Punk’s fake history: the invention of a subculture

If you were born after 1970 and don’t remember punk, you’ve almost certainly been misled by people who do. You’ve probably been told – through countless paean-to-punk retrospectives, documentaries and newspaper culture pages – that it was a glorious, anarchic revolution that swept all before it. I can tell you first-hand that it wasn’t.

Punk was as middle-class as a Labrador in a Volvo. It was invariably the posher kids who abandoned Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes

Far from being hugely influential, punk was a passing fad that made little impression on the charts and left the lasting legacy of a spent firework. Only one punk single could be described as a big hit: The Sex Pistols’s fabulously obnoxious ‘God Save the Queen’ which shot to number two on the week of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

However, the Pistols didn’t share that top ten with any other spiky-haired renegades. Instead they vied for sales with Kenny Rogers, Barbra Streisand and The Muppets – any of whom can still make them look musically and culturally trivial.