We Have to Deal With It: Punk England Report

The Bad Stuff
I'm aware that I've made the punks sound like poverty-stricken lads who only want to build a better life for themselves, and that this probably doesn't jibe with your preconceptions. What about the safety pins and dog collars, you must be wondering. What abut the violence? What about the misogyny and pathological anomie? What about that groupie with the whip?

Well, my guess is that six months from now safety pins and dog collars—but not the wonderful spikey punk hair—will be as passe as platform shoes, replaced by less disquieting concepts in costume jewelry. But the rest of the bad stuff seemed durable enough. I saw fans betoken their affection by gobbing—spitting, in thick gobs—at their idols, I saw X-Ray Spex abandon the stage to their own rampaging fans, and I saw little Kevin Roland of the Killjoys placekick one kid off the monitors without missing a beat. I witnessed numerous fistfights. I learned that punks sometimes pogo with their hands at each other's throats and embrace in holds that resemble hammerlocks. And I read both Strummer and Rotten On Love. Strummer: "I can love them providing they don't come near me." Rotten: "Love is what you feel for a dog or a pussy cat. It doesn't apply to humans."

Yet none of this was anywhere near as appalling as I'd expected. I mean, I almost didn't bring my down jacket for fear someone would knife me and the feathers would all fly out, but the most antagonistic remark any punk offered in nine days was when some youngster addressed me as "Guv'nor" after I declined to share my beer with him. Admittedly, I didn't spend much time with the punk on the street, and I worry that I've somehow been hoodwinked by the British music biz, which is now taking the line that punk is nothing more than teenagers venting their (oh so sociologically justified) frustrations. But while I continue to find some punk music frightening, I am no longer very scared by the punks themselves. On the contrary, I consider their hostility healthy, especially in view of how much they've been maligned.

Synfesis
Poly Styrene is a plump young woman the color of Kraft caramel who brings a pop-art kind of pop sensibility to punk. She prefers "synfetic" clothes and wears braces on her teeth. Reputedly a former reggae singer, she's vague about how she made money before X-Ray Spex. But she did tell me that her manager, Falcon Stuart, used to direct films, and I know this is true because I've seen one--French Blue, a rather arty and off-putting exercise in king porn. This could make you worry about lyrics, like "Bind me tie me/Chain me to the wall/I wanna be a slave to you all." But they continue: "Oh bondage up yours/Oh bondage no more." Poly says she tires to make sure her lyrics aren't obvious; they're collections of images. Her artistic aim? "I try to make people fink."

Fashion Plate
For five minutes after we were introduced, Bernard Rhodes, the Clash's manager, subjected me to skeptical questions and comments implying that I was a poser. I held my ground, which was apparently what he wanted, because soon he was treating me to the English teen version of Sartor Resartus. "The differences are so subtle," he told me. "Shoelaces—you can spend half an hour deciding what shoelaces to wear." Rhodes was wearing aviator glasses, a bezippered gray cloth jacket, a Clash T-shirt, a large digital watch, jeans with rolled cuffs, chartreuse socks, and black oxfords. I did not notice anything special about his shoelaces.

Gobbing I could do without, as could the gobbed-upon, but even gobbing carries metaphorical weight, a weight that reaches its zenith in the pogo. The pogo is more than oafs jumping up and down; its reputation as an idiot dance preceding a punch-up misses entirely the joy, humor, and madness of the real thing. Pogoers don't just jump—they leap, as high as they can for as long as they can, exhilarated to the point of exhaustion. The dance is very physical, with much flailing and crashing near the center, and most pogoers are male. At first they flew strictly solo, but soon couple-dancing began, and with it the stranglehold developed. It was startling to see two 16-year-old boys, their faces shining with sweat and glee, pretending to throttle each other in what amounted to an airborne playfight. But I hadn't encountered such joyful-looking kids at a rock concert in years. This dance did justice to something about rock and roll that all the fast steps and sexy grinds ignored--its exultant competitiveness, its aggressive fun.

Not that pogoers confine themselves to playfighting. People trip and tromp on each other and come to blows—less often than has been reported but more than at a Renaissance concert. Only who needs a Renaissance concert? This is rock and roll, and in England rock and roll (like football, only less so) has always occasioned violence. Yet there were only one or two scuffles a night at the gigs I attended, and I neither saw nor was told about anything to compare, for instance, with the Beatles' second professional engagement, where a 16-year-old boy was kicked to death. I would describe firecrackers at Bad Company concerts as violent, and I would describe Johnny Rotten's vocal attack as violent. But I would describe punk as rough.