Loads of controversy surrounds this swastica symbol and it's presence in the punk scene, even today! It's been used by many over the years for very many different reasons and concepts. Either to cause controversy and shock or to confront the straights or a corrupt system with it's own demons. But most of you with enough suss will realise the swastica was never a direct political statement within punk rock. It was part of the punks desire to repulse a nation of convention! This piece is to shed a bit of light on it's punk rock origins. For what it's worth the swastica and punk have had a long sometimes explosive relationship. Like a lot of aspects in punk it was all about confrontation! The use of the swastika in punk imagery has several roots. Perhaps the first people to be defined as punks who used the swastika were a band who hailed from Cleveland, Ohio, called The Electric Eels. These wackos are credited with having released one of the first ever punk singles called "Agitated"/'Cyclotron' in May, 1975, although the actual songs never made it onto an official release till 1979 (Rough Trade seven-inch, RT008). As early as 1974, The Electric Eels were causing outrage by wearing White Power T-shirts and putting swastikas on their posters. They described themselves as art terrorists and nihilists, intent on upsetting as many people as possible. Another of their tricks, for example, was causing fights in bars by pretending to be gay tee hee. Of course these were preceded by Ron Asheton of the Stooges fixation with SS uniforms. Also in America, at around the same time, The Ramones were just starting out. For their record sleeves, they were using the gay Mexican artist, Aturo Vega, whose work often incorporated Day-Glo swastikas. In the US fanzine, Punk, which is often credited as having given the movement it's name, an interview with Dee Dee Ramone revealed that he liked "comic books and anything with swastikas on it"; a comment that was often thought to be clearly designed to further the band's carefully (snigger) controlled image of dumb, blank teenagers who cared about nothing. What these early punks were really doing was trying to annoy their parents and authority figures by being rebellious and unpleasant. As the not very well respected (in some punk circles) Mary Harron, who wrote an interview with The Ramones in Punk put it, "Punk embraced the things that cultured people, and hippies, detested." Meanwhile, 6,000 miles away in Britain, the manager and future svengali behind The Sex Pistols, Malcom McLaren, and his designer girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood, were running their clothing shop, Let It Rock, which had become Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die in 1973 in London's King's Road. The swastika had already cropped up in Westwood's designs when she worked on the costumes for Ken Russell's movie, "Mahler". In a dream-sequence the composer meets his Nazi enemy who is dressed in a black leather skirt with a swastika studded onto it. Then came her "anarchist" shirts; second-hand shirts which were dyed red and black and had slogans painted on them and sometimes a small portrait of Karl Marx or a swastika attached. The idea was to shock, and the shirts were intended to be provocative, outrageous statements in the tradition of the avant-garde Situatiohist art movement. By 1975, Westwood ana McLaren's shop had been re-christened Sex. One employee was called Jordan who, in Jon Savage's definitive history of punk, "England's Dreaming" (Faber And Faber, ISBN0-571-I679I-8), gives another reason for the appearance of the swastika, "Malcom was in awe of the symbolism," she said. "He had a stock of Nazi memorabilia, including Nazi Youth badges, gold SS wedding rings and swastika hankies." Given that McLaren was Jewish, anti-Semitism seems a very unlikely explanation for this obsession. Westwood claimed they were setting out to de-mystify the swastika. De-mystified or not, another Sex employee, Alan Jones, was beaten up in Notting Hill for wearing a swastika armband. Another rising star in the punk scene was Siouxsie Sioux, who was often seen wearing a swastika armband. "It was an anti-mums and dads thing," she claimed. "We hated older people always harping on about Hitler, 'We showed him,' and that smug pride. It was a way of watching someone like that go completely red-faced." The use of the swastika remained a divisive issue within punk ranks. The Clash's manager, Bernie Rhodes, once wouldn't allow an early line-up of Siouxsie And The Banshees use The Clash's equipment at 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976 because he took exception to Sid Vicious' (then Siouxsie's drummer) felt-tipped swastikas on his T-shirt and Siouxsie's armband. Despite the sick-joke of the Sex Pistols' track, "Belsen Was A Gas", and the appearance of an actor playing the Nazi war criminal, Martin Boorman, in the Pistols' film, "The Great Rock N Roll Swindle", use of Nazi imagery in punk was no more sinister than a misplaced fashion ideal combined with a youthful desire to shock. While early punk bands like Skrewdriver who later turned into and out and out skinhead outfit with a singer with nazi beliefs, they didn't actually use the swastica to promote their records. In the early 80's other high profile punk bands who delved into swastica territory was the Dead Kennedys who used the 'Swasticastor' design again to promote their debut 45 and the Exploited, whose singer Wattie had a passion for Westwood styled t-shirt designs. To bring us bang up to date. A young American punk recently emailed me wondering whether "Torcha Shed were for white power and all that shit? Because my friend got me into Torcha Shed (well what songs you had) and he was like man they're all into nazi shit so fuck em because their cover was all nazi blah blah. Anyways I was like no I don't think the lyrics aren't anything about that, so anyways that would be great if I could prove him wrong". Well the actual swastica that appeared on our only 45 'Nihilism On The Prowl!' that came out on Puke n Vomit records in 2003, was a copy of Jamie Reids 'stratoswasticastor' nicked of the Dead Kennedys poster and it wasnt a main feature of the sleeve just one part of the sleeves theme which was Nihilism On The Prowl! and all that that statement signified in various forms. For more information on the Swastica and Punk go to the Summer Of Hates well informed page that deals more indepth with the Sex Pistols use of the image at...www.acc.umu.se/~samhain/summerofhate/punk.html#punk You can also check out the Electric Heels at...www.electriceels.com/ |