All language subtitles for Seven Ages of Rock - Blank Generation - Punk Rock (2007)

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 fascinatin' 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.