7 - ‘Anarchy in the UK’: the punk rebellion

Summary

It was on 6th November 1975 at St Martin's School of Art in London that a band called the Sex Pistols first took to the stage. At first glance there was nothing special about this; the British art schools have always been some of the most receptive venues for live rock. And live rock had always been significantly different, at least in the cities, from what the mass media called rock music. While the latter was composed of ‘supergroups’ aiming for ‘higher things’ with their bombastic artistic and technical pomposity, teenagers in the clubs and pubs of city working-class districts were once again enjoying more and more the simple patterns of rock's original forms in the rhythm & blues tradition. What they wanted was bands as young as possible showing simplicity and real pleasure in playing. It is therefore not surprising that the art schools, the intellectual centres of the British rock development, opened their doors to this growing trend which had started in 1973 and sought to outstrip each other in the discovery of unknown groups.

In spite of all this the events on that 6th November were quite memorable. For after just a few minutes the performance threatened to dissolve into complete chaos. Instead of the expected simplicity and enthusiasm of the basic sounds of rock there was a wild noise coming from the stage mixed with graphic insults of the audience, which the scarcely eighteen-year-old musicians, their pale faces fixed in cynical mask-like expressions, accompanied with a careful dramaturgy of aggression and force.