Buzzcocks

Pete Shelley & Howard Devoto, punk's odd couple. Two lone wolves whose crossing paths in 1975 could only spawn something utterly unprecedented. The first, born Peter McNeish, was an engineering student with a passion for Romantic poets – not by chance, he chose as his stage name that of his favourite: Percy Bysshe Shelley. The second, meanwhile, cast off the thoroughly English surname Trafford to adopt the more mysterious Devoto, in keeping with his passion for literature and philosophy, which he pursued alongside compulsive listening to that American-bred proto-punk born somewhere between the Detroit of the Stooges and the New York of the Velvet Underground and CBGB. They met at the Electronic Music Society of the Bolton Institute of Technology, on the pretext of scoring a video art piece. Shelley, raised on a steady diet of kraut-rock and something of a budding inventor himself (having already built his first oscillator), took to those experimental scores like a duck to water.

Right, but what does punk have to do with any of this? Apparently nothing, so far. There's only that slang-mangled name, Buzzcocks, which is actually a contraction of the catchphrase from a TV series of the time, "Rock Follies": "That's the buzz, cocks". But this is still 1976, and the buzz going around England is all about the Sex Pistols. Pete and Howard, struck by an NME review, rush down to London to hear them play. A few months later, they'll open for them at the legendary gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall. That's punk, cocks.

Do it yourself

The original core of Buzzcocks, besides the two frontmen-singers (Shelley also on guitar), includes bassist Steve Diggle and drummer John Maher. Even as pioneers of punk, they're already something else. They're pop, thanks to the crystalline melodies and killer choruses they churn out with nonchalance, almost like a new-wave Beatles or Kinks. They're post for their art-rock attitude (which Devoto would later develop more fully in Magazine) and for their sharp-witted lyrics, which, instead of the nihilism of the Pistols or the political broadsides of the Clash, deal with teenage frustration, sex and, believe it or not, love — including bisexual love, openly professed by Shelley. But they're also the first indie band: their debut EP, "Spiral Scratch" (1977), released on their own label New Hormones, is widely regarded as the prototype for DIY (do it yourself). Finally, they're even jazz, at least according to Paul Morley, NME's Manchester correspondent, who was floored by their early sets: "Guitar and bass were skittering, the drums seemed entirely polyrhythmic, the voice a whip crack. If you stepped two inches back you'd think: this is free jazz."

But after that landmark EP, the band is already at a crossroads. True to the chameleonic Bowie-esque creed "if something works, throw it away", Devoto quits almost immediately, already declaring himself "bored with punk" and setting off to write another memorable chapter of British rock at the helm of the aforementioned Magazine. It thus falls to Shelley to carry on the Buzzcocks saga, with Diggle moving from bass to guitar and new bassist Garth Smith, soon replaced by Steve Garvey. But more than in the trio of albums from the band's golden period ("Another Music In A Different Kitchen", "Love Bites" and "A Different Kind Of Tension"), the best of the Mancunian band is captured on this formidable singles collection, almost all of them never committed to an LP as a matter of ideological principle (with the exception of "I Don't Mind", "Ever Fallen In Love?", "Autonomy" and "Just Lust").

Orgasm addiction

Branded with a cover that openly pays homage to the Beatles' "Let It Be", "Singles Going Steady" came out in 1979 as an anthology of the eight singles the Buzzcocks had released up to that point, plus, on the second side, their respective B-sides. In United Artists' plan, it was meant to be their master key to America, since it was their first official release overseas (it would be pressed in the UK two years later). It failed to chart, but there would be time for redemption. Because the 16 gems of punk-pop ante litteram contained within were written to withstand the test of time: from the era of the Ramones (perhaps the band's only true putative mentors) to that of Nirvana (who would adopt Shelley & co. as godfathers, bringing them onstage on their final tour in 1994), all the way to Green Day, who would simplify their lesson and ferry it into the 2000s, and the punk-garage revival of the Strokes, which would take off in the 2000s. After all, it was Shelley himself who ambitiously revealed to NME: "Before I write a song, I have to make sure it can stand the test of time." A paradoxical statement at the time of rock'n'roll's greatest swindle and the swift self-destruction of the Sex Pistols and co.

With their first 7-inch, "Orgasm Addict" (credited to Shelley-Devoto), Buzzcocks immediately set themselves apart from the rest of the pack: no political sloganeering, no self-destructive urges, but rather a healthy sexual addiction, like that of teenagers devouring dirty magazines ("Sneaking in the back door with dirty magazines/ Now your mother wants to know 'bout all those stains on your jeans"). An ode to onanism — the flip side of do-it-yourself and an antidote to loneliness — sobbed out by Shelley in his high, melodious register, light years away from the distorted screams of Rotten, Strummer and co., with Diggle's crackling guitars crashing over Smith's circular basslines and Maher's frenzied drumming. Almost more glam than punk, in the way it mocks the clichés of masculinity. The BBC didn't approve — perhaps also because of those simulated female orgasms — and brought down the axe of censorship.

Five months later, on "What Do I Get?", Shelley turns less insolent, asking almost politely for "a lover like any other", while a punishing riff threatens to overwhelm his lament; Garvey and Maher lock into a manic rhythm, while Diggle acts as a constant harmonic anchor without which Buzzcocks songs would lose much of their physical impact. Songs that condense anguish and romantic torment into three minutes. Like the gorgeous "Ever Fallen In Love" (1978), in which the atypical punk Shelley definitively drops his romantic mask, agonizing over the Hamlet-like doubt: "Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with?". The title — lifted from a line exchanged between Vivian Blaine and Marlon Brando in the musical "Guys and Dolls" — defuses the pain behind Pete's relationship with Francis Cookson, his partner in the side project Tiller Boys, with whom he lived for seven years before Cookson went off to marry in Switzerland. Following in the footsteps of his idols Bowie and Reed, Shelley embraces a fluid, undefined sexuality: "I tried to be as neutral between the sexes as possible when writing songs, because for me I could have used the same song for either sex," he would explain. Rarely does punk show itself so candid and vulnerable, even beneath layers of salacious irony. And the melody of "Ever Fallen In Love" remains one of the most memorable of an entire era, with Shelley's tongue-twisting sing-song propped up by his bandmates' backing vocals gliding over a bubbling magma of guitars, while the drums keep up a devilish pace. A practically perfect song, one that would also remain their biggest hit (No. 12 in the UK), revived in 1987 by a hit cover from Fine Young Cannibals.

Punk without borders

There's something astonishing about Shelley's ability to compress an entire catalogue of broken hearts, wrenching goodbyes, shy infatuations and unrequited desires into breezy, almost sixties-style ditties (the likes of "I Don't Mind", "Love You More", "Promises" and "You Say You Don't Love Me") that nonetheless conceal chord progressions that are anything but elementary, worthy of the best Ray Davies. Punk's raw incisiveness merges with a genuine melodic fragrance, abrasive guitars fuse with catchy, sentimental choruses. And it's all so disorienting that you can almost catch psychedelic undertones amid the cutting riffs of "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" (basically the Beach Boys on an acid trip with Wire), where cynical disenchantment, driven forward like an obsessive mantra ("Life's an illusion/ Love is the dream/ But I don't know what it is"), and the exuberance of a manic (falsetto) chorus conceal a sense of harrowing dread.

A layering of styles that resurfaces in the hard riffs of "Autonomy", in the almost trashy groove of "Harmony In My Head", where it's Diggle who grabs the mic with his raspy warmth (the fruit, legend has it, of 20 cigarettes smoked before singing) to counterbalance Shelley's backing vocals in a chaotic urban tableau, as well as in the decadent boogie of "Something's Gone Wrong Again", already fully projected into the post-punk era, with a jangling keyboard, Garvey's melodic basslines, Maher's monstrous cadences and a Diggle unleashed on guitar, weaving exquisite filigrees into a sprawling solo. And even a seemingly innocuous B-side (to "Promises") like "Lipstick", with that searing guitar riff that Devoto would later clone for the future (and historic) "Shot By Both Sides" by Magazine, only reinforces the impression that Buzzcocks were already "beyond".

But there's also plain punk for punk's sake, like the delightful "Noise Annoys" — almost a Blur ante litteram with that carefree, distorted chorus ("Pretty girls/ Pretty boys/ Have you ever heard your mommy say/ Noise annoys") — or that flash of a song "Oh Shit!", a sly, condensed burst of rage and recrimination in just a minute and 35 seconds (though that would be enough to earn it a fresh round of censorship). Nor is there any shortage of social-commentary tones à la Jam. Take, for instance, that gut-punch of a song called "What Ever Happened To?" (the B-side of "Orgasm Addict"), with Garth Smith's repeated introductory bass line leading into the explosion of Diggle and Shelley's distorted guitars in a nostalgic tirade against an England corroded by the sickness of consumerism ("Your passion is a product of highlight and detail... Your emotions are cheap, cut-price cash-and-carry/ You wear your heart on your sleeve for any Tom, Dick or Harry... Your pasteurized life so fit for consumption"). A theme that recurs, albeit in a more personal key, on "Just Lust", where Shelley vents his frustration at the coldness of those who use people only to possess and discard them, in a sort of "emotional consumerism" ("You're driven to possess, it hurts, it's so unjust... If passion is a fashion/ Then emotion is a curse").

The one exception to the songs' strict concision is the 6:36 tour de force of the dissolute "Why Can't I Touch It?" (written by the whole band): a tight-knit clash between Diggle's and Shelley's riffs in an atmospheric punk jam session that somewhat echoes the guitar duels between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd in Television.

Oh, shit! The epilogue

The listen ends leaving you still giddy on guitars and choruses, with the sole regret being the exclusion of "Boredom", the epic Shelley-Devoto anthem from "Spiral Scratch". Shortly after this collection's release, in 1981, the band would break up, only to reunite later on, spurred by the growing cult following their name among new generations, though with a reshuffled line-up and results that didn't always live up to their legacy, until Shelley's death (on December 6, 2018, in Tallinn, Estonia, at the age of 63) brought their saga to the saddest possible end — though Diggle, for one, still doesn't seem ready to call it quits.

"Singles Going Steady", reissued on CD in 2001 with 8 extra tracks, remains the most precious document of their golden age. A treasure chest of perfect punk songs that fully deserves a spot on an ideal podium alongside masterpieces like "Never Mind The Bollocks" by the Sex Pistols and "London Calling" by the Clash.

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10/05/2020