The Fugs: Rock and roll’s first great satirists
Rock and roll was never a genre meant to be taken all that seriously. For every artist who was meant to hold up a mirror to society and tell them how things needed to change, there were always going to be others who wanted to take the piss out of the higher aspects of society and take the rock and roll heroes down a couple of notches whenever they played. While The Fugs were never trying to go anywhere substantial with their music, their attempt at satire took rock and roll into a completely different realm.
Because, really, a band like this should have happened by complete accident. Everything that the group played wasn’t meant to be heard and studied like Bob Dylan’s music was, which is probably why half of the lyrics fluctuate between being absolutely surreal while also having the occasion poetic line here and there.
When it was recorded, though, it’s not like there wasn’t a market for this kind of surreal take on rock and roll. The counterculture had only just begun in New York City, and while Dylan was busy going electric and bringing his music to the people in a more direct fashion, The Fugs offered a welcome change of pace, usually making songs that dealt with the darker side of life or as a mockery of what rock and roll was becoming.
It’s also worth noting that their albums were never meant to sound pristine. As much as they might have wanted to make noise, vocalist Ed Sanders admitted they weren’t the best musicians in the world, saying, “On one level, we just did all this for a joke. We decided to have some fun and party and write some songs. We were poets, and we certainly knew how to write words, but none of us went to Juilliard, and when we made the first record we didn’t even know how to face microphones.”
At the same time, let’s look at their approach to rock and roll more closely. A band made up of complete amateurs, knowing absolutely nothing about recording technique, and yet still had a conviction to get a rise out of someone by saying what was on their mind? Yeah, this was punk rock music years before it had even become a respectable movement.
While Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground often get credit for what they have done for proto-punk, The Fugs are ground zero. As much as The Beatles and The Who were inventing the sound of punk almost by accident with a handful of their tunes, The Fugs had the mentality of it already down, even going so far as to poke fun at the bloated side of rock and roll.
It didn’t make much sense at the time but had The Fugs debuted in 1975 rather than 1965; they would have been looked at as the forebearers of the genre before Ramones or The Clash even got started. And listening to the noisy sections of their songs, there are even traces of what post-punk would become, like the moments when Television and Sonic Youth started making songs solely from strange noises they could get out of their guitars.
However, the main reason why they worked was because of the satire angle. They would probably have been proud to be the first punk band, but listening to their lyrics, the music was almost secondary. It was more about trying to make something as a goof rather than make some grand statement, but as Joe Strummer and John Lydon later learned, that approach was a better vehicle than getting up on a soapbox.
While the songs may not reach the same calibre as those by The Beatles or The Stones from the same period, Sanders maintained that the group always aimed to deliver their best when presenting their satire to the world. Through their irreverent take on rock and roll, they ultimately captivated an entirely new generation.
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