Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution - Softcover

Colegrave, Stephen; Sullivan, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156025369X ISBN 13: 9781560253693

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2001

Synopsis

Re-creating the complete story of the Punk phenomenon—including where it came from and what it turned into—Punk is a massive and visually stunning record of five years that changed the world: 1975-1979. Collecting the testimony of more than 260 artists, record producers, designers, and journalists—including John Cale, Debbie Harry, Joe Strummer, Maureen Tucker, Gerard Malanga, Lou Reed, Johnny Rotten, Danny Fields, Legs McNeil, Bob Gruen, David Byrne, Iggy Pop, Tommy Ramone, William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern, Cherry Vanilla, and Malcolm McLaren, former manager and ringleader of the Sex Pistols—most published here for the first time, Punk brings to life the profound effect Punk music had on global popular culture. With reverberations in style, fashion, attitude, and philosophy, the birth of Punk music released the greatest shockwaves in the popular culture since The Beatles. Punk tells the story through the words of the people who were closely tied to the mania and through hundreds of contemporaneous color and black-and-white photographs. As Andy Warhol said, "We all knew something was happening. We just felt it." "In 1976 we were the most hated people on the planet – we thought that was great."—Siouxsie

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Colegrave is a Marketing Director of Saatchi, and has worked as an independent film producer. He was previously lead singer for a seminal punk band, The Lurkers. He lives in London.

Chris Sullivan became caught up in the Punk explosion while studying in London. He is now a popular style journalist and successful London nightclub owner.

From Library Journal

Now a confused and disenchanted 26, punk is ripe for a retrospective but reluctant to be pinned down. Cocreators of the best-selling Beatles Anthology, Colegrave and Sullivan deserve credit for acknowledging both New York City's and London's contributions to the movement and beginning at the beginning with Andy Warhol and his Factory groupies. Yet they still miss the point in this oral history, first published in the U.K.: that punk, like any late 20th-century art form, sprang from a frenzied exchange of ideas. Although they interviewed an impressive range of luminaries from both sides of the pond, they fail to re-create those white-hot intercontinental transmissions. Poor editing and pacing aside, the book's failure has a lot to do with the huge amount of space dedicated to the Sex Pistols and their hangers-on. As crucial as that quartet was to the English scene, bands like the Clash and the Ramones better embody punk's true spirit and show how two groups could constructively rub off on each other. In addition, aside from a few stellar shoe-box shots that have finally come to light, this does not come close to forming a "definitive" coffee-table portrait. Missing are the truly world-stopping photographs of Pennie Smith and Mick Rock, to name a few. Unfortunately, this, too, is only being published in North America as an 111/2" x 121/4" paperback with flaps, so it will easily wear and tear. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Penguin, 1997) is heavier on American voices and contains a fraction of the photos, but it's a more concise and raucous read. For comprehensive popular music collections only. Heather McCormack, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 156025369X
• ISBN 13: 9781560253693
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 360