Introduction
-----------------------------
The book started from a number of incidents. I was writing some short stories during the 2000s or Noughties, whatever you want to call them, and I had this snippet about a nerdy punk called Kevin Snopes sitting down in the corner of a pub called the Puking Ferret with a scary crackhead coming and telling him he was sitting in his seat. I'd been in and out of bands since school, so knew the territory well. I was bass player in the short-lived Manchester punk outfit The Chainsores who only played a handful of gigs, badly, but had many magnificent late night cider-fuelled rehearsals at my cramped bedsit. Steve G, the lead singer and lyricist from the band, had one song called '30 Year Hangover', about his life as a punk back in the early days. It seemed like an interesting time, by his accounts and others. We all went to see The Damned play at the Manchester Debating Hall one Christmas, 2006 I guess, and it was one of the best shows I'd ever seen. These old geezers still tore about the stage and connected with a live energy that I'd only encountered on a couple of other occasions (Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jnr, if you must know). I'd even seen Captain Sensible stumble in through the front door with the rest of the punters rather than the group stashing themselves away from the grubby public backstage like most other bands do. This was refreshing. I bought a Damned fanzine afterwards from a guy who made it and sold it himself, standing shivering in the cold outside. It had loads of badly written, dodgily printed articles in it, but what it had most was a clear passion and affection for the subject it was written about. This impressed me.
Around the time of The Chainsores I'd started listening to The Clash a lot more, for inspiration. Everybody has a Clash 'Best Of' stashed away in their collection and maybe one or two of their albums, but I was getting dissatisfied with my cursory ‘Best Of’ knowledge of bands, I wanted to go deeper, learn more about them and get a few more, if not all of the albums, plus additional singles, b-sides and rarities. What I found was far more interesting and insightful than just a bunch of catchy hooks and sardonic lyrics about the government being rubbish. In the songs there was a depiction of real life hardly equalled, along with a subtle, heart-wrenching honesty, as well as some of the sweetest riffs ever strummed on electric guitars. It was while listening to 'Give 'Em Enough Rope' for about the 77th time that the notion struck me that a book about the illustrious Kevin and a love affair with a girl named Julie who wasn't all she claimed to be might make a nice concept for a novel...
The Ramones were another facet of this broken mirror. One rehearsal Jim, The Chainsores guitarist, asked me what I thought the best song ever written was. Eventually, after days of deliberation, we both decided that it had to be 'Blitzkrieg Bop'. It's just got everything. It's so basic and raw that it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of rock 'n' roll. There's no fuss, no fat, the song is unsurpassed in its blistering bubblegum fun and sheer abandoned enjoyment. I wanted to tell more people to listen to The Ramones, so this book is my way of doing that, and if that alone works, then part of my job here is done.
I've since been to see The Stranglers, The Fall, Stiff Little Fingers, Blondie, Buzzcocks, Adam Ant, Magazine and more. They still play great, the music still sounds fresh and more exciting than anything else around today, and the bands retain that stubborn attitude of keeping a sense of reality to the situation around them that is so sadly lacking in so many other spheres of modern music, and life.
And there was always 'Never Mind The Bollocks'. That album was like nothing else, and still is. As a musician, I've tried to unravel the musical influences and intricacies, tried to nail that sound, but it was only ever possible at that point in time with that noxious, or perhaps obnoxious, concoction of politics and people. It's a bit like trying to decipher the Enigma code, or the Da Vinci code, or something. The Sex Pistols were a phenomenon, totally crashing through barriers, seemingly at every step, but I was always slightly unsettled by Malcolm McLaren's statements that it came from nothing, was Year Zero, something totally new. Everything has influences, and I wanted to find them out and challenge those bold statements. What I discovered was some great music, some outrageous characters and some fascinating incidents that I've tried to do justice to in my book.
The book is based on real events and people, but the characters of Kevin, his family, art college friends and Julie are completely fictional. If I have offended anybody, you probably shouldn't be reading books about punk in the first place.
-----------------------------
The book started from a number of incidents. I was writing some short stories during the 2000s or Noughties, whatever you want to call them, and I had this snippet about a nerdy punk called Kevin Snopes sitting down in the corner of a pub called the Puking Ferret with a scary crackhead coming and telling him he was sitting in his seat. I'd been in and out of bands since school, so knew the territory well. I was bass player in the short-lived Manchester punk outfit The Chainsores who only played a handful of gigs, badly, but had many magnificent late night cider-fuelled rehearsals at my cramped bedsit. Steve G, the lead singer and lyricist from the band, had one song called '30 Year Hangover', about his life as a punk back in the early days. It seemed like an interesting time, by his accounts and others. We all went to see The Damned play at the Manchester Debating Hall one Christmas, 2006 I guess, and it was one of the best shows I'd ever seen. These old geezers still tore about the stage and connected with a live energy that I'd only encountered on a couple of other occasions (Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jnr, if you must know). I'd even seen Captain Sensible stumble in through the front door with the rest of the punters rather than the group stashing themselves away from the grubby public backstage like most other bands do. This was refreshing. I bought a Damned fanzine afterwards from a guy who made it and sold it himself, standing shivering in the cold outside. It had loads of badly written, dodgily printed articles in it, but what it had most was a clear passion and affection for the subject it was written about. This impressed me.
Around the time of The Chainsores I'd started listening to The Clash a lot more, for inspiration. Everybody has a Clash 'Best Of' stashed away in their collection and maybe one or two of their albums, but I was getting dissatisfied with my cursory ‘Best Of’ knowledge of bands, I wanted to go deeper, learn more about them and get a few more, if not all of the albums, plus additional singles, b-sides and rarities. What I found was far more interesting and insightful than just a bunch of catchy hooks and sardonic lyrics about the government being rubbish. In the songs there was a depiction of real life hardly equalled, along with a subtle, heart-wrenching honesty, as well as some of the sweetest riffs ever strummed on electric guitars. It was while listening to 'Give 'Em Enough Rope' for about the 77th time that the notion struck me that a book about the illustrious Kevin and a love affair with a girl named Julie who wasn't all she claimed to be might make a nice concept for a novel...
The Ramones were another facet of this broken mirror. One rehearsal Jim, The Chainsores guitarist, asked me what I thought the best song ever written was. Eventually, after days of deliberation, we both decided that it had to be 'Blitzkrieg Bop'. It's just got everything. It's so basic and raw that it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of rock 'n' roll. There's no fuss, no fat, the song is unsurpassed in its blistering bubblegum fun and sheer abandoned enjoyment. I wanted to tell more people to listen to The Ramones, so this book is my way of doing that, and if that alone works, then part of my job here is done.
I've since been to see The Stranglers, The Fall, Stiff Little Fingers, Blondie, Buzzcocks, Adam Ant, Magazine and more. They still play great, the music still sounds fresh and more exciting than anything else around today, and the bands retain that stubborn attitude of keeping a sense of reality to the situation around them that is so sadly lacking in so many other spheres of modern music, and life.
And there was always 'Never Mind The Bollocks'. That album was like nothing else, and still is. As a musician, I've tried to unravel the musical influences and intricacies, tried to nail that sound, but it was only ever possible at that point in time with that noxious, or perhaps obnoxious, concoction of politics and people. It's a bit like trying to decipher the Enigma code, or the Da Vinci code, or something. The Sex Pistols were a phenomenon, totally crashing through barriers, seemingly at every step, but I was always slightly unsettled by Malcolm McLaren's statements that it came from nothing, was Year Zero, something totally new. Everything has influences, and I wanted to find them out and challenge those bold statements. What I discovered was some great music, some outrageous characters and some fascinating incidents that I've tried to do justice to in my book.
The book is based on real events and people, but the characters of Kevin, his family, art college friends and Julie are completely fictional. If I have offended anybody, you probably shouldn't be reading books about punk in the first place.
