Punk’s Origins: Anglo-American syncretism
Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2003
Punk’s Origins: Anglo-American
syncretism1
PETE LENTINI
Monash University, Clayton, Australia
ABSTRACT Punk’s participants, and academic and journalistic commentators often construct
the musical and cultural movement’s origins as either exclusively American or
British. Studies acknowledging punk as a US-UK hybrid tend to overlook the process that
contributed to its emergence. Drawing on oral histories, chronologies and fanzine contributions
recounting, examining and chronicling the mid- to late 1970s and applying Laura E.
Cooper and B. Lee Cooper’s thesis of a ‘pendulum’ of US-UK cultural exchange, this paper
argues that punk developed during this period through a series of two major ‘swings’: the
first, a series of US bands’ 1976 UK tours; the second, the Sex Pistols’ 1978 US tour. The
paper seeks to challenge misinformed and ethnocentric notions of punk’s emergence and
allegations of US cultural imperialism through the musical genre and its associated
subcultures.
In this paper I attempt to challenge authors and commentators who attribute punk’s
authenticity to specific countries. Instead, I argue that punk evolved as a hybrid
musical and subcultural entity through a process of American and British cultural
exchanges.2 Therefore, I suggest that punk must neither be interpreted nor implied
as a manifestation of US cultural imperialism (Sabin, 1999, p. 3) or a British
invasion of the USA. Rather, evidence suggests that punk emerged through a
process of cultural syncretism (Gilroy, [1987] 1992). This syncretism is best
exemplified in Laura E. Cooper and B. Lee Cooper’s notion of a ‘pendulum’ of
cultural exchange. They argue that since the Second World War, some American
and British music and subcultures developed through adapting musical forms to
local conditions. These accommodations evolved into distinctly new approaches to
the music and subcultures. Thereafter, they returned to the reputed country of
origin where they were consumed and re-interpreted as further mutations with
substantially different attributes to the original version (Cooper & Cooper, 1993).
This process of mutual exchange can be identified by at least two swings within
the subculture’s (or perhaps subcultures’) development during the 1970s. New York
bands’ 1976 UK concert tours constituted the first major swing. The second swing
was the Sex Pistols’ 1978 US tour. It could be argued that the pendulum made a
complete return during this tour. Thereafter, punk on both sides of the Atlantic was
ISSN 0725-6868 print/ISSN 1469-9540 online/03/020153-22 2003 Centre for Migrant and Intercultural Studies
DOI: 10.1080/0725686032000165388
154 Pete Lentini
permanently altered stylistically, subculturally and musically. Its most notable contribution
was stimulating the form of punk known as hardcore.3 It is also important
to note that the performers early punks considered their inspirations also developed
through transatlantic exchanges and contributed to punk’s emergence on both sides
of the Atlantic.
Debating Punk’s Origins
There tends to be consensus amongst punk’s participants and chroniclers that the
term punk is ambiguous—reflecting qualities from male homosexuality, violence,
inexperience and prostitution. Their scholarship and testimonies often indicate that
the subculture organised around few shared musical properties. They acknowledge
that there was a musical form called punk that existed in the late 1960s that involved
American garage bands, and that bands on both sides of the Atlantic began
emulating them in the mid- to late 1970s. Moreover, most commentators underline
that punk was, from the start, a musical rebellion that sought to return rock to its
mythical amateurish roots. The performers sought to simplify rock, removing the
emphasis on virtuosity that developed during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Additionally, the performers intended to propose a challenge to what they considered
to be lightweight, meaningless, pop. Finally, these sources also generally
concur that the term punk rock emerged almost accidentally, when British journalists
who followed the bands featured in the American fanzine, Punk, gave the revived
musical style and the bands that generated it this label (Laing, 1985; McNeil &
McCain, [1996] 1997, pp. 202–218, 249–260; O’Hara, 1995, p. 97; Osgerby, 1999;
Savage, 1991, p. 200; Sinker, 1999).
Authors who have examined punk’s origins write from either polarised or syncretic
positions. The former suggest that punk originated in a specific country and
contained certain attributes that established the movement’s authenticity. Peter
Leuner (1999, p. 711), and Richard D. Dixon and Fred R. Ingram (1979, p. 211)
argue that punk is a product of 1970s British working-class youth culture. Early
American punk participants such as Legs McNeil, co-founder of Punk magazine,
and former Ramones’ manager Danny Fields contend that the movement has
American origins. The following comments, taken in response to the Ramones’ 4
July 1976 gig at London’s The Roundhouse, illustrate this point. While appreciating
the band’s success in the UK, McNeil, in a conversation with Joey Ramone, was
disturbed that the band, and punk more broadly, did not appear to be more
significant within the USA. He claims to have said, ‘“Great, I’m glad, but what’s
England got to do with punk?”’ (quoted in McNeil & McCain, [1996] 1997, p.
290). Moreover, Danny Fields, recalling the preparation for the tour claims:
Our first Ramones [sic] show in England was July 4, 1976, the weekend of
the Bicentennial, which I thought was metaphorically appropriate, because
here it was the two hundredth anniversary of our freedom from Great
Britain, and we were bringing Great Britain this gift that was going to
Punk’s Origins 155
forever disrupt their sensibilities. (Quoted in McNeil & McCain, [1996]
1997, p. 287)
Most commentators, however, acknowledge a synthesis of both British and
American contributions to punk. James Lull claims, ‘punk music was from the
outset a reaction against mainstream forms of rock and roll music in England and
the United States’ (Lull, 1987, p. 235). Kristine McKenna has noted that ‘punk was
an international movement, but it’s generally agreed that it had three capital cities:
London, New York and Los Angeles’ (McKenna, 2000, p. 26). James R. McDonald
notes that punk emerged ‘almost simultaneously in Britain and America in 1975’.
While he does not account for links between the two countries at the early stages,
McDonald correctly asserts that the Sex Pistols’ 1978 US tour was a major
international connection between the two punk communities and implies that it was
a stimulus for hardcore’s development (McDonald, 1987, p. 92). As it will be
demonstrated later, participants in many American punk circles in the 1970s share
this viewpoint. Notwithstanding his masterful intellectual spadework, McDonald
attributes working-class youth authenticity to the movement (McDonald, 1987, p.
94). It is certainly proper to acknowledge working-class contributions and themes in
British punk, especially its 1970s expressions. Indeed, that many British punks
considered the music and the movement to be a reaction against hippy and student
cultures, dominated at the time by the British middle class and that some bands,
notably Sham 69 often articulated overtly working-class themes, substantiates a
working-class current existed within punk (Laing, 1985; Lydon, 1993 [1994]; Sex
Pistols, 2000).
Nevertheless, locating punk within (especially British youth) working-class authenticity
obscures the fact that artists, artistic movements, and many middle-class
youths and adults participated in the movement. V. Vale, founder of San Francisco
punk zine, Search and Destroy, commenting on punk’s emergence in San Francisco
in the mid–1970s, notes the important contributions that ‘weirdos and outcasts and
artist types, post-beatnik types’, and ‘older’ participants, especially those ‘at least in
their twenties and thirties’ made to that city’s scene (quoted in Stark, 1999, p. 15).
Lewis (1988, p. 90) notes that Los Angeles’ punk subculture was embraced by
‘graduate students, to upper middle class, white, well educated men and women
(despite the fact that they were often the target of punk tirades)’. Although they
attribute British working-class authenticity to punk, Dixon and Ingram acknowledge
a strong proportion of college and university students and professionals amongst its
southeastern US fan base during the Sex Pistols’ 1978 tour (Dixon & Ingram, 1979,
p. 211). Jeffrey Goldthorpe (1992, p. 39), Martha Bayles (1994, pp. 305–314), Paul
Freyer (1986), Patrick Mignon (1993, p. 191) and contributors to McNeil and
McCain’s punk oral history ([1996] 1997, pp. 107–142) acknowledge poets’, artists’
and performance artists’ early involvement in punk. Nevertheless, it is imperative
not to overstate their influence. Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces: a secret history of the
twentieth century contains some of the most elegant prose on punk broadly, and the
Sex Pistols more specifically (Marcus, [1990] 1997, pp. 27–152). However, he
overstates the connections between the Sex Pistols and the Situationists’ art, practice
156 Pete Lentini
and tactics. Former Sex Pistols’ lead singer Johnny Rotten, ne
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