All language subtitles for Punk (2019) - 01x01 - Part 1

[♪♪♪]

[Penelope Spheeris]:
Punk was born in the late '60s.

It has lived this whole time,

and it will live forever,

so anybody that says, "Punk is dead,"

that's the stupidest thing
I've ever heard.

Punk rock is dead.

[Keith Morris]:
Punk's never been dead.

That's a misnomer.
Punk is not dead.

How can it be dead when I'm still here?

Punk rock is the future for all of us.

In the '60s,

you had a lot of the
short-lived cultural moments

like folk rock,

and acid rock,

so naturally when you had punk rock,

there was an expectation
that it would die.

[Vinnie Stigma]:
Punk will never die.

There will always be somebody,

there will always be some band...

Because there will always be
some angry kid in his bedroom...

Screaming, "Fuck you, Mom," you know?

"Fuck you, Ma.
Fuck you, Mom,"

and, you know, that, to me,

is as punk as anything, you know?

God bless 'em.

[♪♪♪]

I'm Iggy Pop.

Detroit...

home of nearly 2,000,000 people.

Yes, Detroit is enjoying
its finest hour.

[Pop]:
Growing up in Michigan,

people who met me when I was young

assumed I was a rich kid,

partly 'cause I was cocky,

and partly because
I got so much attention

and support at home from my parents

for anything I wanted to do,

including learning to play the drums,

which was a big hassle for them
in a little tiny trailer home...

[chuckling]

This big kit of drums

that I'm just bashing on it
all the time,

and I had a huge radio, and...

a Zenith,

and I would listen

to "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks

in my little bed,

with the covers pulled up over my head,

like, when it was past my bedtime.

You'd have to wait through

the other 39 songs on the Top 40,

which were all shitty,

and then suddenly
you heard this sound, this...

[singing guitar riff]
♪ Ah-na-na-na ♪

♪ Ah-na-na-na ♪

bonk,

and it was this ripping,
tearing sound of the guitar,

and the vocal, it didn't sound kosher,

or manly, or anything.

It was like, "Girl,
you really got me now."

It sounded like life
in the Industrial Age.

You were free of the blues,

you were free of Perry Como,

you were free of Mom and Dad.

You were dangerous,

and, uh...

you turned into a little monster.

[♪♪♪]

...but, uh, to continue
a self-investigation

of how I turned into a punk,

and how this attitude emerged,

it had a lot to do also with the MC5

and their manager, John Sinclair.

[♪♪♪]

The MC5 were pushing a harder attitude,

and they were a big influence.

[Wayne Kramer]:
We were part of a generation

that rejected grown-up ideas
about things,

and we had to do something,

because the grown-ups
were fucking this up big time.

The MC5 was born in a time

where we had a criminal
in the White House

with utter contempt
for the rule of law...

Well, I'm not a crook.

[Kramer]: Millions
and millions of Americans

protested the war in Vietnam.

Millions of Americans participated

in civil rights marches
across the country,

and we felt, being in a rock band,

we were perfectly positioned
to help move us forward.

We got a call from the Yippies,

Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

They were going to have
a counter-festival

to the Democratic convention,

and we were going to join
with other bands

from all over the country

to present a unified front
to the Democrats,

and show them that young people
wanted the war to end,

so we went out to Chicago

and discovered

that none of the other bands showed up.

[chuckling]

They actually had
more sense than we did,

because they knew

the Chicago police
were waiting for them,

and it was tense.

People weren't smiling,

and the Chicago police
were harassing the crowd,

and there were agents provocateurs

starting fights with guys,

and it was very heavy vibes.

So we set up out on the ground, and...

and played our show.

[voice into microphone]
Right now...

Right now...
Right now, it's time to...

[crowd cheering]

♪ Kick out the jams,
motherfuckers! ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ Yeah! ♪

♪ I, I, I, I... ♪

♪ I'm gonna ♪

♪ I'm gonna kick 'em out! ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ Yeah! ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ Well, I feel pretty good ♪

♪ and I guess that I could
get crazy now, baby... ♪

[Sylvain Sylvain]:
I love that.

"Kick out the jams,
motherfuckers."

Well, that's...
that's the MC5 at their best.

That's Detroit.

"People, we gotta rise up."

It's as good as rock 'n' roll gets.

It's the promise of rock 'n' roll.

It liberates you.

What they did with music
was a life-changer for me.

So then I got "Kick Out the Jams,"

and that just completely
changed my life.

"This is what I like."

[crowd cheering]

[Kramer]:
So we finished our set,

and the Chicago Police
Department demonstrated

how they treat people
that they disagree with

by beating American kids
on national television,

and it was... it was ugly.

It was a bad scene,
and all of America saw it.

[Pop]:
Wayne Kramer tells me,

and I don't remember,

that at one point they tried
to recruit me as a drummer

when I was a drummer,

and that I turned 'em down.

I don't know if that's true or not,

because I just have no memory,

which is interesting.

And I heard about this drummer,

his name was Jim Osterberg,

and everybody said, "Man,

you've got to hear this guy play.

He can really play,"

and I'll be damned,
he really could play.

I mean, he was...
he was a terrific drummer.

The band was called
the Prime Movers Blues Band,

and they had this kid on drums,
and he was terrific.

I talked to him about it,
but he said he didn't...

He was thinking about
not playing drums anymore.

He had something else he wanted to do,

and he played with
some blues artists in Chicago,

and one night
he took some acid on the gig,

and he had a vision...

[echoing]

...and the vision was

that he didn't need to be playing drums

for these old blues artists.

He needed to be up front,
singing his own blues.

And I realized

I wasn't going to be
a blues drummer all my life,

and I needed to bring the blues

to suburban juvenile delinquency,

and I knew just the guys to do it.

There were a number of
delinquent high school students

who used to congregate
in the campus business district

when they were supposed to be in school.

One of the kids was Ron Asheton,

and he looked vaguely ill all the time.

He was very pale.

The hair was definitely
too long for high school,

and across the street,

this Elvis-looking character
used to stand there,

smoking cigarettes,

and just giving dirty looks
to everybody that walked by,

and that was his brother, Scott.

They were just a couple of guys

who looked like they weren't
doing much of anything,

and never were gonna,

and I convinced the two of them
to be my band,

and then we brought in
their friend Dave,

who had a bass, and a car,

and an amp,

which was very typical of bands
in those days,

and the Doors,
who had their first album out,

were going to play the homecoming dance,

and the homecoming dance
is a big deal in college.

You know, jocks invite
their girlfriends,

and they get a corsage and everything,

and they go,

so they hired the Doors,

probably thinking they were going to get

♪ Come on, baby
light my fire ♪

you know, but instead...

you know, they got this guy
just wasted on LSD

fronting a band
that really couldn't rock.

They didn't know how
to balance their amplifiers,

the sound was terrible,

and I loved it.
[laughing]

I thought, "If these people,

who have a number-one song out
and a professional album

and a big gig like this,

can do that,

well, fuck, what excuse have I got?

I have no excuse."

[♪♪♪]

...and I stopped singing
about little mice and rainbows,

and I started singing
about having nothing to do,

and no fun, and, uh...

uh, you know, animal sex and whatever.

[♪♪♪]

No one on Earth played that way
at that time.

Only us.

Nobody rocked as hard as us.

Nobody.

♪ So messed up ♪

♪ I want you here ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ In my room
I want you here ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ Now we're gonna be
face to face ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ And I'll lay right down
in my favorite place ♪

People did not know

what to make of The Stooges
in the beginning,

which I took as a good sign.

For me, The Stooges is, like, the band.

You know, the Ashetons, man,
those guys had deep groove,

and Iggy is probably

the greatest front man of all time.

Iggy, to me, is awesome rock 'n' roll,

but, you know, accessible,

not slick.

Everybody in the world
has covered this song.

I cover it myself.

I end with it sometimes,

get on the floor and bark like a dog,

raise my leg up,

pretend to pee on somebody's leg.

The national anthem of punk rock,

and this was before there was
the word "punk rock."

It's 1968.

Iggy is the godfather of punk.

I mean, come on, you know?

The Stooges were
a taste of what was to come.

[Pop]: When I got to New York
with The Stooges in '69,

it was a very dark and downtrodden area.

If you sat on a park bench there
for more than 15 minutes,

somebody would offer you drugs,
or sex, or both.

New York City was so damaged.

It looked like Dresden
after the firestorm.

You know, it was like walking
into this giant movie set

where you could invent
how you wanted to be.

You could reinvent yourself,

and that was kind of cool,

because all these movements
from the '60s

that were coming to a head, you know,

like the gay rights movement,
and the women's rights movement,

you know, just everything,

so no one knew exactly
what the rules were anymore,

so it was kind of, like,
time to make up new rules.

[Bob Gruen]:
But in New York City,

there was no money.

There was a lot of empty storefronts,

and it started to kind of grow

as a community of musicians and artists,

and a lot of people started bands,

not for the idea of becoming famous,

but for the idea of playing
mostly for your friends,

maybe getting some free drinks,

maybe meeting some girls.

It really wasn't a commercial time,

because those kind of opportunities

seemed too far away.

[♪♪♪]

[Sylvain]:
Me and Billy Murcia,

who was the first drummer
in the New York Dolls,

we started making clothes,
you know, to survive

and to make a living,

and we were all going
to the same high school,

and one day I'm in the lunchroom,

and I keep on seeing this guy.

He's always surrounded by girls, man.

He was like a fish magnet,
this cat, you know,

and I'm going,
"Who the hell this guy is?"

and I find out his name
is Giovanni Genzale,

which was way too, you know,

too colorful for me
to actually call him that,

and I said, "Man,

we should get this guy
in our band, you know,

because maybe then we can
have chicks too, you know?"

[laughing]

So I ask him.

I said, "Hey, man,

you want to play with me and Billy, man?

We've got a band and stuff,"

and all of a sudden he said, "Nah,

I don't know how to play.

I don't want to play," you know.

A couple weeks later,
or maybe even a week later,

I see him again at the lunchroom.

This time, he comes up to me,
and he says, "Hey, Sylvain,

how many strings
does a guitar have?"

I said, "Six."

[♪♪♪]

He goes, "Hmm."

He says, "Sylvain,

how many strings
does a bass guitar have?"

I said, "Four."

[♪♪♪]

He said, "Sylvain,

I'm your fuckin' bass player."

[chuckling]

And that was it.
That's how he started.

♪ You're the prima ballerina ♪

♪ On the spring afternoon ♪

♪ Change on into the wolfman
howlin' at the moon ♪

♪ Awoo! ♪

♪ You got
a personality crisis ♪

♪ You got it while it was hot ♪

♪ It's always hard to know ♪

♪ The frustration
and heartache... ♪

[Sylvain]: When we first
started playing together,

I would go to England

and shop for all those cool shoes,

and those platform boots that they had.

The Kensington Market
was a really cool place,

and, of course, the King's Road,

you know, glitter and all that stuff

was really big.

Marc Bolan, my favorite,

I don't care what
you're going to call him,

but to me, being onstage,

or being a performer,

I have the mentality
of putting on a show,

like the "Little Rascals."

It's like, "Man, we're bored.

What are we going to do?"

"Well, let's put on our show."

"Well, where are we going
to get the curtain,

you know, for the stage?"

"Oh, my mother's bedsheet."

"Okay, good."

"How about the makeup?"
"Okay..."

In our case, it was we'd go
to our girlfriends' bags.

They got more makeup
than Bloomingdale's.

It wasn't, like,
trying to be androgynous,

but yet we were.

I mean, you know, for years

it was the girls' clothes fit me better

than the guys' clothes, you know?

I don't know why.

So that's how we started,
like, putting things together.

It was like, "Okay, we've got
to make our own stuff,"

and we're grabbing
our girlfriends' clothes

and putting it on,

and their makeup, and, you know,
"let's put on a show."

[♪♪♪]

[Gruen]: It was just like
a visual circus

with, you know, attitude,

and hair, and makeup,
and heels, and feathers,

but we were afraid of that, you know,

and so I think they played on it

because people were afraid of it.

It kind of helped them get in the news,

and at the time, David Bowie

and some of the other English acts,

they asked them if they were,
you know, homosexual,

and they said they were bisexual,

so they asked David Johansen
if he was bisexual,

he said, "No, we're trisexual.

We'll try anything."

[crowd cheering]

[Jayne County]: The first time
I saw the Dolls,

I kind of like, was kind of,

"Oh my god, they're beating me
to the punch."

They beat me to the punch

doing what they were doing, you know?

The Dolls weren't really transgender.

They were all straight guys, really,

just putting on some women's clothes

and wearing lipstick and makeup,

but none of them were gay.

A lot of people thought
the Dolls were doing it

just to get attention,

but it was the thing to do at the time.

It was more like blurring
the sexes together, really.

It was a very
androgynous scene, you know,

and then you had David Bowie happening,

which was a very androgynous thing.

It was kind of a mixture
of male and female

kind of thrown together.

The gay liberation people
were very upset with the Dolls.

They were calling them transvestites

back in the days

where people called it
"female impersonation."

You had to call it that,
or you'd be arrested.

I also got the plug pulled on me
a couple of times.

The first time I played NYU,
they pulled the plug on me,

and said they weren't going to allow NYU

to be turned into
a 42nd Street smut shop.

My early shows were very graphic.

I used rubber dildos
that squirted out milk,

and I used a toilet
and all kinds of props onstage.

My first band, I set out
just to shock, really.

I just wanted to shock people
out of their normalcy.

[♪♪♪]

♪ If you don't wanna
fuck me, baby ♪

♪ Baby, fuck off ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ If you don't wanna
fuck me, baby ♪

♪ Baby, fuck off ♪

[County]:
Growing up in Georgia,

I had to learn how to run,

and run fast,

because I was always being
followed by cars and things,

and people jumping out of their cars,

wanting to beat me up and everything,

because I was dressed so outlandish.

Silver hair, big Beatle bangs,

high-heeled boots,

pinstriped trousers,
polka-dot tie, the whole bit,

and, you know, just
prancing down the street

just as pretty as you can be, you know?

Then, all of a sudden,

you'd hear someone
yell out from their car,

"You fuckin' Ringo!"
or "Fuckin' queer!"

whatever like that, you know,

and it was like
if you were with your friends,

you'd go, "Okay, it's time to run.

Time to run."

[♪♪♪]

Hello.

Well, Max's Kansas City,

when I started hanging out there,

Wayne County, Jayne County,

was deejaying,

and some of his band members
knew of me and my playing,

and suggested that I be in the group,

and it worked out,

but back then, you've got to remember,

it was 45 years ago,

for Wayne to do what he did,

it took a lot of balls,

you know, to sing about stuff
that he was singing about,

and looking the way he did onstage.

We played a show out in Jersey,

and we sent out a photo of the group

dressed normally,

Wayne in a... a jean jacket,

a jean hat,

looking, you know, a little normal,

but then, when we would finish backstage

getting ready to play,

he would be all made up and everything,

and the owners of the club would say,

"Nah, we can't have this here,"

so, uh... they threw us out,

and that's what it was like.

[County]: Well, I got my name,
Wayne County,

because Detroit is in Wayne County,

and there's a sign that reads,

"You are now entering Wayne County,"

and I always thought
that was really funny,

and I did it because of The Stooges,

because of Iggy and The Stooges,

and I wanted to, I guess,

have some kind of connection to them.

You know, Iggy, he can be dangerous.

Iggy was dangerous, you know.

He started a whole attitude,

a whole way of looking at things.

He went against the grain,
and I think he won.

[♪♪♪]

[Pop]: I sort of
started to see things

a different way.

There was this feeling

that something had to happen

that was more amazing to look at,

more aggressive to listen to,

and it wasn't as some sort of
a marketing plan or...

It's just what you feel inside.

"This is what I want to do and be.

Look out for me.

Watch this..."

...but behind every act,

there's almost always a key person

with some combination of taste,

big balls,

and a position in the cogs of industry,

and for us,

it was a gentleman named Danny Fields.

Danny Fields was, in effect,

the A&R department
of Elektra Records.

He was in Ann Arbor to see an MC5 gig

at the student union,

and we were opening.

[Danny Fields]: And I went
to the student union,

and I heard this great music,
just great music,

just going up the stairs,

and there was this lunatic performer

such as I'd never seen,

and it was Iggy Pop,

just flopping
and dancing around up there.

It was a revelation.

It's like what I always wanted
a rock 'n' roll band to be,

and so I waited for them to finish,

and I said, "Hello,
I'm from Elektra Records,

and I really like your band,"

and he...
Iggy kept walking.

He never even looked
to see who was speaking.

And I didn't believe that...

he looked...
he looked too much like us

to be anybody.

[Fields]:
And he didn't believe

that anybody from any record company

could ever possibly say,
"I really liked your band,"

that I must have been a dirty old man

going after his flesh or something,

but he did point to the room
where the manager was,

and so they were signed...

with a phone call,

and... everything changed.

Let's dispel the myth
that I was their manager.

I was just kind of their babysitter.

Every show I saw, I mean,

I was anxious for either his safety

or the safety of people in the audience,

but every night, there was something.

[news report]: He would pour
hot wax on his body,

cut his chest with a broken bottle,

and smear peanut butter on himself.

There is an extraordinarily
dangerous energy

that these people are trying to unleash.

[Gruen]:
And audiences didn't react

the way they do nowadays,

where you have a mosh pit,

and people go to a show

in order to push each other around.

Back then, nobody touched anybody.

I mean, you wouldn't want
somebody next to you

pushing you,

or jumping on top, holding somebody up

and passing him around in the audience.

That was inconceivable.

Iggy, to me, was complete freedom,

you know, complete
howling madman antics,

and kind of that, you know,

driving the car while
you're getting a blow job

at 120 miles,

and driving it off
the fucking cliff, you know?

That's what Iggy was to me.

[cymbal crash]

Iggy was writing about,

"I'm a street-walking cheetah
with a heart full of napalm.

I'm the runaway son
of a nuclear A-bomb."

I mean, come on,

the greatest fuckin' lyrics in the...

Well, besides the Ramones.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Hey, ho! ♪

♪ Let's go! ♪

♪ Hey, ho, let's go ♪

♪ They're forming
in a straight line ♪

♪ They're going through
a tight wind ♪

♪ The kids are
losing their minds ♪

♪ Blitzkrieg bop ♪

[Clem Burke]: They were like
a perfect rock 'n' roll band.

That's a rarity,

and the Ramones were
one of them for sure.

They didn't even have a guitar solo.

Great fuckin' groove, too.

Oh, I thought the Ramones were
kind of like the Beach Boys,

but, like, on speed.

It was so different from everything else

that was on the radio,

and what people thought of as rock.

I remember the first time
I saw them play.

They must have played, like,
12 songs in 16 minutes.

I mean, it was like
getting hit in the face

and then liking it.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Hey, ho, let's go! ♪

[Gruen]: Considering the way

that the Ramones ended up looking,

with a very severe black leather look,

all of them, everybody,

was very influenced
by the New York Dolls,

and the idea that you could
just do anything,

and you could be as bright
and as loud as you want.

Why do you play so loud?

We don't know.
We have... Why?

Something makes us like it.

We don't have any control over it.

We play so loud,

that our amps couldn't take it,

but now we've got these amps
that they, they're really...

They, they... work.

The Ramones played it
a lot dumber than they were,

which was the brilliant thing
about the Ramones.

You know, I finally went
to see the Dolls at Club 82,

and I was in my sneakers,

and t-shirt, and jeans,

and surrounded by these guys
who looked like roosters,

and I was like, "It's great music,

but I wish they'd
change the clothes."

That's why when I first saw the Ramones,

I was like, "Wow, they play
that kind of music,

and they dress just like me."

[County]: I remember
seeing the Ramones,

and thinking to myself

they were going to become
a big local New York band.

I didn't know outside of that
what was going to happen.

[♪♪♪]

[Fields]: The Ramones wanted
very much to be written about,

and I was the weekly
rock 'n' roll columnist

for the Soho News,

and Tommy was sort of the press agent,

and he called me and said,
"Hey, are you going to...

We know you are really going to like us,

so we'd really like you
to write about us

in the Soho News,"

but I thought they were
some kind of Latino band,

a cha-cha band, we called them

in a derogatorily racially inept way,

but, I don't know, "Ramones,"
it sounded...

so Spanish.

So I agreed to go see them,

and it was great.

They were so fast.

They looked great.

They were all wearing the same thing,

and then it was over,

and the whole set was over

in, I think, under 17 minutes,

and, as promised, I met them,

and I said,

"I'll not just write about you,

but I'd like to be your manager,"

and Johnny said,

"Well, we need $3,000 for drums,

so if you can get us that,
you can be our manager."

Now, $3,000 in 1975

is, like, a lot of money for drums.

I don't know what drums cost,

and I don't know what they spent it on,

and I don't care,

but I called my mother,

and I said, "I need $3,000,"

and she just wrote a check,

and said, "Oh, I hope you know
what you're doing, but..."

you know, so actually
my mother is responsible

for launching the Ramones.

[Sylvain]: The problem was,

where are you going to play?

There was no places to play.

The places to play was
Madison Square Garden...

[laughing]

you know, and huge, huge places,

and, you know, some of the clubs
that was downtown,

and things like that,

they were having, like,
Top 40 stuff, you know?

They weren't doing, like,
original bands.

You're not going to do
anything like that.

[Ramone]: The only clubs,
really, around

that were available to play in

that would let us play in

was the 82 Club, Mother's,

Max's Kansas City, and CBGBs.

That was it.

I think young people
had to go someplace.

They couldn't keep playing
the Top 40 or, or copy music,

and they wanted to do something,

and it's just bursting forward.

[Gruen]: When Hilly Kristal
opened the bar,

he was actually looking more
for country music and blues,

and when the punk music started,

I think at the beginning,
when Jayne County came,

he was actually called
Wayne County back then,

and said he had a band,
and wanted to play,

and Hilly thought
from the name "Wayne County"

that it sounded like a country band.

Jayne County's anything
but a country band,

and so that kind of started the new age,

new wave kind of music
that started playing at CBGBs.

[County]:
When I first played there,

there was dog shit on the floor.

I mean, Hilly had these big huge dogs,

and they'd just shit all over the floor.

At times, you'd be
going up to see the band,

you'd step in dog shit,

and you never ate the chili.

If you ate the chili,
you shit all night long.

[pot bubbling]

Well, I mean,
nobody died that we know of.

I don't know.
I can't remember.

I think there were burgers there, too,

at one time,

but then, you know,

when it started being
a music kind of scene place,

they just focused in on the alcohol.

I think there were still

some of those burgers left.

Really?

Just, like, clinging...

Just leaning in there?

Just, like, hanging around, yeah.

Just stuck?

Yeah, like after, you know, an eternity.

And the toilets at CBGBs were the worst.

There's not even doors to the stalls.

You'd sit down to take a dump,

people could come in there
and just look at you.

It's a fascinating place, I must say.

It's probably one of
the most interesting places

in New York.

Would you come here again?

No. [laughing]

It doesn't interest me in the least.

[Gruen]: It was kind of like
if your parents go out of town,

and they leave your uncle in charge,

and all he wants to do is
have a beer and watch TV.

"You kids can go in the basement
and do whatever you want,"

and if you make any noise
or you break something,

you're out of there,

but if you didn't disturb Hilly,
you could do whatever you want,

and that's why CBGBs
became a great place

where people learned how to play,

because you didn't have to be
a good band

to get into CBGBs.

You just had to play.

[♪♪♪]

[McNeil]: I mean,

Blondie was one of
the shittiest bands at CBGBs

in the beginning,

and they opened for the Ramones,
like, for two years,

or for, like, at least a year,

every two weeks.

[Debbie Harry]:
We had such a small repertoire

that we had to play every song
at least four times.

[Chris Stein]: Yeah,
we did a lot of...

we did a lot of covers, you know.

We used to play
"Heat Wave..."

"Heat Wave," baby, yeah.

Stuff like that.

What was great about Blondie

was you got to see them become
this fantastic fuckin' band,

you know, in front of your eyes.

You know, if you kept
going back to CBGBs,

you got to see people start

from where they were arguing onstage

and playing the wrong song

to becoming absolutely
fuckin' brilliant.

[Burke]: I always
make the analogy with CBGB

of being a workshop,

similar to an actor's workshop.

The whole thing was about originality.

It was about just being onstage

and performing your songs,

or doing your art
in front of an audience,

whether that audience
be five people, 50 people,

or 500 people.

CBGBs was more of a place

where you had a sense of community.

[Burke]: We were influenced
a lot by our peers.

We would cover Ramones songs.

We would cover songs by Television,

and then we would cover,
like, a disco song, you know,

at the same time.

Well, I think all the bands
were considered the punk scene,

but there was really no one genre

that was punk music.

[Tommy Ramone]: Obviously,

if you compare the music of Blondie,

the Dead Boys, and the Ramones,

they're very different, you know,

and I guess that's one of the things

that's really great about it,

because there's all that variety.

[Burke]: It's not what you
classically think of

what, sort of, punk rock is,

but really it's more of an attitude

than anything else.

It's, "I don't give a shit,"

Fuck you,
I'll do whatever I want."

[Gruen]: It was just wild.

It was just a wild scene,

but they were all in this one,
you know, place.

It was a very small scene,

and it was about to break out
from there...

but the music
wasn't called "punk."

The word "punk" kind of
came from the magazine.

[Harry]: They had posters up,

little pieces of paper on the walls,

"Punk is coming,"
"Punk is coming."

Yeah, well, that was for those guys,

for the magazine.

- Yes.
- We all...

Well, there was no "punk"
until they said that.

Yeah, I don't know.

Meh...

Stephen MacLean in New York for Flashez,

New York, the punk capital of the world,

and I'm in the offices of Punk Magazine

with the editor, John Holmstrom,

and Legs McNeil.

What do you do, Legs?

Well, um, I work as resident punk.

What does that involve?

I usually just hang out and drink a lot.

[McNeil]: We were kind of
white trash kids

from Cheshire, Connecticut...

me, John Holmstrom, and Ged Dunn.

John wanted to do this magazine

that combined rock 'n' roll and comics,

because he was a cartoonist.

I didn't want to have anything
to do with the magazine,

but he said, "Well, if we do a magazine,

people will buy us drinks
and want to hang out with us,"

and I thought, "Oh, okay," you know?

So I'm like, "Well, what do
I call a humor magazine

about punk rock and fashion?"

So I pulled something out of my head.

I had just seen the New York Dolls

do a song called "Teenage News,"

and I suggested that.

And, um, I thought
that was a stupid idea.

He said, "Well, what
would you call it?"

and I said, "Punk,"

because that's what everyone
had called me my entire life.

When I said it, I thought
it was funny, you know?

We were trying to be funny.

[police sirens wail]

You know, it was also
on television shows.

They couldn't say,
"You fucking asshole," you know?

You had to say, "You punk,
you dirty punk,"

and Clint Eastwood used it.

We were punks.

We were not tough guys, you know?

We were basically young hippies

that were tired of the hippie movement,

and John said, "I'll be the editor,"

and Ged said, "I'll be the publisher,"

and they said,
"What are you going to do?"

and John said, "You can be
the resident punk, ha ha ha."

[MacLean]: These particular
delicate delinquents,

with no real financial backing,

started Punk magazine a year ago.

Star reporter is Legs McNeil,

who usually makes sure
he asks the dumbest questions,

because Punk, he says,
is anti-intellectual.

[McNeil]: And that's what
we thought Punk was.

Like, let's, you know,

let's break all the rules,

but, you know, have some intelligence

and some wit and some humor, you know,

because the '60s,

everything was so fuckin' tedious.

It was kind of like,
let's have some fun, you know?

We never have any money.

I don't know how
we bring out each issue.

- I don't know how we live.
- Right.

I really don't, you know,
we don't eat anything.

We don't get salaries.
We don't get money.

Yeah, no one here is on salary.

Yeah, right.
We just get over it.

I mean, we don't know
how we, you know...

I make money, you know,
betting on pinball.

You know, I was a loser,

and it was like,
"Why not start a magazine?

We don't have anything
to lose," you know?

We basically were all
going to go to jail

if we didn't find something
worthwhile to do, you know?

But then I found out
that "punk" is a prison term

for young boys who turn tricks.

A punk, you know,

is someone who gets
fucked in the ass in jail.

So I didn't want to be associated

with this punk music thing, you know?

I said, "Yeah, I'm a musician,

but I don't know anything
about this punk thing."

Like, one time I was
in the bathroom, you know,

and I had my jacket on,

and someone came up to me
and said, "Are you a punk?"

you know, and I said,

"What the fuck do you want?"
you know.

Am I a punk, you know?

Bands hated that word.

Nobody wanted to be called a punk band.

[County]: They didn't like
being called punk.

They liked being called
rock 'n' roll bands.

I remember the Ramones saying,
"We're not a punk band.

We're a rock 'n' roll band."

Um, it's rock 'n' roll, stripped down.

[County]:
But the punk label stuck,

and eventually people
had to just accept that.

Tell me about punk rock,

because I have heard,

I've read all kinds of reviews...

Well, I'll tell you about punk rock.

"Punk rock" is a word
used by dilettantes...

- Okay.
- And, uh...

heartless manipulators.

You're acting against that label.

You don't like the label.

I don't like to hear it
come out of someone's mouth.

Where do you like
to hear it come out of?

[laughter]

What we were trying to do
with Punk Magazine

was redefine rock 'n' roll as punk rock,

the original spirit,

the rebellious spirit
of the '50s, you know?

It wasn't safe.

It wasn't what your mother listened to.

It wasn't even what
your big brother listened to.

We wanted to wipe all that out
and start over again.

We were trying to provoke thought

by, like, saying something
you wouldn't normally see,

so we'd end up being
very politically incorrect,

but it was all for a purpose.

It was kind of to get people
out of this comfort zone.

Plus, there were so many
weirdos, you know,

you thought, like,

"These people need some way to be,

some identity too, you know?"

and I think that's what punk was about,

making more options

to be into what you wanted to do,

and I think that

that's what the great success
of this whole movement was.

It liberated people

to be whoever the fuck
they wanted to be.

[♪♪♪]

The Dead Boys are the Dead Boys,

Dictators are Dictators,

the Ramones are the Ramones,
and they're all fuckin' great.

You call them punk

because you got nothing else
to say about them,

no other way to link them,

but it's, like, the heartbeat
that links them, you know?

There ain't no pyrotechnics,
no phony showmanship,

just pure rock 'n' roll energy,

pure guts, pure stamina.

[♪♪♪]

All bands have an arc.

Like all things in nature,

something is conceived,

it's born, it grows,

it's nourished, it flowers,

it produces fruit,

it starts to age,

it withers,

it decays, it dies...

That's nature.

Bands are exactly the same way.

There were problems
with the MC5's political...

well...

oh, everything.

The language, the thought,

but "Kick Out the Jams, Motherfuckers"

was a trademark song,

and this was not a good idea
to put on a record,

because people were frightened
about dirty words.

Well, yeah, it's hard to imagine

that a band would be
banned from existence

for saying "motherfucker."

I mean, you almost have to say
"motherfucker" to start now.

It was just a wonderful,

flexible,

vibrant expression.

The liner notes,

which John wrote
in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

declared that a mantra of the band,

a goal of the band, was...

Total assault on the culture
by any means necessary,

including rock 'n' roll, dope,
and fucking in the streets.

[laughing]
"This is our platform,"

and I thought,

"These guys are going
to get busted," you know?

So stores wouldn't carry it.

The biggest chain in the Midwest,

or certainly in the Detroit area,

called Hudson's,

refused to carry their record

for that reason and a variety of others,

so the MC5 took an ad out

in a local underground newspaper,

and it said, "Fuck Hudson's!"

with the Elektra logo.

So Hudson's was not amused,

and threw all the Judy Collins,
and folk records,

anything to do with Elektra.

Elektra fired the band
within weeks of that.

They thought they were out of control.

[crowd cheering]

I worked on the MC5

from the time I was...

14 years old.

By the time I was 24,
the band had broke up.

My entire life
was poured into that band,

and one day I woke up,
and it was all gone.

It had all gone away,

and, uh, I went into a depression.

At a certain point, for me personally,

the fantastically effective

pain-killing properties
of whisky and heroin

entered the picture,

and it became easier for me

to just relieve myself of all that pain

than it was to get out there
and slug it out another day.

Well, you know, like a lot of people

who are going to go into the art life,

I liked to get a little high
when I started.

I think everybody did.

I didn't do drugs.

I mean, I didn't take pictures of drugs.

I did drugs,

but I didn't take pictures of drugs.

The drugs in the early days
was mostly marijuana.

People were drinking.

Sometimes they would take cocaine

to keep drinking longer,

but it wasn't until later in the '70s

that people started, you know,
finding out about heroin.

And all of a sudden,

at least in our area,

there were...
hard drugs everywhere.

[Richard Nixon]: America's
public enemy number one

in the United States

is drug abuse.

It is essential for the American people

to be alerted of this danger,

to recognize that it is
a danger that will not pass

with the passing of the war in Vietnam,

which has brought
to our attention the fact

that a number of young Americans
have become addicts

as they serve abroad.

[McNeil]: You know, Nixon
went after pot and LSD,

so the only other drug was heroin.

You know, everyone
returning from Vietnam

came back with heroin habits,

you know, really bad ones,

and there was dope everywhere.

Everyone was stoned on something.

It was either downs,
or they were on speed.

[sighing]

It was like, anything goes.

PCP, you know,

horse and hog tranquilizers...

[Pop]: Coke, heroin,

I was taking LSD.

Methamphetamines I tried a couple times,

but it was just...
I felt so good for no reason.

I had the same experience with MDMA.

I was just...
I was on the love train.

[County]: I loved it

when the Ramones did "Carbona Not Glue,"

because Carbona,

I used to have a friend called Carbona,

and his drug was Carbona rug cleaner,

and people would take
Carbona rug cleaner,

and they'd put it on a rag,
and... sniff it,

and it gets you whacked out.

I remember Dee Dee
coming into the deejay booth

where I used to deejay at Max's.

He came into the deejay booth
quite often,

stoned.

Because there was always
nothing else to do

but just sniff glue.

We've got something better to do now.

Man, what do you want me to say?

I want all the kids to go
drink ammonia or something?

So everything,

I mean, every drug
known to man, I think,

everyone was doing, you know?

And that kind of started
bringing the scene down

in a way, you know?

People on drugs are a lot less creative

than people who are awake.

[Pop]: And eventually
everybody was out of gas,

especially me,

and it did create a mess for everybody,

and things got...

things got weirder and weirder.

But, you see, this is how...

you know, it kind of upsets me in a way,

but they all, you know...

the New York Dolls was like
being at a horse race.

We were running so ahead of the pack...

but unfortunately,

we fell down, and we broke our legs,

and everybody else
that was behind us, you know,

just came over and took over,

and they got to the finishing line,

and we never did.

[Gruen]:
Well, the New York Dolls

were in the process of breaking up.

Their management had dropped them,

two of the guys were junkies,

one was such an alcoholic
that he was barely functional,

but it was a losing cause.

[Sylvain]: And one day,

I'm walking right outside
of the Chelsea Hotel,

and who do I see coming out
is Malcolm McLaren.

I had met Malcolm McLaren
years before, in 1971,

him and Vivienne Westwood,

at a...

at what they call
an international boutique show,

and their store was called
"Let It Rock,"

and he says, "What's, you know,

why are you so sad-looking?"
or whatever,

and I told him our woes,

because the band was
about to break up, and...

so I confide in him
what's been going on and stuff,

and he says, "Oh,
I would love to help you.

I love the New York Dolls,"

you know, "Me and Viv, we love them,"

and blah, blah, blah,

and so we started hanging out together.

[Gruen]: And Malcolm,
to his credit,

actually helped them a lot

by getting them into rehab programs,

got Johnny and Jerry cleaned up,

got Arthur sober for...

long enough to wear his clothes onstage.

Malcolm also saw the styles,

and the attitudes of the people at CBGBs

coming to see the different bands.

He was particularly impressed
by Richard Hell.

When he saw Richard show up
with a t-shirt, I think,

that had been safety-pinned together,

had been cut apart or ripped apart,

and put back together with safety pins,

and before you knew it,

him and Vivienne were selling clothes

that were safety-pinned together.

[Sylvain]: And then, one day,
I think it was Johnny,

he goes, like, you know, "Hey, Malcolm,

you think Vivienne can get me
a pair of red shoes,

because, you know,
me and David wrote this song,

it's called "Red Patent Leather,"

and that kind of got things
kicked off, you know,

and he says, "Of course she can,"

and "I'll call her up,"

and then, you know,
Jerry says, "Wait a minute.

Hey, can she get me one too?"

you know, and then Arthur,
then David, then myself,

and we were all, like,

"Okay, let's all get
red shoes."

"Okay, great."
"Let's get red pants too."

"Okay, let's get 'em."

"Okay, let's get
everything red."

Today, music is being sold more and more

not by the fact that someone can sing,

but by very much the nature
of the color of his socks.

[Gruen]: And then Malcolm,

being the provocateur that he is,

decided that instead of
releasing a press release

to announce their show,

he was going to release a manifesto,

and he was going to talk about

how they're no longer
with their puppet management.

It was just, you know,

kind of a play on the Chinese
communists at the time,

and that they were, you know,
the Red Guard.

Like, Malcolm knew that
playing on the makeup

and flamboyant clothing

that they were being compared
to homosexuals,

and that was a very upsetting thing,

a very controversial thing in America,

to be compared to a homosexual,

and he felt that if they were
compared to communists,

that's what really
riles people up in America.

If you want to really
get an American angry,

you talk about communism.

Well, that might have worked,

except for the fact that
nobody thought that this band

that looked like a bunch of pussies

who happened to have a communist flag

was in any way political,

and that this was not a communist threat

from these kids
from the Lower East Side.

He dressed them in red patent leather.

I mean, what's more hokey
than that, you know?

"Oh, now we're communists?"
"Oh, great."

It was silly.

It was stupid.

It was probably the kamikaze

that we should've never done.

And it kind of petered out,

because Johnny and Jerry

were really deep into their drug habits,

Arthur couldn't stop drinking,

and they basically

couldn't get out of their hotel
in Florida,

and Johnny and Jerry said

they were going
back to New York to get drugs,

and David told them

if they went back to New York
to get drugs,

the band was over,

that if drugs were
more important than the band,

he would take that as them quitting,

and so they went
back to New York to get drugs,

and the band was over.

I'd always kind of been intrigued

with the criminal underworld.

I'd known guys from school,

and being in bands,

we were always on the fringe
of the criminal underworld,

and, um...

I just felt like...

fuck 'em, you know?

I'm going to do crime.

I started a band

that I thought could pick up
where the MC5 left off,

and I thought I would finance the band

by selling drugs.

I wasn't making great decisions
in those days,

and I was completely delusional.

I'm not a killer.

I'm not a gangster.

I'm a guitar player,

I'm an artist,

but here I am carrying a gun

and ripping people off,

and selling drugs and TVs,

and I think I'm a hustler,

and of course, I'm way out of my league,

and Detroit was a very,
very tough place in those days,

in the 1970s, you know?

The auto industry was gone.

Detroit had become
the murder capital of the world.

We had 800 murders a year in Detroit,

and I was right in the thick
of the whole thing...

...and was arrested by the DEA,

the federal government's drug police,

and ultimately sentenced
to four years in federal prison.

Punk really was dying a slow death

throughout its existence in the '70s,

and the first Ramones record
would come out,

and there'd be no hit,

and the second would come out.

There's no hit.

Blondie would get signed
and nobody would notice,

and just...
one record after another,

punk rock went nowhere in the States.

[McNeil]: Well, at the times,
none of this stuff sold,

but when you're an 18-year-old,
19-year-old kid,

you're not thinking,
"Wow, did this sell or not?

Is he a big success?"

You just think, "This is
great fuckin' music."

My question was,
why isn't this stuff played?

It's fuckin' great.

[Ramone]: Well, yeah,
nobody wanted to book us

outside of New York.

You know, they didn't understand it.

You've got to remember, disco was big,

stadium rock was big at the time,

but the term "punk"

and the leather jackets

and Blitzkrieg Bop

probably turned a lot of people off.

It is very dangerous.

It could lead to fascism.

[Ramone]: The deejays
didn't want to play it.

They would go, "What the hell
is this?" you know?

Yeah, the Ramones
were way ahead of themselves.

America wasn't ready for that sound yet.

[McNeil]: I mean,
they could play CBGBs,

or Max's Kansas City,

or Mother's, or My Father's Place,

but outside of that,

they really couldn't break
beyond that circuit.

So Linda Stein said to Danny,

"I think we should, you know,
try to get the Ramones...

some exposure in England,"

and I was like, "Who the fuck cares?

England sucks."

[Sylvain]: Well,
the New York Dolls broke up,

and I remember Malcolm,

he's telling me, "Listen, don't worry.

There's so many kids
in front of my wife's shop,

who are working there,

or hang out there, and stuff,

we'll put a band together for you.

You come to England," and all that,

and I said, "Okay,"

but he's telling me, "Come to England.

This is your band,"

and he said to me, "Look,
I'm going to send you a ticket,

and you come over there," or whatever.

Well, guess what?

What are...

2019 now, it is?

And yet I'm still waiting
for that plane ticket.

What a shame.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]