What is Punk Rock and How Did It Begin?

Back in the Seventies in San Francisco, life was a lot simpler. The Punk Rock "Garden of Eden," where Punk was born in San Francisco, was the Mabuhay Gardens on Broadway, the only venue in town that would dare host Punk Rock. Why? Because the policy of Dirk Dirksen, who booked the "Fab Mab," was to give anyone at least one chance, without a preconceived, restrictive aesthetic. The Mab was open seven days a week, with three to five "acts" a night, so this was a lot of time slots to fill (this was before the rise of the DJ). Thus was created a nearly "anything goes" opportunity for anyone who came up with a live act. No other local club had this booking policy and this is the reason San Francisco Punk started at the Mabuhay.

One of the most unusual acts that played regularly through the first years of San Francisco Punk was Frank Moore's Theatre (they have not gone down in Punk history). It was whispered that Frank, along with his wife Linda (who struck me as a kind of Manson girl), headed a commune in Berkeley, and that everyone slept together in one huge bed. Their act seemed a bit "creepy." Frank, confined to a wheelchair, had the wizened, twisted little body of a geek or spastic, with flecks of drool on his clothing. He wore a headband with an antenna on his head that enabled him to communicate--usually in arhythmic shrieks and yelps that were near-impossible to decipher. But Linda seemed to understand him perfectly; she was his "medium." Frank Moore's group, which looked like Manson girl runaways and social misfits, enacted bizarre performances incorporating rants, music and dance that were definitely elementary enough to be "Punk Rock," even though most Punk Rockers had difficulty processing the act and were puzzled ... yet too baffled to show outright disparagement. Looking back, Frank Moore's show truly realized the Punk credo of "Do It Yourself/Anyone Can Do It." Because if Frank Moore could do it, truly anyone COULD do it. He took the "Do It Yourself/Anyone Can Do It" punk proclamation seemingly about as far as it could go.

Unlike in England, most of the people who started Punk in San Francisco were still under the stylistic influence of the Sixties Hippie youth movement--consequently they sported long, or at least longish, hair. (This seemed true of New York City, too.) But that changed as people adopted the Punk credo, "Anyone Can Do It," and discovered firsthand that anyone could give a haircut! Some bizarre, irregular hairdos began appearing (but no mohawks--that was an Eighties phenomenon), along with neon-bright shades of pink, blue, and green; the hair dye Krazy Kolor had recently been invented and was hard to find and expensive; however, a small supply found its way to the Bay Area. But the majority of early Punks were late adopters; their hair was on the long side. The first band to sport very short hair was the Avengers, who were students at the San Francisco Art Institute. They more consciously aped the British Punk look. Another person with very short hair was the vocalist Don Vinil, who started Grand Mal in early 1977 and then the Offs a bit later. (disclosure: I was the bass player in Grand Mal.) Don and his friend Rico had the fashion sense of cutting-edge Gays; Don came from the (gay) Castro neighborhood and worked as a clerk in a small record store there, where he read the British music publications. He already had the black leather jacket, which had long been a gay wardrobe staple.

In the early days there was confusion over who was truly "Punk" and indeed what Punk was. When a bizarre "variety show" (or was it satire?) band called Deaf School came to San Francisco in early 1977, a lot of early Punks went to see them, thinking they were a kind of Punk band. I did an interview with the guitarist Clive Langer (aka Cliff Hanger, his Punk pseudonym) for the very first issue of my Search & Destroy publication. It proved to be informative and informed, as Clive had been present for the critical transition years between pre-punk and punk (and as far as I am concerned there has yet to be a true post-punk anything, despite the assertions of certain corporately-published journalists).

I was very fortunate to meet Clive Langer in early 1977; he quickly brought me up to speed by giving me an almost "causal" historical explanation of how Punk Rock began in England. A brief interruption: Punk officially began in New York City at CBGBs and Max's Kansas City, with Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Television, Blondie, Ramones, Wayne County and others . . . probably as early as 1973 or 1974. On a visit to New York, Malcolm McLaren saw what was happening and returned to London with a vision: start a Punk band (the Sex Pistols), and the rest is history. However, because British papers had reported on early NYC Punk bands, British youth became inspired to start their own; hence the movement. Owing to their widespread distribution and influence, the British weekly music papers spread the "virus" of Punk Rock far more than American media. Because they had pages to fill every week, they gave far more extensive and in-depth coverage, and soon some excellent journalists arose who were particularly sympathetic to this "new thing" and who gave non-disparaging reporting, of intellectual integrity, to punk rock band members who turned out to have a lot to say, and who were far more intelligent than most rock musicians of the past.

Language is a virus, William S. Burroughs has written, and of course so are visual images. The Punk Rock Cultural Revolution was really a full-on, comprehensive rebellion against illegitimate authority in the domains of culture, politics, and society. Punk restored language, music, poetry, political insurgency--indeed the entire range of the Seven Arts--to ordinary folk. The ensuing process of self-liberation, happening almost simultaneously in cities all over the planet, resulted in a veritable avalanche of live shows, recordings, posters, fashions, films (not so many, because filmmaking is expensive), and other manifestations of cultural production. Unfortunately, a lot of live shows were not recorded, and the musical creativity of many early punk bands has been lost...especially bands who never released recordings, or only released a 45 or two.

Back to Clive Langer: his interview in Search & Destroy #1 stands the test of time, particularly with regard to defining the rise of Punk Rock in England. He was not afraid to reveal the "art school" backgrounds of a number of early Punk Rockers. He made note of the influence of reggae and early sixties bands like the Kinks, plus old blues and R&B. He admired the Graffiti on New York trains (that's when Graffiti Art was beginning), and identified certain Pub Rock bands as progenitors of Punk Rock: "Journalists...have become really bored, and have been looking desperately for something new and fresh, and they've fanned the flames or have helped to produce this scene...Some of the punk rock bands were pub rock bands but they changed all of a sudden; they all started wearing the same clothes. Everyone was trying to find something new, and all of a sudden it was there!"

Why was Punk music "back to basics"? "People [were] bored with indulgent musicianship. Things were getting very stale in the music business; records were very beautifully produced, with beautiful precision, like one backing track would take two days to get down in the studio. But now there's a new approach which is: ENERGY, ENJOYMENT, FEELING--an EMOTIONAL thing, really. There's definitely a big difference in approach and you can hear it." ...

"Some of the [new] bands DON'T have anything to say and they admit it, they're just bored, don't have a job, and like playing Rock and Roll, basically. And there are others who want to CHANGE THE WORLD!... they know a lot of kids aren't going to quite get the message, but LET'S DO IT! They totally believe in it, they're obsessed with it ... basically, you don't have to be able to play well to play interesting music!"

I think people are still curious about Punk because it produced a lot of interesting culture that, for whatever reasons, is still liberating, inspiring and against the status quo. And it always illustrates how easy it is to express rebellion in a creative, blackly-humorous way. Because truly, how much has the world really changed since Punk began?