Strictly speaking, my personal 'Year of Punk' lasted about 18 months from about April 1977, to about October 1978. Around that time, I'd started listening to the John Peel Show on the radio, which kept me up to date on the developments in rock and pop music, including hearing early Punk records like the infamous 'Anarchy in the UK' by the SexPistols; Although I didn't actually buy that record until later in the year, because I could only buy so many records at a time, and my immediate early interest in the Punk scene was dominated by The Stranglers, who released the single; 'Peaches' in April 1977.
Having turning 14 years old just a month before I really started getting into punk records, It was in hindsight the perfect music for me at the time. I was attracted to the raw energy and rebellious vibe that punk music had. Suddenly, I didn't want to listen to my dad's rock 'n' roll records. Punk felt like MY music, because I'd discovered it 'myself', so to speak. I felt that I identified with the music because it was sticking two fingers up at the established order. And the way I felt as a teenager was that I myself was losing my identification with that established order, in the sense that I was becoming bored and disillusioned with school. Both school and home life was beginning to feel authoritarian. It probably wasn't any different in real terms to the way things were before, but I had entered that 'difficult' teenage period of trying to find my own identity and independence, which always involves a certain amount of pushing against the shackles of the status quo, and I felt like punk music represented exactly how I was feeling at 14/15 years old.
Curiously, I didn't make much progress towards playing the guitar during this period, beyond daydreaming at school, that is. Collecting the records themselves and responding the energy of the music on a mostly internal level, seemed to be enough at that time, being the fairly intense teenager that I was. Or perhaps like most teenagers, I just imagined myself to be.
But collect those records I certainly did. Mainly centered around singles, I began to gradually build up a collection of my own, turfing out the rock 'n' roll records as I went along, considering them out of date with the way I was in 1977. The hard-edged sound of punk seemed very vital and real to me, especially the heavier sound of the Sex Pistols. And although the Shadows records and such like were deemed no longer valid, a few heavy rock records began to sneak their way in too, like Ram Jam's 'Black Betty', and 'Whole Lotta Rosie' by AC/DC, which was a precursor of the direction my evolving tastes would take me in a year or two's time.
But for the most part, it was records by the likes of the Sex Pistols, The Jam, and The Stranglers that attracted me the most. Especially the Stranglers, who were without doubt my favourite band of 1977, and the only band (with the exception of the Sex Pistols infamous 'Never Mind the Bollocks') whose albums I bought as well as the singles.
In actual fact, the thing that most attracted to me to The Stranglers music was not the guitar, but the bass. It's safe to say that in 1977 I'd never heard any bass playing that sounded remotely like the harsh, biting, growling attack of Jean-Jaques Burnel's most particular bass sound. Right from hearing the opening riff of 'Peaches', the first Stranglers record that I heard, I was hooked. And after buying that single and hearing the the double 'A' side 'Go Buddy Go', I knew that this was a band that I was going to be seriously into, and I went out and brought the album: 'Rattus Norvegicus' a month later in May 1977.
The album was a revelation. There was far more to this band that I expected, with Dave Greenfield's swirling organ solos on 'Down in the Sewer', and crisp, sharp guitar work of Hugh Cornwell on tracks like 'London Lady', and 'Princess of the Streets'. But that biting bass sound of J.J. Burnel was the most integral part. And when I listened to the record and projected my as yet unfulfilled musical fantasies in my imagination.... It was the bass that I was playing, not the guitar.
Luckily for me, there were more Stranglers singles, and their second album 'No More Heroes' that year, and I bought them all, along with the Sex Pistols long awaited 'Never Mind the Bollocks' towards the end of the year.
The heavier sound of the Pistols was not lost on me either, but there was another band who would become very important to me as 1977 segued into 1978. I had already bought their first single; '2-4-6-8 Motorway' in the autumn of that year, but in 1978, their debut album had a massive impact on me, and opened the door to my naive, fledgling political awareness. In the next chapter: the Tom Robinson Band.
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