NME Originals: Punk
When Johnny Rotten snarled those infamous words, "I use the NME/ I use ANARCHY!!!", he was doing nothing more than stating the bleedin' obvious. Of course he used the NME. Everyone who was, or wanted to be, anyone had to.
There was a new sound around, inspired by the guttersnipe noise coming out of New York; a sound so vile, so depraved, so sardonic and so damn addictive that it was instantly banned from the radio stations and concert halls of this fair isle.
So, if you needed to know what the new Clash single sounded like, what pseudynym the Pistols might employ to attempt a gig in your town, or who Rat Scabies last gobbed on, you had to use the NME. It was the weekly comminique of Punk etiquette and argument.
NME did more than just champion Punk, it romanced it. A good year before NME reported the first ever sighting of The Sex Pistols in print, NME had taken the unprecedented decision to tell its readership that everything you thought you liked - from Yes to Led Zeppelin to The Eagles - was crap! In a series of broadsides aimed against the out-of-touch rock elite, NME employed a scorched earth policy in preparation for musical revolution.
And when it came, NME was ready. Editor Nick Logan ran the infamous "Young Gunslingers" ad touting for new writing talent and suddenly Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill arrived in print, the journalistic mirror image of Rotten's mighty sneer. It was an era of belief and betrayal, an extraordinary era when NME writers, readers and the bands themselves all agreed on one single point: music should mean something. This is the NME credo to this day.
Inevitably such a passionate tryst ended in tears. The punks became stars, grew rich and aloof, leaving NME and its readers to howl their disillusionment, laying the foundations of that prefect arc of obsession for which NME is still justly famous ; We build 'em up, we knock 'em down!
NME Originals : Punk! gathers together some of the most legendary and frequently requested articles from that time. As NME's Neil Spencer wrote in 1977 after witnessing a riot at a Clash gig at The Rainbow; Don't just pogo, read something!
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