The mid to late 1970s sure was a weird time for music.
Prescriptive journalists were only interested in punk or ‘new wave’ acts and anything that didn’t fit the bill was dismissed or ignored. Bands either had to 'fake it to make it', or persevere in the hope that fashions would change – which they eventually did.
Some bands were simply mislabelled by uncomprehending hacks. Here are 13 bands who flew under the punk banner but who had previous little to do with messrs Rotten, Vicious and co.
1. AC/DC
Australian rockers AC/DC had the misfortune to arrives in the UK to play a residency at London’s Marquee Club during 1976's so-called 'summer of hate' and immediately found themselves lumped in with punk because of their high-energy shows. In fact, Chuck Berry-worshipping Angus and Malcolm Young despised punk and loathed the bands' ineptitude.
In his book AC/DC: For Those About To Rock, Paul Elliott quotes Malcolm as saying: "When we first came to England in '76, the record company wanted to market us as a punk band. We told them to f*** off! . . . You'd get these punks having a go at us, and Bon [Scott] would go: 'You shut up or I'll rip that f***ing safety pin out of your f***ing nose!'"
2. Dire Straits
These days, Dire Straits are seen as the ultimate band of the CD era, loved by Mondeo Man and Princess Diana. But, bizarre as it may seem, at the time their debut album was released in 1978 they were considered a punk or ‘new wave’ band, and their iconic debut single 'Sultans of Swing' was played regularly by that champion of punk and New Wave, John Peel.
This despite the bend’s suspicious musicality and obvious debt to blues/country guitarist JJ Cale, which set them at odds with the rest of the snarling punk pack. Dire Straits soon found their audience, however, which made founder Mark Knopfler increasingly uncomfortable. Their fifth album, 1985's ubiquitous Brothers in Arms, became the first recording to sell a million copies on CD. Eventually, Knopfler disbanded Dire Straits because they had become too popular – a problem that, let's face it, never afflicted any of the punk acts.
3. The Cars
The Americans didn’t really do punk in the way that the British did. Which is probably why they found so many the British acts of the time so unpalatable. Instead they had New Wave, which was occasionally so close to AOR as to be indistinguishable from it. Boston’s The Cars were a case in point. Behind the stylish, very 1980s attire lay a classy AOR band, whose self-titled debut album yielded such hits as 'Just What I Needed' and 'My Best Friend’s Girl'.
By 1984, all the band's rough edges had been sanded down and Heartbeat City became their biggest selling album, shifting quadruple platinum in the US. Produced by Mutt Lange – who was famed for his work with AC/DC, Foreigner and Def Leppard – this yielded such hits as 'You Might Think' and the Live Aid-soundtracking ballad 'Drive'. The death of frontman Ric Ocasek in 2019 put paid to any talk that the band might get back together.
4. Motörhead
They played loud, they played fast and they took the wrong kind of drugs (i.e. speed). Motörhead were always something of an anomaly, loved by metalheads and warily admired by punks – once they were assured it was OK to like them. Not that Lemmy had any time for such labels. 'We are Motörhead and we play rock and roll,' he would announce at the beginning of every gig.
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Motörhead did play the odd rock and roll number, such as 'Going to Brazil', but they slotted in just fine on metal festival bills. The most unlikely connection between Motörhead and the punks came when Lemmy attempted to teach Sid Vicious how to play his bass guitar. He swiftly gave up, complaining that his pupil was 'hopeless'.
5. The Stranglers
Pre-dating the punk scene by a couple of years, The Stranglers always seemed like an odd fit for the movement. Bassist/vocalist Jean-Jacques Burnel was the only band member who really looked and acted the part, and he remains the only original band member in the current line-up. Hugh Cornwell was an erudite Bristol University biochemistry graduate, while Dave Greenfield was that rarity in the punk scene – a keyboard player. Not only that, but his style as often compared to that of Ray Manzarek of The Doors. Hard to get much less punk than Jim Morrison and his psychedelic crew...
The Stranglers also enjoyed greater commercial success than other punk bands, owing to their more sophisticated style and the variety of their songwriting, which yielded such hits as 'No More Heroes', 'Peaches' and the intricate, faintly Medieval-feeling 'Golden Brown'.
6. The Police
One of the most unlikely bands to be caught up in the punk movement, the members of The Police first teamed up in short-lived prog rock outfit Strontium 90, which was formed by Gong’s Mike Howlett. Drummer Stewart Copeland had been a member of Curved Air, while Sting had been in jazz-rock fusion band Last Exit. Most eclectically of all, guitarist Andy Summers – a decade older than his bandmates – was a veteran of the Sixties rhythm and blues scene and had been a member of acid rock band Dantaliam’s Chariot alongside Zoot Money before working with the likes of Soft Machine and Kevin Ayers.
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Hardly the filth and the fury, then. Debut single 'Roxanne', the story of a man who falls in love with a prostitute, was more musically sophisticated than most products of the punk/new wave movement, but was nonetheless praised by the partisan music press, played to death by John Peel, and eventually peaked at number 12 in the UK singles chart. Only later were the trio viewed with suspicion.
7. The Jam
The Jam are often cited as one of the 'big four' of 1977 punk alongside Sex Pistols, The Damned and The Clash, but Paul Weller was always a Mod at heart. While they had the speed and the anger, their suits, Rickenbacker guitars, and obsession with 1960s soul set them apart from the nihilism of the Pistols.
Weller famously declared himself a 'conservative' (musically, mind) in early interviews – and the band even borrowed heavily from The Beatles' 'Taxman' on 1980's 'Start!'. They used the punk momentum to revive the Mod aesthetic, eventually evolving into a sophisticated soul-pop act that had more in common with Motown than the Bowery.
8. Bowling For Soup
By the 1990s, American punk rock had become a very different beast to its seventies British counterpart, with pop-punk bands like Green Day and Good Charlotte scooping up pocket money across the nation. Into this melée came Texans Bowling For Soup, who contributed a finely developed sense of fun in such songs as 'Girl All Bad Guys Want' and 'High School Never Ends', along with a musicality that owed more to classic AOR than it did to The Clash or the Sex Pistols.
Although they’ve been guilty of far too much dicking around on stage, BFS remain a great American rock band even though frontman Jaret Reddick is now the only remaining original member.
9. The MC5
Formed way back in 1963 and retrospectively claimed as punk pioneers, Detroit’s Motor City Five actually played a blend of hard rock and psychedelia with a revolutionary political edge inspired by their manger (and White Panther Party co-founder) John Sinclair. They recorded three albums between 1969 and 1972, when they were dropped by Atlantic Records: Kick Out the Jams, Back in the USA (produced by future Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau) and High Time.
Declining commercial fortunes and an enthusiasm for hard drugs led to the band splitting in 1972, although they remained hugely influential on the hard rock scene. Guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith subsequently married Patti Smith (no relation) and died of heart failure in 1994. By 2018, co-founder Wayne Kramer was celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kick Out the Jams with a new band called the MC50 (d’ya see what he did there?).
That outfit, featuring Kim Thayil of Soundgarden and Billy Gould of Faith No More, completed a successful tour of the UK, playing to audiences mostly comprised of old rockers. He later contributed to the great latter-day Alice Cooper album Detroit Stories, but his death from pancreatic cancer in 2024 finally put paid to the MC5.
10. Blondie
Emerging from the CBGB scene alongside the Ramones, Blondie was initially lumped into the punk bracket. However, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were actually creating a sophisticated homage to 1960s girl groups and bubblegum pop. Their particular brand of 1977 'menace' was a stylized, cinematic cool rather than raw aggression. As soon as the opportunity arose, they pivoted seamlessly into disco, rap, and reggae, proving their 'punk' association was purely a matter of geography and timing.
11. Larry Wallis
In-house producer at Stiff Records who released a well-received punk-era single entitled 'Police Car', Larry Wallis appeared to have all the appropriate punk rock credentials, but he had a hard rockin’ past of which many a punk was unaware. First of all, he’d been in the Tolkien-inspired Shagrath with a post-Tyrannosaurus Rex Steve Peregrin Took.
Then came a stint in blues rockers Blodwyn Pig alongside former Jethro Tull guitarist Mick Abrahams, and even a very early incarnation of UFO, before Wallis joined psychedelic/proto hard rockers Pink Fairies, for whom he swiftly became chief songwriter on the excellent Kings of Oblivion album. At the same time, he joined the first incarnation of Motörhead and can be heard on their On Parole album.
12. The Motors
Their big hit (number four, 1978) wasn’t about anarchy, white riots or gobbing in the streets but about . . . an airport. The Motors were a short-lived (three years) new wave band whose catchy big hit 'Airport' marked a change in direction to a more synth-laden sound. It didn’t lead to any enduring success, though, and this line-up split the same year. 'Airport' has, however, enjoyed quite an afterlife among literal-minded producers of TV travel programmes who are prepared to overlook the inconvenient fact that it’s actually a break-up song.
13. Squeeze
Frequently hailed as the heirs to Lennon and McCartney, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook were quintessential pop craftsmen rather than street-level agitators. Emerging from South London in 1977, Squeeze possessed the high-energy delivery and lean song structures that allowed them to be conveniently swept up in the New Wave and punk explosion.
However, while their contemporaries were screaming for the destruction of the establishment, Squeeze was perfecting the art of the three-minute novella. Their music was built on sophisticated chord progressions, lush melodies, and 'kitchen-sink' lyrical dramas that captured the mundane beauty of British working-class life. They were melodic traditionalists who merely utilized the era's frantic momentum to find an audience, proving that great songwriting is often just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Pics Getty Images
Top pic AC/DC, 1980
