Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Greil Marcus
but to the five thousand people packed into San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on 14 January 1978, that performance was as close to Judgment Day as a staged event can be—and not because many had seen the leaflets evangelistswere distributing outside: “There’s a Johnny Rotten in each of us, and he doesn’t need to be liberated—
he needs to be crucified!”
That would have been old news to Johnny Rotten; one of his publicity photos showed him nailed to a cross. In London the subculture generated by the Sex Pistols and their first followers had already been pronounced dead by those whose business it is to make such pronouncements: a once-secret society diffused by headlines and tourism. Or was it that, in the beginning, punk was indeed a sort of secret society, dedicated not to the guarding of a secret but to its pursuit, a society based on a blind conviction that there was a secret to be found? Was it that once the secret was seemingly discovered, once punk became an ideology of protest and self-expression—once people knew what to expect, once they understood just what they would get when they paid their money, or what they would do to earn it—the story was ready for its footnotes?
In the United States, primitive enclaves had formed across the country (nightclubs, fanzines, record stores, a half-dozen high school students here, a trio of artists there, a girl locked in her room staring at her new haircut in the mirror)—though perhaps less in response to the thrill of hearing $10 import copies of the banned “Anarchy” single than to newspaper and TV features about London teenagers mutilating their faces with common household objects. Real discoveries were taking place, out of nothing (“The original scene,” said a founder of the Los Angeles punk milieu, “was made of people who were taking chances and operating on obscure fragments of information”); for some, those discoveries, a new way of walking and a new way of talking, would dramatize the contradictions of everyday existence for years to come, would keep life more interesting than it would have otherwise been.
“Now it’s time for audience participation,” Joe Strummer of the Clash said from the stage in late 1976. “I want you all to tell me what exactly you’re doing here.” As they waited for the Sex Pistols to take the stage at Winterland, probably a lot of people wondered what they were doing there—wondered why their expectations were so confused, and so fierce. In all the stories coded in that moment, at least one was simply musical; compared to everything the music secretly contained, that story was almost silent, but I will tell that story first.
HAVE YOU
“Have you seen the Sex Pistols?” Joe Strummer whispered to Graham Parker one night in early 1976—it was as if he were passing on a rumor so unlikely he was afraid to raise his voice. They were part of the London “pub rock” scene (Parker chasing echoes of Wilson Pickett and the Temptations, Strummer looking for Chuck Berry and Gene Vincent): one more abortive attempt to bring the bloated music of the 1970s back to basics. “No,” said Parker. “The Sex Pistols?” “Whole new thing, man,” said Strummer. “Whole new thing.”
Straight away, Strummer quit his rock revival band to form the Clash: “Yesterday I thought I was a crud,” he would later say he said to friends who asked him why. “Then I saw the Sex Pistols, and I became a king.” It’s a good story, too good to be true, but it was true in the music, and never more so than in the music of the Slits. They were the first all-female punk band: four teenagers who hadn’t the slightest idea of how to do anything but climb onto a stage and shout. They said “Fuck you”; it meant “Why not.” It was the sound, Jon Savage wrote long after the fact, of people discovering their own power.
ALL THE SLITS
All the Slits really left behind is an object screaming with muteness: a nameless lp in a blank
he needs to be crucified!”
That would have been old news to Johnny Rotten; one of his publicity photos showed him nailed to a cross. In London the subculture generated by the Sex Pistols and their first followers had already been pronounced dead by those whose business it is to make such pronouncements: a once-secret society diffused by headlines and tourism. Or was it that, in the beginning, punk was indeed a sort of secret society, dedicated not to the guarding of a secret but to its pursuit, a society based on a blind conviction that there was a secret to be found? Was it that once the secret was seemingly discovered, once punk became an ideology of protest and self-expression—once people knew what to expect, once they understood just what they would get when they paid their money, or what they would do to earn it—the story was ready for its footnotes?
In the United States, primitive enclaves had formed across the country (nightclubs, fanzines, record stores, a half-dozen high school students here, a trio of artists there, a girl locked in her room staring at her new haircut in the mirror)—though perhaps less in response to the thrill of hearing $10 import copies of the banned “Anarchy” single than to newspaper and TV features about London teenagers mutilating their faces with common household objects. Real discoveries were taking place, out of nothing (“The original scene,” said a founder of the Los Angeles punk milieu, “was made of people who were taking chances and operating on obscure fragments of information”); for some, those discoveries, a new way of walking and a new way of talking, would dramatize the contradictions of everyday existence for years to come, would keep life more interesting than it would have otherwise been.
“Now it’s time for audience participation,” Joe Strummer of the Clash said from the stage in late 1976. “I want you all to tell me what exactly you’re doing here.” As they waited for the Sex Pistols to take the stage at Winterland, probably a lot of people wondered what they were doing there—wondered why their expectations were so confused, and so fierce. In all the stories coded in that moment, at least one was simply musical; compared to everything the music secretly contained, that story was almost silent, but I will tell that story first.
HAVE YOU
“Have you seen the Sex Pistols?” Joe Strummer whispered to Graham Parker one night in early 1976—it was as if he were passing on a rumor so unlikely he was afraid to raise his voice. They were part of the London “pub rock” scene (Parker chasing echoes of Wilson Pickett and the Temptations, Strummer looking for Chuck Berry and Gene Vincent): one more abortive attempt to bring the bloated music of the 1970s back to basics. “No,” said Parker. “The Sex Pistols?” “Whole new thing, man,” said Strummer. “Whole new thing.”
Straight away, Strummer quit his rock revival band to form the Clash: “Yesterday I thought I was a crud,” he would later say he said to friends who asked him why. “Then I saw the Sex Pistols, and I became a king.” It’s a good story, too good to be true, but it was true in the music, and never more so than in the music of the Slits. They were the first all-female punk band: four teenagers who hadn’t the slightest idea of how to do anything but climb onto a stage and shout. They said “Fuck you”; it meant “Why not.” It was the sound, Jon Savage wrote long after the fact, of people discovering their own power.
ALL THE SLITS
All the Slits really left behind is an object screaming with muteness: a nameless lp in a blank