I was a born in 1979, London Calling came out in 1979, I've always been ridiculously proud of that. The last album I bought was Dylan's Modern Times. When I get asked to list my five favourite current songs I struggle to think of even one.
When I told Mince Fratelli, the most passionate, bloody talented drummer of his generation, that I was going to write a piece about why rock 'n' roll died after '79, he asked me to make sure people know that it isn't a Fratelli opinion. It isn't, Mince loves loads of new bands. There, I made sure!
I used to try to work out why it was that I couldn't get the same bands as my friends. When I was 16 everyone around me was convinced that Oasis were the second coming. I didn't need a second coming: I had The Beatles and told them so. Blur were the new Kinks. I couldn't see why they needed a new one when the originals were so fucking untouchable. It wasn't that I hated all the bands that I was told you should like at 16, it was just that they all sounded like a poor imitation of everything I loved about rock 'n' roll, everything I had discovered in my old man's vinyl a few years before.
By the time my mates had grown out of football and had decided that guitar bands were the future. I'd long since been turned on by The Beatles, Dylan, The Kinks, Neil young, Lou Reed, T-Rex and Bowie.
The way I saw it, I had enough in there to last a lifetime.
Turns out I was half right. A few years later someone taped me a copy of London Calling by The Clash. I was knocked out, staggered and well pissed off. I'd been telling anyone who'd listen that rock 'n' roll died with Bolan or when Bowie went to Berlin. It was hard to admit that I was wrong, but that album is worth looking like a fool for. For a start it sounded nothing like how I'd decided punk should. It was electric, like no album I'd heard before. It had a sound that made my body move even if my brain was telling it to stop because I looked like a prick. Those snares and handclaps snapped like they'd come from another time; rhythmically it was fucking primal. The songs all sounded like they followed a line that I could understand from the very first time I heard it a line that went back to the beginning of rock 'n' roll. It followed the rules that Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley layed down 30 years before. Those guys weren't obvious punk heroes, but Joe Strummer and Mick Jones didn't give a shit. The stories of card cheats, Jimmy Jazz on the run from the law and Monty Clift on 42nd St sucked me into a world that I though only existed in Blonde on Blonde. I'm still in love with it.
The thing that gets me about most of the bands around now is that they don't have the first fucking clue where it all came from. Musicians are free to steal the best bits from whoever they want, but when they're stealing from places of such desperate fucking mediocrity then it doesn't make for a golden time. Noel Gallagher knows where to look. Jack White could probably tell you Son House's shoe size. Beck might sound like he makes his own rules, but then listen to Serge Gainsbourg and you'll know that isn't true:he's still a fucking wonder though. And that's it! Rock 'n' roll was, in the beginning, always going to die, but it's going down without much of a fucking fight!
(This feature originally appeared in Uncut Magazine, February 2007)