Urban Space and the Birth of Punk

Home , 1974 in music, All Time High, Billy Ficca, CBGB, Danny Fields, David Johansen

Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College Honors Theses

Florida Atlantic University Libraries Year 

Paul Fletcher

This paper is posted at DigitalCommons@Florida Atlantic University. http://digitalcommons.fau.edu/wilkes theses/9 URBAN SPACE AND THE BIRTH OF PUNK

Paul Fletcher

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Wilkes Honors College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

With a Concentration in History

Wilkes Honors College of

Florida Atlantic University

Jupiter, Florida

May 2006

URBAN SPACE AND THE BIRTH OF PUNK

by Paul Fletcher

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Christopher Ely, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

______Dr. Christopher Ely

______Dr. Daniel White

______Interim Dean, Wilkes Honors College

______Date

I owe a few people a great deal of gratitude for their guidance, keen insight, and emotional assistance during this long, arduous saga that I like to refer to as my Honors Thesis. These people are: Dr.Ely, for without his support, encouragement, and excitement, I would have given up a long time ago; Amanda Kennedy, for the long hours she spent discussing, correcting, and advising my thesis, without her, I would also be at a great loss; my father, Orland Fletcher, for encouraging and funding my education, without his support, I would not feel as happy and fulfilled as I do now. Also, I’d like to thank everyone else at the Honors College for three years of beautiful experiences. I will never forget them.

iii

ABSTRACT

Author: Paul Fletcher

Title: Urban Space and the Birth of Punk

Institution: Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Christopher Ely

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

Concentration: History

Year: 2006

While the general public agrees that the Sex Pistols were punk—they were dirty,

vile, low-class, and they sang crass lyrics—their aesthetics were originally brought into

punk by the New York Dolls, by bringing the street into their performance. The New

York Dolls were from the New York City streets; they were mediocre musicians,

unglamorous, and not at all phantasmagorical. They removed the hierarchy and the

bourgeois elements from their performances that had been established by previous New

York City bands like the Velvet Underground—who performed as high-class, elitist artists. The New York Dolls destroyed this hierarchy, allowing the audience to join them.

So, all the aesthetics that are associated with punk are the physical, visual, and auditory manifestations of the original scene and unity that began with the New York Dolls.

To My Mother, For Whom All My Days Are Spent Dreaming

Table of Contents

Chapter 1—Introduction…………………………………………………….1

Chapter 2—The New York Dolls and New York City……………………………………………………………... 15

Chapter 3—Television and CBGB’s OMFUG…………………………….. 28

Chapter 4—Conclusion: The New York Dolls’ Music Scene Was Named Punk……………………………………………. 40

Bibliography……………………………………………………………….. 43

Urban Space and the Birth of Punk

Chapter 1—Introduction

“The city, as one finds it in history, is the point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of a community. It is the place where the diffused rays of many separate beams of life fall into focus, with gains in both social effectiveness and significance. The city is the form and symbol of an integrated social relationship…Cities are the product of the earth”—Lewis Mumford.1

Punk is normally understood as a musical genre with specific political

philosophies and grungy aesthetics. Its music is fast, distorted, and is screamed and not sung; its political philosophies include individual freedom, anarchy, and nihilism; and mohawks, spiked collars on leather jackets, colored hair, safety pins, and torn clothing are but a few of its tattered aesthetics. Still, what punk is and what it has become, as its

versions constantly shift and change, are enigmas. Punk is hard to define, in part, because

we tend to recognize it in almost anything: in attitude, clothing style, manners, music, etc.

It is still referred to today in some aspects of popular culture: in Green Day’s music and

in Pink’s constantly altering hair styles and colors. Often moments of punk are associated

with the Sex Pistols and the Ramones for their rebellious attitudes, unkempt hair, safety

pins, and fast, ‘to-the-point’ music. This association, however, is misconstrued; many

musicians have been rebellious in the public realm—remember the Elvis taboo, the

Rolling Stones’ dangerous, sexual charm, and Jim Morrison’s profane use of English and

his violation of public decency. These are but a few exemplary characteristics often

associated with punk.

The main reason punk is difficult to clearly define is that its roots are deeply

grounded in the story of modernity. In modern societies, since the beginning of the

industrial revolution, the dominance of the middle- and upper-class values has played a

1 Lewis Mumford. The Culture of Cities Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc, New York: 1970, 3.

crucial role in the foundation of culture, politics, and economic discourse. Countless

factions have arisen in reactionary opposition to the dominance of bourgeois control. The

problem of defining punk arises because it is an attempt to transgress and transform

society and it can easily be swept into the same pan as bohemians and other

revolutionaries and nonconformists in modern societies.

Elizabeth Wilson presents an excellent description and discussion of these counter

cultural social factions in Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts. She argues that the

impact of the French and Industrial revolutions on Europe’s economic and political

climate brought about two distinct, dialectical forces: the bourgeoisie (the middle class,

city dwellers) and the bohemians (those whose values and lifestyles contrast with the

bourgeoisie’s). While the bourgeoisie was synonymous with capitalistic principles,

valuing goods and services by price, and valuing individuals by their ability to acquire

“expensive” goods and services or by their value as labor, the bohemians adhered to a

much different code of values and ethics. The bohemians understood success not as the

acquisition of goods or services but rather as the process of self-realization through art

and aesthetics. Following these descriptions of bohemians, one can draw many parallels between bohemians and punks. Like bohemians, punks valued self-expression above and

beyond consumption. Their lifestyles were inextricable from the desire of creation and

art. A punk was his or her art.

Modern cities provided the setting for the creation of the bohemian’s oppositional

identity.2 While the bourgeoisie established the thesis, or main structure, of modern

society through their capitalistic principles and values, artists, poets, writers, and other

nonconformist intellectuals managed to create an alternative or antithetical subculture,

2 Elizabeth Wilson. Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts. Rutgers University Press, New Jersey: 2000. p31

known as Bohemia. In Western cities across the world including Berlin, Munich, London,

Paris, San Francisco, and New York, countercultures created alternative domains where

oppositional ideals and values were not only accepted but encouraged. Cities offered

practical advantages to the bohemian subculture. As well as providing an escape from the

responsibilities of the family, a necessary structure of Bourgeois life, the city made

possible the formation of new groups and friendships based on interest and work.3 For, it was in these alternative places that the bohemian identity was made manifest. Likewise, punk can be understood more clearly by examining the modern city, for the modern city enabled the existence of punk. In order to understand the punk, as is true of the bohemian, the soil from which he or she bloomed must be examined. For the remainder of this thesis, I describe a venture into the city in pursuit of punk, revealing punk’s origins. While the general public may think of punk in terms of its aesthetics, philosophies, music, etc., it fails to understand punk as a social phenomenon evolving out of the city. Stripped of its emblems, music, and nihilistic behaviors, punk remains a social engagement, the destruction of social barriers, and the common celebration of the detachment from the past. The scene created by the New York Dolls in New York City during the early 1970s marks the ascent from the traditional boundaries between a performer and an audience into a shared, social relationship. The story of punk’s development unfolds rather disjointedly as the specific actors and places change. If one traces the different chapters, it becomes more cohesive and the origin becomes locatable.

In what follows, I trace the story to its origin: the New York Dolls in New York City, and ultimately define what punk really means.

3 Ibid, 28

Like bohemians, punks needed an urban environment in which to grow and to

establish an identity. Punks used the city as a stage upon which they could perform their

oppositional identities. It was here in public that they were able to be identified as different. For instance, Johnny Rotten was included into the Sex Pistols not only for his

distinct, screeching voice and wild attitude, but also for his appearance. He liked to wear

garbage liners as clothes, spiked and dyed hair, and torn shirts and pants, loosely patched

together with safety pins. It was because of this style that he was first invited to audition

for the Sex Pistols. On the day of his audition, he was wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt with “I

hate” superimposed on the band’s name. In search of a singer for the Sex Pistols, this

shirt acted as a lure, grabbing the attention of the other Sex Pistols’ members. His

appearance alone was the reason he was swept off the street and persuaded to audition as

the band’s front-man, singer. Rotten’s image appealed to Malcolm McLaren, for it

resembled Richard Hells’ anti-aesthetic that McLaren hoped to recreate.4

Rotten mirrored the bohemians’ performativity in city streets. In the city,

bohemians could flaunt their glamorous selves on the stage of the city street, spending all

day drinking coffee, smoking Gauloise cigarettes in cafés, and forming collective

networks with other bohemians. They could take to “the boards of the urban stage to

flaunt their genius, their deviance and their notoriety.”5 The streets, bars, and hidden

corners of the city provided a revolutionary source of material for their artwork.6 In modern, bourgeois cities, bohemians could explore the streets, live in the cheapest places, and aspire to authenticate the life and art that bourgeois society commodified. The

4 Richard Hell was in Television, the first punk band to play in CBGB’s OMFUG. This instance will be examined more closely later. 5 Elizabeth Wilson. Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts. Rutgers University Press, New Jersey: 2000, 25 6 Ibid, 28

bourgeois city provided bohemians with cheap living spaces and offered them an

assortment of alternative social spaces in which the bohemian identity of self-realization

through art could develop and transcend the bourgeois principles of consumption and expenditure. Likewise, the bourgeois city streets allowed the bohemians to translate their oppositional ideas into modes of dress and aesthetics. Elaborate clothing and aesthetics,

and anything deemed openly shocking or repulsive to the bourgeoisie could be displayed on the public streets for all to see. For, “To adhere to the rules of polite dress was to signal your commitment to the good manners of a gentleman”7 but to dress as though you

were dead, poor, or insane (like Johnny Rotten) was to adhere to the rules of Bohemia, and later punk, which sought to “subvert the dominant paradigm”—the bourgeoisie.

Like the bohemians, punks established underground spaces in the city where they could

form a collective enterprise against bourgeois society. To name just a few: Andy

Warhol’s Factory, Max’s Kansas City, the Mercer Arts Center, Club 82, CBGB’s

OMFUG, and the Mercer Arts Center. Aside from Andy Warhol’s Factory which was

more or less an art studio, these places operated as both bars and small concert halls, where punks could gather, drink, socialize, and listen to or play music. It was in these

places that the punk character developed. As it turns out, most of these places were in or

near the lower east side Manhattan, New York City—the dilapidated part of the

Manhattan.

Wilson explains that the bohemians developed styles and modes of behavior that

challenged the bourgeoisie’s and that cafés were the most popular site for the expression

of these behaviors and styles:

7 Ibid, 161

The Café was a stage for that most ephemeral, yet infinitely respectable, performance: the performance of personality and at the same time blurred the distinction between being ‘at home’ and ‘out and about,’ between public and private.8

In cafés, the bohemian could spend the morning drawing, painting, or writing, and the

afternoons in conversation with other bohemians. This lifestyle directly challenged the bourgeois (or Protestant) work ethic, which trivialized creativity and idle conversation and privileged entrepreneurship and ‘the daily grind.’ The streets in front of the cafés and throughout Bohemia “offered them a tolerant haven, [and] a social setting in which they had a positive contribution to make by adding to its colourful eccentricity.”9 What the

café gave to the bohemian, the bar gave to the punk. Like the bohemian in the café, the

punk in the bar could act as extravagantly and as unconventionally as he or she wished.

These alternative behaviors ranged from homosexuality and drug use to the exposure of

bodily fluids. If all that defined punk was unconventional behavior then punk could be

traced back as far as 1965 to the band from Andy Warhol’s Factory— the Velvet

Underground— and their songs, celebrating homosexuality and heroin addiction.10 Or, perhaps its origins go further back to the 1950’s and 60’s, to William S. Burroughs, and his essays and books, dealing with homosexuality, drug use, and murder; one such book is Junky, in which the characters, William and Roy are interrupted while having sex in the subway by two men who yell at them, “Fucking punks think it’s a joke.”11 Possibly

punk descended from this phrase and this sexual activity in the urban subway. Or maybe

punk derives from David Bowie in the 1960s and 70s and his cross-dressing, glittered,

guttered appearance, sexual escapades, and music that sounded as though it was

8 Elizabeth Wilson. Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts. Rutgers University Press, New Jersey: 2000, 37 9 Ibid, 75 10 Ibid, 87 11 William Burroughs. Junky Penguin Books; 50th anniversary edition: 2003

composed by space aliens. Or in 1967, Iggy Pop and the Stooges may have started punk

with their violent, bloody stage antics, during which Iggy Pop was known to roll in broken glass, urinate on speakers, and scream—their music was known to be extremely

loud, fast, and heavy. On stage Jim Morrison sometimes removed his clothes and

screamed about having sex with his mother; off stage he would urinate at the bar, lose

himself for days on acid and other drugs, and eventually die a young, fat, drunk man in a

bath tub. He could even be called the first punk. We could also add to the list of potential

punk instigators: Patti Smith for wearing “boy” clothes, including jeans and loose fitting

t-shirts, and for her dark, urban poetry and music; Jim Carroll for his heroin-addicted

lifestyle and his writings on urban drug-life; John Waters, crowned “the prince of puke,”

for debauchery in such works as his 1972 film, Pink Flamingos, which portrays the drag-

queen Divine urinating on private lawns, sticking meat in between her legs, and eating

dog feces; John Vaccaro for his theatrical performances, which sometimes included

Siamese twins connected at the anus, huge papier-mâché penises, and his own feces

dripping down his legs;12 urban poets like Charles Bukowski, and Jack Kerouac; or

perhaps performance artists like Yoko Ono. The list could continue from here. But punk

cannot be defined solely by the behaviors exhibited by various ‘punks’.

Jon Savage and Greil Marcus, both reputable historians of the 20th century argue

that punk emerged in full form in London with the Sex Pistols but had many prefiguring

influences.13 Although Marcus traces the history of punk to Dadaism, Surrealism, and

other art movements in the 20th century, one of the earliest influences to which both

12 Ibid, 88 13 For a discussion of this look in Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1992 and Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Secker & Warburg, London: 1990.

looked was the Situationist International and their cause for the May 1968 Parisian revolts. In this revolt, Bohemia en masse tried to reshape an entire urban environment, not merely to create an alternate space within a city.

In 1967 the Situationist International’s co-founder, Guy Debord, published

Society of the Spectacle, which claimed that contemporary consumer society causes social alienation and commodifies life. In just one year, the book became hugely popular in Europe and made a tremendous impact on how people viewed themselves in modern society. In May of 1968, armed with paving stones, parked cars, and burning embers, millions of Parisian students and workers joined forces in an attempt to recreate their everyday lives, refusing to be a cog in the ever-present, ever-powerful machine that Guy

Debord had coined modern, spectacular society.14 For the entire month the public sphere was theirs; universities were shut down and taken over by student organizations; factories, banks, and other businesses closed because of strikes. Store-fronts were attacked with heavy bricks and windows were shattered; cars were set on fire. People swung their fists at the police and smashed officers’ faces with blunt objects. Phrases like

“No Work” and “Beneath the Paving Stones, the Beach.15” were written all over the city.

These phrases give insight into the hearts, minds, and inclinations of the revolting crowd.

The streets of Paris were controlled by students and workers of nearly every race, ethnicity, and religion. They tore the categories from their lives, stripped their alienating labels from their chests and stood together, battling proudly and diligently with one another.

14 This note is taken from both: Debord, Guy, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967, Zone Books, New York. and the Situationist International’s home web-site http://www.cdd.vt.edu/SI.com 15 Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. 1990. Martin and Warburg Limited, London. 31-32.

For the first time, Guy Debord had witnessed Situationist theories in action.

Remembering the events, Marshall Berman poetically wrote: “they [were] recombining

the isolated, inanimate elements into vital new artistic and political forms. For one

luminous moment, the multitude of solitudes that [made] up the modern city came

together in a new kind of encounter, to make a people.”16 In other words, in the language

of the Situationist International, “the pleasure was all theirs.” Both Marcus and Savage

associate punk with the Situationist International’s influence on the protestors who attempted to subvert the status quo use of Parisian space.17 This revolt, Savage and

Marcus claim, exemplifies what punk, specifically in the music of the Sex Pistols, was trying to do, which was the breaking down of social boundaries.

In his autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs Johnny Rotten, the former Sex Pistols’ singer, refutes the Sex Pistols’ connection to the Situationist

International by distinguishing his band and punk from the Situationist revolt: “All the talk about the French Situationists being associated with punk is bollocks. It’s nonsense!

Now that really is coffee-table book stuff. The Paris riots and the Situationist movement of the sixties—it was all nonsense for arty French students.” He ignores the millions of workers who also participated in the riots. If Marcus and Savage were correct that the Sex

Pistols created punk by recreating the effects of the revolt through music and aesthetics, it seems odd that Rotten would separate himself from the Situationist revolt.

In Los Angeles in March 1978, during the Sex Pistols’ first and last U.S. tour,

Flipside magazine’s Gabriela interviewed Johnny Rotten. Without being asked of its

16 Berman, Marshall, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, 1988, Penguin Books New York, 163-164 17 The Situationist International implemented détournement, dérive, and psychogeography as revolutionary critics of urban space.

origins, Johnny Rotten was pleased to announce that “[he] started the whole punk

movement.”18 In his autobiography, he repeats this claim:

Who put the Pistols together? Not Malcolm, really…There were several people in the band before I came along…Whatever they were up to before, they were nothing like what they became once I joined up! They had no image. No point. No nothing. No purpose to it other than making really lousy Small Faces and imitation Who noises. It was vile. Really, really bad, but I liked it.19

He takes credit for the style, music, and creation of the Sex Pistols and thus, believes, he

invented punk. Was he not aware that he was but one figure in one band? Jon Savage, on

the other hand, claims that Malcolm McLaren, the former manager of the New York

Dolls and former owner of the Sex boutique on King’s Road in London, was responsible

for the establishment of the Sex Pistols and punk. McLaren undeniably agrees. According to Jon Savage and Greil Marcus, McLaren drew his inspiration from the Situationist

International; that McLaren himself was a Situationist. He created the Sex Pistols to show

the world that one had control over one’s own life by creating one’s own situation, much

like the Parisians did in May 1968. Even if he can be credited with their formation, there

was still the question of whether punk originated with the Sex Pistols at all.

In a December 29th 1984 interview between Flipside’s Donny the Punk and the

Ramones’ vocalist, Joey Ramone.20 Donny asked Joey the following questions: “When

did people start calling your music punk rock?” He replied laughingly, “I guess right

from the time we used to play at CBGB’s in the early years when there were not many

people. We had the song, Judy is a Punk [from their first album], and everybody started

calling us punks.” “How did you come to use that term in the song?” “I was walking

18 “The Sex Pistols Meet The L.A. Hippies.” Flipside Fanzine number 54, Ten Year anniversary issue, 21 19 John Lydon. Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. Picador, New York: 1994, 2 20 “Joey Ramones.” Flipside Fanzine number 54, Ten Year anniversary issue, 201

down the street and it popped into my mind. But it’s a true story about her. She’s a wild,

wild thing.” This claim prompted further research of the Ramones.

I was led to a great oral history of punk, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored, Oral

History of Punk. It is not a theoretical book, but rather a unified narrative constructed out

of quotes from individuals who were a part of the punk story. In it, I was led down a path

of monologues, starting with Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground and ending with Jerry

Nolan of the New York Dolls, who described how seeing Elvis perform for the first time

changed his life. In between the beginning and conclusion of these narratives, punk was

termed in 1975 by Legs McNeil and his colleagues as the title of their magazine, Punk.

The magazine title was named after a New York City music scene at CBGB’s OMFUG

where the Ramones often performed. I learned that the Sex Pistols’ first single “Anarchy

in the U.K.” was not produced until 1976. Therefore, punk is not wholly attributable to

the Sex Pistols or the Ramones, but is rather preceded by and includes both bands as

crucial pieces. The origin of Punk was shared between multiple bands.

Following the Ramones’ story led to CBGB’s OMFUG on the Bowery. Hilly

Kristal, CBGB’s owner, recounted his version of the Ramones’ story and explained that

they were preceded by the band Television—Television created a punk scene in the bar

and the Ramones maintained it. But Television also had a predecessor: the New York

Dolls who played at the Mercer Arts Center and other Manhattan bars. The Dolls successfully introduced New York City street culture into their music and destroyed the

traditional boundaries between audience and performer. Here, with the New York

Dolls—the first band in the punk scene—I found the origins of punk.

New York City and the New York Dolls must be examined together because, just as the bohemians were able to appropriate parts of urban space in their construction of

Bohemia, the New York Dolls were able to transform bars like the Mercer Arts Center into a punk community. While punk may be associated with the aesthetics and music of the Sex Pistols and perhaps those of earlier bands like the Velvet Underground, the New

York Dolls created what can be referred to as a “punk scene.” They created an urban environment, in which the audience and the band were bound up in the same spectacle.

The New York Dolls’ creation of the punk scene tore asunder the individuation principle, thereby removing social alienation from musical performances. The New York Dolls’ construction of the punk scene held simplicity, rawness, and elements of the street as supreme. The Dolls, prior to the Sex Pistols, succeeded in recreating the Situationist

International’s primary characteristic of subverting dominant meanings of space. In other words, they enabled musical performances to fall from the hands of professional, contracted bands into the hands of anybody with a musical instrument and an interest in performing. At the same time, the New York Dolls’ deconstructed mode of style inspired other bands like Television, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols to perform similar modes of music and aesthetics. Finally, the New York Dolls preceded every manifestation of the punk aesthetic from the Ramones to the Sex Pistols, to today’s contemporary musicians like Pink and Green Day.

Why am I certain that punk began with the New York Dolls and not perhaps with the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, or the Sex Pistols? It was the scene created by the

New York Dolls in New York City that inspired Television to recreate it in CBGB’s

OMFUG on the Bowery, and Televisions’ appropriation that allowed the Ramones to

join. It was Television’s performances and their appropriation of CBGB’s OMFUG that

inspired Malcolm McLaren to create the Sex Pistols in London. As we will see, punk is

like a constantly shifting form of Bohemia, instead of moving from café to café as the

bohemians had done, punks moved from bar to bar and from city to city. Punk, then, is

associated with this constant transformation of city space, in different bars and clubs.

Prior bands like the Velvet Underground, although influential to punk music, did not

create the abovementioned punk scene. Punk emerged out of a new relationship between

groups of people in city space. It grew out of the destruction of the conventional

boundaries between performer and audience to which bands like the Velvet Underground

adhered throughout most of their careers. The New York Dolls were the first to unify

performer and audience in the New York City music scene in the 1970s. During their

shows, there was no bifurcation of space; the audience and the performer were conjoined in the same spectacle. In most of their performances, the audience was positioned in a

circle around the band. Their music was intentionally simple and inclusive, which meant

that anybody could repeat similar musical harmonies. This is the framework in which

punk emerged and it is this framework which makes the comparison between punk and

Bohemia so fitting.

This argument does not discredit Jon Savage’s, Greil Marcus’, Johnny Rotten’s,

or others’ claims, for the Sex Pistols and the Ramones can and should be recognized for

their influence on punk’s form and musical expression; their style has influenced millions of musicians around the world. And it is to their music and aesthetics that we still look as the archetypes of punk. But it will add much to their arguments to know why the

Ramones and the Sex Pistols were able to have such a great influence on music and

culture. For, like the cafés and other spaces of Bohemia that were created in cities that allowed bohemians to be bohemian, punk could not have existed if the punk scene had not been formed by the New York Dolls in places like the Mercer Arts Center. For that reason I give credit to the New York Dolls for the creation of punk. On the same note, the

New York Dolls could not have created the punk scene if it had not been for the favorable conditions of the urban space in which they performed. The same can be said about Television and the Ramones in CBGB’s OMFUG. For these reasons we can see the importance of urban space in the construction of punk in New York City. The following chapters describe this argument more fully.

Chapter 2—The New York Dolls and New York City

Both Jon Savage and Greil Marcus associate punk with the Sex Pistols—their spiked hair, torn apparel, and their proclivity toward violence, filth, and bile. According to Jon Savage, punk originated in London with the Sex Pistols’ first single in 1976 entitled “Anarchy in the U.K.”21 The song’s subversive lyrics are often regarded as definitive punk lyrics. It is easy to see why Savage regarded the Sex Pistols as the punk generation’s heralds. As Legs McNeil recalled, “it is hard to compete with those images of safety pins and spiked hair.”22 They were angry; their music was electric, distorted,

simple, and raw; it was the rebellious sound of London youth on the dole. They wore torn

clothing, safety pins through their noses, and black eye makeup; they spit on their

audience and their audience spit back; most of them were drug addicts who had casual

sex with other drug addicts. In Sid Vicious’ case, the band’s bassist, they were sometimes

murderers.23 Their image was imbued with the punk aesthetic, which took the low and placed it up high and held darkness as the new light. The Sex Pistols’ music and appearance embraced social difference and celebrated negation. These characteristics are, after all, punk.

However, I ask those who agree that the Sex Pistols started punk to consider this: in 1971, long before the Sex Pistols’ first album in 1976, the New York Dolls were busy creating the aesthetics associated with the Sex Pistols’ look; they were hard at work, paving the way for subversive lyrics to enter the public realm; they were upending 1960s

21 Jon Savage. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1992 22 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996, 329 23 Sid vicious was accused of stabbing his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death in New York City’s Chelsea Hotel. Soon afterward, Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose.

and 1970s rock ‘n’ roll solos and complexity, making simple, ‘bad’ music ‘good’; and,

they were eliminating social alienation from New York City’s music scene by ushering in new performer/audience relationships that were inclusive and based on collectivity.

Without the New York Dolls, the Sex Pistols and punk would never have existed. The

New York Dolls were the progenitors of punk; their story unfolds in New York City in the early 1970s.

In an article titled “Talking with the New York Dolls,” the New York Doll’s vocalist, David Johansen, said: “Rimbaud would write about the monstrous city and the effects it would have on the species. And here it is 1973 and everything is very fast moving and I try to understand how people feel about it, how they relate to the environment.”24 Johansen was trying to understand, then, the urban environment’s ability to influence people’s lives, particularly people’s lives in New York.

Johansen’s concern for New York City’s conditions during the 1970s was well founded. The crime rate was at an all time high; unemployment was soaring; the city’s industry was crashing; and the city’s government was going bankrupt. A massive exodus of middleclass citizens to suburbs left the crime and financial dilemmas to those remaining in the city. By the end of the 1970s, over a million people would leave New

York City. According to Joey Ramone, the city’s increasing vacancy made “it [feel] as if the parents were leaving and anything was possible.”25The future of New York City was

left in the hands of those who were left behind.

24 Jon Savage. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1992, 58 25 Fields, Jim and Michael Gramaglia, dirs. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones. Rhino Home Video, Burbank: 2005

In The City in History, the 20th century’s most influential urban historian, Lewis

Mumford, expressed a concern similar to Johansen’s, wondering what effects a city’s environment can have on its inhabitants. He concluded that one of the urban environment’s primary functions is “the making and remaking of selves.”26 The nature of the city tests individuals’ ability to live together in harmony. Still, Mumford was well aware of the unfavorable conditions that living together so closely would most likely entail: the drama, tension, and disagreement between factious opinions; the stress felt in the political, philosophical, religious, and social spheres; and crime, disease, and pollution. Johansen was experiencing all of these urban conditions.

Despite these negative circumstances, Lewis Mumford claimed that there are advantages to living in a city. A short list of these urban advantages include: the strengthening of individuality and independence, the cultivation of empathy for others, education through diversity and the expansion of one’s own life in respect to others.

Mumford argued that the best definition of the city in its higher aspects is to say that it is a place designed to offer the widest facilities for significant conversation.27 In his own words: “by action and participation, and again by detachment and reflection, urban man may give to a larger portion of life the benefit of a continued play of the collective mind and spirit.” 28 Urban space has the capacity to offer new forms of civic relationships.

Regardless of urban conditions, city space is provisional of socialization. People are able to congregate and cultivate a collective existence in urban environments. Still, Johansen’s

26 Lewis Mumford. The City in History. A Harvest/HBJ Book, New York and London: 1961, 116 27 Lewis Mumford. The City in History. A Harvest/HBJ Book, New York and London: 1961, 116 28 Ibid,116

concern for New York City’s effects on its citizens calls into question New York City’s

ability to support “the urban man’s continued play of the collective mind and spirit.”29

According to Joey Ramone, New York City during the early 1970s lacked “things to do.”30 Especially in the Lower East Side, where Johansen lived, businesses were

dilapidated and the streets were empty. For original musicians like the New York Dolls—

bands with their own style, lyrics, and songs—places for expression were even harder to

find. Clubs and bars only allowed bands with recording contracts to perform original

music. If bands did not have recording contracts they would have to play cover songs. In

order to counter this, the New York Dolls had to create a place of their own. They would

have to construct their own environment in New York City and transcend the difficulties

that city life entailed.

In his theoretical contribution to the relationship between the production and experience of space, The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau recognized that there are strategies which can be used to subvert or elude the imposition of dominant meanings of space.31 This theme of subversion is exemplified in Iain Borden’s discussion

of skateboarding in the city in “A Performative Critique of the City: The Urban Practice

of Skateboarding, 1958-1998.” In this discussion Borden considers skateboarding as one

spatial practice through which dominant meanings of the city are subverted or ignored. 32

As Borden argues:

Skateboarding resists the standardization and repetition of the city as a serial production of building types, functions and discrete objects; it

29 Lewis Mumford. The City in History. A Harvest/HBJ Book, New York and London: 1961, 116 30 Fields, Jim and Michael Gramaglia, dirs. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones. Rhino Home Video, Burbank: 2005 and Beck, Nadya and Bob Gruen, dirs. New York Dolls: All Dolled Up. MVD musical video, Pennsylvania: 2005. 31 Malcolm Miles and Tim Hall, with Ian Borden. The City Cultures Reader 2nd ed, Routledge, London and New York: 2004, pg 258 32 Ibid, 258

decentres building-objects in time and space in order to recompose them as a strung-out yet newly synchronous arrangement. This while many conceive of cities as comprehensive urban plans, monuments or grands projets, skateboarding suggests that cities can be thought of as series of micro-spaces. Consequently, architecture is seen to lie beyond the province of the architect and is thrown instead into the turbulent nexus of reproduction.33

The urban environment can be altered by subverting or eluding the imposition of

dominant meanings of space. Bohemia, as a subversion of bourgeois urban social spaces,

demonstrates the appropriation of urban space. Bohemia changed preexisting meanings

of space through social action: i.e. the bourgeois cafés became the place for bohemian

collectivity. Similarly, the New York Dolls were able to redefine space at the Mercer Arts

Center in New York City in 1971. This ability allowed them to start the punk scene.

In New York City during the early 1970s, Bob Gruen—photographer/filmmaker/

author—walked to 240 Mercer Street, stopping at the Mercer Arts Center. After entering

the five room night club, Gruen moved toward the back. He went through a door leading

to the Oscar Wilde Room. Fast, distorted music filled his ears. Swarming around the

source of the music were hundreds of tightly packed, dancing, shaking, screaming people.

Looking at the stage, Gruen could not tell the band from the audience; they were crowded

together. Around this mass of people, surrounding the stage “was a whole row of

bleachers seats that went up really steep…it looked like a wall of people.”34 This was the

first time Bob Gruen experienced a New York Dolls performance. After his experience,

Gruen decided the New York Dolls were “the most exciting thing [he] had ever seen in

[his] life.”35 He was witnessing the birth of punk.

33 Ibid, 258 34 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996, 133 35 Ibid, 132-133

Decorated in thick, bright mascara and glittery-lipstick and dressed in chaps worn

over thong-panties, black vests on top of ruffled blouses, and skin-tight jumpsuits, the

New York Dolls performed at places like the Mercer Arts Center, playing the type of music that Johnny Ramone later called, “true rock ‘n’ roll: great music with limited musicianship.”36 To punk historian Jon Savage, the band played music that was, “as their

name suggested, high-energy, sluttish, Manhattan rock ‘n’ roll.”37 Their performances,

according to Joey Ramone, were “eventful and decadent, and incorporated wild stage

antics” and sexual references.38 What their music lacked in musicianship was made up for

with speed, attitude, and energy. According to Jerry Nolan, the New York Dolls’ second

drummer, “The Dolls started playing around, mostly at a place called the Mercer Arts

Center, every Tuesday, and the Diplomat Hotel. I fell in love with them right away. I

said, ‘Holy shit! These kids are doing what nobody else is doing. They’re bringing back

the three minute song.’”39

Unlike other New York City bands, the New York Dolls refrained from playing

long, elaborate solos. Relying on only electric guitars, drums, vocals, and occasionally a

harmonica and saxophone—the basic rock instruments—the band’s simple musicianship was an anomaly in the 1970s New York City music scene which was used to more complex musical entertainment; for instance, the music of the Velvet Underground—the

band that Andy Warhol sponsored. The Velvet Underground were known for giving well

articulated, regulated performances that utilized forms of technology like video

36 Fields, Jim and Michael Gramaglia, dirs. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones. Rhino Home Video, Burbank: 2005 37 Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1992, 59 38 Fields, Jim and Michael Gramaglia, dirs. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones. Rhino Home Video, Burbank: 2005 39 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996, 117

backdrops and floating, colored lights during their shows—playing in front of black and white movies, exotic dancers, strobe lights, oil wheel projections and slides.40 Alvin

Gibbs, author of Destroy: The Definitive History of Punk, remembered the Velvet

Underground’s music as “containing glorious chunks of pain, pleasure, horror, guilt, and nostalgia. It was dark, dark mind fuck of a sound.41 It was emotionally stirring. The

band’s goal was to gain the audience’s undivided attention—the audience would find their performance spellbinding and captivating. Looking into Lou Reed’s eyes while he sang “Sweet Jane,” or onto Nico’s pallid face as her deep, melancholic voice mimicked

Bob Dylan’s, one could see the art—one could see the performance. 42 At a Velvet

Underground show, the performer created the spectacle for its audience of spectators. As

a result, the Velvet Underground’s shows relied on traditional theatrical boundaries

because their performances were regulated, following a script or a scenario that had been

rehearsed.43 Their complexity often alienated their audience, for it divided the band and

the audience into two distinct social categories: the talented observed and the far less

talented observer. According to Alvin Gibbs, the Velvet Underground appeared

solipsistic to the audience, meaning that their performances were so encumbered by

musical complexity that the band became the only reality during the performance.44

People solely came together, during the band’s performance, to witness the spectacle that was the Velvet Underground. Alvin Gibbs noted that this social divergence was “a fatal

40Ibid, 30 41 Alvin Gibbs. Destroy: The Definitive History of Punk. Britannia Press Publishing, Great Britain:1996, 31 42 It’s a little known fact that Nico sounds as “deep and manly” as she does because she wanted to sound like Bob Dylan, although I can’t hear the resemblance. She should be happy with her own voice because it’s fantastic. 43 Richard Schechner. “6 Axioms for Environmental Theatre.” The Drama Review: TDR Vol. 12 No. 3 1968, 42 44 Alvin Gibbs. Destroy: The Definitive History of Punk. Britannia Press Publishing, Great Britain:1996, 31

error,” for it distanced the band too far from the audience. 45 The Velvet Underground’s

performance lacked community. More importantly, it created two other distinct social

camps: the artist and the art lover. The New York Dolls, on the other hand, were able to

combine these two social groups into one element, where the audience and the performer

conjoined to become the same spectacle—both artist and art lover.

Before the New York Dolls, the Velvet Underground’s music had established the

precedent of the music scene at the Mercer Arts Center.46According to Jon Savage, “The

New York Dolls congregated in the tiny Oscar Wilde Room at the Mercer Arts Center right in the middle of SoHo. The Dolls were sharing space with the tail end of the sixties

Warhol scene, which had been the venue for drag queens, speed freaks, every possible outcast.”47 However, the New York Dolls’ performances drastically differed from the

Velvet Underground’s. Unlike the Velvet Underground, their performances were not complex and grandiose. The New York Dolls’ music sounded like the screech of the subway train, IRT, and represented the raw, urban New York streets. 48 It was the

negation of complexity and was as accessible as a ride on a New York City metro rail.

This, in its own right, would appear unprecedented and shocking in New York City’s

music scene in the early1970s. To Nancy Spungen, groupie/stripper/prostitute, the New

York Dolls performances energized “the creation of a scene”:

They were the center of attention. Everything came after them. They were different. Nobody ever dressed the way they did or talked the way they did, or played music the way they did.49

45 Alvin Gibbs. Destroy: The Definitive History of Punk. Britannia Press Publishing, Great Britain:1996, 31 46 Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1992, 60 47 Ibid, 60 48 Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1992, 60 49 Ibid, 150

Many people were attracted to this new social scene and the band’s following increased weekly.

The Mercer Arts Center and other places frequented by the New York Dolls appealed to New York City’s youth, who were, in the early 1970s, both legally able to drink and enter clubs at eighteen and, according to Joey Ramone, “bored.”50 According to

Dee Dee Ramone, “the New York Dolls gave people a place to go.”51At the same time,

Jerry Nolan added that “the Dolls not only appealed to the kids, they were drawing the young art crowd: Andy Warhol, actors and actresses, other musicians.”52 This attraction turned their performances into places where people reunited after years or united for the first time. Especially in the New York City landscape, which writer Robert Sullivan describes as “ultimately unknowable, like a vast forest,” this type of social gathering was rare.53 According to Jerry Nolan, the New York Dolls’ performances were responsible for the union of people:

One time I saw Jimi Hendrix just sitting around. He sent his girlfriend over to me, and she introduced us. [Jimi] said, “I was admiring your suit”—this red velveteen suit with velvet cuffs and collar, red on red. [Jimi] asked me if he could touch it. “Where’d you buy it?” He said. “I had it made.”54 I used to go out with Bette Midler and hadn’t seen her in a while, but I ran into her again at the Mercer. People don’t realize it, but New York really wasn’t a meeting ground for anybody then. You did your shit, then went back home again. But the Diplomat Hotel and the Mercer Arts Center brought everyone together.55

50 Fields, Jim and Michael Gramaglia, dirs. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones. Rhino Home Video, Burbank: 2005 51 Ibid 52 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996, 53 Robert Sullivan. Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants. Bloomsbury, New York and London: 2004, 54 Jerry Nolan could be wrong about this story. Jimi Hendrix died around the time that the New York Dolls started playing at the Mercer Arts Center. 55 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996,117

During their shows, the New York Dolls projected a less rigid aesthetic than the

Velvet Underground. They were less of a spectacle—one knew that, beneath the strange exterior, there existed a “normal” individual, expressing the emotions, concerns, and opinions of the everyday person. According to the New York Dolls’ vocalist, David

Johansen, “Basically we were these kids from New York City who spit and fart in public, were raunchy and just debunked everything. It was just so obvious what we were doing to rock & roll—we were bringing it back to the street.”56 Their performances did not

disguise this everyday persona—they were brief, uncomplicated and not all that visually

or auricularly impressive. This made them unpredictable, and their nonchalance about

their lack of musical expertise was socially inclusive, meaning that their audience could

grow with them. Savage noted that “although there was a distancing irony, this wasn’t

camp: the Dolls transcended ghastly bad taste through their enthusiasm and the way in

which their music perfectly mirrored what they had to say.”57 Artistically masterful in its

own right, their performance did not alienate the band from the audience; instead, it over

came social separation by subverting the traditional theatrical boundaries found in the

Velvet Underground’s performances. Their musical simplicity was approachable,

seemingly lending itself to the audience, almost as if it were a parody of musical

expertise.

The simplicity and lack of intimidation in the New York Dolls’ shows encouraged

audience participation, freeing its members from traditional theatrical boundaries

established between awe-inspired observers and the magnificent spectacle. By presenting

a spectacle that was detached from high, avant-garde formalities, that was tangible and

56 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996, 119. 57 Ibid, 60

yet exciting, it was as if the band was making a Dionysian escape from the Apollonian

calm sea of contemplation and images.58The barrier between the performer and the audience was broken and the individual dissolved into a collective. The individuation principle—the boundaries that separate mankind from the world and each other—was

torn into shreds; what remained was an inseparable relationship between the audience and

the performer, blended into a single unit.59 Because the barrier between the audience and the performer was broken, the freedom to rejoice and expel emotions was all that remained. Beholding the performance, the individual felt like a member of the New York

Dolls—dressing, acting, singing, and perhaps behaving like them. While the New York

Dolls performed, there was no bifurcation of space and no segregation of scenery. It was a fluid situation that allowed spectators to join the performance.60At the Mercer Arts

Center, the New York Dolls performed while the audience formed a circle around them.

There was no stage. The band and their musical equipment—the amplifiers, drum-set,

and microphone stands—were located on the same level as the audience. People could

easily touch the members of the New York Dolls. The audience was free to socialize,

drink, and dance during the performance, and often meet with friends. Leee Childers—

photographer and former vice president of David Bowie’s management company,

MainMan—remembered a similar observation of this union of between the audience and

New York Dolls:

The Dolls created a huge scene and it became extremely fashionable to go see them. You didn’t just see the Dolls—you had to be seen seeing the

58Nietzsche calls the form giving arts Apollonian. The Apollonian is the cause of individuation. The Dionysian breaks down these barriers and creates collectivity. For further explanation of the Apollonian and Dionysian duality refer to Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. Douglas Smith trans. Oxford World’s Classic, Oxford:2000, 41 59 Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy Douglas Smith trans. Oxford World’s Classic, Oxford:2000,21 60 Richard Schechner. 6 Axioms for Environmental Theatre. The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 12, No 3, p 50.

Dolls. It was an actual participatory thing. And the people not on stage were just as much a part of the show as the people on stage. Everybody in the audience was just as outlandish as the Dolls were. 61

This experience heightened social life, moving people face-to-face with the band, the

music, and the created social energy.

In his analysis of the medieval carnival in Rabelais and His World, Mikhail

Bakhtin wrote:

Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom.62

In Bakhtin’s definition of the medieval carnival, we see the true nature of the New York

Dolls’ shows. Like Bakhtin’s carnival, the New York Dolls’ shows came alive with the participation of all the audience members, each viewer reacting with the same kind of relentless, orgiastic expressions and behaviors as the dancers, musicians, and other performers of the carnival. The New York Dolls’ performances celebrated the destruction of social alienation; all figures became the aesthetic and the performance. Through a metaphysical sharing of space and aesthetics, the band and the audience combined, forming a single entity. Wherever the New York Dolls performed, their music and aesthetic was not objectified or held up as an object to observe; instead it was shared with the audience’s enthusiasm and reactions. According to David Johansen, this was “the band’s reflection of the audience.”63

61 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996, 118 62 Mikhail Bakhtin. “From Rabelais and His World.” Cultural Resistance Reader. ed. Stephen Duncombe. London: Verso, 2002. 86 63 Jon Savage. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1992, 60

After years of success, however, the Mercer Arts Studio collapsed (it literally fell down). Simultaneously, Max’s Kansas City—another bar in which the New York Dolls were known to play—shut down as it changed owners, and other “scenes” generated by the New York Dolls across New York City ended. 64 By 1974, the New York Dolls fame dwindled, while on tour in Florida under the management of Malcolm McLaren, in despair, drug abuse, and fatigue. They soon became a memory, leaving behind the legacy that New York City could be used in such a way that any band, even those with limited musical talent, could generate a scene that established a cohesive bond with its audience.

While the general public agrees that the Sex Pistols were punk—they were dirty, vile, low-class, and they sang crass lyrics—their aesthetics were originally brought into punk by the New York Dolls, by bringing the street into their performance. The New York

Dolls were from the New York City streets; they were mediocre musicians, unglamorous, and not at all phantasmagorical. They removed the hierarchy and the bourgeois elements from their performances that had been established by previous New York City bands like the Velvet Underground—who performed as high-class, elitist artists. The New York

Dolls destroyed this hierarchy, allowing the audience to join them. So, all the aesthetics that are associated with punk are the physical, visual, auditory manifestations of the original scene and unity that began with the New York Dolls. As we will see, a similar social space emerged in CBGB’s OMFUG with Television and the Ramones, and in

London with the Sex Pistols.

64 Hilly Kristal’s History of CBGB’s Online Text: http://www.cbgb.com/history1.htm. 2006.

Chapter 3—Television and CBGB’s OMFUG

Only in so far as the genius in the act of artistic creation fuses with that original artist of the world does he know something about the eternal essence of art: for in that state he miraculously resembles the uncanny image of the fairytale, which can turn its eyes inside out and contemplate itself; now he is simultaneously subject and object, simultaneously poet, actor and spectator— Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy65

The New York Dolls’ deconstruction of traditional theatrical boundaries,

boundaries to which prior New York City bands like the Velvet Underground adhered,

caused two social changes in New York City’s music scene: first, the distinction between

the audience and the performer was broken and second, the elements of the street entered

music and aesthetics. The New York Dolls’ scene synthesized these two changes into

what would be called punk. Similar to Bohemia, in which bohemians collectively

participated in a social milieu constructed against the bourgeoisie, punk was the unified

alliance of the audience and band acting out against the bourgeois social hierarchy of the artistic observed and less artistic observer. Music that was more spontaneous and less contrived than that of prior New York City bands emerged in punk. The chaotic elements of the streets were combined with a vicious aesthetic allure; it was as energetic and electric as the New York City avenues. Punk encouraged people from all social classes to create music. The less contrived, more original, sinister, and crass the music and performance was, the better fitting it was to be punk. Punk celebrated the negation of the calm, the strict and the rigid. It was the return of the original unity, as described by

Nietzsche in the Birth of Tragedy, of Dionysus emerging from the strict, composed sea of

Apollonian contemplation: it was the recognition and unrestrained celebration of life’s pain. According to Legs McNeil:

65 Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. Douglas Smith trans. Oxford World’s Classic, Oxford:2000, 38

Punk was about the apocalypse. Punk was about annihilation. Nothing worked, so let’s get right to Armageddon. You know, if you found out the missiles were on their way, you’d probably start saying what you always wanted to, you’d probably turn to your wife and say, “You know, I always thought you were a fat cow.” And that’s how we behaved.66

It was the New York Dolls’ transcendence of prior musical traditions and their break from the past that made punk possible. Soon after the New York Dolls, Television, the

Ramones, and the Sex Pistols would attempt, in their own ways, to manifest similar anti- aesthetics, and incorporate the street and the audience into their performances. This chapter narrates and discusses these manifestations.

Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine—artists, poets, musicians—were huge fans of the

New York Dolls. They went to the Mercer Arts Center to see the New York Dolls nearly every week. The New York Dolls’ music filled both Hell and Verlaine with excitement; to them, attending a New York Dolls performance was like being a part of infinity: “the possibilities were endless.”67 They liked the freedom of the New York Dolls’ shows, the lack of musical intimidation, and more than anything they liked that they could do the same thing. Until Hell and Verlaine went to a New York Dolls’ performance, Verlaine had used most of his creative talent playing an acoustic guitar at the “hootenanny nights in some club in New York’s West Village,” once every couple of months.68 Musically, “it was the most he would do.”69 Before the creation of their band, Hell did not know how to play a musical instrument, but after seeing the New York Dolls, he was inspired to learn.

He began to repeatedly ask Tom Verlaine to start an electric rock band and give up his

66 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books: New York, 1996, 256 67 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books, New York: 1996, 163 68 Ibid, 163 69 Ibid, 163

“acoustic hootenanny stuff.”70 Eventually, Verlaine agreed and began to teach Hell the mechanics of the bass. According to Hell, this “was the beginning of the band, because

Tom already knew this drummer from Delaware, and so we started rehearsing together.”71 Although they were unskilled musicians, like the New York Dolls, they formed a band. They named the band Television and it consisted of Richard Hell, Richard

Lloyd, Tom Verlaine, Fred Smith, and Billy Ficca. Being a part of the New York Dolls’ scene inspired Television’s formation and encouraged them to find a place where they could form a tight, personal connection with their audience and develop as musicians.

They chose CBGB’s OMFUG as this place.

CBGB’s OMFUG was located at 315 Bowery Street. From the 1940s to the1970s,

Bowery Street was New York City’s skid row, notable for its Bowery Bums—alcoholics and homeless. During this time, the Bowery was a high crime, low rent area. Before

Kristal purchased CBGB’s OMFUG, “it was an old derelict bar from the last turn of the century, The Palace Bar.”72 The Palace Bar owed its name to the Palace Hotel right above it— “the largest flophouse on the Bowery.”73 At 8 AM, the derelicts and Bowery bums would line up in front of the Palace Bar for their “eye-opener, their first drink of white port or muscatel.”74 The Palace Bar was over 165 feet long and 25 feet wide “with just a big old bar with beer signs lighting the overhead.”75 According to Kristal, “The Palace stank from dirty old men, vomit, and urine…When I took over the place I had to fumigate as we reinforced the old bar so you couldn’t see the warp.”76 Bowery Street was not any

70 Ibid, 163 71 Ibid, 163 72 Hilly Kristal’s History of CBGB’s. Online Text: http://www.cbgb.com/history1.htm 73 Ibid 74 Ibid 75 Ibid 76 Ibid

prettier. It was “drab, ugly, and unsavory…Within a two-block radius there were six

flophouses holding about two thousand men, mostly derelicts… Most of them were either

alcoholic, drug addicts, physically impaired or mentally unstable.”77 The sidewalks on the

Bowery were covered by sleeping drunks and muggers; upon release, many prisoners

came to the Bowery to stay at one of its many flophouses. During the early 1970s, rent on

the Bowery was reasonable and the surrounding buildings were occupied either by

industries or by people who did not care about noise.78 The club operated on a meager

profit from door money and alcohol sales. CBGB’s OMFUG was a private business, which required people to pay a minimal entrance fee. The price to enter and drink at

CBGB’s OMFUG paid for an entire night of music and socializing; the price of a coffee at a café provided bohemians with similar social benefits. This allowed anyone with a few dollars to enter the bar. The audience and the band remained together until the bar closed in the early morning. In this environment, Television’s, and later the Ramones’, punk aesthetic and music flourished.

People on the Bowery were not constrained by the values and rule systems of middle-class citizens, living in residential, gentrified areas. In a sense, the Bowery was a world unto itself, where poverty and homelessness was a constant reality. Individual businesses, like CBGB’s OMFUG, and industries overlooked its dirty streets. It was neglected by police who deemed it not worth protecting. As a result, unruly behavior, loud music, and drinking were never prohibited. Its location on Bowery Street meant that

CBGB’s OMFUG was less known to New York City’s mainstream culture, and thus adapted an underground mystique. The first time Leee Childers, former manager of the

77 Ibid 78 Ibid

Heart Breakers—Richard Hell’s band after Television—went to CBGB’s OMFUG, he

was with Wayne County, famous transvestite, musician, and actor:

The whole place stunk of urine. The whole place smelled like a bathroom. And there were literally six people in the audience and then the Ramones went onstage, and I went, “Oh…my…God!” And I knew it, in a minute. The first song. The first song. I knew that I was home and happy and secure and free and rock & roll. 79

Tommy Ramone remarked that “atmosphere was right.”80 According to Hilly Kristal,

“operating a club underneath the largest flophouse on the Bowery was not the ideal situation, but it was good enough for rock and rollers.”81 Here, people felt comfortable

because they were not constrained by cleanliness and order. They could bring the lawlessness and dirty aesthetics of the Bowery inside. They could celebrate, drink, and

play music without worry. The intimate and sequestered atmosphere of CBGB’s OMFUG

facilitated comfort, local recognition, and regularity. According to one of the bar’s

regulars, Kate Simon:

[CBGB’s OMFUG] had classicism to it—the place was romantic—in the literal sense of the word…there was room for impromptu theater to the left of the entrance. There were no bullies monitoring you—there was no supervision. It was a perfect creative environment. It has subtlety to it—it was simultaneously eccentric, anachronistic, and somehow imbued with good will.82

For many, including Legs McNeil and John Holmstrom, this atmosphere made

perfectly for “a home.”83

79 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books: New York, 1996. 201 80 Hilly Kristal and David Byrne. CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock. Abrams: New York, 2005, 21 81 Hilly Kristal’s History of CBGB’s. Online Text: http://www.cbgb.com/history1.htm. 2005 82 Hilly Kristal and David Byrne. CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock. Abrams: New York, 2005. 14 83 Hilly Kristal and David Byrne. CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock. Abrams: New York, 2005, 18

After the Mercer Arts Center collapsed, and other clubs like Max’s Kansas City

and the Filmore East shut down, there was, according to Hilly Kristal “pretty much

nothing else happening in rock in 1974…no club would let you play original rock and

roll unless you had a recording contract."84 CBGB’s OMFUG was one of the few places

in New York City that allowed original music. According to Tommy Ramone, “CBGB was the last place in Manhattan that let you play original rock music in the mid 1970s and the amazing thing was that Hilly allowed you to be innovative, creative, and original.”85

Like the New York Dolls, Television, and later the Ramones, could perform without a recording contract; this was necessary for Television and the Ramones, whose nonchalance about their mediocre musicianship matched the New York Dolls’.

A few days after forming Television, Hell and Verlaine went to CBGB’s OMFUG

on the Bowery. Kristal was standing in front on a ladder fixing an awning, when he was approached by “three scruffy dudes in torn jeans and t-shirts looking up at [him] inquisitively.” They were Verlaine, Hell, and Richard Lloyd. “What’s goin’ on?”86

Kristal heard one of them ask while he looked at them perplexedly. “Are you going to have music?” they asked him. “Yep” Kristal replied and pointed to the sign of the club.

“What does CBGB’s OMFUG stand for?” He replied, “Country, Bluegrass, and Blues,

and other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers.”87 “Oh yeah?” they asked. “We play a little

of that, a little rock, a little country, a little blues, a little bluegrass…”88 A few days after

their visit, Television’s manager met with Kristal to get the band a gig at CBGB’s

84 Hilly Kristal’s History of CBGB’s. Online Text: http://www.cbgb.com/history1.htm. 2005 85 Hilly Kristal and David Byrne. CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock. Abrams: New York, 2005. 21 86 Ibid 87 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books: New York, 1996, 170 88 Ibid, 170

OMFUG.89 He decided to open the club and allow the band to tryout for three

consecutive Sundays.90Admission to Television’s gigs was cheap, only one dollar, and

according to Kristal, the shows were “not very impressive: I thought the band was

terrible; screechy, ear-splitting guitars and a jumble of sounds that I just didn’t get.”91

Their bodies twitched and jumped along with the fast tempo of their music, to such an extent that Duncan Hannah, the former president of the Television fan club reported that,

“onstage, Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine looked like they could blow up any minute.”92

Similar to the New York Dolls’ music, Television’s music was fast and distorted; it did

not rely on fancy equipment or advanced technical chords and beats. Like the New York

Dolls, Television played basic rock ‘n’ roll. Apparently, Television did not play the

Country, Bluegrass, Blues music that Kristal had expected. In order for Television to play

at CBGB’s OMFUG again, Television’s manager, Terry Ork, had to persuade Kristal that

the kind of music that Television was playing would benefit his club. To do this, Ork

promised Kristal that Television would play with a “hot new rock band from Forest Hills,

Queens”—the Ramones.93 He argued that the Ramones already had a big following and

that the combination of the two bands would make a great show. In response, Kristal said,

“What the hell, what do we have to lose!!?”94

At the Ramones and Television show, “there were not many more people than before.”95 Additionally, Kristal thought that the Ramones “were even worse than

Television… At that first gig at CBGB, they were the most un-together group I’d ever

89 Hilly Kristal’s History of CBGB’s. Online Text: http://www.cbgb.com/history1.htm 90 Ibid 91 Ibid 92 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books: New York, 1996. 171 93 Ibid, 171 94 Hilly Kristal’s History of CBGB’s. Online Text: http://www.cbgb.com/history1.htm. 2005 95 Ibid

heard. They kept starting and stopping—equipment breaking down—and yelling at each

other. They were a mess.”96 Unlike the Velvet Underground’s well articulated,

choreographed performances, the Ramones’ shows were filled with mistakes and

outbursts similar to those found on city streets. They were performances in ‘real life;’

they were real people who made real mistakes. Their simplicity, unbridled outbursts of

emotions and mistakes, and artistic simplicity charmed the audience and attracted an

increasingly large following. Television and the Ramones, like the New York Dolls,

performed unboundedly. Richard Hell claimed that:

[Television was] really unique. There was not another rock & roll band in the world with short hair. There was not another rock and roll band with torn clothes. Everybody was still wearing glitter and women’s clothes. We were these notch-thin, homeless hoodlums, playing really powerful, passionate, aggressive music that was also lyrical. 97

According to Legs McNeil, being a part of a Ramones performance was more than a

fantasy, it was a connection with his urban identity: “I really thought I was at the Cavern

Club in 1963 and we had just met the Beatles. Only it wasn’t a fantasy, it wasn’t the

Beatles, it was our band—the Ramones.”98 People connected the Ramones’ musicianship with their ability to rile and excite. The Ramones, according to Danny Fields, performed the most unique style of music he had ever heard:

They do songs one minute long and it’s very fast and it’s all over in less than a quarter of an hour (their entire set). And it’s everything you like and you’ll love it. And it’s just the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. 99

The Ramones’ music was reminiscent of the past: “You could hear the Chuck Berry in it…that and the Beatles second album with all the chuck Berry covers on it.”100

96 Ibid 97 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books: New York, 1996, 172 98 Ibid, 206 99 Ibid, 202

However, it was Chuck Berry sped up and exaggerated. The Ramones’ songs never exceeded two or three minutes; their entire sets usually lasted for less than 20 minutes.

Their music was so unprecedented that people came for miles to be a part of a Ramones

concert. Danny Fields went to see the Ramones. The place was so packed that:

[He] couldn’t believe it…And they came on and I fell in love with them. I just thought they were doing it right. They were the perfect band. They were fast and I liked fast. Beethoven quartets are supposed to be slow. Rock & roll is supposed to be fast. I loved it.”101

Their clothing style was fraught with meaning. The inner identity expressed itself in an

outward and visible manner—their matching leather jackets, bowl haircuts, converse

shoes, tight jeans, and tight undershirts made them appear as if they were a gang of urban

misfits. Their uniform appearance spoke a rugged street language that was not afraid to

parody itself. Their style was a collage of images, representing New York City’s loathed

minorities— motorcycle gangs, homosexuals, and drug addicts—turning apprehension

and underclass citizens into a satire that presented the dark characteristics of the street as

the punch-line. They brought this aesthetic into CBGB’s OMFUG, sharing these images

with the audience members. The audience’s connection with the Ramones kept the band

on the stage, permitting the social parody to continue rolling.

The music that Television and the Ramones played mirrored the degradation of

the Bowery; it was chaotic, poorly executed, and intoxicating. Like life on the Bowery, it

was not restricted by etiquette or regulations. Instead it celebrated the negation of

limitations. The audience easily connected with this, for the fantasy of the performer as a

grand spectacle disappeared behind Television’s and the Ramones’ musical mistakes;

thus, the audience was brought closer to the performance. The bar’s small and intimate

100 Ibid, 206 101 Ibid, 202

interior meant that people would be closer to the stage and the band. Like the New York

Dolls’ performances, the Ramones and Television’s shows were not bifurcated. While the bands played on stage the audience members could easily walk up to the band members.

Or, they could socialize, drink, and aspire to create their own music or art. Television and

the Ramones brought the musicians and the audience together in CBGB’s OMFUG to

form a collective enterprise that blended music and socialization into one aesthetic.

Created in opposition to previous forms of music and aesthetics, Television and the

Ramones brought the street indoors, into one remote location.

Soon others like Patti Smith and the Stilettos started coming to CBGB’s OMFUG.

Among these new faces was Malcolm McLaren, the New York Dolls’ final manager.102

After seeing Richard Hell perform at CBGB’s OMFUG one evening, Malcolm McLaren

thought he was incredible, inspiring, and like nothing he had ever seen:

Here was a guy all deconstructed, torn down, looking like he’d just crawled out of a drain hole, looking like he was covered in slime, looking like he hadn’t slept in years, looking like he hadn’t washed in years, and looking like no one gave a fuck about him. And looking like he didn’t give a fuck about you! He was this wonderful, bored, drained, scarred, dirty guy with a torn T-shirt. And this look, this image of this guy, this spiky hair, everything about it—there was no question that I’d take it back to London. By being inspired by it, I was going to imitate it and transform it into something more English.103

Shortly after Malcolm McLaren saw Richard Hell perform he returned to England, inspired to recreate the scene of CBGB’s OMFUG in London. Subconsciously, he was

bringing the New York Dolls along with him. In association with his partner/fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, in 1974, he started the Sex Pistols. The members of the

102 He is infamous for trying to change the New York Dolls into a “political Band,” and adding to the ruin of the band by taking them on tour to Florida where they were less musically accepted. 103 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin Books: New York, 1996, 98

Sex Pistols included Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, and later Sid Vicious.

Like Television and the Ramones, the Sex Pistols played heavily distorted, simple

melodies—their sound was raw and they utilized only the basic rock ‘n’ roll instruments.

From the beginning they devised a style of music that turned forms of melodies on their heads: at first they played popular songs with changed lyrics, adding sarcastic phrases or completely inversing meaning. For instance, if a song had the words “I love you” they would be changed to “I hate you.” Gradually, their style evolved into political statements

armed with lyrics such “God save the Queen and her fascist Regime” and “She was a girl

from Birmingham. She just had an abortion. She was case of insanity. Her name was

Pauline; she lived in a tree.”104 Like Richard Hell, the band members developed a ragged

appearance that made them look angry, bored, and poor while performing these songs.

Their first performance was held in a Catholic school. In a small upstairs room at St.

Martin’s College in London on November 6th 1975, the Sex Pistols played their first

concert; they opened for Bazooka Joe, Adam Ant’s then band. 105 On this day Ant

recalled that:

They came in as a gang: they looked like they couldn’t give a fuck about anybody. John (Johnny Rotten, the singer) had baggy pinstripe trousers with braces and a ripped-up T-shirt saying “Pink Floyd” with “I Hate” over it. They did cover songs with the lyrics changed. There were no guitar solos. [Johnny] would eat sweets, pull them out and suck them and just spit them out: he just looked at the audience, glazed. At the end Rotten slagged off Bazooka Joe as being a bunch of cunts. They did five [songs] and that was it: goodnight…They had a certain attitude that I’d never seen: they had bollocks.106

104 Lyrics come from the song “Bodies” from album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.” 105 1980’s rock star that is most popular for his 1981 hit “Prince Charming” 106 Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, St. Martin’s Press New York 1993, 142

They quit after five songs because they were thrown out. Nobody clapped when it was over; there was dead silence.107 The audience could not believe what the Sex Pistols had done: they brought punk to London.

107 John Lydon. Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. Picador, New York: 1994, 91

Chapter 4—Conclusion: The New York Dolls’ Music Scene Was Named Punk

In the same week that the Sex Pistols held their first London concert, the New

Musical Express ran a two page story entitled “Are you Alive to the Jive of…THE

SOUND OF ’75?” It was a spread on the New York City club, CBGB’s, featuring the

Ramones, the club’s up-and-coming band.108 In the same year, Legs McNeil, John

Holstrom, and Ged Dunn began a magazine. The title of the magazine was supposed to express as McNeil put it “a combination of everything we were into—television re-runs,

drinking beer, getting laid, cheeseburgers, comics, grade-B movies…it was for other

fuck-ups like us, kids that had parties when their parents were away and destroyed the house.”109 Holstrom wanted the magazine to include “this weird rock & roll that nobody

but us seemed to like: the Velvets, the Stooges, the New York Dolls…”110At first,

Holstrom wanted to title the magazine Teenage News, after an unreleased song by the

New York Dolls, noting how influential the New York dolls were to their lives and their magazine. 111 The New York Dolls characterized everything they wanted to “sum up” in

their magazine: they were New York City street culture in artistic and musical form. But,

McNeil decided that Punk would more appropriately “sum up the thread that connected

everything [he and his friends] liked—drunk, obnoxious, smart but not pretentious,

absurd, funny, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side.”112In order to raise

awareness of the magazine, posters began appearing on the streets, announcing: “Punk is coming!”113 On hearing of its arrival, beatnik writer and New York City resident,

108 Ibid, 120 109 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Penguin Books 1997 pg. 203. 110 Ibid, 203 111 Ibid, 115 112 Ibid, 204 113 Ibid, 208

William Burroughs asked questioningly: “I always thought a punk was someone who took it up the ass.”114 In the dictionary, punk is also defined as dry, decayed wood, used

as tinder.115 On the street, however, punk had other meanings. In New York City, for

instance, punks were dirty and disrespectful; they acted without regard to the

consequences of their actions to themselves or others. For Legs McNeil to choose this

word over others to describe the contents of his magazine was for him to hold up these

definitions as a new urban value, and exalt the vile as a new urban aesthetic. At the same

time, he used punk to define his own generation: 1970s urban youth, characterized in the

music of the New York Dolls, and later Television, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols.

According to McNeil, punk was the music and people of the New York Dolls’ performances that later went to CBGB’s OMFUG on the Bowery in Lower East Side

Manhattan during the early 1970s. John Holmstrom remarked that:

Without CBGB’s, there would’ve never been any punk rock: no Mudd Clubb, no Talking Heads116, Television, Patti Smith…CBGB’s was where we spent every night hanging out, exchanging ideas, and having fun. 117

In this quote, Holstrom fails to include the New York Dolls’ influence on Television and

the Ramones. But, the origin of punk and Punk magazine lay in the foundations of the

New York Dolls’ music and is embedded in the New York Dolls’ shows, which destroyed the boundaries between the audience and performer and introduced the street

into their music and aesthetics. Punk’s seeds are buried in the New York Dolls’

celebration of negation. It was because of the scene created by the New York Dolls that

Television, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols performed their own unprofessional sounds.

114 Ibid, 208 115 Webster’s Dictionary Merriam-Webster; 11th edition, 2003 116 These were later punk bands. 117 Hilly Kristal and David Byrne. CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock. Abrams: New York, 2005, 35

The New York Dolls inspired these bands, showing them that anybody could perform,

regardless of musical talent. We should, therefore, look to the performances of the New

York Dolls to find the origin of punk. While the Sex Pistols’ music and aesthetics are

regarded as the archetypes of punk, it was the New York Dolls’ transcendence of prior musical traditions and their break from the past that made punk possible.

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