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Even on the Bowery, lyrics are not as rowdy as in Britain. Punk there is a protest by Britain's working-class children, who have no memory of swinging London and cannot find jobs. Detractors of punk would argue that these children are coddled by a very expensive welfare state and are feeling sorry for themselves. Still, the Sex Pistols' pile-driving Anarchy in the U.K. is an anthem of despair. The British punk bands are a community linked by anger and frustration. They are, within the music world, a rebuke to the bourgeois excesses —and smooth musical stylings—of such stars as Elton John and Peter Frampton.
Says Johnny Rotten: "The millionaire groups were singing about love and their own hang-ups. That's stupid. You don't sing about love to people on the dole." Blithefully, whiningly, punk says anything and everything. As the Sex Pistols chant, "God save the Queen/ She ain't no human being."
Despite some of the revolting accouterments, there is real musical value in much of punk rock. More and more, the punkers find themselves being referred to as members of yet another New Wave. Sex Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren regards that as highfalutin, calling the phrase "Establishment language, more descriptive of a new hairstyle than anything else." In truth, New Wave does seem an apt catch-all label for the energetic and varied kind of music that has emerged in recent months from some of the young American bands. The Ramones stick close to basic rock 'n' roll, but they get better all the time. Last week their latest single Sheena is a Punk Rocker made the Billboard Hot 100 chart—the first New Wave song to achieve that eminence.
Television, which got its start at CBGB's, wraps its big beat in mellifluous instrumental colors. Lead Singer Tom Verlaine's lyrics, like the following from Venus, are among rock's finest in years:
Tight toy night; streets were so
bright.
The world looked so thin and
between my bones and skin
there stood another person who
was a little surprised
to be face to face with a world so alive.
I fell.
Richard Hell's Blank Generation, delivered over a throbbing four-note bass ostinato, is already a punk classic:
I was sayin' let me out of here
before I was even born.
It's such a gamble when you get a face.
.. I belong to the blank generation,
And I can take it or leave it each time.
Sire Records' Seymour Stein, an early champion of punk, finds that the music reflects a mood of total indifference among the young. "They feel they had nothing to do with making the world the mess it is today, and they're also not going to do anything to make it any better—because they can't. They come to the music for the sake of the music, for entertainment, for getting it on."