The Sandman Presents...Marquee Moon Second Draft
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THE SANDMAN PRESENTS...MARQUEE MOON SECOND DRAFT Peter Hogan, 1997 Hi, Peter, Alisa, Neil, and anybody else reading this. As you all know, this is a story set in the heyday of punk, just as it was making the transition from cult status to national (outraged) headlines. And before we dive into our story, I'm afraid you're going to have to sit through a short lecture about punk, all of which is intended to help you draw and understand it better (and my apologies if you already know all this stuff). As with most popular movements, punk was already in decline by the time the masses discovered it. Its origins lie in the mid-Seventies, when Britain was a really grim place. The pound had collapsed, inflation was spiralling (26%) and unemployment was rocketing (highest among the 19-24 age group), industrial relations were in tatters, Jim Callaghan's Labour government was only just managing to cling to power, the National Front were on the march and Margaret Hilda Thatcher was waiting in the wings like a drooling vulture. And everything looked grottier in those days. Though things would get far worse under Thatcher, London (where most of this story is set) never looked worse; the city acquired a chainstore gloss during Thatcher's reign—before then, there were lots of grubby, poky little shops that Dickens would have felt at home in. Everything was generally shabbier and more run down—there were over 30,000 squatters in London at this point, and one reason for this was that houses which would later be renovated and rescued and sold for lots of money were then just left to decay. Street graffiti abounded: NF, SWP and anarchist logos, plus lots of slogans (the most prophetic of which was probably 'Tories want war'). A couple of photographic books of mid-'70s graffiti were produced years ago (think there's one by Roger Perry) which might be worth checking out; for general glimpses of London at the time, I can't think of any obvious movies, but I suppose you could suffer through some old episodes of The Sweeney (poor you). Generally speaking, the populace was as shabby as the city. Revivalism and nostalgia have since coloured the era's fashions as being more fun than they were—in reality, most clothes were ludicrously cut and badly made, usually in beige or some other pastel colour. Quality was far less of an issue then, and the English looked like what they were: a nation of paupers. (One opinion poll at the time asked people if they'd leave Britain, given the chance; 50% of those polled said yes.) As to music: Circa 1972/3, glam and glitter had been a brief flare of pop energy with a sense of the ludicrous, but no more than that...and so it quickly died out. Mainstream rock music was in steady decline, the 'progressive' music of the hippie era having degenerated into smug complacency and self-parody (along with its ideals). It was sanitized and safe, and almost never exciting—a few bands were playing stripped-down R&B on the pub circuit, but none of them were making much impact. Heavy metal was (and is) a world of its own, and had even less impact on the mainstream, most of which seemed to be produced by truly dire bands who began with the letter 'E' (Emerson Lake and Palmer, ELO, the Eagles). Youth culture? Hardly. It was "adult-oriented rock," and it was bland and boring and shite. If you were young—especially if you lacked qualifications—there was a lot to be pissed off about, and crap pop music was the least of your problems. Careerwise, you were probably already on the scrapheap. It didn't even look like things might get better, and Lydon's "no future" line turned out to be grimly prophetic (though he'd later admit that the punks had been pissed off at the wrong people—youth unemployment doubled during Thatcher's first year in power). There was no video in those days, and only three channels on TV. No multiplexes. No heroes. No fun. No future! And this climate bred a disaffected generation who felt themselves to be (to quote Lydon) "outcasts, the unwanted." John Lydon: "I was a young chap who thought I was severely ugly and nobody would ever speak to me. There was this movement full of people feeling exactly the same way. It was a social way of meeting equally ugly people." There were small pockets of people like Lydon all over the country, some in the suburbs, some stuck fifteen floors up in tower blocks. All they had in common was a hatred of the mainstream, be it in politics or music, and a deep distrust of their elders, especially the generation that had preceded them. The non-movement grew slowly and organically, generating its own fashions and music for their own amusement (and sod everybody else). By 1977 (when out story takes place), most of them were kids of 17-19 or thereabouts—Johnny Rotten turned 21 that year, though some bands were a few years older (but not many). We have a scene set in the Roxy, the first punk club, just after it opened; prior to then, punks tended to gather in places where they wouldn't be bothered by outsiders—mainly gay bars and lesbian clubs. Consequently, they melded with others who were hiding out there for similar reasons: prostitutes, people who would once have been categorised as freaks (dwarves, etc), plus (of course) gays and lesbians. There was also a lot of contact with the whole reggae/Rasta scene. The resulting crossmix tagged along for the ride, making punk "a carnival of subterranean people." Musically, punk's roots can be found in rock's grittier and artier veins (the Velvets, Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Bowie and Roxy Music), and also in reggae and (to a much lesser extent) electronic Krautrock. Punk bands usually started before they could play at all, so they kept it simple: three chords and an attitude. And it worked: energy plus enthusiasm plus experimentation equals excitement, pure and simple. No matter how sceptical you were initially, if you were even vaguely young, there was no way to avoid getting swept up in it. And amazingly, it all rested on the shoulders of one man. John Lydon/Rotten was the most articulate spokesman rock had thrown up since Dylan, voicing a set of sensibilities which had the establishment reeling, appalled by the progeny they'd produced. Richard Hell can bitch all he wants to about who invented punk, but even though he coined the term "blank generation," Lydon was undoubtedly that generation's true voice. That punks were radically different was obvious, and visible. It's not that they looked weird in themselves (if you check out photos of punk audiences, most of them look incredibly normal and average to modern eyes—you probably pass more extreme-looking individuals in the street every day). It's the contrast—they looked so different to what was then the current norm. Short hair really stands out from the crowd, when the crowd all has long hair—and pretty much everybody (male) had long hair, regardless of age or class (and many had facial hair as well—mainly beards and sideburns, but moustaches hadn't yet acquired an exclusively gay association). Punk haircuts weren't just short, but often really badly cut (usually enthusiastically—and drunkenly—self-inflicted). Male punks were—pretty much without exception—clean shaven. No, not even stubble. As with music, punk fashion was stripped-down and streamlined. If hippies liked something, punks didn't (on principle). Everybody wore flared trousers, so punks didn't—the upshot being that (eventually) everybody wore straight-legged trousers once again. But on a more radical level, punk style was often akin to street theatre— intended to shock, to provoke, an extension of the conviction that aggressive confrontation was always better than apathy (besides, there's something really satisfying in feeling like a bete noir, even in a mundane way). Coupled with various aspects of behaviour (spitting at bands, mock-throttling each other on the dancefloor), to superficial observers the message was clear: "punk looked scary." Of course, it wasn't. I saw the Damned at the Marquee in early '77—my first exposure to punks en masse—and I vividly remember thinking, how sweet—all these art school kids have made their own costumes. That's what it was really like. I immediately realised something else then as well—this was Hippie Two. Wear what you like and speak your mind. Of course, as with hippie, it all fell to bits pretty quickly, and the fashion eventually deteriorated into cliché and uniform. But all that comes long after our story—what we're concerned with here is the earlyish days. Marco Pirroni: "The 1976 punk look was a mixture of absolutely everything. A lot of Ted, a lot of rocker, a lot of fetish stuff, transvestite sort of stuff, a bit of Mod and a lot of Glam. That's what it was. People didn't wear leather motorcycle jackets in 1976. Mohawks didn't exist then, either." Bondage trousers were around, as was bondage and fetish rubberware and leatherware (courtesy of Vivienne Westwood). Coloured leather motorcycle jackets (red, blue or green) hit London during the month our story takes place, so we might glimpse one or two of them. But much of what was being worn was secondhand and deliberately 'unfashionable' (suits from the '40s or '50s), often in appalling condition and/or altered with a bit of imaginative DIY: shirts might be painted (stripes or splatters or slogans or all three), or ripped and customized—often very slightly (a single safety pin).