Stooges.
Larry was a striking-looking individual, even for the record industry, with high riding boots, jodhpurs, long, ginger, hennaed
hair and a full beard, dyed bright green. It was quite a sight to see him walking his huge dogs along Maida Avenue, next to
the canal, where he lived. Larry, and the other record dealers operating from market barrows in Notting Hill, Camden and Soho,
made available the best in proto-punk and had an enormous influence on the British bands.

The two key albums that influenced British punk bands were Patti Smith’s
Horses
(November 1975) and the Ramones’ eponymous first album (April 1976). Patti believed that the guitar had an iconic value onstage
and that it was not necessary to be able to play it. I was personally always irritated by the way she strummed furiously at
an open-tuned guitar, as anyone can learn the three basic chords required by rock ’n’ roll in a few hours. The Ramones’ impact
came from the brevity of the songs, the simplicity of the lyrics, and the speed of execution: they were very fast. There were
no guitar solos, and certainly no drum solos, with the Ramones.

‘I’m Stranded’ by the Australian band the Saints was released in Brisbane in September 1976 on their own Fatal Records label,
predating all the British punk bands. It was pure punk, fast and fabulous, with no middle eight, just furious energy. All
the punks bought it. Bernie Rhodes, the manager of the Clash, had a box of them and gave me one just two weeks after release.
Then came ‘New Rose’ by the Damned, released on 22 October 1976 on the independent British label Stiff; the first home-grown
punk record. It sold 4,000 copies in the first week. The Damned had funny punk stage names – Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies
– and a goth singer, the ex-gravedigger Dave Vanian, who knew how to put on a good stage act. Like ‘I’m Stranded’, ‘New Rose’
was very fast and when the Pistols finally got their first record out, the Damned turned up their noses: ‘It’s a bit slow,
ain’t it?’ asked Captain Sensible.
²
Several members of the Damned – the guitarist Brian James, bass player Captain Sensible and drummer Rat Scabies – were previously
with the London SS, a proto-punk band whose members also included Mick Jones and Terry Chimes, who both went on to become
founder members of the Clash, and Tony James, who was first in Chelsea, then Generation X. When Chrissie Hynde joined, they
changed their name, at her suggestion, to Mike Hunt’s Honourable Discharge. McLaren put them in a studio for two days to see
if he was interested in managing them. Captain Sensible: ‘They sat there watching us, laughing, and told us to fuck off. No
commercial possibilities.’ Captain Sensible used to share a squat with Sid Vicious and Sue Catwoman. Most of the early London
punk bands, like the Damned, the Adverts and the Clash, who all emerged at more or less the same time as the Sex Pistols,
knew each other, had the same musical influences, and had played together in various incarnations, often in pub bands such
as Joe Strummer’s 101ers.

There was no clear break between the pub bands and the punk bands. Johnny Rotten’s deranged Richard II stage pose, the hunched
stance, looking up at the audience while clutching the microphone, was taken directly from Ian Dury, one of the best pub rock
acts and someone that the Pistols admired and who they often saw perform. The razor blade earring was also Ian Dury’s. The
biggest difference was in speed of delivery; if you played fast, the inadequacies in your playing were less apparent. The
speed was also in the performers; the whole punk rock scene was fuelled by amphetamine: fast, hard and aggressive. Siouxsie
Sioux told Jon Savage:

The Pistols were very much part of rock ’n’ roll, they weren’t breaking down any aural barriers at all, it was rehashing what
had gone before, and it was what they put into that that made it theirs. Without Rotten, they would probably have
just been a pub band, in all honesty. Talking about breaking down walls and actually doing it are different things.
³

There were other punk bands, a different crowd of musicians who had been around for years but who sensed that change was needed
in the moribund music scene. Ten years older than most of the punks, the guitarist Andy Summers cut his hair, dyed it blond,
mumbled when asked his age, and joined a Newcastle schoolteacher called Sting who played in his local jazz band, Last Exit,
and a drummer, Stewart Copeland, to form the Police. Summers had previously been in Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band. He had gone
psychedelic when Zoot changed the name of that band to Dantalion’s Chariot for the hippie market; now he was quite prepared
to become a punk. One of Britain’s best guitarists, Summers reduced his playing to short jerky chords in a watered-down reggae
format with no solos or displays of technical proficiency. It was a winning formula.

There was a third type of punk band, perhaps the only true punks. These were all the kids who saw the Pistols play and went
out and started their own band: most of them never managed even the slightest degree of technical proficiency and had faded
away again by the end of the seventies. Some, however, made their mark, such as the Slits, John Peel’s favourite punk group.
Peel: ‘Their inability to play coupled with their determination to play – the conflict between these two things was magnificent.’
⁴

There was a lot of conflict at gigs as well; punk was characterized by violence. Peter York wrote that punk was almost all
style and very little substance: the violent images that first set the tone for the movement were Joe Stevens and Kate Simon’s
photographs of McLaren attacking a hippie in the front row of the Nashville at a Pistols concert on 23 April 1976.
⁵
It was a high-profile gig, the audience was filled with friends and members of future rock groups, photographers and rock
journalists like Jonh [
sic
] Ingham. In the middle of ‘Pretty Vacant’, Vivienne Westwood suddenly turned on the girl next to her, a complete stranger,
and began slapping her face. The girl’s boyfriend, who was standing about six feet away, immediately reacted, grabbed Vivienne
and began to hit her. McLaren may or may not have seen Vivienne’s original attack, but he now leapt across the front of the
stage to leap on the long-haired boyfriend and thump him. Johnny Rotten, a huge smile on his face, dived off the stage to
join in the fray, throwing punches wildly before Steve and Glen intervened to try and pull everyone apart. Vivienne later
told Caroline Coon that she had been bored, the Sex Pistols were boring, and had decided to liven things up a bit so she slapped
the girl for no reason.
⁶

Some of the dimmer members of the community, such as Sid Vicious, took this behaviour as a role model and his violence marred
the famous 100 Club Punk Festival. This was held over two days: 21 September 1976 featured the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Subway
Sect and Siouxsie and the Banshees; the next night Stinky Toys, Chris Spedding and the Vibrators, the Damned and the Buzzcocks
played. The festival appears to have had some of the experimental qualities of the old UFO Club. The organizer, Ron Watts,
said it was ‘just people getting up and trying to do something’. It was the first-ever gig for Subway Sect and also for Siouxsie
and the Banshees – various members of the Bromley Contingent – who formed specially for the event and had never played together
before; their act was entirely improvisational with Siouxsie reciting the Lord’s Prayer and a few other bits of text she could
remember while Sid Vicious on drums thumped away behind her; never varying his beat; none of them knew any actual songs. They
had been going to use the Clash’s equipment, but their manager, Bernie Rhodes, objected to Siouxsie’s swastika armband, and
the swastikas drawn in ballpoint pen on Sid’s grubby T-shirt, and refused. The Sex Pistols lent them theirs instead. Sid was
in a belligerent mood and at one point threw a beer glass which shattered against an iron pillar, cutting several people and
blinding a girl in the audience in one eye. The police were called and Sid was arrested, and when Caroline Coon from Release
went to find out why, the police helpfully arrested her too (she was later given an absolute discharge). As an event, the
Punk Festival can be seen as the genesis of the punk rock scene; in the audience were Gaye Advert and TV Smith who went on
to form the Adverts, Shane MacGowan, who later formed the Nipple Erectors and the Pogues, Viv Albertine of the Slits and Chrissie
Hynde, who later formed the Pretenders. Caroline Coon, reporting on the festival, wrote: ‘If the punk rock scene has anything
to offer, it’s the opportunity for anyone to get up and experience the reality of their wildest stage-struck dreams.’

Another characteristic example of punk violence occurred at a Clash gig I attended at the ICA in October 1976 when Mad Jane
Crockford, later Jane Modette of the Modettes, appeared to bite off the earlobe of her boyfriend, Shane MacGowan. There was
blood everywhere and that was what he told me had happened; which I duly reported in the
NME
, helping to associate punk with violence. Joe Strummer saw what was happening from the stage and, unlike Johnny Rotten, who
would have presumably joined in, shouted at them: ‘All of you who think violence is tough, why don’t you go home and collect
stamps? That’s much tougher.’ It was not a bad spontaneous response. Macgowan later told
Zigzag
magazine:

I was up the front at this Clash gig in the ICA, and me and this girl were having a laugh, which involved biting each other’s
arms ’til they were completely covered in blood and then smashing up a couple of bottles and cutting each other up a bit.
Anyway, in the end she went a bit over the top and bottled me in the side of the head. Gallons of blood came out and someone
took a photograph. I never got it bitten off – although we had bitten each other to bits – it was just a heavy cut.
⁷