The battle of Ramones and Sex Pistols: Who truly started punk?
Some things in art are difficult to define but instantly recognisable. Much like emotions, we can struggle to put different movements into words but immediately recognise them when they present themselves. People don’t need a verbal prompt for sadness; the same applies to punk. But the question remains: who started it? The Sex Pistols or the Ramones?
You can see punk in many different ways in music today. It doesn’t just apply to a specific sound but also to various artists’ attitudes. The way someone acts and their approach towards promotion and performing can all somehow fall into the category of punk, which means leaning against the grain and doing something outside of the mainstream.
It’s become harder to define what it means in recent years because of this, but some of the trademarks remain the same, and nearly all of these can be traced back to the Ramones. The Ramones were the first band who ever took the stage to deliver noisy, out-of-control and chaotic sets. The way they played, performed and looked all set the foundation for what punk ended up being and what the majority of modern punk bands do as recognisable.
That chaotic energy stems directly from some of the more flamboyant rock bands that made music in the ‘60s and ‘70s. For instance, Joey Ramone previously admitted that he was a huge fan of The Who and that seeing one of their shows inspired him to make music in the first place.
“When I was 16, I saw The Who,” said Ramone, “It was the first time they played America. It was a Murray the K show at the RKO theatre on 59th street [in New York City] — like 30 bands and The Who and Cream for the first time in America. Cream were great, but The Who blew my mind. The character and the visuals, Townshend, Keith Moon. It was the best thing I’d ever seen.”
The singer added, “When I perform, I want to blow people’s minds like that,” and that’s exactly what he and his band did. While their mind-blowing performance, outlandish lyricism and no-fucks-given attitude can certainly be recognised as punk, and even though they were making music before the Sex Pistols, it has to be said that Sex Pistols officially started the movement that we now know as punk.
The seeds were set for punk to happen. The Ramones were making the necessary waves to wet people’s appetites, while other artists like Captain Beefheart and Iggy Pop challenged what people would put up with both sonically and performatively. It was Sex Pistols who combined all of these different elements, which led to the eventual development of the punk movement.
Their political lyrics, paired with a look that made it seem as though they didn’t care about their appearance, along with their over-the-top performing style, led to the creation of what people today know as punk. “There was trash on the streets, total unemployment – just about everybody was on strike, if you came from the wrong side of the tracks, then you had no hope in hell and no career prospects at all,” said John Lydon, talking about the backdrop that would eventually lead to the creation of punk, “Out of that came the Sex Pistols and then a whole bunch of copycat wankers after us.”
The punk movement was more than just a sound, if that was the case, then it would have started at The Ramones. Instead, The Ramones set the foundation that the punk movement would eventually be built upon. Punk was the result of sound, look, performance and the moment in time during which all of this happened. A lot needed to occur before the Sex Pistols could start making music, but once they did, all of these different factors came together, and a new style of music was born.
