PREACHER Mag.

EDITOR’S NOTE

What is punk?

Punk is not only a genre. It’s an attitude.

It’s speaking up for your rights when government ruins your country. It’s defending yourself when you get harrased by your boss. It’s being proud of who you are when you walk down the street you’ve never been.

Punk is a way of living.

It’s 2020 now, whatever you call this era, it’s the time to speak. No one accepts anything anymore.

Because we discovered in the most harsh way that no other person actually cares about who you are.

What you go through. What your story is. No one gives a sh*t if you die on the street. People are blind, they’re hungry, thristy, ready to attack, born blind.

It is time to bring punk back.

Maybe you don’t know, but punk has been coexisting in this society on the corner on the streets or under the buildings or in the tiniest gyri of your frontal lobe.

But most importantly the reason you don’t know about it is because you’re opressed.

No one gave a f*ck when you felt uncomfortable in the metro while someone was staring dead into your clothes, right? Could you say anything? Would anyone get your back if you did?

Or remember that time when your mom said “I won’t accept you as my daughter if you’re gay.” What did you do? Cry and blame yourself?

It’s 2020 and everyone has to speak.

This magazine is here to teach you how to raise your voice. Because when people did it before, it created a change. Maybe they were judged by their looks or called “aggressive” for just expressing themselves.

Opression is something no one should accept anymore. We’re here to be the preachers of our time and show how easy life would be if you got your *ss out of your bed and do what feels right for you.

Make art.

Wear whatever you want.

Play gigs.

Stand up for your rights.

Stand up for others’ rights.

Be punk.

Then see how amazing your stressful life gets.

COLOPHON CONTRIBUTORS Derin Baysal Sara Katherine Senior Oyku Naz Onen Berk Varol Dogac Su Gundog Caitlin Tan Ege Kaynak PREACHER is a magazine on contemporary punk culture instagram.com/preacher.mag ADDRESS PREACHER Ltd Milan OFFICE Turkey Bodrum, Mugla PUBLISHERS Derin Baysal ART DIRECTOR & GRAPHIC DESIGN Derin Baysal EDITOR Derin Baysal SUB-EDITOR Derin Baysal SECTION EDITOR Derin Baysal DIGITAL EDITOR Derin Baysal EDITORIAL TEAM Derin Baysal

COVER IMAGE Iggy Pop by Danny Clinch designed by Derin Baysal All paper and inks used in the production of this magazine come from wellmanaged sources.

All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

Copyright © 2020

THE INTERRUPTERS THE INTERRUPTERS THE INTERRUPTERS THE INTERRUPTERS THE INTERRUPTERS

The Interrupters: the new ska-punk band who might even win over the people who vomit at the phrase ‘ska-punk’ ast Christmas, this writer walked into a bar in London to find a band inspiring wild, chaotic dancing, broad grins and manic laughter among the crowd. The band were The Interrupters, from Los Angeles, California, and this writer hasn’t stopped banging on about them since.

Backed by three brothers – Jesse, Justin and Kevin Bivona (that would be drums, bass and guitar, in that order) – at the front of it all was one of the coolest, sassiest, most-bona-fide superstars-in-waiting NME had seen in eons. Her name was Aimee Allen – think: the cartoon woman on the record sleeves of original 2-Tone band The Beat, made real, but angry.

When the band returned to the UK this summer, we vowed we’d speak to them and so we did. We’re sold. Now here’s five reasons why you need The Interrupters in your life too…

In 99 percent of cases, ska punk is the bubonic plague of musical genres. The Interrupters are the one percent.

“We’ve heard that before,” says Kevin, “and the fact that you still like us and want to speak to us is something we take as a huge compliment…”

“Can I tell you something Sir Elton John said about us,” asks Aimee.

After you’ve picked his name up off the floor, sure.

“He’s played us on his radio show a few times,” she continues. “He said, ‘Some people call it ska. Some people call it punk. Some people call it ska punk. I call it ‘up music’ and I love it…’”

Aimee prefers to refer to the music her band makes as ‘unity music’.

“Music that brings people together. If you come to one of our shows, everyone’s family. We’re there for you…”

The Interrupters are the band their teenage selves needed After you’ve picked his name up off the floor, sure.

“He’s played us on his radio show a few times,” she continues. “He said, ‘Some people call it ska. Some people call it punk. Some people call it ska punk. I call it ‘up music’ and I love it…’”

Aimee prefers to refer to the music her band makes as ‘unity music’.

“Music that brings people together. If you come to one of our shows, everyone’s family. We’re there for you…”

“I’m really interested in how music can make people feel less alone,” says Kevin. “I needed that when I was growing up. One of the bands who helped me so much when I was a kid was Rancid. We’ve got them on our new album on a song called ‘Got Each Other’. The lyrics go, ‘If you are alone tonight / You can come with us / if you don’t have friends and family, or people that you trust / We will be your confidants, your sisters and your brothers / We don’t have much, but we’ve got each other’.

That’s kind of our mission statement.”

“It’s what Joan Jett did for me when I was a teenager,” says Aimee. “I had a horrible, abusive stepfather. He’d put in me in my room and take away my music as a punishment. I hadn’t done anything wrong, he just loved to torture me. As an act of rebellion I’d sit in my room and shout the lyrics to Joan Jett songs. He’d come in and beat me, but it was worth it. He could take my music, but he couldn’t break my spirit.”

They’ve written an incredibly important song about domestic violence The band’s new album, ‘Fight The Good Fight’, is fire; a sequence of songs both political and fun. But go back to album number two, 2016’s ‘Say It Out Loud’, and you’ll find a song about domestic violence called ‘She Got Arrested’, that is one of the most powerful punk rock songs of the modern era.

“I’ve been the victim of domestic violence,” says Aimee.

“So has my mother. So have so many of my girlfriends. I knew I had to write a song about it. The song is kind of a fantasy, how women who’ve been the victims of domestic violence would like things to play out but they’re too afraid to fight back. It’s a song about not being sorry about standing up for yourself.”

“I think the most powerful line in the song is ‘She’d do it again’”, adds Kevin. “It’s a song about justice…”

As well as being one of punk rock’s most interesting new voices, Aimee has – literally – one of the coolest “I’ve been singing as long as I remember,” says Aimee of her throaty rasp (think Brody Dalle gargling wasps). “I never cared about singing well, I just cared about getting what I was feeling inside out. I remember singing for my mum when I was little and her bursting into tears and telling me I was the best. It was then I thought, ‘maybe I could do this’. When I got older, I moved from Montana to LA and would spend every day walking up and down Sunset Boulevard asking people if they were in a band and if so could I join…”

This, she says, was because “it’s what people do in films.

How else was I to know how to join a band?” Aimee’s journey to the front of the stage with The Interrupters was certainly storied…

“I had a solo thing before. I was playing in a club with my punk band and [musician, producer of superstars and American Idol’s longest serving judge] Randy Jackson was there. He helped me get signed and Mark Ronson produced my first solo album [2003’s ‘I’d Start A Revolution If I Could Get Up In The Morning’]. The music was pretty confused. It was kind of hip-hop and rock. Very produced. It never really felt right and that album didn’t actually get a proper release in the end.”

She smiles.

“For me? Everything started when I joined The Interrupters. They were the band I always dreamed of being in…”

Kevin: “Awwwwwwww!”

“It’s the highest honour that Rancid took us on our first tour,” says Kevin, excitedly. “That Tim Armstrong has produced our albums. That Green Day took us out on tour. We would be nothing without those bands.

But you know what the best thing about those bands championing us?

We’ve learned so much and we’ve learned from the very best. They treat people well. Most importantly, they treat their fans well. They’re the model for what we want to do with The Interrupters…”

“Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971-1985” explores the intersection of sexuality and punk music. More of it was queer than you might think.

You’d be forgiven if the the word “punk” makes you picture an angry, skinny, hetero-masculine white boy, like the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious or the Ramones’ Joey Ramone. But while “punk” and “queerness” seem like contradictions, punk was (and is) very much queer: Whether it’s Tom Robinson Band proudly declaring they’re “Glad To Be Gay,” The Buzzcocks’ bisexual singer Pete Shelley asking if you have “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve?)” or trans pioneer Jayne County asking if her audience is “Man Enough To Be A Woman,” punk music has long engaged with sexuality and gender as a means of rejecting repressive social norms.

Punk Lust: Raw Provocation, 1971-1985, an exhibition now showing at New York City’s Museum of Sex, introduces these and other overlooked LGBTQ+ punk icons to a new generation. Curated by cultural critic Carlo McCormick, writer and musician Vivien Goldman, and artist and Museum of Sex curator Lissa Rivera, the sprawling show features over 300 objects, including seldom-seen photographs, treasured items from personal collections, such as Johnny Thunders’ leather jacket owned by Manic Panic’s Tish and Snooky, and visual art by queer artists, like David Wojnarowicz, who influenced and were influenced by punk musicians.

The exhibition explores everything from punk’s intersection with the sex industry, gay leather culture’s influence on punk fashion, the deep impact of queer culture on punk’s roots, and more. More than sheer shock value, Punk/Lust asserts that punk’s transgressive aesthetics were a radical and rebellious political critique of heteronormativity, which continues to resonate today. them. spoke with curator Lissa Rivera on the inspiration behind Punk Lust, the difference between punk and disco’s engagement with sexuality, and if she found any resistance to revealing punk’s queer influences.

What initially inspired you to organize Punk Lust?

The exhibition started with Toby Mott’s collection [of punk memorabilia] and his book called Showboat: Punk/Sex/Bodies. For me, I was looking forward to doing this show because punk is such a part of my identity. I grew up with punk. My dad identified as a punk in the 70s and taught me everything about life through his record collection. It was also good to work with both Vivien Goldman and Carlo McCormick.

Vivien was part of the band The Flying Lizards, did her own independent music, and worked with Sounds magazine back in the day. And Carlo knows everyone from New York. So they were able to call people on the phone that they hadn’t talked to in years for the show. The show is really personal for everyone. What was really great is that I was able to trace everything back to queer culture in a way that I don’t feel is done very often.

The exhibition begins with punk’s influences, many of which are queer, like John Waters, Divine, Candy Darling, and others in Warhol’s milieu. What was the influence of queer culture on punk?

I wanted to be able to connect everything back to Andy Warhol and David Bowie. If you read all the history, especially of British punk, they all worshipped Bowie and androgyny in general. Similarly, Warhol did exciting things with the Velvet Underground and their intersection with the queer and trans community in the 1960s, with songs like “Venus in Furs” or “Candy Says.” It would be completely revelatory to any young person that listened to them. Another person who often gets lost in this history is Jayne County, who was roommates with Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis, and was also a part of the Stonewall riots.

It was also interesting to see who Malcolm McLaren was looking at. He was looking at Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and leather culture. There’s more of an intersection with gay leather culture than you would normally assume.

I’m glad you mentioned Jayne County, who emerges as a significant figure in the show.

It was almost unanimous that all the collections coming our way had a ton of material related to Jayne, as well as Debbie Harry. They were both playing on the archetype of the blonde and destroying the Marilyn Monroe image of what femininity is. We were able to put so much of Jayne in this show, which you don’t see as often. Her band had a residency at Max’s

Kansas City, when Debbie Harry was just a waitress and Patti Smith was trying to get in the door. Jayne was already busting people with microphone stands and performing with prosthetic vaginas.

LGBTQ+ culture and politics seem more typically associated with disco during the same period. With the long-standing division between disco and punk, how did their engagement with sexuality differ?

With disco, it was about an ecstatic release coming out of Stonewall. Pre-Stonewall, LGBTQ+ people were used to horrible abuse, having to be in mob-run bars and pay off the cops in order to exist. Disco came out of this opportunity to be public. It was feminine, queer, and embraced people of color. If you’re repressed for a long time and all of a sudden being celebrated, you become much more expressive and realize there’s so much more to discover about life.

It was about creating a world to explore that didn’t just relate to heteronormative expectations. It was also a way to transcend the music charts, because Billboard was controlled by a few white men in a really corporate world. There weren’t many ways to break through, but in clubs, when they were spinning

records, they could compete. There was immense power.

Punk was very anti-commercial; I relate it more to the sex industry.

If you think about the landscape of New York City at the time, people were working in peep shows, and as professional dommes and sex workers. It wasn’t necessarily seen as taboo, but as an exciting way to explore your identity. This was a group of people who worshipped Rimbaud, Jean Genet and William S. Burroughs.

There was freedom because rent was so low you could do phone sex a couple nights a week and have enough money to go out every night. And because it all worked to combat moral norms, there was a sense of excitement.

Punk looked at the hypocritical society of the 1970s, which was simultaneously a return to the restrictive morals of the 50s while Deep Throat became the highest-grossing film of 1972. Punk engaged with these conflicting ideologies and the absurdity of it all. There’s also a certain level of nihilism in punk and a desire to see how far you could push yourself. This is actually true of disco as well. There’s a desire to see how much you could experience life, whether your pleasure was risk or ecstasy.

Many prominent punk musicians played with gender, starting with the New York Dolls, who were wore makeup, platform heels and feminine clothing. How did gender fluidity evolve with punk?

The New York Dolls were directly influenced by Warhol and the Theatre of the Ridiculous, for sure. It’s really interesting because if you listen to Johnny Thunder’s solo work, he has a song called, “I’m A Boy, I’m A Girl.” I wonder what they were tapping into. In the early 1970s, there was a certain level of ambiguity that the movement evolved away from. It seemed to evolve into something that was more specifically geared toward queer offshoots of punk, like homocore or Derek Jarman’s films. There were more directly queer works that weren’t necessarily ambiguous.

You mentioned before that queerness’ influence on punk is often not shown. Did you find any resistance to finding the queer side of punk?

I didn’t really find that. It is funny, though, that when people heard we were doing a punk show about sex, they said, “No one had sex.” I had to explain that it wasn’t about your sex life per se, but about the visual language of sexuality, the use of explicit lyrics and partaking in sex work.

They began to open up. Punk actually wasn’t very sexually decadent at all, which was very different from disco. There were exceptions, of course, but a lot of people mentioned it being a barren time for them, mostly because of heroin and other things.

But, to your point about queerness, with our current cultural climate being less dependent on gendered binaries, many people I talked to were able to speak more freely about their attractions or their desire to be between binaries. The literature in rock magazines at the time was very misogynistic. Now it’s much less so. I don’t feel like the show is revisionist at all. I mean, Amanda Lear was on the cover of Roxy Music’s album, who themselves were so open, sexual and free. Iggy Pop was also effeminate, and there is the later image of him in a dress. Looking at it now, there is a kind of freedom this 1970s generation is feeling. There’s not as much shame now about the spectrum of sexuality or desire.

Iggy Pop Is Fine With Being the Godfather of Punk Over the years, the Michigan-born rocker James Osterberg Jr. — better known by his stage persona, Iggy Pop — has earned a reputation as “the Godfather of Punk.” This is thanks mostly to his tenure as the frontman of the proto-punk band the Stooges, but also because his reckless, sui generis stage presence embodied a gleeful but slightly scary abandon that became synonymous with the genre.

His presence looms over “Punk,” a four-part documentary series about the fashion, politics and musical influences that defined punk rock, which debuted this week on Epix.

Osterberg (credited as Iggy Pop) is an executive producer of the series, along with the fashion designer John Varvatos — which might raise eyebrows given that Varvatos put what some would say was the final nail in punk’s coffin in 2007 by buying CBGB, the hallowed punk club at 315 Bowery, and replacing it with one of his boutiques.

In a phone interview, Osterberg defended Varvatos and also discussed the Sex Pistols, drugs and his favorite music critics. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Punk, in its original form, was nothing if not iconoclastic. How do you feel when critics, fans or other musicians call you the “Godfather of Punk”?

Once it gets into reverence, does that bother me?

Yeah.

I was, initially, but now I don’t mind being called “Godfather of Punk;” I suppose I’ve grown into the suit!

There are occasional personal feelings that come from one-on-one interactions, when someone lets me know something genuine about the role that my work played in their life. When any type of music is still enjoying its vitality — that’s a social influence. And then, as people carry on that style and figure out how to further produce it, the style becomes academic, by really imperceptible steps.

Even in country music: There is a hell of a big stretch going from Hank Williams to Garth Brooks, buddy! That process of change happens in all genres. Rock ‘n’ roll sort of took a beating and is now basically irrelevant, because it got mined to death. But whatever anybody wants to call me is O.K. I’ve been called worse things than the “Godfather of Punk”!

You’ve said that the Sex Pistols were honest with their fans because they always told their fans that they shouldn’t be trusted.

I said “They always thought they were honest.” I don’t remember applauding anybody for saying “Don’t trust me.” I was much more impressed with their onstage ability than whether they were swindled out of thousands of dollars by their manager [Malcolm McLaren]. I just don’t care. But that doesn’t mean [McLaren] was not an effective Barnum-type showman. He was, you know? And that’s fine.

The group, as a whole, had a lot of flair. Johnny Lydon is very good at the things you’re supposed to be good at when you front a group. And [the guitarist Steve Jones] was a really good foil for Johnny, especially when it came to doing publicity. Everybody contributed something musically, or in terms of image, to the group.

In “Punk,” the deaths of the Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen are presented as examples of how drugs essentially killed the punk movement.

There was a lot of that stuff around the music business as I experienced it, as a punky type. And it was the hard stuff, so there was always a price to be paid. LSD and marijuana were the stuff being pushed in 1966 and 1967. And taking those drugs has a way of breaking down some barriers that people need to hold themselves together. But while those barriers are being broken down, you also get insights about life and the world around you, especially if you’ve grown up as a milk-fed American lamb to the slaughter, as we all were when we were told, “Go to Vietnam, but don’t ask why.” All that.

Cocaine came in next. And it seemed like a good drug because, after a while, the weed and the LSD weren’t doing it anymore. Some people were getting into speed, but cocaine was a more upscale stimulant that, in effect, kept the party going. Eventually, people’s nerves were shot, their patience had worn thin, and many turned to opioid drugs, as well as Valium and other soporifics. Those are very subtle, dangerous drugs.

“These are fun songs. Done for a laugh. God Save The Queen? It’s kind of high camp, in a way,” said Sex Pistols singer John Lydon in 2002. “You certainly don’t think it’s going to be taken as a declaration of civil war.”

how the Sex Pistols made the most controversial song in history But exactly 40 years ago, that was precisely how the Sex Pistols’ second single was taken. God Save The Queen, a thrilling three-minute-nineteen-second blast of disillusionment, was released to coincide with the Queen’s silver jubilee in the summer of 1977.

The band’s alternative national anthem rocked the establishment, was banned by the BBC and led to Lydon becoming the poster boy for the nation’s moral outrage. Routinely attacked in the street by disgusted members of the public, he endured machetes in the kneecaps and bottles in the face.

But the song also sold by the shedload, carried one of the most iconic record sleeves of all time and announced the mainstream arrival of punk, arguably this country’s most famous and recognisable youth movement. Furthermore, a Thames boat trip by the band past the Houses of Parliament to promote the single has become one of music’s most infamous publicity stunts. If the Pistols and punk in its purest form didn’t last very much beyond that heady summer, then God Save The Queen has certainly endured.

The song has been ranked one of the greatest of all time by Rolling Stone, and it’s included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list. Its Jamie Reid-designed cover, featuring the Queen with newspaper print gagging and blinding her, was voted the best record sleeve ever by Q magazine.

So how did the song come about? Why did it cause such outrage? And to what degree was this stoked by the band’s svengali-like manager, Malcolm McLaren?

Broadly-speaking, the punk movement happened due to the successive governments’ failings of the young working class in the decades after the war. Bored of strikes and limited job prospects, and disenchanted

with the stiff and accepted ways of doing things, young people found their voice by adopting a DIY ethic in what they wore and the music they played. Loud, anti-establishment, iconoclastic and angry, the punks wanted to shake society from the ground up. It was against this backdrop that four young, boisterous, snotty Londoners — Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock and Lydon, who went by the stage name Johnny Rotten — formed the Sex Pistols in 1975.

The band were magnets for trouble, which thrilled record companies looking to cash in on this new youth trend. They were signed by EMI in October 1976 on a £40,000, two-year contract. But if God Save The Queen was to prove controversial the following summer, then events in the intervening months were no less dramatic.

On 1 December 1976, Queen — the rock group, and the Pistols’ EMI labelmates — pulled out of an appearance on Today, a live TV show presented by Bill Grundy, because singer Freddie Mercury had toothache.

Desperate, EMI convinced the Pistols, who’d just released their first single Anarchy in the UK, to fill Queen’s place.

Live on air and goaded by Grundy himself, guitarist Jones — drunk on green room wine — called the presenter a “dirty f-----” and a “f------ rotter”. There was a national outcry. “TV fury at rock cult filth”, raged

We’re the flowers in the dustbin We’re the poison in your human machine We’re the future, your future

the splash of the Daily Mirror the next day, as viewers jammed phones. “The filth and the fury!” screamed other editions. Punk had screamed its arrival, live on national television.

Within days of the broadcast Sir John Read, EMI’s chairman, told disgusted shareholders that his board — which included establishment luminaries including then-Shadow Chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe and Lord Delfont, the theatre impresario — were reconsidering the Pistols’ contract. “We will do everything we can,” Sir John said, “to restrain the Sex Pistols’ public behaviour, although this is a matter over which we have no real control.”

On 6 January 1977, EMI dropped the Pistols. The band took revenge, of sorts, lambasting the label’s “stupid fools” in their song EMI. It was not the first time in that era when EMI caved into the nation’s moral outrage. The following year it pulled funding from Monty Python’s Life of Brian film just days before the shoot started, forcing George Harrison to step in with the cash.

But anger at the Pistols was not confined to the label and to newspaper editors. The band’s behaviour seemed to genuinely offend the nation. Planned concerts were cancelled by universities and town halls. The outrage was even shared by students; half the audience of students at a Leeds concert were reported to have walked out on the band.

It was against this febrile backdrop that the Pistols had started recording what was to become their album Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols.

The album was recorded piecemeal between late 1976 and summer 1977 at Wessex Sound Studios, a converted Victorian church hall in Highbury, London.

One of the songs was God Save The Queen, a rant about the monarchy. “God Save The Queen, she’s not a human being, and there’s no future, and England’s dreaming”, Rotten sang. The song was set to a propulsive beat and a monster three-chord guitar riff written by Glen Matlock, who was soon to be replaced on bass by the doomed Sid Vicious. Matlock has said the riff was influenced by the 1950s rockabilly of Eddie Cochran, and you can hear C’mon Everybody’s rhythm in the opening chords. Lead guitar player Jones gave the song almighty welly, its bassline mimicking the main riff.

On 10 March 1977 the Pistols signed a new contract with A&M Records, the US label founded by easy listening trumpeter Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. The signing took place at 8am outside Buckingham Palace, a twofingered salute to the establishment. A&M’s plan was to release God Save The Queen imminently, and they pressed 25,000 copies.

However after the signing of the contract, the band went to the label’s offices to celebrate. Alcohol flowed and things quickly got out of hand. The party turned into “total bedlam”, according to the band. Sid Vicious walked blood all over the office due to a foot injury, there was a punch-up and – according to some reports – an amorous Steve Jones took the boss’s secretary into the top man’s private bathroom, where the sink was ripped from the wall.

The band went straight from A&M’s offices to Wessex Studios, which happened to be next to a school. When the kids started climbing the playground fence to see the band spill out of a Bentley with bottles of vodka cascading behind them, the headmistress called the police.

A&M’s top brass got wind of the situation and dropped the Pistols just days later. Most of the 25,000 copies of God Save The Queen were destroyed (the few remaining copies are among the most valuable On 7 June, the band played a gig on a boat as it records in the world today). floated past the House of Commons, two days before the Queen did the same as part of her official The band were once again label-less. But on 18 May, celebrations. The police arrested members of the they signed with Virgin, who’s boss Richard Branson party when the boat docked, despite Branson’s decided to rush release God Save The Queen two protestations. weeks later to coincide with the Queen’s jubilee celebrations. Lydon claims that he was wasn’t even The event delighted fans but, once again, shocked aware that it was the jubilee that summer. Either the nation. But McLaren, it seems, knew exactly what way, God Save The Queen was released on 27 May as he was doing. By that point the Pistols had become the nation prepared its bunting and its street parties. a circus. The whole thing was a brilliantly calculated The single sold 150,000 copies in one day, rising to publicity stunt. “It was a fantastic thing,” McLaren 200,000 in its first week. said. “You couldn’t buy the record, you couldn’t hear the record, you couldn’t see the group play, yet it was However, due to the content and the cover, the BBC unquestionably outselling Rod Stewart.” refused to play it. The song was held off the number one spot in the following weekend’s chart by Rod Lydon has said that the public outrage was palpable: Stewart’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It. The band “If they’d have hung us at Traitors’ Gate, it would have and McLaren sensed skulduggery, believing that the been applauded by 56 million people… We declared record industry had colluded to keep the song off the war on England without meaning to.” top spot.

Britain was a very different place then. Society was The papers, rather predictably, went bonkers at the unpermissive and subversion still wasn’t broadly blatant disrespect. “Punk Rock Jubilee Shocker”, read tolerated. With God Save The Queen, the Sex one headline. “Jubipunk Sex Pistols ‘Pin Up’ Shocks Pistols turned a national celebration on its head.

Palace”, said another.

With one brutal jab of their safety pin, they burst the establishment’s lofty balloon and changed pop culture forever.

How Vivienne Changed Fashion Forever

Tartan, zippers, leather, safety pins, a dash of heroin and a general disdain for greater society.

In the mid-seventies, this was the defacto uniform for a disenfranchised generation of British youth. They mocked the government. They listened to the Sex Pistols. And, if they could afford it, they wore Vivienne Westwood.

They were Punks.

In the early seventies, Westwood, along with then partner Malcolm McLaren, orchestrated a stylistic revolution—a backlash against the flared denim and wide lapels that dominated the sixties. Their store, through its many iterations, cemented an unprecedented relationship between music, fashion and counter-culture, shaping generations of fashion designers who followed. Their small shop at 430 Kings Road became the cornerstone of the most monumental shift in youth culture since the advent of Rock ‘N Roll itself.

And while Westwood and McLaren certainly did not invent punk, no one commoditized and marketed the movement as successfully.

Situation, location and time period are all crucial to fully grasping the impact of 430 Kings Road. The store began in the back of Paradise Garage, a small outpost in London’s Chelsea district. In 1970, Chelsea was experiencing surging growth, quickly transforming into an artist enclave. Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and all four Beatles counted themselves as locals. Boutiques sprouted up everywhere. They sold bohemian ephemera, featuring everything from silk caftans to imported rugs. Uninterested in such hippie fantasies, McLaren, an art school dropout, and Westwood, a schoolteacher, began to hock symbols of ‘50s kitsch out of Garage. The two were more intrigued by early fifties Rock ‘N Roll, preferring Elvis and Chuck Barry to the glam Rock-Pop taking over the airwaves at those times back then.

Soon enough, Paradise Garage shut down, and by 1971 the couple took over the space. Expanding on their brand of romanticizing the 1950s, they transformed the space into Let It Rock. With the expansion, Westwood, who was still perfecting her sewing, began to sell reinterpreted renditions of Teddy Boy fashion.

The style, which harkened back to post-WWII England, mainly composed of flamboyantly colored zoot suits, drainpipe pants and thick sole creepers.

Around the same time, resentment started to surface.

The established super groups of the sixties—The Stones, Beatles, etc.—felt stale. They were all glitz and glamour, no edge. Hardened New York youth felt disconnected, that the established music scene did not accurately portray their economic struggle and turmoil. McLaren, who was living in-between London and New York, saw this emerging dissidence and positioned himself to seize the opportunity. He began to manage The New York Dolls, a key player in the proto-punk movement.

Despite their quick demise, The Dolls’ influence was massive. They played fast, hard, loud and aggressive.

When they performed, McLaren had them fitted in all red uniforms, reminiscent of Soviets.

A student of the Situationists—the French political group who believe in absurd performances and propaganda to invoke political change—McLaren himself saw something in the anti-capitalist, anticulture ethos of proto-punks like The Dolls. They rejected the establishment, felt sympathetic to Stalin and outwardly rejected Nixon. More than just resonate with their ideals, Mclaren knew he could package and mass-produce their malcontent.

By they time he returned to London, Let It Rock was no more. McLaren and Westwood had turned their attention to the disgruntled youth directly in front of them. The decaying façade out front was stripped away and the shop took on a new name, Too Fast To Live, To Young To Die. While the new store still looked towards the past—with influences such as Marlon Brando and James Dean—the slick leather jackets and heavy distressing fit in well with the proto-punk movement that was quickly crossing the pond. Too Fast To Live stocked ripped black T-shirts repaired with safety pins and inflammatory words such as “PERV,” “ROCK” and “SCUM” emblazoned across the chest. Vests had zippers directly over the nipple and pants were adorned with glitter glue. Bleached chicken bones were attached to certain pieces. The goal was to recreate the heroes of youth rebellion in the here and now. Westwood pictured how the Wild Ones dressed in the face of insurmountable debt in the middle of Chelsea, and the results were surprisingly prescient.

The store’s name was quite apt—within two years, Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die was scrapped for a new retail experience. As proto-punk evolved from a niche sub-genre to a serious musical movement, Westwood and McLaren delved deeper into the subculture. No longer interested in romanticized icons, they immersed themselves amongst the neon-colored hair and tight spandex that populated their neighborhood. Employee Glen Mattlock—future bassist of the Sex Pistols—would help erect three pink rubberized letters on the shops façade that would change Punk forever: SEX.

Easily the most famous iteration of the store, SEX was a backlash against all things retail. The windows— like those of an actual fetish shop—were opaque, forcing those interested to physically walk inside in order to even know what was for sale. The shop was open sporadically, sometimes for only a few hours in the evening. McLaren famously explained, “Making money was never even a goal.” The store interior was covered with a privately sourced material from the Pettonville Rubber Company: a spongy, pink rubber that was pressed against all walls to create the appearance of a womb. Punk icon JORDAN operated as the overseer, clad in full bondage.

SEX was as much about attitude as it was about fashion. While the tight latex and burnt T-shirts were key pieces, the shop’s main commodity was punk itself. As early as 1972—back in the Too Fast To Live days—Mattlock, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten, all future Sex Pistols, were regulars at 430 Kings Road.

Other key punk figures such as Mark Prionni, Gene October and Mark Stewart would also make frequent stops to hang with McLaren, buy Westwood’s designs and smoke unseemly amounts of cigarettes. By the late ‘70s, when Punk kicked into high-gear, SEX was no longer a store, but a destination as inextricably linked with the scene as leather and dyed hair.

Even before managing the Dolls, McLaren took interest in Mattlock and his infant group, The Strand. Following his stint in New York working with the Dolls, McLaren became enamored with the scene developing in Lower Manhattan and reshaped The Strand using that proto-punk essence. The result? The Sex Pistols. In 1977, in honor of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols released their now seminal counter-culture anthem, “God Save The Queen.”

The record was outwardly rejected by nearly every radio station and became one of the most censored recordings in British history.

While critics protested, fans flocked and sales skyrocketed. The single moved 150,000 units in its first week, a unequivocal, massive success. The group’s and only album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, would go on to hit number one on the British charts. Punk had officially arrived, and at the Top of the Pops.

This shocking commercial boom coincided with the final iteration of 430 Kings Road, Seditionaries. Following the success of SEX, architect David Connor took over the space and remodeled the store to mimic Dresden following World-War II. Trading straightup sex appeal for hardcore fetishism, Westwood fully embraced BDSM culture and made it central to her fashions. By the late Seventies, McLaren and Westwood—with significant help fromm shop manager JORDAN, credited for creating the punk look—were styling and managing the most successful punk act in the world.

Through McLaren’s work with the Sex Pistols, the duo managed to dictate the punk aesthetic, dominate the charts, airwaves and streets simultaneously.

In the midst of their 1978 American tour, Syd Vicious walked off stage and the Sex Pistols called it quits. Shortly after, McLaren and Westwood would do the same. By 1984, the couple separated, with McLaren focusing on music management and Westwood switching lanes from street to high-fashion, where she became an international success following her seminal 1981 collection, “Pirate.”

While 430 Kings Road did briefly shut its doors, the shop has since re-opened, now managed by McLaren and Westwood’s son, Joseph Corre and half-brother Ben Westwood. No longer a punk emblem, the shop, now called World’s End, operates as a working museum, selling both mainline Westwood and archival pieces from the Seditionaries hey-day.

For those who have spent any significant time on Grailed, you may have noticed a bit of a pattern. The most sought after items on the site, from vintage Helmut Lang and Raf Simons to ENFANTS RICHES DÉPRIMÉS, share a thematic tie. Whether it’s the destroyed tees and bondage straps or inflammatory logos and burn marks, a certain aggressive, counter-culture mentality runs through our favorite finds. To varying degrees, they all embody the punk spirit birthed at SEX. This is no accident. Even Kawakubo and Takahashi are not immune to the running obsession with Westwood. All of the above, and more, have cited her as a major influence. Even following SEX, Westwood was one of the earliest designers to politicize fashion, boldly expressing her often controversial viewpoints.

As with most things, King’s Road is not what it once was. The dilapidated melting pot of contempt, colored hair and ill-tempered youth has since become a bustling downtown commercial hub. Yet, 430 Kings Road still remains.

QUEER PUNK 7 Bands Bringing Camp And Queerness Back To Punk

In an uncertain world, these U.K. musicians are showing it’s essential to be loud, proud, and fabulous.

In my early teens I was largely interested in three things: kissing boys, kissing girls, and punk rock. I loved punk music because it was bratty and it felt good, but I sometimes struggled to carve out a place for myself within the scene. I always seemed to wind up at shows dominated by straight men, and I got little affection in return from an art form I invested so much in. At 15, I was already jaded by the unspoken sexism of my local scene — like the hardcore shows where I’d routinely get hit hard in the face by guys three times my size, or the male friends who assumed that my gender meant that I couldn’t possibly understand punk in the same way as them. I longed for something that I could call mine.

So, just like most frustrated girls into aggressive music, I eventually discovered riot grrrl. In bands like Bratmobile and Bikini Kill I found a style of punk where the loudest voices belonged to women who talked openly about the type of sexism I’d encountered, and who countered it by prioritizing the safety and happiness of girls at their shows. In retrospect, the scene wasn’t perfect — the genre has been criticized for not doing enough to include women of color. But for me, hearing punk with an explicitly feminist message was revelatory, and I was ravenous for more. The brazen, personal-is-political style soon led me to discover U.S. queercore.

Queercore as I knew it then was hardcore punk with explicitly “queer” lyrics that engaged with gender and sexuality in non-normative ways. Bands like Limp Wrist and their invitations to Come out of the closet and into the pit! tapped into a part of myself that I was still trying to understand. But it wasn’t just queercore’s lyrical content that thrilled me; it was the showy vocal delivery and outrageous performance styles too. Between Black Fag, with their elaborate costumes and hardcore send-ups, and Pansy Division’s tongue-incheek kitsch aesthetic, I quietly developed a lust for camp in its many forms, which has stayed with me into adulthood.

Camp and queerness are, of course, two different things. For me, camp is the spirit of queerness enacted: it’s all about outwardly revelling in that which feels somehow deviant from social norms.

Sometimes camp has nothing to do with sexuality, and everything to do with how a performer constructs a relationship with their audience — female pop stars like Madonna and Katy Perry thrive on camp, but you wouldn’t call them queer.

In the definitive 1964 text Notes on “Camp,” Susan Sontag writes that “the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Queer punk relishes playing up to this, often in performances which take social prejudices about queer people — for example, that they’re a threat to the nuclear family, or spend all their money on tiaras and glitter — and remake them as uglier, cuter, and more powerful than they were before. Punk rock in 2016, I am pleased to report, has camp in rhinestoned bucketloads.

Perhaps due to the widespread galvanization of previously marginalized voices through social media and activist circles, voices in the punk scene feel prouder than ever. It’s happening on both sides of the Atlantic: in the U.S., bands gathering steam include New York garage duo PWR BTTM, and G.L.O.S.S. from Olympia, Washington, who play self-described badgalcore punk (and whose hard-as-nails Trans Day of Revenge EP is out now). But these queer voices feel especially loud in the U.K., where DIY venues that place huge premiums on community and inclusivity are springing up in a number of cities, and bands are responding to these new spaces which embrace them. In honor of that, here are some of the best bands currently being unapologetically queer, camp, or both, in British punk.

1. Shopping Shopping are upbeat, rhythmic, and queer-positive.

Protest, particularly against capitalism, runs through their music, as “For Your Money” on their 2013 LP Consumer Complaints attests (I had a job/ Yeah it nearly killed me). Queer pride is, and should always be, tied up with critique of social hegemony, so it’s exciting to see a band like this one whose queerness is linked with other forms of dissent. At live shows, Shopping is boundlessly energetic. Musically, as on their upbeat 2015 album Why Choose, they’re sparse but distinctive, with fast drums, catchy hooks, and a post-punk strut.

2. TOWEl Towel are from Bristol, or your nightmares, and they are Roxy, Rosa, and Camille. The trio play keyboardinflected punk which often starts shyly, before it sneaks up on you with devastating crescendos and furious vocals. The simple melodies and percussion back up vital lyrics which speak to the routine difficulties of being a queer woman. In “feed yr guts,” the line Taking up space is a challenge every day is repeated over and over, and sometimes it’s all you need just to hear someone else saying that.

3. actual crımes London three-piece Actual Crimes’s songs mash together sonic elements that shouldn’t match up, giving a discordant texture to their music that marks them out from anyone else on the list. That’s what happens on “Trash” from Actual Crimes’s 2015 EP 5 Songs, when raw guitars and drums contrast with a lilting soprano vocal to jarring, thrilling effect. Vocalist and guitarist Kirsty Fife explained to The Girls Are in 2016: “I don’t really write songs about big P politics, but I think of the stuff we do as politicized because of the position and perspective I write from (as a workingclass queer fat femme). I think making music or doing any sort of cultural work as a marginalized person is inherently political.”

4. cruısıng With Irish punks Cruising, you get everything you might expect from a band that is ironically named after an Al Pacino film about a serial killer who targets gay men. The four-piece are equal parts mad as hell and delightfully seedy, especially on their single “You Made Me Do That,” where Benni Johnston’s vocals are just vague and echoey enough to transport you to a seedy club with smoke machines and unidentifiable pink drinks. Elsewhere on “Woman,” vocals begin more gently before leading up to an assured, affirming chorus with lyrics that candidly embrace non-normative sexuality: Say who you are and shout your name.

5. skınny gırl dıet South Londoners Skinny Girl Diet are the punks I wish I’d had in my life growing up; they’re reminiscent of the more urgent moments of Hole, and the vocals on their Reclaim Your Life EP sound like each vocalist has her bottom lip jutted out in a permanent brat-pout. Performative femininity is as camp as anything — again, it’s all about exaggeration — and this particular brand of it is hyper-girly (and often clad in latex). It’s also not afraid to stand up for itself: the band’s upcoming release Heavyflow features a period blood-stained cover (above), confronting taboos which plague many female bodies. In a genre where explicit femininity is rare, it’s really refreshing to have bands like this one (as well as their excellent peers Dream Wife, who have a similar sound and look) who will happily shove it in your face.

6. dregs London’s Dregs comprises members of a whole heap of other bands (including the recently disbanded Good Throb and U.S. post-punk mainstays Self Defense Family), and their experience shows. They make hardcore punk that is urgent and deliberate in its delivery. It’s inspirational to hear a band that selfidentifies as queer, and which is made up entirely of women, playing straight-up hardcore — a scene that doesn’t always feel like the most inclusive. I’d wager that it’s because of this subversive energy that Dregs are a cut above a lot of other U.K. hardcore bands.

Headbang in your room to the frenetic “Sketch” if you know what’s good for you.

7. daskınsey4 Self-described on Bandcamp as “benders with agendas,” Brighton band Daskinsey4 are bold about their queer politics and identities, and includes members from across the LGBT spectrum. Their sincere lyrics directly refer to queer sexuality (for example, You didn’t seem like the kind of girl to act like this/ but then I saw you kissing her/ And I could tell that you really meant it on “Making Out”) and are delivered by singer Maeve in a vocal which is by turns swaggering and fragile, with a penchant for the dramatic. Perhaps the most indie-influenced of the bands on this list, Daskinsey4 make guitar music reminiscent of The Long Blondes, another band I idolized in my teens and purveyors of high camp.

Their songs center on personal relationships, and stress that your romance with yourself is as vital as any you might share with anyone else.

“IF PUNK BIRTHED A THOUSAND GARAGE BANDS, IT CERTAINLY BIRTHED AS MANY DESIGNERS.” -Andrew Blauvelt

Arturo Vega Ramones showcase poster 1975 Arturo Vega (1947-2013) was a visual artist and is perhaps best remembered for his graphic design work for The Ramones. Vega created the band’s famous logo, a take-off of the Seal of the President of the United States, in which he replaced the eagle’s clutched arrows with a baseball bat, and the nation’s motto, E pluribus unum, with the Ramone’s Hey Ho, Let’s Go. The eagle was a recurring motif for Vega in his own art work and one that he began to associate with the Ramones. This early poster for an unsigned bands contest at CBGB features a photograph by Vega of the artist wearing an eagle-clad belt buckle.

Jamie Reid poster for The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle 1979 Jamie Reid is perhaps punk’s best known graphic designer, having crafted the unique visual look of the Sex Pistols’ materials. Reid embraced the situationist technique of detournement, or cultural hijacking.

In this poster to promote the film, The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, Reid appropriates the advertising campaign of American Express credit cards (“Your Name Here”). The music industry itself becomes the target, including the artist (“the prostitute”), the record company (“the pimp”), and the music business as a whole (“the swindle”).

The posters were withdrawn and most copies destroyed when American Express threatened legal action.

Peter Saville poster for Joy Division Unknown Pleasures 1979 This poster by Peter Saville, who first came to prominence for his designs for Factory Records, was issued to promote the debut album by Joy Division. The image is of successive waves recorded from a pulsar and was found in an astronomy textbook by band member Bernard Sumner. Saville reversed the image from black-on-white to white-onblack, conjuring the darker atmospherics of the album’s sound.

The design has attained an iconic status, particularly of late, even spawning the term “joyplot” in data visualization, which is used to describe a style representing successive and comparative histograms.

M&Co poster for Talking Heads Remain in Light 1980 Envisioning the look they wanted for their next album, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz of the Talking Heads worked with Walter Bender and Scott Fisher of the MIT Media Lab to create the computer-generated images used on this poster.

Weymouth and Fisher shared a passion for masks that drove the digital manipulation of the band members’ portraits. The four fighter planes flying in formation allude to the original title for the album, Attack Melody, and were a nod to Weymouth’s father, who served in the US Navy.

Tibor Kalman’s M&Co created the graphic design and the typographic treatments for the album and poster, including the use of the upside down “A” in Talking Heads.

Jamie Reid Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the U.K. tour poster 1976 Featuring London punk icon, Soo Catwoman, this very rare one-off magazine was designed

by Jamie Reid for sale on the Sex Pistols’ 1976 Anarchy tour. It features graphics and slogans from Reid’s political magazine, Suburban Press, which he founded in 1970. Reid remains the most well-known and influential graphic artist of the punk eraIllustration: Jamie Reid

The Modern Lovers: Our 1986 Feature, Funny How Love Is Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers was like some love affairs: passion, pain, and then a bad breakup. A reissue of their first few albums brings back memories of a band that could have been the biggest of the ‘70s if it had only survived Jonathan.

“We don’t want some girl to fool around with / We don’t want some girl to ball / We’re the Modern Lovers from Boston, Massachusetts / And we came here tonight to say / We only want a girl we care about / Or we want nothing at all…” —Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, 1973 Jonathan Richman is the Mr. Rogers of Rock, the Grandma Moses of Pop Music, the Walt Whitman of Wimp, a wholesome Lou Reed, and a hopeless romantic.

His band, the Modern Lovers, were legends before anyone had heard of them.

They could have been the biggest band of the ’70s. They were probably the first art band, preceding the Talking Heads by a number of years.

They were a new-wave band long before punk was a musical term. While everyone else back then was going to extremes to be outrageous, the Modern Lovers bent over backwards to be normal. While everybody else was into glitter, makeup, and platform shoes, the Modern Lovers wore T-shirts, so you could see from their arms the kind of work they did; short hair, so you could see their faces; and sneakers (they were just as tall as they appeared).

When everyone else was smashed on coke and Quaaludes, the Modern Lovers were singing songs like “I’m Straight.” They were the only ones at their concerts not stoned. And when everyone was into the modern world, the Modern Lovers were praising old world virtues and values.

Despite, or perhaps because of, their eccentricities, the Modern Lovers became the darlings of rock critics and trendsetters. Record companies begged to sign them.

Perhaps they were too virtuous, too straight, too old world, or too modern, but when the opportunity came knocking at their door, they tried to sneak out the back. They did everything they could not to succeed, and finally, as if to guarantee failure, they did the only thing left—they broke up. ***

There are three people on the other lines at the bank and on Jonathan’s there’s eleven, but that’s fine, ’cause Jonathan’s in heaven. He’s got a crush on the new teller.

Jonathan’s in touch with the modern world. Jonathan’s in love with rock ‘n’ roll, Massachusetts when it’s late at night, and the neon when it’s cold. He’s in love with Route 128 by the power lines.

He loves to drive to the Stop ‘N’ Shop late at night with his AM radio on.

Jonathan, Jonathan, when you walk into the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, where do you go first?

“First I go to the room where they keep the Cézannes, but if I had by my side a girlfriend, then I could look through the paintings.

I could look right through them, because (drums) I’d have found something that I understand. I understand a girlfriend.” (“Girlfriend”) How do you spell that?

“G-I-R-L-F-R-E-N.” Hey, Ernie [Brooks, bass]. What’s with Jonathan and girls?

“That’s what he wanted. A girlfriend. Someone he could share his dreams with. Jonathan was one of those kids who was totally in his own world. He did not know how to talk to girls. He put them up on a pedestal. He’d visit girls up on the astral plane and visit them at night. Some of the girls he intercepts up there he may have known from other lives.”

“Hey, Ernie?”

“Whaa, Jonathan? It’s six o’clock in the morning?”

“I entered her dream last night. I know I entered her dream. I…I don’t know if I should have done that.”

“No, Jonathan, that’s wrong. You shouldn’t have done that.”

Jonathan was still a virgin. The girl who Jonathan wrote all those songs about ended up in the hospital. That’s who “Hospital” was about (“When you get out of the hospital / Let me back into your life / When you get out of the dating bar / I’ll be here to get back into your life”).

She was sensitive. She understood him. “She cracked / I’m sad / But I won’t… / She did things / I don’t / She’d eat garbage / Eat shit and get stoned / I stay alone / Eating health food at home” (“She Cracked”).

Before he was a Modern Lover, Jonathan was frustrated. Big dreams. No friends. He grew up in Natick, a Boston suburb, dropped out of high school at 16, moved to New York City at 18, worked as a Wall Street messenger and as a busboy at Max’s Kansas City, hung out at Lou Reed’s house, moved back to Boston.

Jonathan didn’t have a standard voice. He just wanted to show the world that anyone could do it. All you had to have was feeling.

People thought it took courage to perform alone when you couldn’t sing and only knew two chords on the guitar, but it didn’t take courage. It was something Jonathan wanted to do so bad, no one could have stopped him.

Ernie Brooks, bass: It must have been in the winter of ’72 that scenemaker Danny Fields brought New York Post rock critic Lilian Roxon to the Speakeasy in Cambridge to hear us play. The Modern Lovers were a little Boston band when her article appeared and suddenly all the record companies wanted to take us to dinner.

Warner Brothers flew us to California to make an album. We went into the studio in Burbank and played all our songs. It was a little test, just a demo tape, but it was the only recording we ever finished. Years later it ended up becoming our first album.

Jerry Harrison, keyboards: When we got back to Boston, we tried, through the summer of 1972 and into 1973, to decide what to do with all the offers. We were deciding between Danny Fields; working with Steve Paul; David Geffen with A&M; and then Warner Brothers, who flew in a whole raft of managers. We had a huge basement in Arlington where we rehearsed, so we brought them all back there. David’s father owned a liquor store, so he got some liquor and we had an amazing concert. The managers thought we were fantastic.

We interviewed each one for hours. We asked them what books they read and what they thought about this and that, but what we were really asking was what their morality was. We thought of ourselves as a cause and we didn’t want to be ruined by something we thought would take away the purity of what we were doing. Meanwhile, we were destitudinally broke. We lived off record company dinners, which were once or twice a week. Once in a while, Jonathan’s parents would visit. His father, who sold beef to army bases, brought along huge packages of Table Top pies and his mom brought a big fluffy sweater, which Jonathan had to put on.

Ernie: At first we rejected the good managers, and by the time we realized we needed one of those good managers, we proved ourselves so difficult, no good manager would touch us.

Jonathan, Jonathan. I want to know something. Have you ever been to Bermuda?

Yeah, my band once played down there.

The Modern Lovers had a friend whose cousin was the musical director at the Inverurie Hotel. They alternated with the Esso Steel Band and the Fiery Limbo Dancers, who’d do the limbo with flaming sticks and rolled around on broken glass. Every time the Modern Lovers played, they drove the tourists out.

Jonathan, what did you like about Bermuda?

Something in the air that kept soothing me down, making me feel better all around.

What did you see?

I saw how stiff I was and I changed it just because. I realized how stiff I’d been and I didn’t want to be like that again, in Bermuda.

Miss Christine, of Frank Zappa’s group Girls Together Outrageoously (G.T.O.s), was found dead this morning in the quiet seacoast town, where she was a house-guest of the Modern Lovers. Ernie Brooks III had gone to great lengths to rent the Victorian house, with garden and tennis court, from an ambassador who made him promise the band would behave and not use drugs, a promise the band maintained. Miss Christine, who had flown in from L.A., apparently with a pharmacy of drugs, overdosed her first night there. Within a week, the band had to move out.

Jerry: We moved back to Boston and eventually signed with Warner Brothers. Warner had a reputation for being able to take on new and unusual acts and also rock ‘n’ roll acts. At that time A&M was doing Cat Stevens. That summer, 1973, we drove to California, to move there because John Cale, who was to produce us, couldn’t leave his psychiatrist.

When we got to California, we moved into Emmylou Harris’s house in Van Nuys, which Warners had found for us. Almost as soon as we got there, things began to fall apart.

Ernie: John Cale kept trying to get Jonathan to play violently.

He’d shout, “Jonathan, attack! Attack!” But Jonathan didn’t want to be mean, he wanted to be nice. Cale got into a big fight with Jonathan. We thought, “We got this far with this sound, why change it now?”

Maybe Jonathan was growing up, but as far as we were concerned, this was causing problems with his music. We were still trying to do the old songs, “Roadrunner,” “Modern World,” “I’m Straight,” and Jonathan was trying to sweeten them up to make them more acoustic. Around that time he wrote “Government Center,” and “Hey There, Little Insect.”

Anyway we started having these fights in the studio. Cale wanted to produce the Modern Lovers that he had heard eight months earlier. Then Kim Fowley cam around. He had a lot of dumb enthusiasm for the new songs. “Make it teenage,” he’d yell from the control room.

There was no argument between Jonathan and Kim, the new producer. But we ended up not being that satisfied with the stuff we did with him.

Johnny Rotten: I don’t listen to music.

I hate all music.

Interviewer: Not one favorite song?

Rotten: Oh, yeah.

Roadrunner,� by the Modern Lovers.

Lou Reed: I created Jonathan.

But I won’t be responsible, like I did it on purpose. No way. Like, Jonathan said if I bad-mouth him it would be OK because I only bad-mouth people I like.

“Pablo Picasso, No On Ever Called Him an Asshole,” I love it. “I’m Straight,” that’s incredible.

One of my big mistakes was turning him on to Alice Baily, that’s where that insect song comes from. I said, “Do you know, Jonathan, that insects are a manifestation of negative ego thoughts? That’s on page 114.” So he got that.

That’s a dangerous set of books. That’s why Billy Name locked himself in his darkroom at Andy Warhol’s Factory for five months.

Around the fall of ’73, Jonathan decided he didn’t like electricity. Eventually, Jonathan decided electricity was evil, because natural resources were consumed to create it, which was unecological.

David: Jonathan was obsessed and we couldn’t talk him out of it. He wanted to play acoustic on street corners and at rest homes, and I was supposed to play a rolled-up newspaper by banging it against my fist. I was the first to leave.

“The band has to learn volume and how to play softer. At this stage, infants wouldn’t like us because we hurt their little ears and I believe that any group that would hurt the ears of infants—and this is no joke—sucks.”

-Jonathan Richman, 1973.

Ernie: Meanwhile, Warners was calling up every day to find out whether we had a manager yet and what was going on with the recording. Jonathan would tell the person from Warners we would finish the record, but when we were on tour we wouldn’t play any of the songs that were going to be on the album.

Of course what a record company wants, if they’re going to put money into an album, is for the band to play the songs on the tour and help sell the album.

Jonathan would tell the record company something that was calculated to upset them.

Warners terminated our contract, and in ’74, the band broke up.

Thirteen years later, Rhino records, through Capital, is reissuing the Modern Lovers’ first albums. David Robinson is in the Cars, Jerry Harrison’s in Talking Heads, and Ernie Brooks plays in a lot of New York bands on the fringes of what’s called the “new music” scene.

There have been many other Modern Lovers, but Jonathan’s still Jonathan, singing songs like “Chewing Gum Wrapper,” “My Jeans,” and “Vincent Van Gogh” (“The baddest painter since Jan Vermeer”).

He has a new album, It’s Time For Jonathan Richman, on Upside Records. He would like his records to be stocked in the international section, next to Charles Aznavour and Maurice Chevalier.

Ernie: In retrospect, I think Jonathan was right.

Maybe we were just too uptight. We were into being in this cool rock ‘n’ roll band, and going “buzz, buzz” in the background of this cute little insect song (“Hey There, Little Insect”) didn’t fit the image we had of ourselves.

Maybe we should have followed him into his vision a little more.

these photographers documented new york’s legendary punk scene From Blondie to the Ramones, i-D spoke to Roberta Bayley and GODLIS to find out just what made CBGB’s so special .

In the 45 years since CBGB’s opened its doors on the Bowery, the club’s legend has hardly faded from memory. Perhaps this is thanks to the many iconic photographs, often taken by Roberta Bayley and David Godlis, that seem to suspend New York’s punk scene in time — like that of a young Patti Smith smoking a cigarette between sets or the Ramones crouched in an alley outside. Chances are if you walked into CBGB’s between 1975 and 1978, you’d be greeted by Roberta, seated at her post by the door where she’d collect the $3 admission. Occasionally, she’d pop back and take a few photos of her friends performing — like Richard Hell with his Heartbreakers, Talking Heads, or Blondie — often to print in Punk Magazine, where she was the chief photographer.

In 1976, Roberta greeted David Godlis (a.k.a. GODLIS) at the door and the two photographers became friends. After moving to New York from Boston, where GODLIS studied photography alongside Nan Goldin, he became fascinated with the underground scene at CBGB’s. It’s well documented in his book History is Made At Night, published just last year.

“By the 70s people perceived New York as not a place they wanted to be. But I can tell you that everybody hanging out at CBGB’s in those days really wanted to be there,” he says. “They knew something was happening. You couldn’t not know it… You’re never guaranteed how long that’ll last and there was that feeling that you don’t want to miss it.”

i-D spoke to Roberta and Godlis, who still live on St. Marks to this day, to find out just what made photographing the iconic New York venue so special.

When did you start getting into photography?

Roberta Bayley: I took a few classes in high school, when I was 15 or 16, and learned about developing in my own darkroom and printing. I was fooling around with taking pictures, but it wasn’t a serious thing and I didn’t study it. I went to college at San Francisco State and the photography department was really popular. Everyone wanted to be a photographer. From the beginning, I started selling photos for almost no money. I didn’t see the point of taking pictures that I couldn’t sell, which was stupid in a way. Now, I could kill myself because I should’ve taken like ten thousand more pictures, especially in certain situations. I did a fair amount with Blondie, just because they were easy to photograph and I travelled with them. I’m glad I stopped when I did because when I look at Godlis, he just has thousands and thousands of rolls of film and I wouldn’t know what to do with that.

How did you come to find CBGB’s?

RB: I came to New York in April 1974 from London, where I’d been living off and on for two or three years. I didn’t know anybody. I just came here. I got a one way ticket. One person had asked me, ‘What do you want to do here?’ You know, when you’re new everybody wants to show you around and so I said I wanted to see the New York Dolls.

It turned out that this guy Dave not only had been their sound guy on the European tour, but he lived directly above Club 82, where the Dolls happened to be playing the next week. When I first saw David Johansen he was wearing a dress, high heels, and he had a bouffant wig on. I just started to get to know people on the scene. I saw Television at Max’s with Patti Smith. Not long after that I met Richard and we started a relationship. That was when Television was doing a residency at CBGB’s and so, Terry Ork, the manager, just said, ‘Can you sit on the door?’ And there would be 20 people there. Bands were looking for a place they could play on a regular basis, learn to perform in front of an audience, learn their craft. It makes sense if you think about it. It’s like The Beatles at The Cavern Club.

DG: It was pretty easy to see in The Village Voice that there was this strange place. I went down there thinking, this looks like a nice place to check out. The Bowery was pretty much empty back then.

There was nothing happening except gas stations and bum hotels and, ‘this must be the place,’ — the place with the awning out front. I walked in and the first person I probably met was Roberta. New York had professional places, where bands with record contracts were playing, but CBGB’s seemed like something off the cuff, different. And that interested me. I had a day job as an assistant, but I always took my camera everywhere. I didn’t expect to take pictures. It wasn’t considered cool and artistic to take pictures of rock and roll stars and these weren’t rock and roll stars anyway, but it was something different. It was a scene.

What was it about the atmosphere of CBGB’s that made it such a great place to make photos?

RB: I took pictures a little bit of all the bands that I liked, but not very much else. I hardly have any pictures of Blondie there because it would be too crowded. That’s why I have good live pictures of the Ramones because there was no one there at the beginning. It was very early. The stage was right up to where the audience is. You knew. You just kind of had a feeling who the cool bands were and who the not cool bands were. And we liked a lot of people in the not cool bands. We just didn’t like their bands.

DG: I was a big fan of Robert Frank and his book, The Americans. It was like a touchstone for me. One picture I had in my mind, of a bunch of kids sitting around a jukebox in a candy store in the 1950s, and I kind of wanted to take a picture like that of the people hanging around CBGB’s. There was great subject matter, whether it was the way people looked and dressed, the way the place looked, there was always something every night. You’re peeing downstairs in the men’s room and you’re like, maybe I should be taking a picture of this? It was so easy and natural under the guise of being weird and strange, you know? If you could get over that it wasn’t really weird and strange, that it was just as natural as could be, that’s why everybody loved it.

Hearing the Ramones didn’t sound like something crazy. It sounded like exactly what you wanted to hear and you wouldn’t hear it anywhere else.

When you were taking these photos did you ever think that you’d still be talking about them, so many years later?

RB: No. I mean, there was a real lull between the mid 80s to mid 90s when there was still an occasional article, but it was mostly ignored. It was right around the time of Please Kill Me coming out, that’s when I had my first gallery show. I’d never sold a print to anybody, ever. When did Nirvana get big? Early 90s? That helped too, that they were referencing those bands. But no, at the time, I didn’t think I’d be talking about it and I certainly didn’t think I’d be making money from it. Or that there’d be museum shows, or anything like that. And it’s still, as far as art goes and sales, it’s still kind of an uphill battle — rock photography.

DG: No. I thought I’d put out a book. But by the time 1980 rolled around and the Sex Pistols burnt out, Sid Vicious and Nancy’s death kind of tanked punk rock and turned it into New Wave, nobody wanted to do a book on those pictures. Then people started calling up because this scene back in the 70s, we think Nirvana is kind of influenced by. I’d been trying to convince people that it was an interesting scene!

It became history, I guess. And at the same time, the thing that had never clearly been defined, which was exactly what happened at CBGB’s, that’s when Please Kill Me came out. And that cleared it up that this thing in New York had happened before this thing in England, and that they were both just as important. I think that everybody there wanted to last a long time. They wanted their music to last a long time, or whatever they were making. In people’s minds, what passes for nostalgia was simply what was going on down there. It was like a lightning bolt hit that place. There were so many ideas and so many interesting things happening there every night. When I was doing my book, all I had to do was put on the records — put on Television, put on Richard Hell — and it just comes right back.

‘We’re back. It’s intense’

Riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill:

Their songs excoriated rape culture, their motto was ‘girls to the front’ – and they inspired Nirvana’s biggest hit. Now Bikini Kill are back with a mission still relevant in 2019 Bikini Kill never intended to reunite. “It wasn’t something that crossed my mind as a possibility or anything that I would want to do,” says drummer Tobi Vail. “Going back in time doesn’t make sense to me.” It wasn’t until 2017, two decades after they’d parted ways, that the pioneering riot grrrl band witnessed a model for doing it. They’d been asked to play a song at a New York event in honour of the Raincoats, prompted by a book about the Londonbased feminist punk group’s self-titled 1979 album.

In that room, Vail witnessed a group often erased from the punk canon writing their own history.

“They were telling their story on their own terms,” recalls Vail. “There’s a power in seizing history. To me, that’s what being a band allows you to access.

If we see historicisation as an institutional force, let’s be inclusive: let women’s voices in.” After that night, Bikini Kill watched as fans called their brief performance a “reunion”. It “felt right”, says Vail, so they decided to do more shows.

Vail is calling from LA, singer Kathleen Hanna’s adopted home town, where the group have been rehearsing prior to the first leg of their tour in the US. She is firm that this it isn’t just a nostalgia trip.

“It doesn’t feel like an irrelevant, punk oldies thing.”

Indeed, it’s hard to tell whether it’s depressing or galvanising that a mission begun three decades ago still feels so relevant. In the wilds of early 90s Olympia, in America’s Pacific Northwest, Bikini Kill’s “revolution girl style now” aimed to radicalise girls and women to take direct action against sexism.

The riot grrrl movement, founded by a coterie of like-minded bands and zine-makers nationwide, was about reclaiming a girlhood spoiled by misogyny.

Bikini Kill tackled rape culture, female solidarity and the pursuit of pleasure in Hanna’s confrontational sing-song vocals, backed by abrasive, lo-fi playing.

At gigs, they famously brought “girls to the front” to provide a sanctuary from the aggression of maledominated punk shows.

Life in the band was tough. While celebrated by peers such as Kurt Cobain (Hanna wrote “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on his bedroom wall, inspiring Nirvana’s biggest hit), they were often abused at shows, with some men turning up specifically to cause trouble. Other feminist punks decried Hanna after the media crowned her the leader of a supposedly non-hierarchical scene. The maledominated music press frequently mocked the band (“Moronic nag-unto-vomit tantrums over stock school-of-Sabbath riffage,” wrote Rolling Stone of their self-titled 1993 EP) or seemed intentionally to misinterpret them: Hanna was repeatedly and wrongly portrayed as a survivor of incestuous abuse.

“It was extremely sexist and condescending,” says Vail of the coverage. “It’s upsetting now, so imagine processing that at the time. People can’t even hear what you’re saying [as a band] because it’s filtered through these institutions.” The riot grrrl movement encouraged boycotting the media. On the rare occasion that Bikini Kill did speak to the press, it wasn’t to promote their work but, says Vail, “to encourage girls everywhere to start their own bands”. Their success can’t be overstated: it’s impossible to imagine today’s landscape without riot grrrl.

After releasing three albums, Bikini Kill played their last show in Tokyo in 1997. “There were interpersonal conflicts,” says Vail. “We’d done everything we wanted to. It just fizzled out.”

Seven years is no mean feat for a young band under such pressure. Vail agrees. “Getting to the end of your 20s, you’re thinking, ‘What am I going to do next?’” She feels warmly towards their younger selves. “When you’re in a band it becomes like a relationship or a family structure, so you all get into your roles and that can become somewhat dysfunctional. We have different skill sets and it’s a healthier lifestyle now – not like we were always nihilistic and self-destructive, but when you get older you figure out how to live and it’s not such a struggle.”

Still, Vail is frustrated that women are still fighting for what riot grrrls wanted in the 90s. “These same issues still exist,” she says. “Being a woman in public is very intense, whether it’s in the public eye or just walking down the street at night by yourself.”

In some respects, Bikini Kill’s once-underground brand of feminism has gone mainstream: the #MeToo movement echoes conversations that riot grrrl opened up. “Obviously we didn’t transform society,” Vail says. Yet feminism has, in some respects, also been defanged. “Whenever feminism intersects with the mainstream, you have to be a little suspicious about whose voices are not being heard,” says Vail.

She admits the same was true of riot grrrl, a very white, middle-class scene. “I remember being like, ‘Well, anyone can be in a band’, but the truth is not everyone has access to information and resources and leisure time, and those privileges get reproduced over and over again.”

Their legacy – plus nostalgia – means that Bikini Kill are now bigger than in their heyday. The venues are larger, the tickets more expensive, the cultural cachet stronger. “We’re in a different reality,” Vail says of what the band can mean today. “We’re doing it because we want to be a part of this conversation about what feminism is in this moment..”

They want to use music “as a tool for enacting feminist mythology or helping to create a language”. More specifically, Vail wants to replicate what the Raincoats did in New York, meaning more women find the band and understand their history, especially those who didn’t hear them the first time around.

They haven’t decided whether Bikini Kill will make new music. Vail says they are being cautious and making decisions based on what feels appropriate personally and politically. But she knows their old songs have new power in today’s modern climate – the desire to question socialisation in Feels Blind, or that riotous call for female togetherness in cult hit Rebel Girl.

Playing them in the rehearsal space has been “physically emotional”, she says. “I’ll be playing drums and Kathleen’s singing and we’re back in that place again. It’s intense. It’s not that since the early 90s the songs have ceased to have meaning, but everything she’s saying feels like it’s

right now.

”

The Stylish Octogenarians of Paris Men’s Fashion Week Are the Faces of a New Unisex Label

For all the complaining we (okay, I) do about social media—the constant scrolling, the oversharing, the thirst traps!—certain moments remind you just how incredible it is to connect with virtually anyone, anywhere. Last night I found a note in my Instagram direct-message folder from a designer I’d never heard of, asking if Vogue Runway’s social media team could tag his brand in an Instagram photo of his grandparents.

“The story is rather funny,” Nompeix tells Vogue.

“They were our first supporters and always pushed us to outdo ourselves. We had them come to our studio one evening so they could see the collection, and on a whim we decided to dress them in Egon Lab, and the magic was instantaneous. They were standing before us, complementing each other, in love.... [It was] timeless. It’s like we were looking at ourselves in the mirror, many years later.”

Wait—grandparents? Was he really referring to the photo I’d just seen in our feed, of an elderly couple in hand-painted and aggressively spiked leather ensembles? The photo with more than 26,000 likes and comments like “goals!”? (One follower even tagged her significant other: “Baby, it’s our future!”)

When fashion week came around in September, Nompeix and Glémarec decided to give Marie-Louise and René a few looks and went to the show venues to catch a glimpse of the action. “When they arrived, it was general hysteria,” Nompeix says. “The [streetstyle] photographers shouted, and everyone wanted to take a selfie with them. After Mugler, they stole the show from Bella Hadid, who was leaving the Palais de Tokyo.”

As it turns out, yes. The couple’s names are MarieLouise and René, and they are 85 and 86 years old, respectively. They’re the grandparents of Florentin Glémarec, one half the design duo behind Egon Lab. He and his cofounder (and real-life partner) Kévin Nompeix launched the unisex brand last year and credit Marie-Louise and René as their earliest fans and current “brand ambassadors.”

Marie-Louise and René look so comfortable in their punkish, fashion-forward looks that you’d be forgiven for wondering if they were former models, artists, or performers. Not quite: She worked at the post office, and he was in the French navy. “They

discovered the fashion world with us,” Nompeix says. “But we must admit that René has always wanted to be in the spotlight. [They are] real stars.”

Consider it the most sincere, uncontrived form of guerrilla marketing…ever? The couple has no doubt brought more eyes to Egon Lab, just as Nompeix and Glémarec are debuting their fall 2020 collection, below, which merges their hard-core spirit with more casual, utilitarian basics. “Our idea [for Egon Lab] is to propose a uniform for the leaders of tomorrow,” Nompeix says. “It’s not political, but full of hope…for an awakening in each person and the desire to build a future together.” (Still, you might appreciate the political jab in the T-shirts and hoodies printed with Make Humanity Great Again.)

Their second collection was picked up by a few independent boutiques, and the designers are working on launching their e-commerce site. “We would like to develop commercially and be sold internationally,” Nompeix adds. “But more than anything, we want Egon Lab to grow and continue to spread our message of hope, acceptance, and love.” Follow them on Instagram to see what Marie-Louise and René wear next.

There’s a new “it couple” in the fashion world, and they’re proving that you’re never too old to try something new.

Marie-Louise and René Glémarec are 85 and 86 years old, respectively, and they’re not your typical street style stars. But they’ve quickly become unofficial brand ambassadors for Egon Lab, a unisex brand launched last year, as originally reported by Vogue.

It all started when the couple’s grandson, Florentin Glémarec, decided to create a clothing collection with his partner, Kévin Nompeix.

“When we announced that we wanted to launch our brand together, Marie-Louise and René pushed us to pursue our dream and do everything to make it happen,” Nompeix told TODAY Style.

The Glémarecs have been Egon Lab’s biggest fans from day one. And after watching the couple try on pieces from the collection with such glee, Glémarec and Nompeix knew they wanted them to represent the brand in style at Paris Fashion Week. So they outfitted the grandparents in coordinating printed coats and sent them on their way to take in the runway shows together.

“It was a really new experience for them,” Nompeix said, recalling the overwhelmingly positive reaction the Glémarecs got from photographers and street style stars alike.