Punk: The Whole Story [Hardcover]

DK Publishing (Author), Debbie Harry (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2006

The story of punk, the world's most shocking rock genre, charting its birth in the mid '70s, its '78-79 heyday, the '80s punk new wave, and its continuing popularity today. Includes interviews and photographs originally published in Mojo magazine, together with new specially photographed spreads on memorabilia. Produced in Association with MOJO magazine. Features three decades' worth of MOJO articles, interviews, and photography. December 6th 2006 is the 30th anniversary of punk.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although the history of punk-the music and the lifestyle-reaches further back than 1976, that year was a watershed one for the anti-establishment movement that introduced the world to the Sex Pistols, The Ramones and The Clash. The British magazine Mojo, among the most respected rock publications in the world, celebrates punk's 30th anniversary with this fully-illustrated volume, collecting archival articles and photos from the pages of Mojo, those of sister magazine Q and the now-defunct Sounds (punk's original champion). It therefore reads like a magazine, divided into three departments: "In the Beginning," "The Beginning of the End" and "What Happened Next." Taking readers inside seminal scenes, the book highlights the Pistols' first interview; Blondie's unlikely success; the rise of Black Flag; Sid Vicious' tragic demise; and Green Day's unexpected coming-of-age party at Woodstock '94. Special sections feature stunning black-and-white photography that often captures a moment more eloquently than the book's prose, and shorter pieces about fanzines, fashion and memorabilia add context. Most valuable to music collectors will be the book's list of top 20 British punk singles and what it proclaims as "the 77 greatest punk albums ever." Appropriately, the book closes with a two-page homage to the late Clash front man Joe Strummer, heralding him as "the heart of punk itself."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: DK ADULT (September 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756623596
• ISBN-13: 978-0756623593
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #709,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Blake has been writing about popular music and culture since 1989.
A former Assistant Editor of Q magazine and regular contributor to Mojo, he is the author of Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd (published as Pigs Might Fly outside the US), Stone Me: The Wit & Wisdom Of Keith Richards and the editor of Dylan: Visions, Portraits & Back Pages. His latest book, Is This The Real Life: The Untold Story Of Queen, was published in 2010.
More info at www.markrblake.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Whole?" No. "Story?" Yes., December 2, 2008

By 

Stargrazer "the lost mixtape of my life" (deep in the heart of Michigan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Punk (Paperback)

An unfortunately myopic look at punk rock, making sure we hear the same old mantras and canards: "The Sex Pistols invented punk...well, I mean, after The New York Dolls did...er, that is, after The Stooges did... uhh, MC5... uh, dang those New York guys were arty! And the British were so working class!" And the wind-up focus on Green Day is just disappointing, as they quickly departed the punk camp and evolved into a Modern Rock radio band, nothing more.

But this is the old dogma; the genesis of punk is understood to be far more complex than this simplified tale, by anyone who's done more than dipped their toe into the idiom. The preoccupations with punk as a youth movement or a fashion subculture or a political stance have all been discredited one way or another. That thinking was the birthplace of goonery of all types -- punk's right to swing it's nihilistic fist ends abruptly at the tips of our complicit noses. What remains when the bones are boiled isn't nearly as romantic or wish-you-were-there, but it has the advantage of letting the actual music triumph over the admittedly colorful personalities that make for better photo spreads and journalistic pieces to be compiled into coffee table books. Even "Punk" (the book) can admit that Sid Vicious is a punk rock icon for all sorts of non-musical reasons, and certainly not due to his contributions on wax.

Certainly, rebellion against extant aesthetics is a major ingredient...but this rebellion did not suddenly appear in 1971, it's been with us a long time. It's really only the method of delivery that changed. Similar rebellious movements have occurred in classical music, jazz, art, social movements, etc., only to be absorbed into academic revisionism - and it'll happen to punk rock too. Punk desperately doesn't want to become Classic Rock. But this codex is just the sort of think that romanticizes the generic looks and sounds of punk without transmitting any of the visceral or artistic push behind the spectacle.

There is a lot of perfectly nice, first-person source material here, though those sources are occasionally dubious. I read "Punk" cover-to-cover, with a salt shaker nearby. Punk rock's Us-vs.-them ethos translates into an Us-vs.-us stance: many of the musicians interviewed spend a great deal of time contradicting eachother - everyone wants to be the one who initiated the most significant events of punk legend. McLaren even gives himself credit for creating "the infrastructure for an alternative society" in the afterword!

More importantly...

How can you take a book on punk that claims to be "the whole story" seriously when it makes no mention at all of The Dicks? Bikini Kill? The Electric Eels? The Screamers? Scratch Acid? Mission Of Burma?? Crass? The Crucif**ks? These are not obscure bands, they are glaring omissions. The American South and West Coast are treated as virtually nonexistant. Hardcore is hinted at, but otherwise fairly absent. The years from 1982-1996 are largely skipped. If you are interested in American bands that aren't Patti Smith, The New York Dolls, Television, Black Flag, Blondie, or The Ramones, you won't find much information in this book!

The British bands that are highlighted include The Buzzcocks, Generation X, The Damned, The Stranglers, The Clash, and Siouxsie & The Banshees. The whole thing is strung together with the story arc of the Sex Pistols, beginning with their nascent flounderings and ending soon after Sid's death. The conceit that the Pistols were the apotheosis of punk is persisted throughout "Punk: The Whole Story." The fact that The Boomtown Rats and Wreckless Eric receive more than the single-sentence treatment afforded by some of the bands mentioned in the next paragraph really seals the verdict on this book: it is light.

Certainly, since it was culled primarily from MOJO, the Anglocentric bias and myth-making are inevitable, but fleeting mentions (often one solitary album review or name-drop) of the Germs, Dead Kennedys, The Minutemen, Husker Du, Pere Ubu, Minor Threat, and Wire do nothing to support the book's pose of being definitive.

Forget these bands, listen to bands from your own time. If you were there, you don't need this book. If you weren't, this will just dilute the education you can give yourself by going to some basement shows or a dingy owner-operated record shop. If you're obsessed with these personalities, save your money and buy a guitar.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kent Still Sad but Book Excellent, March 21, 2007

By 

Frankie Love (The Southwest and The Northeast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Punk: The Whole Story (Hardcover)

This is a terrific book.

The only unfortunate aspect is the "offering" by Nick Kent. Mr. Kent, I was there and you were not even a blip on the radar screen. Nick Kent seems to have the same sort of difficulty with the truth that Malcolm McClaren has always had. So in that, his self-aggrandizing claim of being on the scene before there was one is at the very least, documentation of how he considered himself way more important than he actually was to the whole thing. There's a bit too much Blondie as well. She just wasn't what we thought was punk at that time.

The whole movement was thanks to the Sex Pistols and there is plenty of focus on the group and their brief career. The book gives time to their come-back a few years ago which is also very interesting and relevant.

All in all, a good book. Just don't be fooled by Kent.

5.0 out of 5 stars punk rawk, November 25, 2011

By 

louie syfer - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Punk (Paperback)

Great book, easy read, and filled with lots of cool stories. I like the way it was broken into sections about each different band. Good read for someone who needs an "intro" to the seeds of punk rock