The history of punk rock

Punk rock began in New York between 1974 and 1976, in a handful of clubs on the Lower East Side, and became a mass movement in Britain during 1976 and 1977. It was a return to short, loud, simple rock songs at a time when the charts were full of long progressive suites and polished soft rock. Within three years punk had split into several directions. Some bands moved towards art and experiment, others towards pop, others again towards ever faster and harder music. By 1984 the most lasting result was not a sound at all but a method: make the record yourself, print the magazine yourself, book the tour yourself.

This page follows the story in order, from the roots to the end of the first decade.

Roots: before 1974

Punk did not come from nowhere. The obvious ancestors are the American garage bands of the mid sixties, collected in 1972 on the double album Nuggets by Lenny Kaye, who later played guitar for Patti Smith. Then come The Velvet Underground from New York, The Stooges and MC5 from the Detroit area, and the New York Dolls, whose debut album appeared in 1973. In Britain the pub rock circuit of 1972 to 1975, with Dr. Feelgood and The 101ers, kept small, sweaty, fast rock and roll alive in London’s back rooms.

What these bands shared was a refusal of virtuosity and a love of the three minute single. That is the inheritance punk took up.

New York, 1974 to 1977

The New York scene grew in a dilapidated part of Manhattan. CBGB at 315 Bowery had opened in December 1973. In 1974 Television started playing there, followed by the Ramones in August. Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, the Heartbreakers and Richard Hell’s Voidoids came through the same door. The scene had its own magazine from January 1976, simply called Punk.

The New York punk bands were not uniform. The Ramones played two minute songs at full speed, Television built long guitar duels, Patti Smith mixed rock with poetry, Blondie used girl group pop. The records followed quickly: Patti Smith’s Horses in November 1975, Ramones in April 1976, Television’s Marquee Moon in February 1977.

London and Manchester, 1976 to 1977

The British version took the music and added a public identity. Malcolm McLaren, who had briefly managed the New York Dolls, put together the Sex Pistols around his shop on the King’s Road. Their first gig was at Saint Martin’s School of Art in November 1975. During 1976 the scene grew fast: the Ramones played the Roundhouse on 4 July, The Clash and The Damned played their first shows that summer, and the 100 Club held a two night punk festival on 20 and 21 September. The full story of that year is on our page about London 1976.

Manchester joined early. Two students, Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley, organised a Sex Pistols concert at the Lesser Free Trade Hall on 4 June 1976. The audience was small but included people who went on to form Joy Division and The Fall. Their own band, Buzzcocks, released Spiral Scratch in January 1977 on their own label, one of the first British independent punk records.

The breakthrough to the general public came on 1 December 1976, when the Sex Pistols swore on the early evening Today programme in an interview with Bill Grundy. The next day they were on the front pages, and most of the concerts on their Anarchy tour were cancelled. In 1977 punk dominated the music papers and spread across the country. God Save the Queen appeared during the Silver Jubilee in May, and Never Mind the Bollocks followed in October.

Fanzines and independent labels

Punk produced its own media. Mark Perry’s Sniffin’ Glue appeared in July 1976 and showed that anyone with a typewriter and a photocopier could write about music. Shops such as Rough Trade in London became distribution centres, and labels such as Stiff, Small Wonder, Factory and Mute made records without the major companies. This network outlasted the first wave of bands.

Splits and new directions, 1978 to 1984

The Sex Pistols played their last show at Winterland in San Francisco on 14 January 1978 and then broke up. By then punk had already split:

1. Post-punk. Bands such as Wire, Public Image Ltd, Joy Division, Gang of Four and The Slits used punk’s freedom for darker, more experimental music. More on our post-punk page.
2. New wave. The melodic, more commercial branch, from Blondie to Elvis Costello. See new wave.
3. Second wave and Oi!. In Britain bands such as Sham 69, UK Subs and later the Oi! groups kept punk as street music for a young working class audience.
4. Anarcho punk. Crass, based in a commune in Essex, released The Feeding of the 5000 in 1978 and built a scene around pacifism, anarchism and self released records.
5. Hardcore. In California and Washington, D.C., bands such as Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat and Bad Brains played even faster and shorter songs and ran their own labels, SST and Dischord among them.

Punk outside Britain and America

Australia had The Saints in Brisbane, whose single (I’m) Stranded came out in 1976. In West Germany punk arrived through Hamburg, Düsseldorf and West Berlin, first with English lyrics, then increasingly in German. Many of these bands fed into the Neue Deutsche Welle, while others kept the punk name and led to the German punk scene of the eighties.

1984: the end of the first decade

In 1984 SST released Hüsker Dü’s double album Zen Arcade and the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime. Both were long, ambitious records by bands that had started as hardcore groups. They mark the end of the first punk decade and the start of what would later be called American indie rock.

Where to go next

For the bands, see our overview of punk bands that shaped the genre. For the records, start with our selection of the best punk albums. And if you collect, our guide to collecting punk records explains what to look for in original pressings from these years.