The punk wave originated in late 1960s hard rock but truly arrived in the mid-1970s. Besides the raw, simplistic music, the genre came crucially equipped with chains, leathers and a barrow-load of attitude. But wasn’t this front of hedonistic attitude established long before by the likes of Keith Richards, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop?
When we imagine the early rumblings of punk, thoughts turn to the Ramones on one side of the Atlantic and the Sex Pistols on the other. Of course, there were other, much better punk bands around concurrently, but these two groups fit the bill square on with ripped jeans, leather, anarchy and hard drugs.
At the eye of the British punk wave was the snarling voice of Johnny Rotten née Lydon. The quintessential anarchist, he liked nothing more than slating fellow artists – oh, and perhaps Queen Elizabeth II. The music was as real as the zeitgeist, but this avalanche was controlled by explosives experts like Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. Hitting the all-right formulas, the group surfed on a media frenzy to the height of fame in two years with just one studio album to show for it.
Amid his many confrontational interviews, Rotten downplayed the influence of popular outfits like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Of the latter, he once said Mick Jagger and Keith Richards should have thrown in the towel in 1965, just before they embraced pop rock and abandoned R&B covers altogether.
“Well [if Johnny Rotten said we should have given up in 1965], then he should definitely retire next year,” Jagger said, responding to the comments in 1977. “He was on Top of the Pops in England, and that was a cop-out for the Sex Pistols. It’s difficult for Americans to know what Top of the Pops means, but it’s the only pop music show on television – and I do mean pop – and the only place for Top Twenty records, and it’s the most banal – it’s aimed at a real teeny market, people with clean hair and all that. Now they’re on the front of the Rolling Stone. That’s a real cop-out.”
After denouncing the Sex Pistols as a sell-out, Jagger bitterly offered Rotten some advice. “If I was Johnny Rotten, I wouldn’t do either,” he said. “I wouldn’t do Top of the Pops, and I’d tell Rolling Stone to go fuck themselves. I don’t care what Johnny Rotten says. Everything Johnny Rotten says about me is only ’cause he loves me ’cause I’m so good. It’s true. [Smiles]… I’m not pleased at Johnny Rotten, who says all these nasty things about me. I know that he feels he has to because I’m, along with the Queen, you know, one of the best things England’s got.”
At around the same time, Keith Richards weighed in on the Sex Pistols, denouncing their status as pioneering artists. “I don’t think that Bowie or Johnny Rotten or all the Zeppelins are anywhere in the future, let alone the present,” he said. “Jagger believes punk is today, is now. To think you’ve got to do something new just for the sake of doing it, it isn’t real. It’s the equivalent to when a lot of Dixieland bands added electric guitars, calling themselves R&B just to stay up with the times.”
Continuing, the guitarist explained why The Stones would never conform to the punk wave. “For a band of The Stones’ position to do that would have been ludicrous,” he said. “It’s fatal for The Stones to try that. Why the fuck do we have to sound like the Sex Pistols for? What’s the point of listening to that shit? It’s for mass-media consumption.”
Although Keith Richards dismissed the Sex Pistols, he wasn’t wholly disillusioned with punk. He gives his thoughts on punk in the interview clip below from June 1978.