Originally published in Let It Rock, December 1975

The term punk is bandied about an awful lot these days. It seems to describe almost any rock performer who camps it up to any degree, on or off-stage, or who displays an arrogance and contempt for his audience.

Bowie, Jagger, Ronnie Wood, Iggy Stooge, Freddy Mercury, Todd Rundgren et al. They’ve all been variously branded as punks. But they ain’t punk rock. The popularity of the term dates from Lenny Kaye’s now historic collection, Nuggets! Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, released in 1972. There’s cause for some confusion here, too. Psychedelic rock ain’t punk rock either—it may be—but if anything it grew out of the punk rock proliferation between 1964 and 1966, and many groups—it was a group dominated era—were either transitional to or exponents of both arts.

So what is punk rock? In its heyday the punk tag was more a qualitative one. Punk, pungk, adj.—rotten, worthless. Like bubblegum, it was seen as the dross of its day. It seemed totally ephemeral and not to be taken seriously. Yet Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets had unleashed a rabid interest in the genre among collectors and writers, and not simply on a kitsch level. There is a certain intrinsic worth in punk rock. It’s certainly the first of the mid-‘60s genres to be resurrected. Whither folk rock, acid rock, and flower power?

In 1964, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and other less notable surfers and hot rodders were holding out against the British Invasion. The Byrds offered the first apparent consolidated challenge with their hybrid, folk rock. But that challenge was also taken up by a plethora of amorphous garage bands which sprang up in the suburbs of American cities. It is among these groups that punk rock was born, as they made their reputations through live appearances at local teen clubs and battle of the bands competitions. Punk rock was as regional a phenomenon as the British Beat and R&B booms that inspired it. But the punk rock process was crucially different in one respect from the British booms. In America, local labels soon came into existence to record budding local talent, and, if the primary purpose of cutting discs was local promotion, there was always the chance that a local single might just take off nationwide.

The perfect example is ? & the Mysterians’ “96 Tears.” They were a bunch of Tex-Mex based in Michigan whose home recorded effort was later taken up by Cameo to give them a #1 smash in 1965. “96 Tears” propelled them straight out of nowhere and then straight back again. They had a couple of other minor hits (for my money “I Need Somebody” is a better punk archetype), but that was the finish. It was the usual the way of things—viz the Castaways after “Liar Liar” and the Count Five after “Psychotic Reaction.” Few punk groups could deliver the goods consistently or diversely enough to withstand the passage of time. Some slipped into other areas: the Seeds into flower power; the Shadows of Knight into bubblegum; the Standells into cabaret. Other punk rockers found individual fame—Todd, Leslie West, or Terry Knight—but most just called it a day.

Vintage punk rock is less a style than a lack of style, defined by a crude simplicity—thin sounding Vox organs, 4/4 drumming, barely in time, and primer stage guitar playing, riffy fuzztones, and later jangly chords, all fed through cheap Fender amps. The singer’s stance was important, an aggressive swagger to counter his lousy adenoidal weak voice. Ironically, the British Invasion groups were probably more aware of the American roots of their music than the high school punk groups. The classic case is the Shadows of Knight on their debut album, Gloria, owing everything to the Stones/Animals/Them conglomeration and nothing to the bluesmen of their hometown, Chicago, as they ran through “Boom Boom”, “Let It Rock”, “Hoochie Coochie Man”, and “Mojo.”

In 1965, following the success of the Byrds, folk rock became a staple punk rock direction for both new and established groups. By their second album, Back Door Men, the Shadows of Knight had the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” sound brilliantly sewn up. Their blistering version of “Hey Joe”, a regular punk anthem, has never been bettered. The Leaves, a typical Hollywood punk outfit following in the wake of the Byrds, made arguably the first rock version of the song. Their album, Hey Joe, is a splendid artifact of 1966-style punk rock derivations, with the Beatles and Stones stepping aside for the Byrds as the new sound to champion. The Leaves do a delightful version of the Searchers’ “Goodbye My Love”, in vintage Byrds style, and suggests the Byrds owed some debt to that most successful Liverpool group outside of Brian Epstein’s stable.

Punk rock songs dealt typically with teenage obsessions, frustrations, and hang-ups over love and growing up. “Some of my friends, they’ve been in real trouble! And some say, I’m no better than the rest! But tell your momma and your poppa! Sometimes good guys don’t wear white.” So reasoned the Standells. “Are You a Boy or a Girl?” asked the Barbarians; “Try to Understand” pleaded Sky Saxon of the Seeds; and the Blues Magoos, never noted for musical subtlety, gave vent to a boastful threat in “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”: “Nothing can hold us and nothing can keep us down! Someday our names will be spread all over town! We get in while the getting is good! So make it on your own and you know that’s cool.”

Punk rock actually had very few huge hits. Some that were aided by elaborate gimmicks, like the Blues Magoos with their coiffure hair styles and electric blue/flashing light suits, or the deliberation over who was the singer (Rudy Martinez) with ? & the Mysterians. But even local hits made an impact, while a national hit inspired hordes of local imitators. The success of Doug Sahm with “She’s About a Mover” sparked off a remarkable teen club/teen group boom in Texas, perhaps the most interesting of the punk regions and, rarely, one with something approaching a composite local style. Punk rock may have bordered on the realms of bad musical taste but it was the genuine article—street music, or rather garage music, which was never manufactured behind the scenes. Whatever else, the punk rock groups were people’s groups, and that was important.

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