Punk - an exercise in nostalgia

I've been wallowing in nastalgia recently, reading Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution. 

England in the late '70s was certainly a heady time. I never dressed the part myself, apart perhaps from the ripped jeans, but I had all the records, and attended some pretty crazy gigs. I had forgotten, though - or maybe never even knew - just how extreme, excessive and over-the-top some of it was. Many rock and pop stars have always had a reputation of being "bad boys" and, occasionally, "bad girls", but really no-one could hold a candle to these guys, who made a point of taking it to the next level. I had also forgotten just how young a lot of the top bands were in their early days, barely older than I was.

A few choice quotes from the book (assembled from various musicians, managers, journalists and just hangers on) can perhaps give some of the flavour of it:

"Then I went into the kitchen and found his German manager drunk, flat out on the floor with his face in the cat's food dish."

"It started on the Anarchy tour. Until then we thought heroin was a female character in a 19th-century romantic novel."

"It was fun at the beginning. In 1976 we were the most hated people on the planet - we thought that was great."

"Slits - fantastic! They all started at the wrong time, doing different songs - superb."

"Jordan - she was amazing. She used to commute each day from near Brighton in this see-through lingerie and corsets and rubber dresses, which caused havoc on the train. In the end I think British Rail gave her a first class pass."

"Rotten looked the part with his green hair, but he couldn't sing. Then again, we couldn't play, so it was OK."

"Back then, 'Sex Pistols' was an outrageously shocking name."

"There were times when I had to push Johnny on stage, and I had to put a bucket out so he could throw up between songs, but you just deal with that reality."

"On stage, great front man; off stage, total fucking arsehole."

"Siouxsie who can't sing, Steve Severin who can't play bass, Marco Pirroni who can play guitar, and Sid Vicious who can't play drums. They make a wonderful racket for about 15 minutes."

"The Ramones came on stage, they counted off '1, 2, 3, 4' md they all started playing a different song. They threw down their guitars in disgust and walked off the stage. It was the best concert I'd ever seen in my life."

"I still don't know whose idea it was, but when they started doing the 17 minutes of music - 20 songs in 17 minutes without stopping - it became interesting."

"I hated the pogo. Being a dwarf, it was really frightening."

"They were throwing anything they could at us - pig's noses, beer cans, rat. It was really awful."

"We had one guitar, but junkies broke in and stole it. The whole thing was really squatsville. The funny thing that struck me about him was that we both liked Rupert Bear books and Tin-Tin when we were kids."

"Somebody dropped a brick on the rat and killed it, and we started calling Chris Miller 'Rat Scabies' because he had scabies and we killed the rat."

"What was exciting about Subway Sect was their total lack of interest in anything at all."

"When the band hit the stage, the whole place erupted. There was a lot of violence from the audience, and it seemed to be entirely directed towards the band."

 "By that time, the audiences had got really violent - they would get on stage and start a fight."