Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution FROM THE PUBLISHER
From it's origins in the States to the cultural shockwave it sent through the UK and Europe, the word, the sound, the style frightened the unknowing and inspired an insurgent network of DJs, artists, writers, and bands as influential today as ever. After nearly three decades of the rallying cry Loud, Fast Rules, punk remains one of the most momentous cultural movements since the inception of rock and roll. This book gives a voice to the punk generation twenty-five years later, as it remembers the jubilant chaos that ensued during those formative years of 1975 to 1979 and takes a look at where the form ventured in the era that followed. With hundreds of previously unpublished interviews from preeminent figures like Iggy Pop, Legs McNeil, The Velvet Underground, Don Letts, Debbie Harry, William S. Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Joe Strummer, Richard Hell and the Sex Pistols, the true story is told in all of its triumphant, furious glory and supported with stunning, often previously un-published photographs.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Colegrave and Sullivan (The Beatles Anthology) deliver a brash and brilliant photo-essay of the most brash and obnoxious chapter in the history of music and culture long before the advent of crowd surfing. Framing its history between 1975 and 1979 (but covering the years before and after), this volume is a historiography of the music, attitude and dress as typified by Malcolm MacLaren and his manufactured Sex Pistols, uncomfortable commercial shifts in the music when anarchy became "a badge of conformity rather than an alternative way of living" and finally the latter days, which saw the dissolution of the Pistols. The authors trace punk rock from its earliest roots in the avant-garde and Warhol's Factory, and discuss every figure and legend from Iggy Pop and the MC5 to Siouxsie Sue and Johnny Rotten. This volume is smartly designed, featuring hundreds of glossy black-and-white photographs and thousands of appraisals from the likes of Leee Childers, Nils Stevenson, as well as quotes from the film Please Kill Me and Leggs McNeil, whose Punk Magazine gave the wave its name. This is a gorgeous, hefty book and readers may be inspired to break their coffee tables with it. (Mar.) Forecast: While punk revelers won't be as nostalgic as Beatles fans, expect many closet sentimentals to clear the book shelves though reissued and repackaged, punk is not yet dead. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Now a confused and disenchanted 26, punk is ripe for a retrospective but reluctant to be pinned down. Cocreators of the best-selling Beatles Anthology, Colegrave and Sullivan deserve credit for acknowledging both New York City's and London's contributions to the movement and beginning at the beginning with Andy Warhol and his Factory groupies. Yet they still miss the point in this oral history, first published in the U.K.: that punk, like any late 20th-century art form, sprang from a frenzied exchange of ideas. Although they interviewed an impressive range of luminaries from both sides of the pond, they fail to re-create those white-hot intercontinental transmissions. Poor editing and pacing aside, the book's failure has a lot to do with the huge amount of space dedicated to the Sex Pistols and their hangers-on. As crucial as that quartet was to the English scene, bands like the Clash and the Ramones better embody punk's true spirit and show how two groups could constructively rub off on each other. In addition, aside from a few stellar shoe-box shots that have finally come to light, this does not come close to forming a "definitive" coffee-table portrait. Missing are the truly world-stopping photographs of Pennie Smith and Mick Rock, to name a few. Unfortunately, this, too, is only being published in North America as an 111/2" x 121/4" paperback with flaps, so it will easily wear and tear. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Penguin, 1997) is heavier on American voices and contains a fraction of the photos, but it's a more concise and raucous read. For comprehensive popular music collections only. Heather McCormack, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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