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Anger is an energy! Stars and writers on the songs that define punk spirit
As Patti Smith’s debut single turns 50, punk musicians and music writers pick the songs that define the genre’s resistance, rebellion and refusal
Its creator had kicked off the 90s by co-founding Detroit techno crew Underground Resistance with Robert Hood and Mike Banks, merging Black funk histories with cheap electronics at thundering speeds, rhythms sparking as if off red-hot midwestern steel. Photograph: Ian Dickson/ShutterstockA combustible, untutored thunder of drums, churning guitar and chanted vocals, May 1978’s So Tough (a wry account of the Sex Pistols’ messy collapse that managed to slip a surprising amount of Grundy-interview-grade language past the BBC censor) feels like a rare moment when punk’s questionable anyone-can-do-it ethos bore extraordinary fruit. What makes Gordon’s song so remarkable isn’t just her wink at the latest iteration of capitalist hell – kind of punk’s raison d’être – but the fact that she released it aged 66, in the first wave of a solo career begun nearly 40 years after her band Sonic Youth debuted, following the breakdown of her marriage.
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