Buzzcocks - The Complete History. Tony McGartland
immediately relevant to punk, though, was the intense renewal of interest during the period in back-to-basics rock’n’roll, especially on the underground London music scene. As early as 1969, musicians who’d become famous in the sixties were expressing a desire to return to the simple R&B and rockabilly sounds that had inspired them to pick up guitars in the first place. Chief among these were the Beatles, who even planned to release an album called Get Back, which would be heavily indebted to the vintage twelve-bar music of their heroes Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis. In the event, it didn’t happen (though the title-track escaped as a single), but it was indicative of a prevailing notion shared by bands as diverse as the Kinks and Procol Harum that nothing beat a bit of old-style boogie.
With the advent of rock operas like Tommy, and bloated, self-indulgent progressive rock, more people decided to ‘get back’, and, by 1974, bands like Dr. Feelgood, the Count Bishops and the 101ers had started playing a thrashy, supercharged version of old-fashioned rock’n’roll in pubs in and around London. This, of course, was the great pub rock, a much-maligned beast whose proponents included early incarnations of the Damned (then Johnny Moped), the Vibrators and, in spirit if not in style, the Stranglers. The lead singer of the 101ers was one John Mellor, better known as Joe Strummer, who played the dirtiest, tinniest, most amateur three-chord thrash most people had ever witnessed – and at deafening volume, too. He was the son of a British ambassador, who’d been an envoy to Turkey and Mexico, but you’d never have guessed it from Joe’s strange, slurring voice and salt-of-the-earth manner. When the other future Clash founders, Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon, saw the 101ers live, they knew Joe was the man to front their own Mod-rock group.
Yet, although pub rock, glam and the leftover spirit of sixties radicalism turbocharged punk, and the dull, boring, indulgent stadium rock of Genesis and Boston afforded it a vacuum in which it could thrive, the New Wave was most directly inspired by something else: the New York punk scene of 1974–5.
A 1975 NME feature gave the first exciting snapshot of a city in which a bunch of gawky, bubblegum-chewing long-hairs were playing a brand of brash, beefy garage rock, which had all the passion and attitude of the Yardbirds, the Stones and the Kinks in the mid-sixties. It was young, it was gormless, it was loud and it said ‘Fuck you!’. And the key players were the New York Dolls, the Stilettos (with Debbie Harry of Blondie), Television, Talking Heads and the Ramones, with the eye of the hurricane usually being the CBGB club. Overshadowing the whole scene, though, was the spectre of Iggy Pop’s band, the Stooges, who, together with the MC5 from Detroit, had closed the sixties with a thunderous, misanthropic and menacing take on rock, the perfect antidote to wide-eyed hippie idealism and sophisticated pop. A veteran of several mental institutions, Iggy Pop was the coolest, skinniest and most slack-jawed ‘punk’ on the block, and his was the attitude – self-laceration was a favourite – that prompted the word ‘punk’ (meaning worthless trash) to be applied to the scene.
Godfathers of punk the Stooges and the MC5, and the fastest of their young charges, the Ramones, had a particularly profound impact on the British scene, with all three inspiring in varying degrees the Pistols, the Clash, the Damned and, yes, Buzzcocks (a very early incarnation of which covered Iggy’s ‘Your Pretty Face Has Gone To Hell’). Indeed, Buzzcocks couldn’t have existed without what had gone before, self-consciously pinching their sixty-mile-an-hour tempos from the Ramones, their sneers from the Pistols and their art-school swagger from the Velvet Underground.
But those brilliant songs, which were already being written by Pete McNeish when he was working as a computer operator in the mid-seventies – well, they were all their very own. Armed with experience, ideas and the desire to be the greatest, wittiest, most romantic punk-pop band in the world, young Peter McNeish and Howard Trafford stumbled through the early months of 1976 knowing that the British music scene was about to blow up in the nation’s face.
1966
At the age of eleven, Garth Davies has ambitions to become a pop star. Born in Tyldesley, near Leigh, Lancashire, he is the youngest of five children: two girls and three boys. He attends Tyldesley County Primary School and, from September 1967, Leigh Boys’ Grammar School. (Leigh is a mining and cotton town.)
He is submersed in music at home. His parents play Doris Day, Sinatra and Elvis Presley on an old radiogram, while his brothers and sisters play nonstop Cliff Richard, Helen Shapiro and sounds from the Merseybeat.
Radio and television are also to contribute to his interest in music. ‘The first music that made a real impression on me was rock’n’roll. All the American and British originals. Pop hits of the early to mid-sixties were also influential, and I still regard this decade as my favourite for music.’
Garth’s parents buy him a cheap, nylon-stringed guitar and enrol him in lessons with a local music tutor. ‘The lessons were in classical guitar playing, which seemed alien to me, but I thought that all guitarists had to learn like that. Still, I tried to copy the songs that I liked most, but my career as a guitarist in any genre didn’t amount to much.’
During his teens Garth becomes acquainted with blues and progressive rock, listening extensively to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Jethro Tull and Cream.
Not far away in Leigh, Peter McNeish’s aunt returns home with a transistor radio for him and his brother Gary. Peter listens to late-night pirate radio stations and, in particular, listened a lot to the Beatles.
1970
Jan 4th
A fifteen-year-old Peter McNeish picks up a guitar his father had bought for his younger brother Gary’s tenth birthday. Peter’s New Year resolution had been to keep a diary and the entry on this day reads, ‘Today I will start to learn to play the guitar.’ His prime influence is The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook, assisted by playing along to the second-hand Beatles records he had bought. His mother Margaret remembers, ‘Every day after school he would be in his room with the guitar, teaching himself how to play.’ The diary is forgotten about after a few weeks.
Oct 3rd
McNeish attends his local youth club, where he listens to the Led Zeppelin II album with friends.
Dec 21st
Howard Trafford and Richard Boon are in a comedy group at Leeds Grammar School named the Ernest Band after their headmaster. Trafford plays piano and Boon the jaw harp, both sufficiently well to perform at the Christmas high-school hop. Trafford was brought up in Nuneaton and Leeds.
1971
May 17th
At the age of sixteen, McNeish starts writing his own material. His first ever song is called ‘Yesterday Night’.
June 7th
A sixteen-year-old Steve Diggle buys a Spanish guitar for £6 and starts practising in the Coronation Street-style house in Moston where he lives. With his new instrument, he learns a few chords from a neighbour, who plays Lindisfarne covers on the local pub circuit. Diggle is heavily influenced by John Lennon but gets a more immediate buzz listening to the thrashing guitar sound of the Who’s Pete Townshend. Diggle’s dad soon buys him an old Hayman bass guitar and a 120-watt Sound City amplifier; he makes his own crude but effective speaker cabinet with wood, which costs him £4.
June 13th
At Leigh Boys’ Grammar School, a play for fifth- and lower-sixth-form pupils features a rock band as part of the storyline. This brings together various schoolfriends, all with an interest in music – Mick Reay, Keith Wilde and Tony Wall. Various drummers join and leave the band, disgruntled with the set list, which includes covers of Free, Deep Purple and Jimi Hendrix. For the duration of the play they rehearse in the school hall.
On the last day of the play another guitarist, Peter McNeish,