When punk happened I was in just the right place at just the right time. Raised in a squat by robbers and hookers, in 1976 I was staying in a flat above Malcolm McLaren's Sex shop on the King's Road. The obvious choice, I was recruited to manage The Damned, X-Ray Spex and Alternative TV, before launching my own legendary punk band, which took the music industry by storm.
None of this is true. In fact, I was the wrong age (at least in practical terms, as I couldn't see bands in licensed premises), living 130 miles north of the capital and of rather middle class stock. When 'Never Mind The Bollocks' was released I was 14, living with my teacher/actress mum in a leafy area of Nottingham. Books and plays came before most things in our house, but musically my mother favoured baroque classical, a bit of modern jazz, a touch of Mike Oldfield and a sliver of Steeleye Span. We both quite liked Abba and on a whim I bought Slade In Flame and T-Rex's Hot Love.
In all honesty, this Midlands idyll should have formed the perfect shield from the snarling anger of London's seedy cellars. And, sure enough, initially I toed the party line - sniggering with my pals at the piercing voices and pierced faces appearing on the evening news. But then a friend bought the Pistols' 'God Save The Queen'. His parents wouldn't have it in the house (imagine that, young folk), so he brought it round to mine. Out of curiosity, I played it. And played it. Over and over. Obliviously, with every drop of the stylus I was changing my life.
Not long after taking custody of the Sex Pistols 45, a hip family friend visited and for some reason left a white label pressing of 'Another Music In A Different Kitchen' in our sitting room. I knew enough to recognise the Buzzcocks' name scrawled in biro on the label and switched to playing that on unending rotation. When my grandma offered to buy me a record for my birthday I took her to the Virgin Records shop*, and chose 'Never Mind The Bollocks'. Understandably she objected, suggesting a Chuck Berry compilation instead. To her credit she finally relented and allowed me to acquire the Pistols' acid yellow album. Back at home, and by my own estimation, I was now a 'punk'.
Just a few months before I had been bussing my way into the city to watch Star Wars, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now my trips took me straight to a record shop where I could pick up singles by The Members, Sham 69, Adam and The Antz and The Stranglers. Not only had this new music put a bonfire in my belly, it had kicked off a record collecting habit.
In my transformation from innocent butterfly to grimy caterpillar, it was suddenly very important to adopt a punk dress code. 'Like trousers, like mind' advised Joe Strummer. Happily, this wasn't too challenging, requiring little more than a pair of jeans narrowed to drainpipes (grandma again) and the introduction of my t-shirts to a pair of destructive scissors. A bit of accessorising with a cheap dog collar (as in the pet, rather than the clergy) and a pyjama top and the desired metamorphosis was easily accomplished.
I don't know whether this was common to all young punks, but I also developed a penchant for button badges. A firm called Better Badges advertised in the music press - and once I'd finished with Siouxsie interviews and Adverts reviews, I'd clip the coupon and order a clutch of metal, pinned discs with Clash, 999 and Ramones logos sealed on the front. I loved them. Costing about 20p each, they always arrived promptly, from London, in a padded envelope - affordable, exciting, slightly mysterious and utterly brilliant. I must have accumulated well over a hundred.
If you've heard this bit a thousand times before, from other middle aged punks, I can only apologise - but you cannot underestimate the hazards of appearing in a town centre in punk regalia in the late 1970s.
Thanks to the near blasphemy of 'God Save The Queen' and (mostly untrue) tabloid tales of vomiting and violence, the general citizenry were persuaded to forcibly resist punk and its adherents. As legend has it, a truck driver was electrocuted when he booted in his TV screen at the sight of Johnny Rotten. For me, the public's objection came in the form of a very smart looking woman in a Nottingham market, seizing me by the shoulders, rocking me backwards and forwards and screaming "You stupid, stupid boy" into my face. I can't pretend I wasn't shocked but, walking away, I was enormously aware of being a part of something stronger and more profound than a clutch of bright badges and torn shirts would suggest. This was obviously a very big deal.
For reasons which still elude me, the Teddy Boys (into their third revival by the seventies) had also declared war on punks. For all the studs, pins and leather, very few punks were into fighting - but Teds represented a real and dangerous threat. If you valued your pubescent features, you were careful to avoid them. I was never actually beaten up, but this was more by dint of my ability to run away than any reluctance on the Teddy Boys' behalf.
I did eventually see some of the bands who were now dominating most of my waking life. A wonderful Nottingham club called The Sandpiper (which I've written about before) staged matinee gigs for under-18s. In quick succession I saw The Dickies, The Damned, The UK Subs and The Angelic Upstarts. Then I was sent away to an institution.
At boarding school, to the utter disgust of the masters, my enthusiasm for punk was undimmed. Some colleagues accepted my passion with mild amusement, while others used it as the perfect excuse to victimise me like posh Teddy Boys. I didn't enjoy the jibes and humiliation, but accepted this was the price to paid by most punk pilgrims. Occasionally the cost was high and I recall a swift and mighty kick to the crotch for wearing a Stiff Little Fingers badge. My aggressors didn't bother to mind my bollocks.
With the arrival of the eighties the afterglow of punk's beacon faded. Nevertheless, another generation of bands, too young to form during the initial blaze, were rising. In Theatre of Hate, Killing Joke, Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen and Bauhaus I could hear the resonant uniqueness that had gripped me half a dozen years before. Indeed, records like London Calling and The Damned's Black Album confirmed I had backed real winners, even when I was too callow and naive to know whether punk was something truly remarkable or just a diverting mistake.
And so it continues. After school I worked as a nightclub DJ for almost ten years, a direct result of my addiction to recorded music. Then I took up radio presenting for the same reason. Finally I settled on the life of a writer and whether I'm working on a script, advertisement, website or blog - I have little doubt I would have been denied the necessary creative smarts or cultural reference points had I not taken charge of my mate's Sex Pistols single in 1977.
Punk - the music, the clothes, the ideas and ideology - has informed my mind, politics, career and life, consistently and powerfully for over thirty five years.
Now a husband, father and latterly a grandfather, in some ways I couldn't be more different from the wide-eyed, skinny twerp in the PiL t-shirt, being shaken senseless by a stranger in a Nottingham street. Then again, you'd be surprised how similar we are. Once a punk ...
* This is the same shop which was raided and prosecuted for displaying the Pistols' album cover in its window.
