Pink Floyd

While psychedelic rock began to poke its head above water towards the back end of the 1960s, it wasn’t until the ‘70s that it really began to find form, and that came in the image of bands like Pink Floyd. They had worked out how to make layered and deeply conceptual psychedelic music, and it led to the development of albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, which is still considered to be one of the greatest records out there by many.

While there might be a lot of rock fans who love this kind of music, those who contributed towards punk found themselves detesting it. It was a representation of how glamorous and over-the-top rock was becoming. Bands no longer stuck to the roots of the genre, and many felt like it was making it undeniably inaccessible. John Lydon made his disdain quite clear with his “I hate Pink Floyd” t-shirt he famously wore.

Led Zeppelin

When Ian Anderson was praising Led Zeppelin for what they contributed towards the world of rock, he highlighted how effective they were at using different genres and cultures within their sound. “I think what they showed to all their peer group as musicians was that there was, first of all, a very powerful and dramatic way to perform simple, direct rock music and also to introduce elements of more eclectic music,” said Anderson, “Because Zeppelin, near the beginning, there were a lot of elements of folk music, and Asian music, and African music that crept into their stuff.”

This is all well and good, but once again, it highlighted the overly complicated nature of rock music that a lot of soon-to-be punk musicians detested. While some artists might have heard those Asian and African elements in Led Zeppelin’s music and found the band’s incorporation of them interesting, a lot of punk fans thought that it was too ornate.

AC/DC

It wasn’t necessarily that AC/DC’s music led to the creation of punk; rather, the Australian rock’s willingness to distance itself from the genre helped set parameters for it. Both used very few chords, sure, but AC/DC’s sound was cleaner, with more distinction between notes and a much more obvious melody, whereas punk was messy, a sonic representation of the anger that the sound embodied.

Angus Young made it pretty clear that punks weren’t welcome at AC/DC gigs, as they hated how they acted. “[Punks] were locked into selling anarchy, like a political thing. To be honest with you, the first time I heard the word’ anarchy’, I had to get a dictionary to look up the fucker! I’m limited, meaning a limited education, so that wasn’t communicating anything to me,” he said, “We would get punks showing up, and spitting, and when anyone got hit by gob, we’d be in the audience punching the shit out of them.”

Yes

It wasn’t just psychedelic music that a lot of punks found themselves growing frustrated at, but prog rock as well. When Frank Zappa tried to describe this experimental genre, he said that it was basically rock music, but not as we know it. “Progressive rock is anything that doesn’t sound like regular Rock,” he said, “Regular Rock is everything that sounds like itself. All songs which sound the same, everything on MTV, everything on the radio, that’s rock. Progressive rock is stuff that doesn’t sound like that.”

Punk’s attitude towards these complicated genres applied to a lot of bands who are considered titans of these styles. One of these bands in particular was Yes, who, prior to having a hit with ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, were obsessed with making complicated prog rock tracks. It was the kind of thing that fans of the genre hated, but that a lot of people who wound up growing connected to punk couldn’t stand.

Queen

The flamboyancy, the strange nature of some of their lyrics, the band’s entire look, all of it made a lot of punk’s very best grow to detest the band. Sid Vicious made his dislike of Freddie Mercury pretty clear when they were working in studios next to each other, as after a quick interaction with the Queen frontman, he said, “Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?”

Mercury wasn’t really the kind of person to let petty insults get under his skin, and responded with a very simple but quite devastating retort that didn’t just undermine the Sex Pistols member but the movement as a whole, simply saying, “Aren’t you Stanley Ferocious or something?”, and then grabbed him by the collar and threw him out the studio.