Punk rock fashion

PUNK

Stephen Colegrave and Chris Sullivan

Cassell, 399pp, [pounds sterling]35

THE CLASH

Photographs by Bob Gruen.

Edited by Chris Salewicz

Vision On Publishing, 317pp, [pounds sterling]45

UP YOURS! A GUIDE TO UK PUNK, NEW WAVE AND EARLY POST-PUNK

Vernon Joynson

Borderline Productions, 552pp, [pounds sterling]29.50

Discounts at www.newstatesman.co.uk

Punk had many forms. For the poser, it was another fashion: being a punk was to belong to an imagined elite. Then there were the good-time rock 'n' rollers taking the natural next step from Bowie, Slade and Dr Feelgood, scruffs dedicated to a decent pint and a better tune. And finally there were the punks who wouldn't be seen dead in eyeliner but loved the music and the social lyrics that said something about their lives. For them, punk was much more than a passing fashion; it was something that would shape their future lives.

Punk was supposed to be anti-fashion, so it's amazing to see it sold nowadays as little more than a funny haircut and a pair of bondage trousers. This view of punk is all about Malcolm McLaren and the King's Road, and has nothing to do with Johnny Rotten, yet it was those such as Rotten who gave punk its words and energy, who made it special. Forget Sex and think of the Chelsea Shed instead, thousands of bootboys on the march. The way punk is peddled is down to power and those who control it; punk's history is firmly "in the hands of the people rich enough to buy it" -- to quote "White Riot" by the Clash.

Nothing changes. The social commentators of today excel only in an ability to compromise any vague beliefs they might hold through their search for the next pay cheque, rehashing the same old obsessions in a back-slapping media culture of privilege and fake morality. The agenda revolves around race, sexuality and our need to join the Euro hypermarket, when it should still, after all this time, be about wealth and its redistribution. Appearance dominates content, something that the "common" form of punk challenged.

Punk -- a glossy, coffee-table collection of photographs covering the period from 1975 to 1979, edited by Stephen Colegrave and Chris Sullivan -- concentrates on the punk-as-fashion angle. Colegrave is described as "a Porsche 911-driving yuppie in the 1980s", and Sullivan as a style expert who designed clothes for Adam Ant and Spandau Ballet. Punk connects with Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and the Beat Generation, and chooses American bands such as the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls as inspiration, the meaningless term "attitude" pressed on like a passport stamp. The photos themselves are a mixture of fashion victims and the likes of the Sex Pistols, ragamuffins grabbing a piece of the cake and giving the posers some bollocks in a castrated world of designer S&M and the Bromley Contingent.

According to this commentary, punk, which peaked in 1976, was over as soon as it was given a mime. In truth, punk developed and became more relevant under Margaret Thatcher than it ever was during the Labour government, something which is lost on Punk's editors and too many of its contributors. Unemployment arrived big time and huge political battles were being fought, but to dress differently seems to have been enough for the fashion brigade. Some even became New Romantics, a new Tory sect if ever there was one.

Few British punk records were released before 1977, and later bands such as the Ruts, Sham 69 and the Angelic Upstarts were among the most committed groups around -- better than many of the earlier bands, in fact. Meanwhile, 2-Tone, anarchist outfits such as Crass and the Oi! movement kept things going well into the 1980s. These people were saying something relevant and important, but the media had buried punk by the mid-1980s, concentrating instead on the so-called indie scene -- an easy money-spinner for the record companies and an easy ride for the hacks.

The strangest part of this book comes at the end, where it claims that a movement such as punk would be even more valid today than it was in 1976. This is true, but the poser element would be around for only a few months before feeling that its elite status was being challenged and thus moving on.

The Clash, a collection of photographs by Bob Gruen, is a much better book; but then, the Clash were the band of the late Seventies and early Eighties, and could do no wrong. The Clash had it all -- stance, sound and, most of all, lyrics. And lyrics were what punk was really about. For schoolkids uninterested in the stuffy books of the day, the Clash, and the more committed punk bands, offered an accessible and pertinent literature. Joe Strummer, Paul Weller and John Lydon were essentially writers operating through music. In some ways, they are a missing link in Britain's tradition of alternative literature, a connection between authors such as Alan Sillitoe and the handful of new writers who have come through in the past four or five years.

The comments that accompany the photos are shorter and less arrogant than those in Punk, mainly quotes from Strummer, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon. There are some great pictures -- the Clash with Mikey Dread, the Clash with Lee Dorsey, the Clash with Bo Diddley, the Clash with Futura, the Clash on stage in Britain and the US. Anyone who saw the band play will be transported back by these images; the group's sheer power and ability to embrace different styles -- whether it was rockabilly, reggae or early rap -- were special qualities.

One photograph, taken from above the stage and shooting into the audience, captures the true nature of punk -- the crowd is not done up in expensive fetish gear, but is a mixture of ordinary people. Everyone was welcome, and there was no dress code or pretensions, no elites in this brand of punk. That's what it was really about. Honest. The heritage of Joe Public is marginalised by the establishment, whether it's the government or the media: ignorant journalists tag Strummer as some punk throwback, even though he has released two timely new albums in the past three years; books by writers such as Frank Norman are out of print; and important British films such as Up the Junction remain unavailable on video. There is a social history Out there that is consistently ignored, and punk is a part of that history. Punk records topped the charts, filled up dance halls, mutated and continue to influence alternative and mainstream culture today.

Up Yours! by Vernon Joynson contains 552 pages on the hundreds of other bands that made punk what it was. While Up Yours! doesn't claim to be fully comprehensive, it aims to list every British punk group that released a record before 1982. It lacks the expensive production of the other books, but that's how it should be -- a huge body of work written from the heart, content more important than the appearance. Record covers break up the text, and there is a handful of excellent photos by Steve Richards capturing Poly Styrene, the Ruts and the Vibrators in their prime. More concerned with vinyl than PVC, this book is a long way from Punk.

What these three books have in common, however, is that they show how much our society has changed over the past 25 years. There are no convincing youth cults today, nothing to compare with the days of skinheads, punks, mods, teds and their like. There hasn't been since the Eighties. Thatcher began the cultural meltdown and acid house carried it on, with ecstasy sedating the nation better than the pubs ever did. Britain has become bland and conservative, a Euro-bound society gagged by political correctness, where once it was angry and on edge. Brands and corporate logos rule and money dominates. Cash translates as style. The biggest posers in Punk look good in comparison.

John King's novels include The Football Factory, Human Punk and White Trash

COPYRIGHT 2002 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group