CBGBs: The New York venue John Lydon dismissed as “a world of foolishness”
When we talk about things like the punk movement, we focus predominantly on bands and artists, but venues are just as important.
It’s all well and good having a bunch of musicians who want to make great songs that push the boundaries of different genres, but they need a space in which to do it. This means that venues need to exist, and venue owners need to be willing to take a punt on artists who might not draw crowds at first but who may be able to start a brand new movement when given time.
One of the most famous punk venues in the US is CBGBs in New York. While it started out as a Country and Blue Grass bar (hence the initials), it quickly saw the potential that the punk movement had and pivoted towards accommodating bands practising the genre. It was a space that artists like Patti Smith and Television made their home, as they were able to take the stage and try out this new branch of music freely without risk of being booed off.
“The sound was crappy, there was always things breaking down and glasses breaking and people vomiting and the rats scurrying around in the back,” said Smith, reflecting on her time at the venue, “It was our shithole, and that was the greatest thing. I’ve played a lot of places, and it was the only place I’ve ever played that felt like our place.”
In the UK, the most prominent punk venue was probably The 100 Club in London; however, the sound was so in its infancy when bands like Sex Pistols and The Clash started playing, they essentially took to the stage in any building that would have them. They travelled from London to Sheffield to Manchester, playing a variety of gigs to crowds large and small as this new branch of music began to fully find form.
Some of those early gigs were truly a thing of madness. The review of the Sex Pistols’ first-ever show has gone down in punk legend, as the reviewer struggled to truly make sense of what they were watching. Instead, they just commented on the chaotic nature of everything as it went down.
“‘Hurry up, they’re having an orgy on stage’,” wrote Neil Spencer in the NME. “Said the bloke on the door as he tore the tickets up. I walked to the front and straightaway sighted a chair arcing gracefully through the air, skidding across the stage and thudding contentedly into the PA system, to the obvious nonchalance of the bass drums and guitar. Well, I didn’t think they sounded that bad on first earful, then I saw it was the singer who’d done the throwing.”
The band’s run of shows in the US was just as chaotic. It seems that crowds from across the pond were no different to some of the UK audiences. The people who turned up to the gigs were violent, and the band were equally confrontational. There wasn’t a single venue in America they weren’t daring enough to play at, except, of course, for CBGB. This had nothing to do with the actual crowd that went there; rather, lead singer John Lydon refused to go as he described the place to be foolish.
“When we first came to America [in January 1978], they were pulling guns on us down in the South,” he said, “It was an act of choice to tour there, but it was also a bit crazy. It was dangerous. The record company wanted to shove us into that CBGB’s world of New York, but that’s a world of foolishness.”
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