I was exactly the right age for punk. It hit London in 1976, the year I turned
15, and lasted right through my university years. Yet I always felt that I
was the wrong age for punk — or, rather, that the punk age was the wrong age
for me.
I was — literally — a child of the Sixties, and I wished instead that I could
have been a teenager of the Sixties. The Sixties were so much more fun than
the Seventies. The music was better, the clothes were better, the ethos was
better, even the drugs were better.
At that age I envied my oldest brother, born six years before me, who dropped
out of his sixth form, grew his hair, smoked loads of dope, slept rough in
Hyde Park and followed the hippy trail to India. Somehow, putting a safety
pin in my nose and spitting at people didn’t quite match up.
Anyway, have you seen my hair? How can you look edgy and threatening with
tumbling Pre-Raphaelite locks? They would have been perfect for a hippy
chick but you could hardly turn them into a Mohican. I cut my hair short but
it just ended up like a curly helmet. Not very punk — I looked more like Leo
Sayer than Siouxsie Sioux.
The whole philosophy of punk repelled me. I could do teenage angst with the
best of them, but the Sex Pistols were too nihilistic by miles. I rather
liked the Queen and certainly never worried about her “fascist regime”
(swearing on Bill Grundy’s show was good, though).
And their music was s**t. The Sex Pistols even admitted that they couldn’t
sing or play. Malcolm McLaren, their manager, seemed to revel in ripping us
all off. Well, here was one teenager who wasn’t prepared to be ripped off. I
never bought a Sex Pistols album. They were as manufactured as any of
today’s boy bands, and just as cynically.
There were some good bands that came out of punk, though “new wave”
was a better term for them. The Clash were brilliant, The Jam were pretty
good. But the sub-Sex Pistols imitators such as Sham 69 were terrible, too.
I told them that. In the summer of 1979 I had a brief fling with Sham 69’s
lead singer, Jimmy Pursey. His single, Hersham Boys, was then No 6
in the charts. He didn’t like it when I said that I preferred Led Zeppelin,
whom I had seen live that year. In fact, this was the ultimate insult: punks
thought that their music was an antidote to what they saw as self-indulgent
“rockism”. Johnny Rotten was recruited to the Sex Pistols after Malcolm
McLaren spotted him wearing a home-made “I hate Pink Floyd” T-shirt.
Yet anyone with half an ounce of musical taste can see that Pink Floyd’s music
is better than the Sex Pistols’. It might not be as angry, but it is whole
lot more interesting, inventive, complex and better played.
I even preferred the anger of the Sixties to that of the Seventies. In the
Sixties, teenagers thought that they could make a better world. They
rebelled against the conformity, the uptightness, the greyness of their
parents’ generation. Naive they might have been, but at least they were
idealistic.
And the punks? What were they rebelling against? What was their idea of a
better world? Fighting each other at gigs, it seemed. Their drugs, speed and
heroin, only made them jump like pogo sticks, beat each other up or pass
out. At least pot and acid turned hippies on to peace and love.
A few good things did come out of punk. I remember joining 100,000 people in
Trafalgar Square in 1978 for the Rock Against Racism march, which culminated
in a concert in Victoria Park, Hackney, where the Clash played, along with
X-Ray Spex, Tom Robinson and Steel Pulse. By then the Sex Pistols had broken
up.
But in the end, the best thing that came out of punk, I felt, was its
backlash: the New Romantic movement. Here were clothes that were downright
beautiful, even men who were downright beautiful. The clubbing was great,
with no danger of being spat on or stabbed. And the music was at least more
melodic.
What about the philosophy? Well, it was pretty shallow, to be honest. The look
was all-important. But at least the ethos wasn’t destructive. And if you
can’t be shallow as a teenager, when can you?
maryann.sieghart@thetimes.co.uk
School rules
Oh my God, I’m about to be sent to jail. Or so I feared when I read the papers
yesterday. The High Court has ruled that parents who take their children out
of school during term-time face a criminal conviction. Fortunately, the
words “without the permission of the head teacher” appeared in the ruling.
So that’s all right — we had not only permission but, from one headmistress,
outright enthusiasm for taking our daughters away for a term to go
travelling.
I can see why head teachers get angry when parents swan off with their
children just to get a cheaper beach holiday in the Canaries. But they can
also be remarkably unimaginative about leave-granting.
Not all of them. When I was at a state primary school, our headmistress never
complained about us occasionally disappearing with our parents during
term-time. “You’ll learn far more with them than you will at school,” she
declared. I don’t remember suffering academically from the short absences.
Equally, even after four months away, our children have barely fallen behind
their classmates; in some subjects they are ahead. And they have learnt
about Mayan civilisation, rainforests, volcanoes, sailing, salsa and a
smattering of Spanish, as well as backpacking survival techniques.
The mother in the High Court case wanted her children to be able to
participate in the finals of a dance contest, but their head teacher said
no. These girls were above average in their school studies. Here was a
chance for them to excel in a non-academic discipline, too. Why be so
small-minded? Schools are not the only educators in life.
Sister act
When Tessa Jowell stepped up to the dispatch box on Monday, she was surrounded
by fellow Cabinet ministers. It was a great show of support. But look at the
names: Ruth Kelly, Patricia Hewitt, Hilary Armstrong. And on the front bench
alongside them: Dawn Primarolo, Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman and Margaret
Hodge. All right, so Ben Bradshaw was there too, but he’s an honorary
sister. I’m all for female solidarity, but not if it means that men don’t
have to bother. Jowell must be asking herself now: where are the brothers
when you need them?
