(adapted and edited by Allan Metz)
In 1976, Patti Smith ended her rendition of The Who's "My Generation" with the declaration, "We created it; let's take it over!" She knew what she was talking about. Punk rock by birthright was an American creation, originated by New York City musicians during the mid 1960s, but the British version of punk was more famous. Punk was born with the Velvet Underground in New York City. Though the Velvets achieved cult status and eventually critical acclaim, such British bands as the Sex Pistols were better known. As a result, twenty years later, punk is falsely considered a British creation.
In an academic context, New York's punk rock is difficult to explain. It eludes blanket generalizations of content and philosophy and never became popular enough during its original inception to be incorporated into mass culture. New York punk's philosophy evolved out of necessity. Jon Savage captured the idea in his book, England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, and Beyond. For his book, Savage interviewed Richard Hell of the New York band Television, and established that Hell considered rock music to be "secret teenage news" (Savage 88). Punk was about youth; it borrowed the street and rebellion element from rock's origins, and promised individuality. The best way to describe punk is to say what it was not. In the imagination of rock music audiences, the pop charts of the late 1960s and early 1970s are saturated with rebellion and sexual revolution. In reality, the charts reflected a homogenized landscape of bland pop. Punk rock certainly did not crack the veneer of pop, but it expanded pop's boundaries....
Source: ‘We Created
It: Let's Take It Over!’ web site, 1999