London Punks Tell All Five Years After – 1981

In December 1981, The UK’s The Face magazine ran the feature ‘Punk Rock: 5 Years On’. Photographer Virginia Turbett was commissioned to look for punks in London, take their photo and get few words about what punk meant to them. But five years on from what? The magazine didn’t give readers a timeline.

If the story of punk’s etymology is told at all, it is normally told this way: at the very end of the sixties, and the very start of the seventies, the word bubbled up in rock criticism, most notably when Lester Bangs referred to The MC5 and Iggy Pop as “punks.” In 1971, they say, Creem Magazine editor Dave Marsh coined the term “punk rock,” in a review of ? And The Mysterians… read more >