ARTS
Punk rock
The revolution that failed
Marcus Berkmann
As the record industry prepares for yet another profitable winter, with the Christ- mas charts destined to be dominated by a host of exciting new names (Paul Simon), it seems appropriate to reflect on the ten years that have passed since the inception of pop music's own inglorious revolution, punk rock. Indeed, the grubbier pop pap- ers have devoted months of earnest cover- age to the annniversary, celebrating it with ill-concealed nostalgia for a simpler, more Innocent day-glo past. Does it seem like a decade, though, since the Sex Pistols ended Bill Grundy's television career with an injudicious exple- tive, or since the first sightings of slashed punk apparel shocked the worthy burghers of SW3? These are what many if not most People remember most vividly of the whole business. For a few brief years the nation's youth gloried in the name of the 'Blank Generation', while saliva acquired a whole new significance.
But before I get really pompous about it, let's remember what they were rebelling against in the first place. In 1976 the singles charts were dominated by the likes of Brotherhood of Man (`Save Your Kisses for Me') and Tina Charles, the Singing Housewife. The album charts, meanwhile, were the preserve of Pink Floyd, Yes and other exponents of drippy long-haired rock. A mere two years before, Genesis's then lead singer, Peter Gabriel, had gone through an entire UK tour dressed as a flower. It was not an era of pop music that anyone (bar these groups' accountants) would remember with much pride. . So punk came as a bit of relief, and not Just to those who dyed their hair orange and tattooed themselves in unusual places. Unlike previous youth cults, punk actually made some sort of impact, at least on Passers-by. An important aspect of being a Punk was that you could frequently and loudly advocate 'change' (as in the Strang- lers' Something Better Change'). Not that many punks knew quite what they wanted to change, how to change it or what to change it for. But 'change' of a general and Ill-defined sort was held to be A Good Thing.
Predictably, this fashionably justifiable rage was rarely channelled into anything more constructive than beating up people who didn't agree with you. Nevertheless, Punk was a musical movement (if it was ever as coherent as a 'movement') and the music business, swollen after years of excess and white powder, was due for a shake-up. The oligopoly of multinational record companies that has presided over these horrors was slow to react to the 'new wave'. And just as punks found how easy it was to get noise out of a guitar if you turned it up loud enough, so they disco- vered that it was scarcely more difficult to record and release a single yourself. Inde- pendent labels sprang up, more attuned, it seemed, to the artists and audience of the moment. Most failed, as might be ex- pected, but many prospered. The indepen- dents' success benefited musicians and fans alike. Here was a new way for performers to get a record contract and find their audience, while avoiding the necessary compromises of a corporate deal. For a while, even bands who did flirt with major labels seemed to do so very much on their own terms. The result was the diversity and tolerance that characterised British pop music in the late Seventies and early Eighties.
Where we all went wrong, of course, was to expect that the brief excitement of punk would develop into something more dur- able. But as Simon Garfield's excellent new book on the scabbier side of the music business shows (Expensive Habits, Faber & Faber £5.95), the industry always reasserts itself. Indeed, ten years on, punk already appears hopelessly naïve. A brief glance at the charts today confirms that, whatever its short-term effects, punk's impact in the long term has been virtually non-existent.
'I recommend a few years with MI5.' The mulinationals are back in charge, while the independents have shrunk into self-important ghettos of arcana, unlis- tened to by all but a few grim-faced students and John Peel. Many of the acts that punk was supposed to do away with Genesis, Queen, Rod Stewart — flourish as never before, though long since creatively bankrupt. Some younger perfor- mers have deteriorated even faster: the Smiths, for example, bounded straight from obscurity to mirthless self-parody, thus ensuring almost constant chart success ever since.
Pop music has gone seriously awry. But why? A manager I spoke to, who looks after a 'cult' band (i.e. one that is not entirely obscure but as yet spectacularly unsuccessful), had no doubts: 'Video. Since it became compulsory to tack on a cleverly edited but usually secondhand visual image to every song, the whole balance of the industry has changed. For an ambitious band, visuals are often more important than the music. Is it any surprise that music has declined? I think it's pretty amazing that it isn't any worse.' An in- novative or unusual 'promo' can render the song irrelevant: A-ha's 'Take on Me', a huge hit everywhere from Arkansas to western Samoa in 1985, was a memorable example. The song itself was pleasant if undistinctive, the first effort by a trio of photogenic Norwegian lads. The promo, on the other hand, was an accomplished and original mix of animation and live- action techniques (much imitated there- after) with a soppy 'Photolove' story de- signed to appeal to the band's target market — tiny screaming girls. It had nothing to do with the song, and success- fully propelled A-ha to unimaginable fame and fortune.
Video also rumbled the independents. Without the resources to compete effec- tively with the multinationals and their glossy three-minute epics, smaller labels have found their more lucrative acts de- serting them. Some independents did break into the big time — the recently deceased Stiff was the best known — but most have been forced to withdraw from high-risk competition in the pop charts and concentrate on less overtly 'commercial' performers. As a result the independent sector has been reduced almost to a musi- cal greenhouse, developing and nurturing young bands until the major labels come and pick them off. The Smiths, recently signed to EMI for the cost of a small Central American republic, are but the latest to benefit from this process.
Rock 'n' roll's decline has been further precipitated by its gradual but inexorable assimilation into the Establishment. This is partly the fault, I'm afraid, of the Blessed Bob Geldof, KBE, whose otherwise laud- able activities have conferred, as an unfor- tunate side-product, an unwelcome tinge of respectability on this once universally derided genre. Pete Townshend's anti- heroin crusade, not to mention his respon- sibilities at Faber & Faber, have made matters only worse. Old rock recidivists do not care to witness their heroes fade into benign middle age. Even the wasted gran- deur of Keith 'How-long-will-he-last' Richards has been tainted somewhat by recent rumours of moderation and happy family life (although some would say that Bill Wyman is perhaps trying a little to hard to redress the balance. . .).
Central to it all is the single most important trend in pop music today: the ageing audience. While the really dedi- cated fans are still to be found primarily amongst the under-20s, it is the four- albums-a-year consumers, the owners of in-car stereos, midi hi-fi systems and compact-disc players who supply the re- cord companies' huge profits. The singles market, as one might expect, is still the province of youth; hence its domination by anonymous black acts and their pallid dance records. But the album charts are a different matter. Dire Straits, Sade, Phil Collins and this year Paul Simon: these are the artists who sell by the warehouse-load, and it is the grown-ups who are buying them. Compact discs of Diamond Life and Graceland provide the yuppie soundtrack, the background for many a dinner party. On cassette these albums are slotted into car stereos, for the brief time their owners can enjoy them before they are stolen. The post-war baby boom makes the 25-35 age group the most remunerative market for record companies to tap. Teenagers, punk forgotten, are no longer significant.
Which is why pop music is geared no longer towards the kids, but to the more sedate habits of their CD-owning elders. Record shops everywhere are being refur- bished to cater more for adult customers, who prefer carpets and neutral greys to the Jesus and Mary Chain at two billion decibels. Magazines like Q appear, aimed at people who can no longer read NME without foaming at its drab obscurantism and dismal ideological inflexibility. But who are they, this army of born-again Phil Collins fans? Many are punks who grew up.
Pop music has always been a mildly shabby, even risible business, but that is one of its charms. Its purveyors talk of art but cater without shame to the market conditions of the time. It is not something that should be (or is, by most people) taken very seriously. But it's still a pity to see it in such terrible shape. 1986, the year of hip-hop, EastEnders spin-offs and Sigue Sigue Sputnik, may well represent some sort of nadir of recent pop history. Ten years ago, punk disturbed a similar com- placency. What is going to do that now?
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