Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution

Re-creating the complete story of the Punk phenomenon—including where it came from and what it turned into—Punk is a massive and visually stunning record of five years that changed the world: 1975-1979. Collecting the testimony of more than 260 artists, record producers, designers, and journalists—including John Cale, Debbie Harry, Joe Strummer, Maureen Tucker, Gerard Malanga, Lou Reed, Johnny Rotten, Danny Fields, Legs McNeil, Bob Gruen, David Byrne, Iggy Pop, Tommy Ramone, William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern, Cherry Vanilla, and Malcolm McLaren, former manager and ringleader of the Sex Pistols—most published here for the first time, Punk brings to life the profound effect Punk music had on global popular culture. With reverberations in style, fashion, attitude, and philosophy, the birth of Punk music released the greatest shockwaves in the popular culture since The Beatles. Punk tells the story through the words of the people who were closely tied to the mania and through hundreds of contemporaneous color and black-and-white photographs. As Andy Warhol said, "We all knew something was happening. We just felt it." "In 1976 we were the most hated people on the planet – we thought that was great."—Siouxsie