John Lydon says its “wrong” to credit Patti Smith with punk’s beginnings
nme.comJohn Lydon has said that he believes it’s “wrong” to credit Patti Smith and, more broadly, New York with punk’s origins – saying the UK did it first.Smith was an essential part of the punk movement within the US with her 1975 debut album ‘Horses’.
The former Sex Pistol and Public Image Ltd frontman, however, claims that the UK is the actual birthplace of the genre with acts such as David Bowie, T-Rex, Sweet, The Clash, The Dammed and the Sex Pistols.In an interview with The Sun, Lydon said: “I’ve heard an awful lot of American journalists pretending that the whole punk influence came out of New York.
Well, hello? Bands like Sweet with ‘Ballroom Blitz’ and Mud with ‘Tiger Feet’ — that’s the do that, man!”A post shared by PiL Official / John Lydon (@pilofficial)He continued: “T.Rex, David Bowie, Slade, Mott The Hoople, The Alex Harvey Band — their influence was enormous.
And they try to write that all off and wrap it around Patti Smith. It’s so wrong!”Lydon then proceeded to blame New York punk band Ramones for the “all that uniformed, studded leather jacket nonsense” before speaking about his past bandmates and their new supergroup Generation Sex which consists of former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook along with Generation X’s Billy Idol and Tony James.The ‘Anarchy in the UK’ singer is not a fan and revealed he and his bandmates used to call Idol “the Cliff Richard of punk”, though he insists he was a “nice fella”.“Good luck to them but come on boys, get it together.
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