Never Mind the History Books: 6 stories from 6 Music's A to Z of Punk

6 Music is celebrating the pioneers, debunking the myths, and identifying the inspirations, in its new A-Z of Punk podcast.

Hosted by Marc Riley and Record Collector journalist Rob Hughes, the pair have been revisiting the filth and fury of the late 70s.

“I want to take people through a journey of punk rock,” says Riley of his personal Anarchy Tour. “It’s factually based but there are opinions too, it’s not just a dry history lesson. I was in The Fall so I played on the bill with lots of these bands, and had first hand experience of punk.”

All 26 episodes are available to download now, and to celebrate Marc has created us a mini A to Z of Punk below – the actual letters A, Z, P, U, N and K – as he reveals the truth behind six scurrilous punk tales.

Marc Riley: Obviously there was the song ‘Anarchy In The UK’ but there was the Sex Pistols Anarchy Tour as well – which it was! It lived up to its name, getting cancelled left, right and centre, towns banning it, cities not letting them play. They had to have secret gigs and all that kind of stuff. It’s a legendary tour. The Pistols were the real deal, and anarchy summed it up. They predicted it and anarchy came true, that’s why they lasted such a short time.

I did see the Pistols play in Manchester at the time. I went to the second of the two shows they played here, because a band I knew called Slaughter and the Dogs were on the bill. It was promoted by the Buzzcocks who were first on the bill. During the Sex Pistols, me and my mates were a bit hungry so we nipped out to the chippie and came back for the rest of it.

For the top of my programme every night, [artist and garage rock songwriter] Billy Childish has done me a jingle that includes the lyrics “punk before chips on Radio 6”. He ended-up writing another song called ‘Punk Before Chips’ triggered by that story. So yeah, I saw the Pistols but there was a gap in the middle for chips.

Marc Riley: Year Zero, in fact. Punk was going to wipe out everything that had gone before. Supposedly Genesis and Rick Wakeman were worried for a minute, but then 18 month later Genesis were selling 50 million albums around the world. So it didn’t change much, but it was nice while it lasted.

We’ve also got ‘Less Than Zero’, which is is one of Elvis Costello’s first singles – his debut on Stiff Records. He was travelling the New Wave beast, at the forefront really. He’s a great singer-songwriter who could have probably existed at any time, but he came along at the same time as punk and was the other side of the coin really.

Marc Riley: We delved into the origins of the word punk. Iggy Pop was deemed to be the godfather of punk but he really hated that term. The American word just means you’re a bum, a nogoodnik, a thief. I think Lester Bangs was the first person to use “Punk” describing Iggy, but he didn't like it. Then Malcolm McLaren helped to bring it over here after managing The New York Dolls for bit. I first remember seeing the word in an NME article about the Pistols. There was a picture of them jumping into the crowd to have a fight. That’s punk!

Then there was Pub Rock too. Some of the pub rock stuff was quite lairy and punky, like Eddie and the Hotrods and Dr. Feelgood, who both started out as a pub band. Also our own Tom Robinson went through Pub Rock in a band called Café Society, signed to Ray Davies' Konk label in 1974. Then they all fell out, punk happened, so then you got the Tom Robinson Band. A load of the punks came from pub rock. People like Joe Strummer, with The 101ers, and Adam Ant, who was in Bazooka Joe. The Guildford Stranglers were going in 1974 before they were just The Stranglers so there were a quite a few.

That’s why when punk happened some of the bands turned up and they couldn’t play and other quite patently could. Like Johnny Moped. They’re still going, I had them in session recently, but they had Chrissie Hynde in the band for a bit before they sacked her, Captain Sensible too, so the pub rock thing was pivotal for punk.

Marc Riley: John Peel’s favourite band! I only recently discovered that ‘Teenage Kicks’ wouldn’t exist without Peel. He paid for them to make a demo. He’d heard their original demos and then gave them £200 to go into the studio again. I believe it was from that session that they came out of that with ‘Teenage Kicks’.

I really loved The Undertones because they stayed in Derry in the thick all the troubles, yet they wrote these brilliant love songs. I thought that was great. it wouldn’t have been easy to politicise their situation but they didn’t. They wrote songs of youth with some optimism in there. And obviously ‘Teenage Kicks’ was John Peel’s favourite record of all time, which is very important.

Marc Riley: The first punk single. The Damned beat everyone else to putting the first 45 out. It was produced by Nick Lowe who said his only role was to go out and buy the band cheap cider so they’d make a good racket. It might be the first punk record, but it still sounds as thrilling and as urgent as when it came out.

Nick Lowe is a great character in all this. He confessed he didn’t like punk, he was just in the right place at the right time – he produced Eddie and the Hotrods too, before going on to do Elvis Costello and all that stuff. David Robinson who managed [pub rock band] Brinsley Schwarz started the Stiff Records label with Jake Rivera [later Echo & The Bunnymen manager] by borrowing £500 from Lee Brilleaux from Dr. Feelgood.

So it was all that Pub Rock set who started Stiff Records, but they got The Damned, and got it out quick for the first British punk record out.

Marc Riley: Nick Kent was an NME journalist who championed Bowie and was mad on the Stones. His attitude was part and parcel of what the punks were kicking against really. He was hanging out with Keith Richard, being all debauched. He saw himself to being on the edge and documented a lot of the dark stuff but I don’t think the punk fraternity took him and that was when the ugly side of punk first started to emerge.

He got attacked by the punks. I think Sid Vicious went at him with a bike chain at the 100 Club. Vicious was also responsible for partially blinding a girl by throwing a pint pot at the 100 Club at The Damned because they had a feud going on. I also remember hearing about him attacking Bob Harris, but Bob was protected by Procol Harum roadies. I love punk, but it attracted a dark side.

Download the A to Z of Punk podcast