How The Velvet Underground and The Stooges inspired the sound of Buzzcocks
When deeply lodged in the discussion of the most significant British punk bands of all time, the conversation is usually centred around Sex Pistols and The Clash. However, there was a band that had arguably just as much impact, if not more than them: Buzzcocks. The quartet wrote dynamic songs that preceded the future in the most unapologetic, taboo-busting ways, with a style that wasn’t too dissimilar from the way David Bowie started to tear down the walls of Britain’s frigid nature with 1972’s Ziggy Stardust.
However, Buzzcocks’ work was much more potent than Bowie’s and came with a lightning-quick form of northern humour that was more authentic than anything else anyone had ever heard. This iconoclasm was primarily due to the unwavering character that was the late frontman and guitarist Pete Shelley. An open bisexual man during a time that was largely homophobic, his defiant discussions of love, sex and other more ‘taboo’ subjects were game-changing and carried much more weight than anything their contemporaries were doing.
Shelley created a plethora of brilliant cuts that helped to imbue rock music with more density than ever before. Ranging from ‘Autonomy’ to ‘Whatever Happened To…?’ he rarely, if ever, penned a dud, and of course, his masterwork is the anthemic ‘Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)’. Duly, Shelley inspired many subsequent icons, ranging from Kurt Cobain to Morrissey, who took the baton and helped to keep rock’s flame alive with their own boundary and more-pushing work.
Unsurprisingly, Shelley and Buzzcocks were primarily inspired by the most pioneering bands of their youth, including The Velvet Underground, The Stooges and Can. This gave them a multi-faceted essence, meaning that fans and critics struggled to categorise them. “They were undoubtedly punk, but they were also something else entirely. Not afraid of tackling any issue, Shelley understood the work of his heroes Lou Reed and Iggy Pop and, via his natural personality, adapted their formula for his generation.
When Shelley, bandmate Steve Diggle and manager Richard Boon sat down at the British Library in June 2016 to discuss their career with Colleen Murphy, they explained the influences of bands such as The Velvet Underground and The Stooges and how they inspired their iconoclasm. Shelley said: “Myself and Howard (Devoto), we were listening to… well, separately, but we had a mutual interest, things like The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Can, I mean, a lot of the German… yeah Neu! I mean things that, really, when you put on you can clear a room.”
He continued: “In those days, it was a whole different country. It was music which nobody liked at all. Everybody was into sort of like heavy metal, but it wasn’t as widdly-widdly… I mean, things like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, there was a lot of blues, and it was all to do with how many notes you could fit into your 20-minute guitar solo. Where, I liked the things which were more on the noisy side, but were funny as well. So that’s basically what we tried to do… In fact, we were making the most uncommercial form of music that we thought possible… We even had swearing in it. Nobody did that.”
