A Conversation with Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks

This is the original transcript of the interview, only minor editing has been applied for readability. This has been the basis for articles but has never been published in the original form.

Wortraub: What is punk?
Pete: It just became a label, in a Sex Pistols review 30 years ago. It referred to them as being punk. And for a while people argued about the term. But punk became more than a style of music. It became an attitude. It was really the attitude that drove it. It was an attitude about action and getting things done, rather than theorizing about it. It was really practical and it was something that people could do themselves. And so, the fanzine attitude was there, they were also punk because they were not going into the normal publishing way of doing things. They were using a photocopy machine and copying and pasting things. It was about getting people involved in doing things. It wasn’t just a form of music which people went as spectators to. You were meant to participate in it and to help along the lines by designing you clothes and things. To come up with your own style of what you are wearing. It was about the creative idea. Punk. It was also a very political act. It was involving people to take a part in what was going on in their culture. Rather than being a passive consumer you became an active part in it. A lot of people still think that punk was just a style of music. But the people who really know, know that it was a mindset that made lots of different things possible. But part of it was the excitement of the music as well.

Wortraub: What is the music definition of punk?
Pete: If you listen to the Ramones first album, you call that punk.

Wortraub: The Ramones played in London in 1975. Have you seen the show?
Pete: No, I wasn’t aware of them. I listened to the Stooges and Alice Cooper which had some punk elements in it.

Wortraub: When did you first come in contact with punk?
Pete: It was probably by actually making it. Me and Howard Devoto grew up in Manchester and we were writing songs which we thought were songs like the Stooges. That was what punk was. That kind of stuff.

Wortraub: You got the Sex Pistols to play in Manchester for the first time. How did you come in contact with them?
Pete: I saw this review in the NME, which said: „Don’t look over your shoulders but the Sex Pistols are coming“. A review for their concert in the Marquee club in London. And it said they did a Stooges-song. So we thought, this is the only band in the whole country who liked the Stooges. So, I had to be in London that weekend. Howard borrowed a car and we drove down to London and tried to find this band called the Sex Pistols. And we found them and we saw them and we chatted with them. And we thought, well, it would be easier if they actually came up and played in Manchester where we were, rather than groups of us coming down to London. They wanted to play outside of London as well.

Wortraub: Where you at time already a band?
Pete: We were a proto-band. We were writing but we did not have a bass player or a drummer. We were writing songs. There was no line-up.

Wortraub: When was the starting point of the movement?
Pete: Well, the Sex Pistols started playing in late 1975, and me and Howard got the Buzzcocks together in late 1975. When you listen to it now, you what call it punk music. But back then nobody called it punk. It was very strange, that form of music because it was the opposite of what all the music around was like.

Wortraub: When did you first hear the term being used?
Pete: In the review for the Sex Pistols, it mentioned that „punk“. The Sex Pistols never liked it though, because it became like a straight jacket at the end. It became something that people talk loud, because this is a name, then it must be describing something. They looked at it describing the music and they put up barriers and said: anything between here and here is punk. But it was an attitude, a state of mind which could be applied to all sorts of different things. It had more of a use as a description of a state a mind rather than being a description of a certain music. Like how many chords you could have in a song. Or how fast it could be. The Sex Pistols said, they wanted a thousand other bands to start. Or a hundred. I don’t remember the number. But they did not intend a hundred bands like the Sex Pistols. They wanted a hundred bands to spontaneously form because the people decided they had enough of the rubbish that was going on at the time. And to do something about it rather than complain all the time.

Wortraub: Why was punk so appealing?
Pete: Because it accessible. Because the music which was around at the time was all about Ö they were like living in a different world, a fantasy world. It was like American influenced music. I mean, I knew nothing about driving along a freeway. And I could care even less, how many notes people could play in a guitar solo. I wanted things to have an immediacy. Not something that went on and on and on, so it could fill the side of an album.

Wortraub: The music needed to be more authentic to your life then?
Pete: Yes, because then it became more authentic to other peoples lives as well. That’s why it managed to spread so fast. It was something that people could do and there was a lot of fun in doing it. It was amazing how wearing trousers with open flies became such a public outrage. It was all over the country, just small groups, two or three friends at school, who decided to become punks. And they started dressing differently to what everybody else was wearing, to what was in fashion in that time. Punks were almost creating fashion. It went down as a form of music, which became a lifestyle. When you started to listen to punk music, then you wanted to dress accordingly. And you mainly did that by improvising and adapting clothing. Or, the charity shops were great sources of clothes you could afford instead of Vivienne Westwoods prices.

Wortraub: What was your personal background back then?
Pete: I was born in a working class family, lived in a bungalow at the edge of town. I went to grammar school, then went to college. I did electronics at college, decided that electronics would confine me to repairing TVs rather than designing great computers etc. So I decided I was finished with electronics and switched to philosophy and comparative European literature. I was doing that part time. Then I noticed a piece of paper on a notice board saying that a guy named Howard wanted to form a band doing „Sister Ray“ by the Velvet Underground. I knew the song and was interested because The Velvet Underground weren’t really the icon of known. Now they might regularly get played on the TV. They are backed now. But at the time nobody knew them. They were completely finished as a band. Some people might have know about Lou Reed because of his collaboration with David Bowie apart from that it was all done and dusted.

Wortraub: 30 years later, what has punk become? What does it stand for today?
Pete: Seeing the kids that come to the shows, it still stands for that idea of individuality. I mean, I know it has become a bit of a uniform but we are talking about punks here that never had mohicans. I mean, I never had a mohican. It became something that people could see and dress up to. And some people still do that. But the majority of the people just look quite normal really. Except that they want to become involved in something that has a ring of being genuine. Rather than the stuff that is just manufactured.

Wortraub: But is it genuine?
Pete: Well, it is to me. That’s what I do. I don’t do anything else. I don’t have a secret day job.

Wortraub: But with media coverage and big stories in every magazine, with millions of records being sold. Is there still the old attitude in punk?
Pete: In some ways it is more possible now. It is easier now, especially because of the internet. With the internet everyone can write something. Back then you needed to find a photocopying machine and some hundred people read your stuff. Now, you put up one copy and everybody in the whole world can see it if they want to. The same with music. Punk still lives on in people who try and make things happen. They are doing their own bands. There are so many bands that say that Buzzcocks have been an inspiration to them. I think that is because we do what we gotta do. It inspires people that it can be done. You don’t have to make a pact with the devil in order to make music or to express yourself. There is people doing films and video. There is lots of different things. I think, punk is that spark that you don’t have to be gifted by god to be able to contribute. Everybody is welcome. That’s the main thing. If people don’t try it, it is a waste of their lives, ain’t it. Any talent that doesn’t happen is a complete waste. So it encourages people that want to do it. And it is fun as well. The joy in playing music isn’t the rewards that you get or of the record buying public. It is the joy in actually doing it. That is why I do it. There are always people that don’t like it but there is nothing much that I can do about that. I’ve got to do what I need to do, what I consider to be the right thing to do. The whole process of writing a song is about making decisions. You have to decide how many verses you are going to have in them. All these decisions you have to do. At the end, we use our judgement to make it sound right.

Wortraub: Through free access to media, did the idea or spirit of punk get more universal, more global?
Pete: Yes, the whole do it yourself idea of punk was because we managed to get a hold of the means of production. We found out the addresses of record pressing plants. To find out how it is done, to make your own records. So that you did not need an established business as a middle man. Or as we said: a gatekeeper. They said, they function as gatekeepers to make sure that people did not listen to awful music. So they only choose the best ones, but really they are choosing on a financial basis, not on the basis of the music itself. But now people can come up with anything on their computer, put it up on the Internet and other people can hear it. Which is just the same as playing a gig and hoping that people come to see it. So that was the thing about organizing gigs ourselves as well. It was all about Ö we don’t need the people that are in between, that stop us and tell us how it is done. It is about learning how things are done. Finding ways to do things. It was very creative. Solving problems. How do we get this? And then we went and got but usually in a way that was painfully stupid at the time we were doing it. They told us you couldn’t do that. Because they saw too much of a problem. But there weren’t many problems that were insoluble. It was finding a way through no matter what. And it was people organizing themselves. That is were the whole idea of anarchy came from. It wasn’t as essential controlling power. It was people organizing themselves. Doing things. It was a lot like the hippy ideals. Not with the hippy attitudes.

Wortraub: I thought punk was a counter-culture to hippy culture?
Pete: I mean, yes, it was at the time. But there was a lot more hippies back then. Nowadays, it is surprising that there are a few of them left. They had the same ideals in some ways, but they had totally different ways of going about it. Like I said, punk was all about action, about doing something. It was not theorizing about things. Behind punk was a lot of theory of actually doing something, the need for people to do something themselves. Rather than be relying on the music industry to provide for them.

Wortraub: What do you think of the Sex Pistols reunion?
Pete: I have seen them twice since they got back together in 1996. Once in London in 1996, then again in 2002 in California. Both times I thought they were great. I mean, there is a lot of suspicion and prejudice about bands getting back together. Like, ah, they are doing it for the money. It doesn’t matter what they are doing it for. They are playing. That is more important than holding on to that golden memory of how things used to be. Becoming over sentimental and too precious is a bad idea. I think, people should be allowed to do what they want. I mean, I don’t give anybody the time or credence that says the Buzzcocks should not be back together. Because I see it quite differently than that. *laughs* They are never going to convince me. Gratefully.

Wortraub: 30 years is not enough then?
Pete: 30 years isn’t enough. 30 years is just the consequence of us not having died yet. Hopefully, we will be having this conversation in 20 years time. Going on about punk. The thing about punk is, that is has been absorbed so much in culture. It had a big effect on lots and lots of things. If you walk down the street you can’t help but see how people have changed because of punk. If you listen to music on the radio, especially guitar music Ö sometimes you get bands and they sound like they could have been in the 60ties or 70ties, the prog-rock kind of thing Ö but there seems to be an actually area now, where the musical ideals and ideas of punk, you can see in other bands.

Wortraub: Is there an undeserved label of punk?
Pete: No, not really. I mean, I tend to ignore things like this. I am not picketing outside of concerts saying this is not punk! I leave that to the purists. I mean, I just read an article today for the new album, and it said: „the Buzzcocks were never punk, they were more power-pop.“ But to me, it isn’t an either/or thing, because I have said, punk is more internal than external.

Wortraub: How did you like the reaction of the Sex Pistols to being invited in the hall of fame? How would you react?
Pete: We have never been asked. *laughs* So it is all theoretical, if we say yes or say no. It would all depend on whether it was funny to do it or not. But I can see how they have no time for doing these back-slapping events. And it is ridiculous with these prices.

Wortraub: Finally, I would like to know some of your favourite records?
Pete: I like the song writing of the more esoteric bits of punk. The stuff that came out way before anything was called punk. The Ramones first album would be another influential thing. And also Iggy Pop’s „Raw Power“. That was what we would listen to in jam sessions, when we were practicing stuff. Trying to get that urgency and excitement in. An edge to the music.