Today, nearly twenty years after punk's reign on the New York scene, punk is still considered a British creation. It is no surprise that a conflict arises concerning punk's origins. Cultural creations are always being modified, and fickle pop audiences are more likely to grant authenticity to the latest output, rarely seeking out its origin. To add to the confusion, Britain's Sex Pistols and the Clash looked more punk than America's Patti Smith or Television. During Britain's adoption of punk, New York audiences and music critics saw record companies losing interest in American bands. This caused the critics to wonder what was so special about the British. American writer Alan Betrock criticized the rock media's attention for being prone to "malcolmization," and noted that "New York has been historically maligned." Betrock documented New York's origination of such musical styles as the 1960s girl sound to the City's Greenwich Village folk scene, and pointedly asked why New York did not get credit for the discovery (New York Rocker 43,46). He added that British punk became more popular because the only American that truly looked punk were the Ramones. 

The two versions of punk, the antecedent American and its British descendent, were very different. British punk was aggressive and violent it demanded immediate change and had no interest in working for the solution. The Sex Pistols typified British Punk with such songs as "Anarchy in the UK," which did not give a thought to anarchy's effect. American punk seemed lazy by comparison. It was sarcastic where the English was violent and poetic where the former was illiterate. The American originator offered lessons for the British to copy, and the British pushed one step further, thus gaining more recognition. 

Britain's economic climate inspired youth fashion in extremes of image-conscious violence and self-abuse. In her book, Break All Rules: Punk Rock and the Making of a Style, Tricia Henry us Britain's stagnant economy as the reason for punk's success. "Great Britain in 1975 had one of its highest unemployment rates since World War II" (Henry 68). Punk in Britain was more accurate as a description of the national youth sentiment than it was Stateside. If British punk was confrontational, New York punk seemed almost non committal in comparison. British punk overshadowed its New York influences in popularity because such bands as the Sex Pistols and its punk-manifesto approach and subject matter in songs like "God Save The Queen" or "Anarchy in the UK" complimented British aggression. 

"God save the Queen 
The fascist regime 
It made you a moron 
A potential H-bomb 
God save the Queen 
She ain't no human being 
There is no future 
And England's dreaming." 
The hostility stemmed from Britain's social and economic climate and offered little incentive for British youths to peacefully co-exist and be optimistic. The war cry of "No future/No future for you" in the song "God Save The Queen" was an apt one, and it seemed, at least monetarily, to apply. The generation of British youths coming of age during punk graduated from high school into a climate of harsh unemployment statistics and little options for upward mobility. This bleak scenario offered little alternative, and punk for the British youth was a way to act out on their feelings of inadequacy. As British teenagers struggled with the demoralizing effects of welfare and unemployment, American youth involved with punk chose the bohemian lifestyle. Economic conditions were not as difficult for the young Americans who formed punk bands. Most of those involved moved to New York City by choice, fashioning themselves as urban expatriates. 
Much like the mid-1960s British Invasion, British punk bands borrowed American musical styles and turned their interpretations into cash. Britain reclaimed punk rock much like early British rock bands exported American blues back to American audiences. Recalling the Rolling Stones' effect on her impressionable teenage mind, Patti Smith wrote an article for Creem magazine in 1976. In it she wrote that the Rolling Stones were "five white boys as sexy as any spade." Smithwas saying that the Stones made rock music that was as authentic as its original blues inspiration. The bands ud as part of the British Invasion mimicked their early rock influences--black blues musicians--and tried to recreate their rock'n'roll. 

Undoubtedly the rock'n'roll era was unstoppable when the British Invasion reached American soil, but if not for American influences the British Invasion would have been meaningless. With a careful recipe of imitation and freshness, British musicians managed to make American R&B (rhythm and blues) and blues seem like uncharted territory to young American audiences. The same happened with punk. America's influence on British punk was renamed "new wave". As Betrock's article notes, American punk was lost in Britain's shadow. In the rock industry, super stars of lesser stature than Elvisand the Beatles have a quick turnover. Unless their initial popularity is enormous, bands generally fade into the oblivion from which they emerged. Rock audiences are flippant, a buying crowd reluctant to pay attention to anything that does not suit its needs. Pop stars play into the audience's needs in order to survive. Within the rock industry of the mid-1950s, Elvis survived in the industry as a white artist who recorded black-styled rock music. His white skin kept him from alarming the industry, which at the time was catering to white artists. 

Arnold Shaw's insightful look into rock's roots is an invaluable account of of the musical climate of the 1950s. His book, The Rockin' 50s: The Decade That Transformed The Pop Music Scene, shows how rock was manipulated to serve the buyer's or the producer's market. Shaw discusses Elvis's success in terms of practicality. Until 1954, the Billboard charts kept black and white musicians separated by two different charts--R&B and pop charts. It was not until 1954 that a black artist had chart success on the pop charts (Shaw 73 -74). Still, by 1955 the established white songwriters who reigned before rock's emergence wanted to keep their whiter "pop" alive (Shaw 3). Elvis' manipulation of racism, much like Debbie Harry's manipulation of >sexism, enabled him to succeed within the industry. Rock, since its birth in the mid-1950s, had set a pattern of borrowing to see how much the borrower could get away with. In this vein, British punk was successful because it was playing on something the British buying audience needed, while in the case of American punk, American buying audiences did not understand the new bands or their music. The United States' economy was not at the bottom like England's, which made punk less relevant in the States. 

After a pleasant decade of the late 1960's love and happiness, the baby boom generation, the largest record-buying population since rock's inception, was complacent. The consumer audience was getting older and settling into young adulthood. American punk was peaking in 1972, but American pop charts certainly did not reflect the occurrence. According to Billboard's Hottest Hot 100 Hits, the chart toppers during the early years were not reflections of punk, but reflections of pop, from the 1973 number-one hit "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree" by Tony Orlando and Dawn to Barbra Streisand's1974 number-one movie theme, "The Way We Were." Punk was nowhere to be found on American pop charts, but it was busy repackaging itself for British consumption. Punk's peak occurred during the late Nixon and early Carter years, and the nation seemed to want glossed-over niceness, not aggressive or hard-to-understand music. The 1960s were still alive in the consumer's imagination, and punk was not yet part of the picture. In Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music & Society 1954 - 1984, Jim Curtisdefines a generation that came of age during the Nixon era, kids who grew up with Nixon as their "father figure." If the 1960s was this generation's childhood, then punk was its late adolescence, and a new generation of music fans was coming of age. Curtis explains that, "Only when Nixon resigned were the sixties finally over" (Curtis 296). Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, five months before Patti Smith became the first American act to get signed. By the time record companies were signing bands, the main surge of punk was over in America. And if one were to believe Curtis's time line, punk was lost in a shuffle between one decade and the next. 

Punk may have been lost in time, but it created a music and style that was a new aesthetic, and it meant that one did not have to be a hippie or a genius musician to be in a rock band. The extended guitar solos of 1960s rock staples became passe; punk was about simplicity. Anyone could be in a punk band; it was a do-it-yourself, all-invited occasion, and the results were inspiring. Bands came out of the woodwork to stake their claim on the new music. The idea took off and eventually moved to England but failed to sell records Stateside. The American version of punk rock was forgotten while the British turned theirs into a household name. 

Because of its style, punk fit more comfortably in British music and fashion than in New York's. A punk used to be a hoodlum, and New York punk was too weird to be purely street tough enough to be "punk." The New Yorkers were either flamboyant and campy or too overtly intellectualized and dreamy. American bands the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls maintained a street edge, but their versions of the rock and street aesthetic never became as popular as British punk. No matter how hard-hitting the New York message was, the British made it even more obvious. If Lou Reed's poetic slurs brought the ideas of desperate nihilism to the surface, such British bands like the Sex Pistols brought the message home. With his band the Velvet Underground, Reed wove tales of modern depravity. His songs were full of people trapped by the temptations of the city's streets or their own desires. Speaking to and from the perspective of drug addicts and transsexuals, his subject matter confronted alienation but wrapped it in the modern cloth of rock music. British punk took it one step further. Instead of New York Doll, David JoHansen's, tight narratives about having a "Personality Crisis," such British punks as the Sex Pistols screamed about there being "No Future." The New York Doll's "Personality Crisis" is deliberately tongue-in-cheek, where as the Sex Pistol's lyrics are abrasive. 

"Now with all the crossing fate 
that mother nature sends 
Your mirror's getting jammed up 
with all your friends 
That's personality, 
when every scene starts to blend 
Personality, when your mind starts to blend." 
Back in the states the pop charts were a reflection of America's disenchantment with punk. The examples of number-one hits during punk's early years show a country wanting to be comforted. The late 1960s put the buying market in the mindset of the Beatles, "All You Need Is Love." Why create tension with lyrics about "Heroin" or a "Personality Crisis" when you could avoid reality with "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree?" Britain's success with punk, as opposed to America's comparative failure, acted itself out like sibling rivalry. The younger one trying to outdo the older one, capitalizing on the elder's accomplishments for the younger's success. British punk took the most obvious aspects of New York City punk--fashion, simplicity, and rebellion--to build its own monster. The younger British punk gained more media attention because its message was the most blatant. British bands flaunted their aggression with such names as the Sex Pistols and the Clash. They borrowed the rumpled-hoodlum look from Television's Richard Hell, and they didn't give the New Yorkers credit. During New York punk's peak, Malcolm McLaren recognized America's punk potential and tried to convince members of collapsed New York punk bands to migrate to England. McLaren knew he could turn punk rock into a viable commodity that would speak to British youth. He admired the urban fallout-shelter atmosphere of the New York Dolls and Richard Hell, and knew he could package their aesthetic into a more obvious and accessible product. Because of his keen observations, British punk and its fashion played into British emotional and economic exile, eventually emerging out of McLaren's clothing shops. He and partner Vivien Westwood created visually confrontational wardrobes to suit the modern nihilist. Because of McLaren and Westwood's fashion instincts, when people think of punk, their images are inspired by McLaren's clothing and shops. His and Westwood's talent for accessorizing fetishes made punk style more memorable. Where New Yorkers favored a toned down, bohemian-jeans-and-ripped t-shirt look, the British went all out. Meticulously ripped clothing held together with safety pins and dotted with intentional cigarette burns were topped with cropped and dyed vertical hair. British punk fashion embodied the extreme, not the casual or poetic like the wanderings of their New York influences. 
New York punk was an era of music that for lack of a better term is now called "punk." In Alan Betrock's 1977 New York Rocker article most the American bands were calling themselves "new wave," and leaving punk to the British. New wave was a less severe and more artistic version of the same idea, and stylistically it could more easily encompass the differences between the New York bands. Britain's success with popularizing punk came from the consistency of its musical and visual output; years of redundant offerings eventually hit home. Names like the Clash and Damned, and the Sex Pistols finally registered with their audience, and British bands developed a uniform fashion code of belligerence. New York's punk was not as easy to categorize; its scene revolved around an eclectic melting pot of influences. Whereas British punk meant aggression and immediacy, its New York antecedents combined aspects of aggression and immediacy with everything from bubblegum pop records to French bohemian poets (Savage 86). New Yorkers were not dressing to shock; there aesthetic was strictly come-as-you-are, which for Manhattan's glamour and intrigue was statement enough. 

New York City punk set the standard for punk fashion and musical style. Though expanded and manipulated to suit Britain's cultural fads, it still remains relatively unique within the boundaries of pop's homogeneous leanings. Punk music, whether British or American, was not as safe as pop, but it exemplified rock's pattern of borrowing and reclaiming. Rock music originally was about youth and creation and began as a separation from the status quo. Punk, either the American original or its British offspring, continued the trend. 

 ©1993, 1999 Jessamin Swearingen.