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Calling to the underworld: The London locations that shaped the rise of punk
There’s no question that London sits just behind New York as punk’s essential smoking crater.
Despite all the Year Zero mythos and well-trodden narratives on killing prog overnight, punk was a continuation of London’s, and the UK on a broader scale, solid decade or so’s golden heritage in the Western rock and pop tradition. Whatever was in the British musical air, some of the late 1970s’ most enduring names all came from or flocked to London to mainline punk’s insurgent energy into their veins and threw themselves into the underground DIY underground.
Still, it can’t be overstated just how ripe the time was for rock’s fire in the belly. The lore is correct. Prog was fucking boring, classic rock had stultified into an ossified parody, and the psychedelic marvels of London’s swinging yesteryear seemed like ancient history. Punk’s gobbing sneer was wholly necessary against the backdrop of such chart stagnation, sat amid a wider political backdrop of social ennui and economic malaise that placed a giant dead end for the day’s youth that looked to punk for some kind of furious validation.
Collapse in living standards, nasty air of hopelessness, sound familiar? Punk’s alive and kicking, most nights at The George Tavern or The Shacklewell Arms will attest, but the big difference between now and fifty years ago is the cold, ghoulish grip of unfettered capitalism laying waste to any space or cranny that can offer a skint artist or working-class band the space to form a project or rehearse their material. In fact, compiling a list of London’s most essential locales of punk’s burnishing also serves as relics of a time when a post-war deal gave young dissidents the chance to make their weird mark on society and enrich our heritage, today’s safety-pinned corporate hijackers have rhetorically celebrated while materially torn up.
Still, while we can lament the neoliberal robbery of our communal and creative spaces, let the list below not only stand as a reverential nod to what was pioneered, but also as a laid-out blueprint for what can hopefully be built again when the rotten economic order implodes on itself—which it will.
The London locations that were essential for the rise of punk:
