The Fugs: the first-ever punk band?
The question of who arrived as the first-ever punk band has thrown up many candidates over its nearly 50-year existence. The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, and The Stooges are three that often rise to the top, as well as more niche suggestions such as The Seeds, The Sonics and The Kingsmen. While all are contenders with solid cases to back them up, another group has a stronger claim than all — and not only because of their music. The lyrical content, general outlook, and the fact that they channelled the punk spirit years before the genre came to fruition all strengthen the point. The band is The Fugs, and they were far ahead of their time.
Labelled by many as the first true underground outfit with stylistic precursors to the sneering punks such as Dead Kennedys, the foundations The Fugs put down in the mid-to-late 1960s remain remarkable. Characterised by having a revolving door of musicians, the band were formed by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, alongside drummer Ken Weaver in late 1964.
Before too long, they were joined by The Holy Modal Rounders members Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber on fiddle and guitar. Each member chipped in with vocal duties, but Sanders and Kupferberg gave the band their star power, with lyrics more cutting and taboo than anything anyone was producing at the time.
Demonstrating how The Fugs were the first genuine punk act, it must be noted that Kupferberg named the band from a euphemism for ‘fuck’ used in Norman Mailer’s 1948 novel, The Naked and the Dead. This was a significant thing for the time, given that swearing was a no-go, even for the most rebellious of individuals.
Profanity was something the group weren’t scared of weaponising, and in their most famous track ‘CIA Man’, the word “fucking” is used frequently. While it might seem tame by today’s standards, it is another pioneering fact when you note what other rock bands were doing during this period, and sugary rock music was à la mode. The Fugs even beat The Velvet Underground to it, the band regarded as the decade’s most eminent boundary-pushers, with the words of Sanders and Kupferberg arguably more incisive than anything Lou Reed penned.
From start to finish, the track is a masterclass in prose, with Kupferberg embodying the sort of situationist thinking that would become so key to the burgeoning counterculture and, later, the punk scene. Note this verse, for example: “Who can be so overtly covert? / Sometimes even covertly overt. / Fucking-a man! / (Fucking-A! C-I-A!) / CIA Man!”
So, long before Johnny Rotten was politically-charged lines such as, “There are many ways to get what you want / I use the best, well I use the rest / Well I use the enemy / I use anarchy / ‘Cause I, I want to be, anarchy / Fuck the rat race man”, and more pointedly, “Or is this the CIA / I thought it was the U.S.A,” Kupferberg and Sanders were already well-versed in this area.
Unsurprisingly, the taboo-busting lewdness and political vitriol of The Fugs made them a favourite of the counterculture. In fact, they became so esteemed for their political slant and anti-Vietnam war sentiment during the 1960s that the FBI suddenly staring taking note. In an FBI file on The Doors dated from the late 1960s, an excerpt reads that the band’s debut record, The Fugs First Album, is the “most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive”. Getting that sort of response from the FBI is about as punk as conceivable.
Another demonstration of The Fugs’ position as the first punks arrived in 2012 when NPR interviewed Ed Sanders. Reading a leaflet from an August 1965 show, the content suggests that they were not only the first punk band, but the first metal act too. Adding credence to this notion, some of the overdriven guitar tones heard in their oeuvre would be replicated by the likes of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath at the dawn of the 1970s.
Although the 1968 Steppenwolf song ‘Born to Be Wild’ is widely regarded as the first mention of “heavy metal”, this idea is undone by the leaflet. It read: “The Fugs present: Night of napalm, songs against the war, rock n’ roll bomb shrieks, heavy metal orgasms! Watch all The Fugs die in a napalm raid!”
Another strange moment in the band’s history denotes The Fugs’ position as the first punk band. As was an essential element of punk, in order to be authentic, the words of protest in the music needed to be backed up by praxis. Unsurprisingly, the band were on hand for the historic National Mobilisation Committee to End the War in Vietnam’s march on the Pentagon in 1967. As chronicled in Norman Mailer’s famous work, The Armies of the Night from 1968, The Fugs and others attempted to encircle and levitate The Pentagon. Situationist to the core, this is one of the most bizarre anecdotes in music history.
A recording of the event is included as part of The Fugs’ 1968 record Tenderness Junction, as ‘Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon Oct. 21, 1967’. It is said that before this moment, Sanders and Kupferberg organised a complicated exorcism ritual and rented a flatbed truck kitted out with a sound system. As can be heard in the song, the pair gathered a considerably-sized crowd in front of the building and repeatedly chanted: “Out, demons, out!”
Reminiscent of something former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra would later do, this set a precedent for everything to come in punk, including Malcolm McLaren’s famous stunts with the Sex Pistols. I think it’s high time everyone else moved aside. The Fugs were the first punk band to walk the line.
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