Compared to other provincial towns, growing up in the 1990’s in my hometown was not that bad: there was a thriving music scene where you could find metalheads, punks, alternative music freaks and even, for a longer period than one would classify as healthy, a shoegaze scene. While this was a thing to be somewhat cheerful about, it was not, as many have recently tried to redraw, a sort of highpoint of modernity. Recent nostalgic trends imagine a golden period prior to the Internet where relationships thrived and our connection to the world was of a better quality than it is now, and that the kids now growing up with the Internet and social media have a disadvantage that an older generation did not have, particularly concerning personal relationships. Nostalgia always keeps this intimate connection to lies. These days, if I want to hear a particular band or song, I just go online and find multiple sources where to get it from; before, you would have to rely on your personal acquaintances, favors, and luck (as when you would browse randomly through the CD racks of some record store and suddenly find a rare record—in a small town of a small country, those moments were magical). These actions required, obviously, having people nearby who could supply your needs regarding information and ownership of music, which, truth be said, was not a stress-free task (although some might be lucky to have grown up in certain places where it was easier to find such people). For all that could be said about the pernicious ways of the Internet, one must not dismiss all the good things it brought about.

It is not the case that the Internet has changed the need to trust people, it is just that it has become much easier to find trustworthy and knowledgeable people regarding (not only) music. In those days you relied on your eye to pinpoint people you would (ideally) be interested in meeting: someone dressed as a punk would probably be fun, someone in a Dead Kennedys shirt would have polished musical taste, dyed hair was worn by exciting people, and someone wearing a pair of creepers was sure to be a good friend. Obviously, this was a very sketchy system and more often than not one would be disappointed; in any case, CDs circulated, homemade recordings of radio shows were passed on, rare demo tapes from local bands could be acquired. While it seems true that many things have changed, Sam McPheeters[1] observation about the twenty-first century isolates something that it is still true today:

The twenty-first century, with its badly curated festivals and American Idol aspirations, has tricked us into believing that music is a communal experience. It’s not. Consciousness is a solitary phenomenon, and the emotions we experience from music are just one private part of our solo selves. (Mutations, p. 71)

In most cases—the most noteworthy, I would suppose—music remains a solitary experience. But as with most of our experiences, we have a longing for not being alone in the way we feel (musically or otherwise).

Part of the nostalgia comes from the bonds established between people who wore their taste on their sleeves; it comes from believing that somehow those circumstances were more honest than what the new generation has nowadays. Punk stands as one of those movements that lends itself to such trends for standing at the fringe of what is taken to be standard social relations; it is also a movement easily identifiable by the music, the social behavior, in part by its politics, and clearly by its eccentricity, which makes it appealing for any trending social theory. But this nostalgia generally ignores that most of our wandering into certain places comes from the same inner place identified by the Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones in his autobiography[2]:

It wasn’t so much the music for me as that need to feel like I was part of a group—to connect with another little gang. Man, I wanted to belong so badly; whether it was to QPR, or the skinheads, or the Teddy boys didn’t even matter too much. I just had to be something. You could see how desperate I was by the fact that I even tried to be a hippie for a while—around the time I was breaking into all the other shops down King’s Road, you’d often see me bowling along there in patched leather flares with platform boots and a big hairy Afghan coat. (Jones, 98)

Musical connections, as well as political, social, or sports-related, begin because we need to fit in, a particularly demanding task for teenagers. Having this in mind, punk was not very different from other musical/social movements popular in the last decades of the twentieth century. In that sense, things have not changed that much in the new century: we still gravitate towards like-minded people, we just have access to many more people and to much more things that were out of our reach then (and most relevantly, now we do not have to ever meet anyone face to face).

The closeness between people in these contexts allows for a second part of that revisionist nostalgia to kick in by granting value to the objects where the music is stored. A tape recording of some rare record suddenly becomes an important token for it tells the story of how it was made, of how it came into the possession of its owner: what measures its relevance is not the quality of the music anymore (in some trends, being recorded in an obsolete medium is all that matters for it to be relevant). That, and only that, gives it more meaning and honesty, two features taken as essential in such matters. Most of what punk was, and a central part of what still defines it today, is concerned with this kinds of relationships and with what comes out of them, stressing that a particular way of doing things is more relevant than the reasons for doing them.

This makes punk vulnerable to another contemporary popular fashion, namely the oral story: in its terms, punk is mostly defined by those who were part of a specific scene, and different accounts of what stands as “real” punk will vary according to the scene someone belonged to. The point seems obvious when we attempt to outline a definition of punk; the fluctuations of the definition depend mostly on who is giving such a definition and on the correlation it kept with some form of punk. McPheeters recognizes the problem about finding a workable definition of punk:

Depending on who and where you are, “punk” can be a lifestyle; cosplay; design element; powerful ideal; lazy cliché; magical realism; badge of authenticity; pantomime social movement; withering mockery; ironclad conviction; lucrative career; vow of slovenly poverty; incubator of brilliance and/or mediocrity; rite of passage; riot of violence; ferocious hokeyness; suicide hotline; sales category; community glue; license to wallow; mass catharsis; a refuge for smart people and/or playground for dumb people; boisterous escapism; marketable nostalgia; belligerent incompetence; self-satire (intentional or otherwise); assault on falseness; or adult-sized, psychic diapers that can be worn until death. (McPheeters, p. 12)

All these possibilities depend, as noted, on the place the one describing punk occupies within it. A good way to escape such a trap would be to attempt a more academic definition, concerned with History and social relevance, for instance; but such an attempt, as it has been proved often since the 1980’s, will inevitably lead to stale descriptions of what punk was, failing to capture precisely the organic convolutions of the movement (even the notion of punk as a movement is in itself a very poor base to start with). This being so, we are dependent on compiling stories from different backgrounds and trying to make sense of punk through them. Although this seems weak and unreliable, it is not in any way different from trying to make sense of other moments in History. The effort, some would say, is futile and unworthy; but for those who have had a relationship to punk, by being a part of a local scene or just by listening to it, there is in fact something relevant coming out of punk that makes the effort matter.

So, in my teenage deviations toward places where I could find like-minded people, who wore particular clothes and listened to specific music, I once came upon an EP cover on a small record store in the basement of a shopping mall that struck me as remarkable. It had an appealing title: “Fuck the Beatles, Go Country!!!” The store was a place where you could buy anything from classic punk to the latest trends of Scandinavian metal, the hottest Gothic music and the most renowned German minimalism, and the EP was by a Portuguese band called Tédio-Boys. The cover was a play on The Beatles’ covers showing cutouts of the band’s members’ faces over a red background, all sporting moptops (even if only in the cutout picture). That cover and title always struck me as relevant, although for many years my attention was drawn by the second part of the title, the less interesting one. The band was originally from a nearby city and while they may not have had at the time a great national recognition, in my hometown they were regarded as a sort of punk heroes by the people who cared about that kind of thing. The legendary stories about their raucous shows were passed along, verging on the ridiculous, all very unbelievable and yet very satisfying to hear. The interest in the band peaked in the late 1990’s, when they toured the US and documented the tour in a sort of diary published by the main Portuguese music newspaper at the time. The unbelievable stories were revived in a documentary that made all those tales less inconceivable.[3] After the band disbanded, most of its members went on to form new bands which have had a certain amount of impact and that are, in different ways, very good.[4]

My struggle with the title of this EP was not different from recognizing The Pogues as a punk band: it was hard, as a kid with a limited amount of information, to understand traditional music references as legitimate when punk was so clearly a beacon of urbanity within a provincial setting. How could punk hold such strong provincial references? The Tédio-Boys EP had three songs that mixed punk and country in a way I could only take as sarcastic (although this description was never satisfactory).[5] With time, I grew acquainted with the rockabilly influences and my reading of the songs as sarcastic was undermined; I also became aware of the fluctuation of the word “country,” used first to mean a music style, but also, in the second song, to refer to country geographically (as in a rural area) and started reading it as an interesting take from a band based on a provincial town. But what seemed to elude me for many years was the reason for an apparent apology of country, whether the music genre or the geographic reference. This was wiped away by listening to other bands, accessing other contexts, and mostly by coming to a different understanding of what punk was. And with time, my challenges with the record moved from the second towards the first part of the title: why The Beatles? This move came also with the realization that The Beatles were a constant enemy of punk bands, mostly British punk bands. Any decent punk History, from whatever quarter it might come, will point out common enemies for the early punks: the hippies, prog-rock, or commercial music. Maybe The Beatles cross all these fields against which punk rebelled, but they still feel like a shaky enemy when compared with more obvious adversaries.

I was recently reminded of the many times I thought about that cover and title by Danny Boyle’s television adaptation of Steve Jones’ autobiography. In Danny Boyle’s lukewarm show, Pistol (2022), The Beatles are mentioned at least three times in the first ten minutes of the first episode (not in the most flattering ways, of course). Then there is the scene where Steve Jones (Toby Wallace) shouts to Glen Matlock (Christian Lees), “We’re not in a Paul fucking McCartney fucking tribute band,” over a quarrel about a tune with complex chords. In his book, from where the scene was taken, Jones’ description explains the reference to The Beatles in a different tone:

I’m not trying to take the credit away from Glen for the original songwriting, but the reason he and I worked so well together was that he’d come up with something quite fiddly—the ‘fucking Beatle chords’ that drove John up the wall—and then I’d drive a bulldozer through it. You hear some complex chord progressions played exactly right and they go in one ear and out the other. Give ’em to someone who’s not too bothered about sevenths and elevenths, and all of a sudden they work on a whole other level. Glen was so polite that if he’d played guitar on our records I don’t think anyone would’ve noticed them. Once I took over the chords he’d originally written, we ended up with something that was brutally direct but not simple-minded; an iron fist in a velvet glove. (Jones, 161)

According to this description, the root from which the songs departed were the “Beatles chords” which were later reduced to the simple chords the Pistols are known for.[6] Why is it that The Beatles are such a strong negative presence if they are at the center of the songs’ writing? The obvious answer would be to recognize The Beatles’ success as something to vilify, in the vein that sees punk as an anti-establishment movement; but if we look carefully, taking only this show and the book it is based on, we can easily see that success is a goal to attain: the frustration induced by the Pistols not being played on the radio and the joy at reaching number one on the charts clearly hint at it.[7]

The problem with The Beatles, I believe, lies in their virtuosity: they feature so prominently as punk enemies because they were the best musicians. It is not a coincidence, I think, that the only slightly interesting storyline in Boyle’s adaptation is the affair between Jones and Chrissie Hynde (Sydney Chandler), a relationship between a man who can barely play guitar (and finds immediate success) and an accomplished guitarist (who, prior to her success with The Pretenders, had difficulty finding a band to play in). This relationship, I think, gives us a glimpse at the way punk was working in the early stages: their connection is doomed not only by Hynde’s relationship with a famous music critic (who dreams of being Keith Richards), but also by Jones’ refusal to accept the normal constraints of what a relationship should look like. The guitar lessons Hynde gives to Jones are, in that sense, a mere comic relief and a sexual interlude, since according to the show Jones learned to play guitar by practicing non-stop for a week (without sleeping, courtesy of illicit substances). In the autobiography, Jones praises his placement in a magazine’s list of the one hundredth best guitar players of the century ascribing the honor to his hard work and many hours of practice. But it is a work done alone, mimicking songs, touring, or recording in the studio. It is never, as poorly hinted by Boyle’s show, a result of lessons, for those would mean compliance with a conventional way of doing things. Compare Jones’ guitar lessons with Hynde with Johnny Rotten’s (Anson Boon) singing lessons. Unable to hear his own voice, Rotten accepts Malcolm Maclaren’s (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) offer to pay him for singing lessons. Independently of how those lessons are portrayed in the show, they do not need to be hidden or made fun of: is there anything more unorthodox than Rotten’s singing? Even if he had lessons (which he did), did they have any effect on his singing? To assume any sort of conventional way of playing or singing would clearly undermine the History of punk, always so ready to glorify the lack of expertise:

Because a lot of later punk and post-punk bands would make a point of not being able to play, people don’t necessarily understand how well drilled we were. We didn’t go skipping into Wessex Studios saying, “Yay, let’s do it.” We weren’t just having a laugh. We never wanted anything to be sloppy­—the whole “anyone can do it” element of punk had completely passed us by. In fact, me and Cookie were the opposite of that: we were really dedicated in the studio. (Jones, 193)

Some features associated with punk have been built and preserved in the aftermath of those early years, formed mostly on misconceptions. One of those misconceptions is precisely the notion that punk requires a lack of expertise from its performers:

But the subculture’s core message—anyone can do this!—stayed constant. So bands and fanzines and record labels became the default pursuits of a generation. A lot of people think this is a good thing. I don’t. I know too many folks who plod along with their bands or record labels simply out of momentum, because underground creativity is a tradition that extends just far enough past their own lifespan that it seems like an enduring lifestyle. (…) Not everyone should make art. Not everyone should be in a band. Some people have to farm, and repair bridges, and make socks. Sometimes it’s okay to be a spectator. (McPheeters, 178)

But here lies one misconception about punk: punk does not demand lack of expertise, on the contrary, what it does not require is any kind of expertise or formal training; it does not even require for people to improve their skills. It is legitimate for someone who can play an instrument to thrive on punk records as it is for someone who can barely play a chord and never will. Punk’s relevance and allure lie in allowing for the spectators to become performers, no matter the level of skills they have: clumsy amateurs can also make art, even if sometimes, for everyone’s sake, they should have remained as spectators. No other movement I can think of made this so clear as punk. It is funny, naturally, that those who built their careers on account of such premise come to criticize it, as Jones and McPheeters do here, but corporativism is not something we can be freed of easily: people who know how things work will always be ready to criticize those who do not.[8]

Someone once told me that The Beatles were the greatest cultural revolution of the twentieth century, thinking, I believe, not only about the music but about all the social changes of the 1960’s. I will always challenge that position: The Sex Pistols, and punk by extension, bear that title. What the Pistols achieved, beyond all the discussion about the egalitarian access to the music industry, cannot be compared to The Beatles precisely because it was made against them. The working heroes of Liverpool became the greatest artists of their time and had the success to show for it; the Pistols were not even close to their British counterparts technically or artistically, and yet they achieved a close enough amount of success with just one record that changed music, not only in the sense of creating a new genre but also, and mainly, in a new way of making music. They allowed for the possibility of making and enjoying music crafted by people who had no talent for it, proving “that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”[9] Of all the people gravitating around punk in the late seventies, not only musicians but other artists also, there were only a few who could be said to excel in their respective areas; most of the talented musicians and artists who became known for their art in the years following punk learned their art while performing it. Take McPheeters’ reference to “a 1979 interview, [where] Deborah Evans explains of their LP, ‘It’s the best we can do under the circumstances. Very few of us can play. I mean, David can play the bass guitar very badly…and I can’t sing’” (199); or a similar point made by Jones in his book, naming the several bands that gravitated around the Pistols, “[o]f course, they were no good, in fact they were awful—none of them could play a note—but that didn’t seem to matter much back then” (Jones, 171). One could say that this process of learning by doing things was also true for The Beatles (think about their German period); but the difference, and the crucial difference at it, is that with them it was about improving in order to achieve something. With punk, the achievement precedes the improvement: you become known for producing art before you have a mastery of how that art is produced (not that there is only one way of doing things, but there is a formal education and a specific History for each art which those connected with it are expected to know). I think this explains why so many punks, once they became accomplished artisans, moved away from punk aesthetics.

What that Tédio-Boys’ title held that seemed so punk was exactly the condensation of what punk is: it is not about going against the rules, but it is about accomplishing something within the limits of those rules without necessarily having the skills to comply with the conventional way of doing things; to be able to have a record out, to promote it, play it live, and listen to it playing on the radio without really knowing how to do any of those things. So, for that EP to belong to punk, in front of the name Beatles you can put anything, really: country, folk, techno, reggaeton. What really matters is that The Beatles are there, since what you are doing is defying the most accomplished artists. Art, in that view, is not reserved for the virtuous alone, it is not accessible only to those who already have a grasp on how that specific art operates. What defines punk is mostly the ability to be satisfied with our shortcomings; not to make art an ongoing search for perfection, but being able to live with our flaws.

[1] This book was suggested by an episode of the podcast What is X?, by Justin E.H. Smith, from The Point Magazine: “What is Punk?”, with guest Joseph M Keegin, August 15, 2022. 

[2] Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol.

[3] I saw them live only once and, according to my recollection of it (they finished their set naked and run around the venue where the show was being held), the stories heard in the years prior to that show suddenly all sounded pretty accurate.

[4] I am not going to go into all the projects featuring ex-Tédio-Boys, but for the purpose of this text I must refer to The Parkinsons, a true old-style punk band that, in the early years of the century, was the great hope for a punk revival in London (a well-deserved reputation).

[5] The songs were: “Back from the Crypt,” “A Place in the Country,” and “I Love Country.”

[6] I assume the relationship with The Beatles to be much more complicated than what I am making it look like here, more in the strain of a Freudian (or Bloomian, if we think about literature) relationship; take this line from Jones’ autobiography, where the Fab Four are, after all, a goal: “It’s not quite Lennon and McCartney, but it’s getting there” (Jones, 1993). This complex relationship, while worth pursuing in other terms than the ones I am using here, ends up underlining the argument I presently want to make.

[7] Note how The Beatles feature in Jones’ bitter description of Glen Matlock’s removal from the band: “At first he’d been happy to wear clothes from Sex, but as time went on he seemed to be more and more into his Beatles thing, and it was all getting a bit painful. It wasn’t just that he was more respectable and strait-laced than we were, it almost felt like he thought he was too good for us. The fact that he had a deal set up for his own band the minute he left —and with EMI, of all people—would kind of show where his loyalties lay” (Jones, 183).

[8] I also think this is why we so often find great names of punk dissing the movement: once you learn how to sing, play, or produce songs it is hard to stand with those who do not know how to do those things. This gives an acid tone to most of the renditions given about punk and it is one of the reasons I so often frown upon them.

[9] G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World.

References:

Chesterton, G.K. What’s Wrong With the World. 1910. (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1717/1717-h/1717-h.htm)

Jones, Steve (with Ben Thompson). Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. Kindle ed., William Heinemann: London, 2017.

McPheeters, Sam. Mutations: The Many Strange Faces of Hardcore Punk. Kindle ed., Rare Bird Books, 2020.