bruce butler PUNK

I was into music from an early age. I’d get NME, Melody Maker and Sounds magazines from the UK, and read about all the music overseas that wasn’t being played on the radio here. Then, in the early ’70s, a number of small record shops emerged in Melbourne, purely selling imported music from America and the UK. There was one called Gaslight Records that I’d go to every day after school. When I was 16, they offered me a job working Friday nights and Saturday mornings.

Gaslight imported most of its stuff from America – that’s how I got exposed to the Ramones and early American punk music. It was this energetic, in-your-face music with a new attitude. And the way they looked, too: we were used to record covers being glam, but theirs was tough and gritty. After the Ramones came Sex Pistols and their debut single “Anarchy in the UK” in 1976. When I heard it, I went nuts.

I decided to get rid of all my hippie and glam-rock clothes and start making punk clothes instead. I had my t-shirt with Siouxsie and the Banshees scrawled on in paint, and homemade badges of Ronald Mcdonald with a safety pin through his head. It was a whole do-it-yourself aesthetic. Being punk was about the music, but also about the fashion and being part of a clique. Later on, people would stop their car to scream at me for the way I dressed. Once, a friend and I got arrested and locked up overnight. The police told us our clothing was dangerous.

I soon favoured the English punk scene. There was so much coming out of there and dozens of new records to buy each week. I found like-minded people in record shops buying the same things as me, then local bands like The Boys Next Door (later The Birthday Party) started. A scene formed in Melbourne with a sound distinct from British and American punk – it was more experimental and arty. There were gigs on five or six nights a week.

It was a very middle-class movement. Not exclusively, of course. But bands like The Boys Next Door were all private-school kids. When I went to the UK in 1979, during what we now call the ‘post-punk’ era, it surprised me how the punks over there were extremely political, out of necessity. They were mostly working-class, fighting against their social conditions and the onset of Thatcherism. It was a real ‘fuck you’ to the government. We had the same leftist politics in Melbourne, but in England, it was a true struggle.

For me, early punk – before the aggressive Oi! bands – was this vibrant, creative scene. It was very hands-on, and people not only got involved with the music, but with making the artwork for singles, too. I might not look like a punk anymore, but it’s still with me in the way I think about social issues. I’m not an anarchist; I’m a political person who cares about human rights and the rights of the individual.