“We Have To Shut This Punk Thing Down”
DOA/Sex Pistols Tour Chapter 37: Summer, 1978
Narrator: In our last episode, Tom Forcade’s best friend died in a plane crash and Jimmy Carter revived the War on Drugs.
Sorry, I have to go on a rant here: Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President? No, more like: “Jimmy Carter: The Southern Baptist President Who Hated New York City Rock ’N’ Roll.” That’s the film I want to see.
From “3 Music Moments That Turned Jimmy Carter Into the Rock ’N’ Roll President”:
“On June 18, 1978, Jimmy Carter held a White House Jazz Festival to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival. Invitees included Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Katharine Handy Lewis (daughter of W. C. Handy), Handy Lewis, Jo Jones, Clark Terry, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Ron Carter, and Ornette Coleman, along with legendary jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.”
Chris (Blondie) Stein told me Jimmy Carter was overheard during that jazz festival on the White House lawn saying:
“We have to shut this punk thing down.”
So many questions pop up in my head whenever I look back on this crazy piece of history: When a sitting President of the United States used state powers to try to shut down a music movement (and in all likelihood a struggling punk zine):
1. What would people who appear in that film like Bono (influenced by the Ramones), Paul Simon (who visited CBGB back in the day), Bob Dylan (who got his start in West Village bars and clubs), and others think about his campaign against punk rock? Would someone like Greg Allman ever ‘fess up that they asked Carter to shut down punk? Or was this something that was strictly between Carter and the intelligence agencies? Anyhow, if anyone out there can ask any of these people, please do. And let me know what their reaction is like.
2. From the best-selling book: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA: “Running for president, Jimmy Carter had condemned the CIA as a national disgrace. Once in power, he wound up signing almost as many covert actions as Nixon and Ford…”
I wonder if there are any files or documentation of his campaign against punk rock? Prying them from the intelligence agencies might be impossible, though.
3. Exactly what actions, if any, were taken by the Carter administration to shut down punk? I would think a lot of people reading this now would wonder about that. Is there an investigative journalist out there who would like to look into this? Or is this chapter of music history lost to history?
Last week I received a question from a reader asking why Jimmy Carter would want to shut down punk rock. I explained that:
1. Tom Forcade, our main source of funding, was an enemy of the (deep) state. PUNK Magazine became a target soon after we started working with him. The “intelligence” agencies probably figured that punk rock was another movement against the military industrial complex cooked up by Forcade.
2. The Hippie/Yippie/Zippie subculture (especially the anti-war movement), was targeted by the FBI, so when a new subculture began to emerge, they were ready for us. (This wasn’t about “Democrats versus Republicans,” since the surveillance of PUNK Magazine began soon after we worked with Tom Forcade in May 1976, before Carter was elected president.)
3. Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign was successful due to fundraising concerts by Southern rock bands, who I am convinced hated us “Damn Yankees from New York City.” There was a lot of hatred against New York and everything it stood for back then, especially by Southerners (who loved their stars and bars). I’m sure those good old boys had an influence on their good friend Jimmy deciding to shut down punk.
4. The US government going after music and musicians it didn’t like has a long history: especially when it came to marijuana. According to his Wikipedia page, Harry J. Anslinger (the federal bureaucrat most responsible for demonizing cannabis and making it illegal), “hoped to orchestrate a nationwide dragnet of jazz musicians and kept a file called "Marijuana and Musicians." Yes, they were planning a mass arrest of jazz musicians who smoked cannabis. It almost happened, but they were allegedly worried that the plan would backfire, since the musicians were so popular.
Then there’s the well-documented FBI campaign directed at John Lennon (who worked with Tom Forcade, David Peel and the Yippies after he moved to New York City): LINK: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lennon-fbi-history/
Don’t forget that Jesse Jackson visited record companies and radio stations in early 1977 in order to shut down punk rock. This was eerily reminiscent of the campaign against rock and roll music in the 1950s, except that it wasn’t as well-publicized. Oddly enough, this began very shortly after Jimmy Carter became president:
You also have to consider how much America despised punk rock, to the extent that Sire Records hailed the Ramones as a “new wave” band when Rocket to Russia was released. (Funny there’s no mention of “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” which became the best-selling single from the LP, I wonder why not?)
Yeah, don’t worry about it—I probably won’t mention all of this background evidence is the “anti-punk” conspiracy theory again… At least not for a little while. And I never blamed poor Janis Schact for her press release, she was a very nice, professional public relations person. (Rest in Peace, Janis!)
It just seemed like a lot of people hated what we were doing back then. Even punk rockers hated each other: There was a lot of animosity between the English and American punk bands, especially when it came to the silliest of all arguments: “Who was the first punk rock band?”
Well, who said it ws all about the music, anyhow? Punk is an attitude. Right?
Danny Fields says to me whenever I bring up government interference (paraphrasing): “We didn’t need the government to shut us down: The bands did a great job of self-destruction all by themselves.”
He has a good point. On the other hand, back then all it took to break a hit record was for one radio station to give a record enough exposure. You have to wonder what might have happened if the US government wasn’t cracking down on punk rock. Maybe the Ramones could have scored a hit record, the way Plastic Bertrand and The Knack did when “new wave” music began to take off? Anyway, I often reflect on this…
Meanwhile, back at the PUNK office we put together Mutant Monster Beach Party over the summer and sent it to the printer, but instead of using the printer who took care of PUNK #12 and PUNK #14 (who we had good communication with), Tom Forcade insisted that we go with his choice: Enterprise Printers. It was Production Hell, but since he was paying the printing bills, we were stuck with them.
In order to knock out the word balloons and line art, the production people at Enterprise Printing insisted that we include an overlay for every photograph so they could shoot it as line art and as a halftone. This added to the workload. We had to miss a few deadlines. Not only that, but they charged an outrageous amount of money: The printing bill ended up costing around $25,000 (around $1.00 per copy). Since the cover price was only $1.25, we would have lost money even if it sold out on newsstands. Worst of all, even though it was the most expensive printing ever, the end result looked awful. But it was a triumph just to get it published. It was our masterpiece.
NEXT: PUNK Magazine gets shut down.
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I wasn't too bothered by the use of the term "new wave" back then because "punk rock"
described a specific type of music (and attitude) and most CBGB bands were not punk but were labelled as such. But when Sire used the new term to describe the Ramones, "new wave" seemed to become a political thing: "Don't call it punk or else they won't play it on the radio." And coincidentally this happened shortly after Jesse Jackson made his visits to radio stations...
My ass isn't. I've always maintained it was an international movement, started (mostly) by the Stooges. That's why it started in England, the USA and Australia. The Saints and Radio Birdman always need to be included.