Source: Debbie Harry Index of Galleries
"Blondie's Punk Roots" by Victor Bockris
Original essay commissioned specifically for this book–Ed.
Source: Debbie
Harry Index of Galleries
The history of punk is appropriately ugly. Punk rock is a music of passion born out of contradiction. Consequently it would be mad to look in its roots for kindness and understanding. It was in fact an ugly competitive uptight movement, full of hostility and hatred. It was also the most exciting glamorous organic movement of real art in its particular moment of creativity, in say 1974-1976, and to be involved in it, to walk around New York knowing about it, was thrilling, sexy and beautiful because it was to live in the present. And anybody who has ever lived in the present will know that it is an experience that you would give up almost anything to have, both because it's rare and grand. Goethe wrote that being an artist is the best way to both avoid life and engage in life, and that's very true of punk. Goethe was a punk...