1977: the real pioneers! (3)

"The Idiot": recorded in France with Eno, Bowie, Visconti

Two small thoughts about punk and this year of 1977, which, in itself, is a symbol year when it comes to popular music. The Sex Pistols, and even the following groups, strongly denied what they were resurrecting without wanting to. A beautiful contradiction! As primary musicians, putting an end to virtuoso progressive rock, they returned to an even older period: the rock'n'roll of a Chuck Berry, which yet was one of the targets to destroy (Rotten made a parody of Chuck, who could have passed if it was funny, but «humour» and «punk attitude» never crossed the same path). The punks wanted to be the «year zero» of the music, but they just came back to the good old rock, except badly played, and not very exciting.

Robert Fripp, Eno Bowie, in Berlin: "Heroes"

It was also a complete misunderstanding of what was going on that year.  
1977 was that of four albums recorded on the European continent, and which will form the basis of post punk music until today, These records were the creation of some exceptional artists in a record time: David Bowie, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, not to mention producer Toni Visconti. The single-year release of “Low”, “Heroes”, “The Idiot”, and “Lust for life” are still too underrated today, but New Wave groups had captured the essential contribution. They were a keystone in the history of music, whether it was classical or popular. 

These albums owed not only to the geniuses of the artists mentioned, but also to the German wave «Krautrock» led by Kraftwerk and Neu! , around 1974, groups that themselves influenced Bowie and Eno with a truly new aesthetic. These Dusseldorf Germans played a crucial role until today.

Krafwerk live

I mean, let’s not be radical with the Pistols. It is necessary to distinguish among them, an artist intellectually above the lot, Johnny Rotten, the singer, who himself, in a radio program being devoted to him, asked ""carte blanche" for programming. Those who expected other bands from the punk movement, got jazz, reggae, soul, styles that Malcolm Mc Laren, his mentor, did not expect to hear. Rotten knew very well that his group were artificially created. It was the beginning of the end of the Pistols, and later the singer began to insult the audience who came to see the band by shouting: "How can you pay to see us? You have fallen into the trap, you brainless sheep!”.

Rotten was fired, and Mc Laren put at the head of the Pistols, Sid Vicious, this kid whose neurons were burned after his drug abuse, and who, meanwhile, had killed his girlfriend in an excess that later led him to the fatal overdose. That was the end the life of a child who had undertaken nothing, lost in a whirlwind of violence and deadly substances, and whose only fact of glory, without his knowledge, would be adorned for decades by T-sshirt as a cult figure, symbol of the counter-culture and antisocial.

Jah Wobble and his love for the dub reggae

Johnny Rotten, once again became John Lydon, who took bassist Jah Wobble (excellent artist until today) and the companions flew to Jamaica with Keith Levene, a guitarist, where they formed Public Image Limited, an essential post punk band, dominated by Wobble’s reggae dub bass, mixtures of nervous noises, progressive rock ( !) and Lydon’s ever-strident improvisations, but with a more classical and talented guitarist.
 

Levene, Wobble, Lydon: PIL

In short, if punk didn’t invent anything, it was like a traffic sign indicating where the progressive rock of Genesis or Pink Floyd would stop, and where the breaking post punk, much richer and inventive, would begin. In fact, like other musical movements, punk will exist more in the years that followed, until today, and that, among other examples, the grunge of Nirvana, owes him an obvious legacy. Its end, which corresponds almost to its beginning, will result in the start of a period of a few years of new sounds, and many musical trends between 1978 and 1984, whether artistic or commercial. The last post to come will remind us of the most important, but already the punk in England, will be only a visual memory, because it was never musical. (to be continued)