Buzzcocks
Punk innovator Pete Shelley looks back on three tumultuous decades of music and politics

Lorne Thomsom

Formed in Manchester in 1975, the Buzzcocks were
the first punk band to bring a touch of sophisticated songwriting to the genre’s atavistic energies. Among their notable achievements: getting banned by the BBC for the effortlessly catchy song “Orgasm Addict”;
jump-starting punk by booking the Sex Pistols for their first-ever Manchester concert; and bringing the pink revolution to punk with frontman Pete Shelley’s 1981admission of his bisexuality. Metropolis reached Shelley (far left) at his London home in advance of this weekend’s Punkspring festival at Chiba’s Makuhari Messe.

What defined punk for you?
Punk initially shocked people, because popular music had become a parody of what music should be. No one was addressing what was actually happening to people. That’s why punk started out as an underground DIY movement by people who were interested in things other than being signed by a big record company.

But one thinks of Malcolm McLaren as a Svengali who single-handedly created punk...
He was responsible for discovering something that already existed and getting the attention of the media. He helped accelerate the understanding among people that there was something a lot more fun happening than what they were being given by the major labels.

What is punk’s biggest legacy?
Doing things the DIY way, like putting on concerts, which we did with the Sex Pistols in Manchester, or making our own record, which started everyone else thinking, “We can do that.” People became active participants instead of just passive consumers.

Was it an epiphany when you first saw the Sex Pistols?
When we saw them, we thought they were doing what we were dreaming of. It made us say, “Hey, let’s get our shit together and make this happen.”

The Buzzcocks were one of the first punk bands to write more complex music…
If you think about it, in ’76, it had only been ten years since the heyday of pop in Britain. So all the pop music of the ’60s was within memory. It was full of melodies and catchy tunes. I grew up in the ’60s so I was influenced by pop.

What did you think of the Sex Pistols’ Filthy Lucre reunion tour? It made me a bit uncomfortable.
Even though they were a better band, it was hard to listen to it with the ears of 1976 because of everything else that had come after that. The shock element had gone out of it, but what was left was that they had great songs that you could sing along to.

Tell me about the bands you’ll be playing with at Punkspring. Have any impressed you?
I’m very bad on bands. I don’t really like music very much, that’s why I have to make it, you see! I usually get impressed for the first five minutes, and then I get bored. Rancid and Pennywise are the only bands I’ve really heard. But that’s the good thing about doing festivals, the chance to see other acts.

Do you think music has lost the power to shock in the way “Orgasm Addict” did?
I think it would be hard nowadays because in the ’70s there were only three TV stations, so any news that went out on those channels was what people found out about. Whereas now there are so many channels it’s hard to do anything that has a real effect on society in general. It’s hard to find someone you can really offend.

You came out as bisexual, but I can’t think of many in the rock world who have come out recently.
I don’t think it’s much of an issue these days. The shock element is gone from that as well. It was quite hard for me to even contemplate sharing that, but in the ’70s I was involved in student politics before I became a punk rocker, and part of that was about sexual equality.

You knew you would become a spokesman when you made that decision?
I knew there were people who were even more radical to me. Radical gays think bisexuals don’t exist; they think it’s just a lack of commitment.

Tell us about the new Buzzcocks 30 album.
As time inexorably moves on, it was our 30th year. We thought, “Let’s do some shows,” and then thought, “What songs should we play?” My idea was to do three songs off each of our roughly ten albums.

As you looked back on your career, did you have any fresh thoughts about your songs?
Surprisingly not. As a band, we’ve never knowingly released anything we didn’t think was very good. We don’t have huge albums of embarrassment that some bands get.

When did you first come to Japan?
The first time was in 1990, then 1993 or 4, then 6, then we weren’t asked back again for another ten years. The offers never came, so we were quite happy to come back in 2006. I was expecting the audience to be ten years older, but they were as youthful as when we started out. There’s a whole new audience that wants to check us out. We’re not something to be consigned to a museum.

Punkspring, April 6. See concert listings (popular) for details. Buzzcocks 30 is available on Cooking Vinyl.

Got something to say about this article? Send a letter to the editor at letters@metropolis.co.jp.

Listen to the Metropolis Podcast, the coolest guide to what goes on this week in Tokyo.

Looking for international friends? Check Japan, Inc. Friends now - it's 100% free!