1988 - The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion - Caroline Coon

 1988 - THE NEW WAVE PUNK ROCK EXPLOSION - CAROLINE COON

More so than Virginia Boston's 'Shockwave' book, Caroline Coon's 1988 - The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion once acted as an inspirational blueprint for the punk rock scene in its ascendency. What Caroline did was to capture punk both at its embryonic stage and - some might say - at its height. More so than any other book apart possibly from Ray Stevenson's 'Sex Pistols File', 1988 was the punk style bible that became required reading.

Based on a series of interviews Caroline conducted between July 1976 and June 1977, her book captures a vision being born. The remarkable thing about it is that at the time, she was almost on her own, being one of the few journalists astute enough to realise the importance of the Sex Pistols and the movement she foresaw them inspiring. As she explains in the introduction, she first saw the Pistols in March 1976 at the Nashville in London but on floating the idea of writing an article on them to her editor at Melody Maker music newspaper she was practically laughed out the office. It was a whole five months later that her proposition was finally accepted and in August 1976 one of the first articles ever printed on punk was published, starting with the line 'Johnny Rotten looks bored'. The rest is history.

Like a lot of music journalists at that time, Caroline had been heavily involved in the late Sixties/early Seventies hippy counterculture. She had been in attendance at the UFO psychedelic nights with Pink Floyd, written for Oz magazine, defended and supported Oz at their obscenity trial, and even co-founded Release - the free, independent drug charity.

The difference between Caroline and many of her fellow travellers, however, was that rather than mocking or even being frightened of the new, emerging punk attitude, she recognised the similarities between the two cultures and their shared oppositional positions to the mainstream. Punks were the antithesis to hippies, for sure, but the commonalities were undeniable.

'What's so different about youth today?' she asks The Clash during her interview with them. She's met with silence. But then Joe Strummer stands up and almost relishing the drama of the moment, turns around to reveal the stark, hand-painted graffiti on the back of his boiler suit that says 'Hate and War'. It's the hippy 'Love and Peace' motto but reversed, of course. And right there, like a line being drawn in the sand, history was in the making and Caroline Coon was there recording it.

Interestingly, Caroline ends the book with the words 'Whatever happens now, the force of punk rock will be felt in society at least until 1988'. Hence the title of the book. A whole fifty years later, though no longer viewed as a 'force' as such, punk is still with us in multiple guises with even many of the original school of '76 bands still performing to mixed-age audiences.

The fallout from the 'force of punk rock' is another thing entirely. Punk rock changed lives. Some for the good, some for the bad. Some for the better, some for the worse. Punk rock ruined lives but again for some even in this it was for the best. Like an eternal paradox.

Punk rock was never the be-all and end-all of life as we know it but for those caught in its explosion at whatever period or stage of it, it certainly made life a bit more interesting than the staid, generic version sold as being 'normal'. Better a punk life than a life punked. And as for Caroline Coon? Her legacy is safe but she still deserves to be honoured once in a while and our praise to her offered.

John Serpico