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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Jakub Kolář Differences Between the American and the British First Wave of Punk Bachelors Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Ph. D. 2017 / declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. Author's signature I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospišil, Ph. D. for his advice, encouragement, and willingness to work with a punk like me. Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. The Punk Subculture and Its Beginnings 3 2. Hooray for the USA 7 2. 1. The 70s Punk in America 7 2. 2. We Are the Ramones, and You've Heard It First 11 3. Anarchy in the UK 17 3.1. The 70s Punk in Great Britain 17 3. 2. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols 21 4. The Differences between the American and the British Punk Scenes 27 4. 1. The Differences between the Ramones and the Sex Pistols 29 5. The Analysis of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols' Song Lyrics 32 5. 1. A Corpus Analysis 32 5. 2. A Subject Matter Analysis 34 5.2. 1. Romantic and Sexual Relationships 36 5. 2. 2. The First Person Feelings 38 5. 2. 3. The Second and the Third Person 39 5. 2. 4. Social and Political Comment 40 5. 2. 5. Music and Dancing 40 Conclusion 42 Bibliography 44 Resume (English) 47 Resume (Czech) 48 Introduction We knew how to get to the backstage window. And so when the Ramones were getting ready to do their concert. I was there, Simo, Jonesy, some of the Sex Pistols. We were in a back alley, and we threw a rock at the window. I think, Johnny Ramone stuck his head out and went, "What?" And we went, "Hey, this is the Clash, and this is Pistols, and we need to get in." So they kind of formed a sort of human chain and pulled us up through this window. And that was the first time we met them, and it was just a really great punk rock moment. (Joe Strummer, the Clash's singer-guitarist, in End of the Century) The authors dealing with punk agree that its definition is problematic. This thesis will use the term in a wide sense of the complex of music, audience, and institutions (including fanzines,1 record labels, clubs and shops) that "caused uproar and alarm among critics, politicians, media pundits, and record company executives" (Laing, viii) in the second half of the 1970s. This sense also includes a wide range of music inspired by punk in later years. In the thesis, mainly the first wave of punk, that corresponds roughly to the years 1974-1978, is considered because this is a safe area, considering different opinions on punk. The authors usually agree that punk had originated in America and was imported to Britain where it bloomed. There were different epicenters of punk, but the scope of the thesis is narrowed to the scenes centered around the CBGB club in New York and the band Sex Pistols in London. The aim of this work is to summarize the differences between the two main epicenters mentioned above and their main protagonists the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. The differences will be demonstrated on the lyrics of the songs from the debut albums of the two bands. The bands have been chosen as the main protagonists because 1 "[T]he small-scale, semi-underground publications of music enthusiasts" (Laing 13). 1 the Sex Pistols were the first punk rock group in Britain, inspiring other musicians, and the Ramones, being from the New York scene, where the most influential punk rock bands started simultaneously, are frequently listed as the best punk artists of all time ("Fifteen Greatest Punk Bands of All Time"). There were "considerable differences of musical approach between the various punk groups" (Laing 39), and, as Roger Sabin, the editor of Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk, highlights, "subcultures themselves are constantly mutating, and [the] participants negotiate their own positions in them" (5). In consequence, nothing in the punk subculture is absolute, and even statements from inside punk are inconsistent. For that reason, the thesis is partly subjective, even if it tries to synthesize different opinions. The first three chapters provide a background for the rest of the work by presenting the history of the punk subculture in general, the New York and the London scenes, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols and putting it into the context of other music genres and subcultures. The fourth chapter is a summary of differences between the American and the British 70s punk and a summary of the differences between the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. The fifth chapter then presents two lyric analyses illustrating these differences. The first analysis is corpus based, executed using the Sketch Engine. The corpora used consist of lyrics taken from the sleeve of the Ramones' LP and from the Sex Pistols' official website and adjusted to correspond with the records. The second analysis analyzes the lyrics from the point of view of subject matter. 2 1. The Punk Subculture and Its Beginnings Because the punk subculture started as a genre of music-in contrast to majority of other youth subcultures that adopted already existing genres (Laing xi)-it is not possible to separate the subculture from the genre. During the second half of the twentieth century, the word punk was used to describe many different bands, sometimes having a little in common, although some of them later influenced punk rock. Subsequently, different groups of people listening to these bands started to call themselves punks. In the mid-1970s, appeared a new concept of punk, propagated by fanzines. The aim of these publications was to raise the alternative culture: first, by reminding its readers of some representatives of the popular music (mainly the past popular music from the 1950s and the 1960s, some of them later to be called proto-punk) and criticizing others, and second, by propagating new artists. Some of the new artists would later become the leaders of the new punk subculture, including the Sex Pistols (ibid 13) and the Ramones (ibid 23). This concept of punk "as a musical type and ideal" originated in America, where it emerged in the early 1970s as a reaction against progressive rock (ibid 13). Punk in the current meaning came into existence mainly as a result of mutual influences between New York and London. Both the economic situation and the state of the music industry in the 1970s contributed to the emergence of the punk subculture. New York was on a verge of bankruptcy, and whole Britain was experiencing a crisis ("Blank Generation"). In the music industry, it was getting harder for new bands to become popular as recording technologies were increasingly sophisticated, and record companies were investing large sums into preparation and recording in the studio. In consequence, it was commonly believed that a good record equals an expensive one. 3 Therefore, the genre of progressive rock was steadily gaining popularity since the late 1960s. Progressive rock, with its large musical forms and concept albums, preferred recorded music to live performances, which were supposed to exactly recreate the recorded sound, requiring expensive equipment and additional musicians. This led to growing costs of the performances (Laing 3), increasing demands on musicians, and alienation of devotees from their idols. "People started overindulging with long solos, and you watched someone like Jeff Beck or Jimi Hendrix, and you felt like you'd have to practice for twenty years to be able to play [the] song," said Johnny Ramone, the guitarist of the Ramones, about the late 1960s in the documentary Seven Ages of Rock (see "Blank Generation" in the bibliography). While some claim that punk was mainly about the return to the roots of rock music, the return was predominantly in the area of rawness and simplicity (ibid) as the common instrumentation of a punk rock group was a strict guitars and drums lineup. On the other hand, the '50s rock and roll exploited a much wider range of instruments. The punk attitude accentuated "directness and repetition." Dave Laing in his book One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock even suggests that for the punks "to use more than three chords was self-indulgence" (12). Two contrasting principles were mixed. The first one emphasized purity and transparent music, free of limitative traditions and the premeditated intricacy of progressive music. Johnny Ramone used to say, "We're playing pure rock 'n roll." The second one involved artifice, exaggeration and outrage. "The sounds were to be distorted, dirtied and destroyed, so that their meanings were mangled." (Laing 26) Interestingly, the '70s punk rock artists often, although in different proportion, combined both principles. In contrast to progressive rock and, most likely, the whole music industry of that 4 time, the 70s punk rockers emphasized live performance: new bands were promoting themselves primarily by playing frequently, slowly building their following, and the principal task of studio recordings was to capture the energy of a band in concert (ibid 53). The participation of the supporters and their equality with the performers was also a crucial part of the punk attitude. This all is proved by an interview with Brian James, the guitarist of the Damned, for Seven Ages of Rock: It was a growing thing, ... first of all there'd be like a few people, and you'd talk to them after the gig, ..