“I said, "Holy shit! These kids are doing what nobody else is doing! They"re bringing back the three-minute song! These were the days of the ten-minute drum solo, the twenty minute guitar solo. A song might take up a whole side of an album. I was fed up with that shit. Who could outplay who? It was really boring. It had nothing to do with rock and roll. (McNeil & McCain 1996, p. 117)
CBGB/OMFUG was a biker club on the Bowery whose owner, Hilly Kristal, saw potential in booking a band called Television (McNeil & McCain p.170). When Television began drawing a crowd, other bands in the same vein were booked too. The Talking Heads played regularly, as did Blondie and the New York Dolls, and a few months later, the Ramones (p. 173). Since this was a biker bar, the crowd was bikers, heroin addicts, prostitutes, and eventually, a lot of young people interested in this music. Eventually, two participants in this new facet (Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain) decided to publish (independently) a magazine chronicling the new music; they called it Punk (p. 203). They wrote dirty stories and short comics for it, but they also began interviewing members of the bands that frequently played on the Bowery, and reviewing their shows.
Although this culture was still limited to a small number of people in a poor area of New York City, Punk sold well enough for McNeil and McCain to get an office (McNeil and McCain 1996, p. 207). Now, this small scene had a record of what was going on.
Include something here about Malcom's vision for the dolls. New York Dolls manager Malcolm McLaren, an englishman who had come to New York “in order to get out of England (p. 189)”, saw the bands and the attitude and the style, which mostly evolved from sloppy dressing due to heroin addiction (p. 198), and vowed to bring it back to England with him. He and his wife, Vivienne, owned a clothing store that catered to Teddy Boys. When the New York Dolls broke up, McLaren returned to England hoping to bring this new music to popular attention:
I went back to England determined. I had these images that I came back with, it was like Marco Polo, or Walter Raleigh. These are the things I brought back: the image of this distressed, strange thing called Richard Hell. And this phrase, “the blank generation”. (p. 199)
McLaren changed the name of his shop to “SEX” and began selling fetish clothing (Savage 2001 p.46) because the Teddy Boy fad had grown much less popular by the late 70s. England in 1977 was experiencing a severe economic recession and 60% of those under 18 were unemployed and angry. (Traub 2001). McLaren noticed a surge of these people coming to buy (and often steal) from his shop. He did what anyone would have done: he offered them cookies, told them to stay, and put on some records. McLaren said of the shop: “All these kids used to come into the shop and we used to give them clothes and feed them. It wasn't my money anyway. We were redistributing the wealth (Lydon & Zimmerman 1995 p.266)”
The London punk scene started with a style of dress because it was most easily accessible to young teenagers and most visibly antiestablishment, most obviously deviant. McLaren's store was the meeting place where kindred spirits could be met, where shocking pieces of clothing and revolutionary conversation could be found -- without a steady supply of records, punk in London would have been little else. It graduated to music, but New York punk records were hard to find at first; the kids started to play.
McLaren, still supposing he could achieve what he had formerly wanted from the New York Dolls (McNeil & McCain p. 247) , tried to get a group together and ended up with cat burglars Steve Jones and Paul Cook on guitar and drums, respectively. They suggested a bassist they knew named Glen Matlock, but were still in need of a singer. They picked a teenager off the street who looked objectionable; he was wearing an “I hate Pink Floyd” shirt, his hair was dyed. They asked his name: John Lydon. They asked if he wanted to be in a band.
Steve Jones: I first met John in Malcolm McLaren's shop. He came in with green hair. I thought he had a really interesting face. I liked his look. He had his “I Hate Pink Floyd” shirt on, and it was held together with safety pins. John had something special, but when he started talking he was a real asshole -- but smart (Lydon & Zimmerman p. 74).
The Sex Pistols played their first show in 1976 (Traub 2001). As is usually the case, other bands popped up from the audience quickly, and a scene was formed in London. Eventually, with McLaren's public relations tactics, the Sex Pistols were signed to A&M and a tour of England was organized.
