Russ Bestley: 'Turning Revolt Into Style' (2025): Notes on Chapters 3-5

Russ Bestley: Turning Revolt Into Style 

(Manchester University Press, 2025)

 

 

I.

 

It's true that although UK punk began in London, it soon spread elsewhere; that it was neither a uniform nor static phenomenon; that it was "subject to rapid and dramatic change over time, particularly as local scenes sprang up across the country" [a]. 

 

But whereas Bestley, like most other punk scholars, is interested in the way in which "punk's evolutionary diaspora was as much geographical as it was temporal and aesthetic" [103], I have to admit that my own interest tends to begin and end at 430 King's Road. 

 

And whilst I wouldn't dismiss the punk scene as it developed in Leeds, or Manchester, or even Penzance [b] as part of the "'incorporation and containment'" [c] of McLaren's project, I do think that the Sex Pistols were something distinctly different, as recognised by Bernard Brook-Partridge [d].

 

In brief, whether we choose to think of them as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [e], or as a group of Dickensian yobs looking to swindle their way to the top of the music industry whence they could shit on their own success, they were not a punk band merely offering us, in Rotten's words, a bit of a twang, a giggle ... [f].           

 

 

II. 

 

Post-punk: an aesthetic and stylistic expansion, which, to be fair, did result in some great records and previously unknown pleasures. 

 

And I'd concede the point that one cannot stay forever at the level of the ruins, like those "sections of the original punk scene ossified around a set of fixed aesthetic conventions" [106]. Ultimately, one has to "build up new little habitats, have new little hopes"[g] and even McLaren and Westwood ditched punk for piracy in 1980 and set off in search of new sounds, new looks, and new adventures.   

 

But, on the other hand, I'm extremely wary of those who think Metal Box is more fun than The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, or more radical than Your Cassette Pet - and I'm sorry to say that seems to include Bestley, who describes the former as ground-breaking and thrills to the album's dub rhythms and "Lydon's leftfield, poetic lyrics" [105], whilst not once mentioning either of the other two albums.     

 

 

III. 

 

Extreme punk politics: from puritanical anarcho-hippies Crass, to fascist morons Screwdriver - what can one say? 

 

Punk, as I understood it, rejected political asceticism of all varieties; it had no time for "the sad militants, the terrorists of theory, those who would preserve the pure order of politics and political discourse" [h]. 

 

Punk was not apolitical; but it was transpolitical ...

 

 

IV.  

 

"A significant part of the emerging punk aesthetic was driven by enthusiastic followers and amateur producers ..." [124] 

  

Sadly, it seems to me that amateurism is, in this professional era, increasingly looked down upon (with the possible exception being that of amateur porn; the erotic folk art of our digital age). 

 

Which is a pity: for I tend to be of a Greek persuasion and consider the amateur as a virtuous figure; open minded, devoted, and full of passion for their discipline regardless of whether this brings public recognition or generates an income. 

 

Ultimately, as Roland Barthes notes, the true amateur is not defined by inferior knowledge or an imperfect technique, but, rather, by the fact that he does not not identify himself to others in order to impress or intimidate; nor constantly worry about status and reputation. 

 

Also, crucially, the amateur unsettles the distinction between work and play, art and life, which is doubtless why they are feared by those who like to police borders, protect categories, and form professional associations.  

 

Having said that, the fact remains that the "history of punk graphics in the United Kingdom starts [... and I'm tempted to say finishes] with Jamie Reid" [124], whose work for the Sex Pistols captured what they were about with a high degree of skill and style.   

 

Obviously, there were many other design practitioners and graphic artists who emerged at the time of punk and contributed to it. But, other than Winston Smith - who was associated with the American punk band the Dead Kennedy's - and Nick Egan, who worked in partnership with McLaren in the post-Pistols period, I can't think of any whose work ever really excited my interest.  

 

I know a lot of people rave, for example, about Peter Saville's cover for the first Joy Division album (Unknown Pleasures, 1979) and Mike Coles's cover for the eponymous debut album by Killing Joke (1980) [i]. However, whilst they're both vaguely interesting works, neither really means anything to me, whereas Reid's Never Mind the Bollocks cover still makes smile almost 50 years later.    

 

 

V. 

 

Chapter 4 concludes on a slightly depressing note (but true, of course):

 

"Despite the rhetoric of the punk 'revolution', little changed at the major labels [...] The recorded music industry was founded on the core principles of innovation and novelty, at least in relation to identifying new artists that could be moulded and exploited to generate popular appeal. The commercially viable areas of punk and new wave were rapidly absorbed, just like the at-the-time radical music and youth scenes that preceded them." [151]

 

Similarly, while some of the "new breed of punk-inspired graphic designers set themselves apart from the traditional art departments [...] many of the more successful practitioners joined the ranks of the commercial studios as time went on" [151].

 

In brief, never trust a punk [j] and remember - to paraphrase Nietzsche writing in the Genealogy - no one is more corruptible than a graphic artist ... [k]   

 

 

VI. 

 

I think the main takeaway from Bestley's book is that amateurs and professionals need one another and that both types of producer "informed the wider punk aesthetic and reflected common visual conventions that were emerging as the new subculture made a nationwide impact" [154].

 

Those who lack education, skills, and material resources but who still attempt to do things for themselves should not be looked down on. But inverted snobbery aimed at those who are professionally trained and talented and do have access to the very latest technologies [l] is also unwarranted. 

 

 

VII.   

   

Whilst I'm not particularly interested in the "range of processes chosen by punk and post-punk designers for the origination and print reproduction of record sleeves, posters and other visual materials" [155], there are passages in Chapter 5 of Turning Revolt Into Style that caught my attention and in which Bestley's analysis is spot on. 

 

For example, I agree that the reason many punk visual tropes and techniques work so well is because they not only "drew upon a much longer tradition of agitprop art and design" [157], but unfolded within "a new context that extended into mainstream culture resulting in [...] a more powerful impact" [157].

 

In other words, things such as record sleeves, posters, badges, etc., "were not fine art objects to be appreciated by connoisseurs in galleries and exhibitions; they were examples of mass-produced printed ephemera that conveyed a sense of identity and subcultural capital" [157].

 

Of course, today, many of these same objects are in fine art galleries and museums and cultural capital is now big business. 

 

Thus, for example, a copy of the one-off official Sex Pistols newspaper, Anarchy in the U. K., produced by Jamie Reid in collaboration with Sophie Richmond, Ray Stevenson, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, and featuring a striking photo of Soo Catwoman on the cover, may have had a cover price of 20p when it was sold on the Anarchy Tour in 1976, but it will now set you back £2000 if you wish to buy it from Peter Harrington in Mayfair: click here. 

 

Cash from chaos, as someone once said ...

 

 

VIII.   

 

Bestley mentions many of the more successful punk fanzines; Sniffin' Glue, Ripped & Torn, Chainsaw, etc. - and several of the fanzines produced outside of London which "reflected the development of scenes well beyond punk's stereotypical epicentre" [172].

 

One that he doesn't mention and won't know of - one that probably only me and one other person in the world remember - was Yourself which was a single photocopied page of A4, printed on both sides, and freely distributed amongst the student body of a small Catholic college which, at that time (1981) was affiliated with the University of Leeds. 

 

The subtitle read: 19 and young - 20 and old (ageism was a defining feature of punk as I remember it back in the day) and the text called for a rejection of all authority, particularly beginning with the letter 'P' (parents, priests, and policemen, for example). 

        

 

IX.

Ultimately, as Bow Wow Wow once informed us, it's T-E-K technology - not punk rock or other forms of subcultural activity - that really brings about fundamental change in society; demolishing patriarchal structures and creating greater degrees of A-U-T autonomy [m]. 

As Bestley notes in his closing remarks to Chapter 5, "changes in the social and technical practices of design blurred the boundaries between amateur and professional production" [178-79]. He continues:

"Changing technologies and the culmination of an ongoing restructuring of the labour market [...] enabled more control along with creative freedom for a new generation of designers ..." [179]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Russ Bestley, Turning Revolt Into Style: The process and practice of punk graphic design (Manchester University Press, 2025), p. 103. All future page references to this text will be given directly in the post.

 

[b] See Simon Parker's PZ77: A Town a Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022), for a nostalgic look back at the punk scene in Penzance in 1977. And for my thoughts on this work, see the post entitled 'Punk History is for Pissing On' (21 Sept 2025): click here. 

      In brief: I don't like it. Bestley seems to approve of punk bands acknowledging their roots and paying homage to their locality and that of their friends, family, and fans; singing about "the issues that affected their local community" [113]. But that kind of folksy provincialism doesn't really appeal to me (not even when it's the Clash singing about West London). 

      In part, the is due to my own intellectual background in schizonomadic philosophy; home is made for coming from, it's not somewhere to idealise (or even dream of going to). Punk, at it's best, is headless and homeless (one might do well to recall the destination of the Sex Pistols bus as well as Poly Styrene's problematising of identity). Remember kids: civic pride is simply a form of micro-nationalism.

 

[c] Gary Clarke, quoted by Russ Bestley in Turning Revolt Into Style, p. 103.

 

[d] Brook-Partridge was a high-profile Tory who served as chairman of the Greater London Council's arts committee (1977-79). He famously described punk rock as "nauseating, disgusting, degrading, ghastly, sleazy,  prurient, voyeuristic and generally nauseating". 

      Singling out the Sex Pistols as the worst of the punk rock groups, Brook-Partridge labelled them as the "antithesis of humankind" and suggested that "the whole world would be vastly improved by their total and utter non-existence". 

      Malcolm so-loved this, that a filmed recording of Brook-Partridge uttering these words was included in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980). As far as I recall, no other punk (post-punk, or new wave) band ever solicited such a vitriolic response. Click here to watch on YouTube.

 

[e] Peter York, 'Them', Harpers & Queen (Oct 1976), quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.  

 

[f] Of course, Rotten himself would eventually collaborate with Virgin Records and build himself a long term career in the music business. 

 

[g] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 5. 

 

[h] Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, tran. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1984), p. xii.

 

[i] Bestley discusses Cole's Killing Joke sleeve on p. 141 of Turning Revolt Into Style. 

 

[j] Jamie Reid came to the same conclusion and in 2007 he issued a limited edition giclee print with this title; an ironic inversion of the 'Never Trust a Hippy' slogan from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.  

 

[k] See Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, III. 25. 

      For Nietzsche, the artist, as a creator, should actively invest and transform the world; not simply represent it by holding up a mirror to the times. Or, failing all else, the artist should be prepared to return the world to its chaotic character and become a great destroyer.

      Unfortunately, Nietzsche was obliged to accept that the becoming-decadent of even our greatest artists is far more likely than their becoming-untimely.  

 

[l] Often, knowledge of and access to new technology was what mostly "separated the professionals from the amateurs, the commissioned from the vernacular" [170]. 

 

[m] I'm quoting from the lyrics to the Bow Wow Wow single 'W.O.R.K (N.O. Nah No My Daddy Don't)', written by Malcolm Mclaren and released on EMI Records (1981). 

 

To read the first post in this series - Notes on the Introduction - click here. 

 

To read the second post in this series - Notes on Chapters 1 & 2 - click here. 

 

To read the fourth and final post in this series - Notes on Chapters 6-8 - click here.  

 

 

Russ Bestley: 'Turning Revolt Into Style' (2025): Notes on Chapters 1-2

A Gentleman and a Punk Scholar [a]

Stephen Alexander à la Jamie Reid (2025) 

 

I. 

 

Russ Bestley's new book, Turning Revolt Into Style (2025), is divided into eight chapters and an Introduction that I discussed here.   

 

In this post, I will offer some remarks on Chapter 1, which introduces the notion of punk graphic design and its core themes, and Chapter 2, which "interrogates the range of design methods that were utilised in response to these punk thematic ideals" [b]. 

 

 

II. 

 

"Punk's original premise ..." [24] - did punk ever really have such? 

 

I suppose one might regard sex, style, and subversion as a thematic slogan - and punk was as accomplished at sloganeering as it was at political posturing and posing for the cameras - but I'd hesitate before speaking of a punk premise when punk was far from being a coherent philosophy or aesthetic and "simply an umbrella term that could be applied to an eclectic and disparate range of activity" [24] [c]. 

 

Still, let's not get get bogged down with the opening three words of the first chapter and broadly agree with Bestley that punk's core themes were "provocation, individuality, novelty, directness, honesty and authenticity" [25-26] and that these things were reflected in the sound and look of punk. 

 

And let's remember that Bestley is a graphic designer, not a philosopher; i.e., he's someone concerned with a "range of physical, designed objects" including "flyers, posters, photographs, clothing, badges, fanzines and record covers" [26] rather than with language, with which he seems to have an unproblematic relationship.

 

Bestley is not a bad writer. But he is an assured writer: one for whom words possess clear meanings and are used straightforwardly to convey information as concisely and precisely as possible.

 

However, whilst it's good to think in a material manner (in terms of objects), that shouldn't mean one fails to think also in a more abstract or symbolic manner (in terms of ideas); a good writer understands that language might move beyond being merely communicative in a narrow, functional manner and become a medium in which we can construct new thoughts [d].  

 

 

III. 

 

This seems an important point: 

 

"The diversity of punk graphic design styles and aesthetics needs to be understood in relation to three loosely defined groups of visual practitioners ..." [27] - amateurs; up-and-coming designers (often out of art school); and established design professionals. 

 

If it was "the simplicity of the lo-tech, handmade flyers produced by Helen Wellington-Lloyd and Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols, along with an underground revolution in homemade fanzines and other printed ephemera produced by inspired and enthusiastic fans [...] that kickstarted a punk design aesthetic" [28], it was, by contrast, "the hugely influential work of professional art directors and designers [...] that helped it reach a mainstream audience" [28].

 

And this, for me at least, is an interesting point: Reid's ransome note typography for his work with the Sex Pistols was not widely copied or "commonly used on record covers for other punk artists" [34], even whilst it was soon recognised as visual shorthand for punk. Bestley writes:

 

"The success - and notoriety - of the Sex Pistols [...] was a double-edged sword: on the one hand, punk was beginning to develop a recognisable set of visual styles, largely centred on Reid's work [...] At the same time, largely due to its powerful visual impact, ransom note typography [...] quickly became symbolic of early UK punk in the mainstream media and therefore a cliché to be best avoided unless the designer's intention was to make a parodic comment on the commercial exploitation of the new subculture." [37]

 

This makes me wonder about my continued use of Reid-inspired graphics as in the God Save ... poster featuring Bestley above. Is it possible for something that has been assimilated by the mainstream culture - Reid's work is found in collections all over the world, including the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A here in the UK - to be reclaimed? 

 

In other words, can the recuperated punk image be subject to a technique of détournement?    

 

 

IV. 

 

"The inclusion of a photograph of the group - standard practice in the pop music market going back to the 1950s - is prevalant in many early punk record sleeves, though the convention was rejected by some groups, including the Sex Pistols ..." [37]

 

Other punk groups displayed no such qualms with having their ugly mugs plastered on record covers and before long there was a standard picture; band members standing in a gritty urban environment trying to look menacing "and graphically treated to render a high contrast, distressed or distorted image" [40]. 

 

As punk became ever-more commodified and commercialised, "by far the most common visual trope in the depiction of a punk rock group is the band lined-up against a brick or concrete wall" [41] - see the Clash, for example, on the cover of their eponymous debut album (1977) [e], or posing as rebel rockers on the front of Sandinista! (1980).  

 

And some people still think of them as the only band that matters ...!

 

 

V.

 

"Punk was no erudite ideological critique ..." [51] 

 

Well, that's certainly true; "most punk discourse was rhetorical and performative" [51], though McLaren and Westwood may have fancied they had something of political importance to say and they provided punk with "an appropriately anatgonistic" [51] language and look drawn from various sources, promiscuously and irresponsibly "mixing symbols of insurrection and revolution" [52] with images drawn from popular culture and pornography. 

      

And better their playful politics of provocation and art school pranksterism, surely, than the militant asceticism of bands like Crass, or, on the other side of the fence, the politics of those punks who supported far-right movements and replaced witty intelligent lyrics with a grunted two-letter interjection.    

 

 

VI. 

 

And speaking of art school pranksterism ...

 

Bestley makes the fair point that "while Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid had indeed caught the late 1960s zeitgeist and attempted to engage with the then current ideas of the Situationists [...] while at art college [...] the suggestion of substantive links between participants in the wider punk scene and the work of earlier art groups is less convincing" [57]. 

 

That's why, one might argue, the Sex Pistols interest and excite far more than most of the artless and ideologically clueless punk bands that followed. I know many sneered at those who played along with the art school boys - including Rotten - but I don't have much time for such philistine and reactionary stupidity disguised as "working-class politics and street level 'authenticity'" [58]. Ultimately, where would we be without creative intellectuals such as cousin Kevin? [f]

 

 

VII. 

 

DIY: to tell the truth, I've always hated this three-letter initialism and the kind of people who spend their weekends in B&Q, priding themselves on being able to turn their hand to all sorts of job, even though do-it-yourself was an oft-repeated punk mantra and core ethic even among "many groups and artists signed to major labels and operating in the mainstream music industry" [59].  

 

I suppose, I've always been intrigued by the aristocratic (anti-utilitarian) idea that one attains sovereignty not by doing things for oneself, but by not doing anything and by refusing to be a useful or productive human being [g]. 

 

Knowing how to operate a photocopier or printing press does not a scarlet poppy make you ...     

 

 

VIII. 

 

The appropriation of visual material (including found images) and "the use of détournement as a subversive method" [78] is something I very much admire about punk graphic design and artwork. And so is the deployment of humour:

 

"Beneath all the rhetoric and 'shocking' behaviour, the early punk scene in the United Kingdom displayed a deep-seated ironic intelligence [...] The scene was [...] deeply self-aware and parodic, with a keen sense of the absurdity of its own rebellion ..." [84]

 

Bestley continues:

 

"Punk's embrace of parody, pastiche and irony was played out in lyrics, dress, interviews, artwork and music. These kind of strategies were not unfamiliar to artists and designers [...] The long tradition of satirical insurrection, from Dada to Duchamp, the Surrealists to the Situationist International, offered a rich resource for punk graphic designers and visual communicators to plunder." [84]   

 

As I argued in a post published on 28 February 2025 - click here - fun is not only a vital component of playfulness (i.e., hedonic engagement with the world), but it can also help one avoid what Wilde terms humanity's original sin, i.e., self-seriousness [h].  

 

I think it's crucial therefore to stress that punk was essentially a revolution for fun and that the Sex Pistols embodied a notion of the ridiculous, the most crucial aspect of which is that it solicits, incites, or provokes laughter [i]. 

 

To quote once more from Bestley: "While the notion of détournement suggests a politically charged, subversive intent, much punk graphic design appropriation was simply playful and witty ..." [86]  

 

 

IX. 

 

And finally ... 

 

One of the defining characteristics of post-punk, writes Bestley, was the fact that they attempted to operate withing "a wider and more sophisticated musical and visual arena" [99]; i.e., to "raise the intellectual bar away from 'outdated' and inarticulate punk themes and into an aspirational new decade" [99].  

 

Personally, however, I preferred Bow Wow Wow to Joy Division; post-punk pirates to post-punk miserabilists ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Russ Bestley is a Reader in Graphic Design & Subcultures at London College of Communication. 

      He is also Lead Editor of the academic journal Punk & Post-Punk, Series Editor and Art Director for the Global Punk book series published by Intellect Books, a founding member of the Punk Scholars Network, and head of the Subcultures Interest Group at UAL. His research archive can be accessed at hitsvilleuk.com.  

 

[b] Russ Bestley, Turning Revolt Into Style, (Manchester University Press, 2025), p. 19. All future page references to this text will be given directly in the post.  

 

[c] I discuss the problematic term punk in the notes made on the Introduction to Turning Revolt Into Style - click here - and in a post published on 13 March 2025: click here. For me, the term wasn't quickly co-opted - it was itself the linguistic means of co-option; a way to overcode, simplify, and negate. As Bestley notes, the term punk allowed a "reflective metanarrative" [29] to develop as well as a new youth market.  

      Bestley's use of the term umbrella is perhaps more appropriate than he realises. For I would suggest that what the Sex Pistols attempted to do was cut a hole in the great umbrella erected betweeen ourselves and the forever surging chaos of existence (we mean by umbrella our ideals, our conventions, and fixed forms of every description). 

      The Sex Pistols were essentially cultural terrorists; the enemy of human security and comfort. But no matter how many times they managed to make a tiny hole in the painted underside of the Umbrella, along came other bands to ensure things were speedily repaired. And the majority of us, if we're honest, prefer a patched-up reality to the sheer intensity of lived experience; which is why we quite like those punk and new wave bands who followed the Sex Pistols. 

      D. H. Lawrence introduces this idea of chaos and the great umbrella in his text entitled 'Chaos in Poetry', which can be found in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116.    

 

[d] Am I being unfair here? Maybe. 

      But Bestley writes with confidence, clarity, and authority and these are not traits that I value in a writer. I suspect he believes that there are certain objective truths and indisputable facts about punk on which everyone who has attained a certain level of education can manage to agree. Thus, thanks to the inherent certainties of language and shared common sense, critical consensus is both possible and desirable.

      I would deny this and I would also contest the author's consciously exercised control over their own work; i.e., bring into question a writer's ability to ever fully understand their subject with any confidence or certainty.

 

[e] Bestley describes the cover thus: 

      "The front cover is based on a photograph by Kate Simon depicting the three main group members, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones in an alleyway adjacent to their rehearsal studio. Wearing suitably punk stage clothing, the musicians look directly at the camera without smiling. The connotations of the image are clear: punks are embattled urban survivors, their territory the rundown street. The photograph is reproduced in stark, high contrast black and white, with all the midtones stripped out through a deliberately heavy halftone image treatment." [94-95]

      The key point is:

"While the album cover offers several graphic references to the visual language of punk fanzines and the DIY revolution, this is a sophisticated graphic composition that sets out to play down the technical skill of the designer ..." [95]. 

      In other words, the gritty authenticity of punk is a form of artifice; the Clash were plastic punks after all.

 

[f] I'm referring here, of course, to a line from the song 'My Perfect Cousin' by the Undertones, released as a single from their second studio album Hypnotised (Sire Records, 1980). It was the band's only top ten UK hit, reaching number 9 in the charts. The track was written by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley. To play on YouTube - and watch the video directed by Julien Temple - click here. 

      I love the song, but I have to admit I'm sympathetic to Zanti Misfit's defence of Kevin, the perfect cousin, published on The Afterword (03/06/2015): click here. 

 

[g] This is why I've always loved the X-Ray Spex track 'I Can't Do Anything' on Germ Free Adolescents (EMI, 1978): click to play here. 

      For an interesting essay by George McKay that critically interrogates and reconceptualises the DIY/punk nexus, with particular reference to the early UK punk scene, see 'Was Punk DIY? Is Punk DIY?' in DIY: Alternative Cultures & Society Vol. 2, Issue 1 (April, 2024): click here to read online. 

      Challenging Bestley's view of DIY as being an essential component of the punk philosophy, McKay suggests the two concepts should be decoupled; that DIY needs depunking so to speak, in order that it might be liberated as a far broader (and more radical) practice.

 

[h] One recalls Oscar Wilde's line from The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890): 'If only the caveman had known how to laugh ...'

 

[i] See the post entitled 'In Defence of Fun' (3 June 2024) - click here - and the post entitled 'On the Nature of the Ridiculous (and the Ridiculous Nature of the Sex Pistols) (21 March 2024): click here. 

 

 

The following post in this four-part series on Russ Bestley's Turning Revolt Into Style, can be read by clicking here. 

 

Russ Bestley: 'Turning Revolt Into Style' (2025): Notes on the Introduction

Russ Bestley: Turning Revolt Into Style 

(Manchester University Press, 2025) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Russ Bestley is Reader in Graphic Design & Subcultures at London College of Communication (UAL) and someone who knows more - and has written more - over the last thirty years about punk, graphic design, and popular culture than Monsieur Mangetout has had odd dinners [b]. 

 

And so, if one is only ever going to read one book on the process and practice of punk graphic design, I would recommend it be Bestley's latest work, Turning Revolt Into Style - a solidly written and nicely illustrated book about which I'd like to share a few thoughts here and in a series of posts to follow.

 

 

II. 

 

Just to be clear at the outset, I don't have a background in graphic design or the visual arts and most of the names mentioned by Bestley mean nothing to me.  

 

However, I've always regarded Jamie Reid as an important member of the Sex Pistols (referring to the wider gang, rather than merely the four-piece group consisting of Cook, Jones, Rotten and Vicious) and a strong case could be made that his designs for the record sleeves are at least as important and as powerful as the black shiny discs they enclose [c].  

 

In other words, the art (fashion and politics) of punk probably means more to me than the music [d], so Bestley's book was always going to attract my attention; especially with a title which both echoes George Melley's celebrated 1970 study of the music business [e] and a line from 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' (turning rebellion into money) [f].  

 

 

III.

 

Bestley wisely limits his study to the UK punk scene in the late 1970s and early '80s, even whilst acknowledging that punk is now a global phenomenon with a long history behind it; books that try to encompass everything and speak to everyone invariably fail. 

 

And besides, the core elements of the punk aesthetic - or what Bestley likes to call punk's visual language - were formed very early on by the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [g] who hung around at 430 King's Road. 

 

The book addresses two key questions: "how did a generation of young, punk-inspired graphic designers navigate the music graphics profession in the late 1970s and early 1980s?" and "how did significant changes in printing technology, labour relations and working practices in the design profession impact their work during that period?" [1-2] 

 

Whilst the second question is doubtless important, it doesn't really excite my interest as much as the first question. 

 

And so, whilst I will certainly read what Bestley says in relation to the latter and offer some commentary, for the most part my remarks here will focus on the answer he provides to the former (even at the risk of thereby missing the point of the book, which is to situate punk's visual aesthetic both within cultural history and the technological, professional, and political contexts that materially shaped it).  

 

 

IV. 

 

Punk, says Bestley, "is a phenomenon that is difficult to define in simple terms" [4]. 

 

And whilst I know what he means, one is tempted to suggest that the word itself has always been a misunderstanding and one that Rotten wisely rejected when asked about by it in a pre-Grundy TV interview with Maggie Norden [h].    

 

At best, the word punk acts as a point of cultural consistency within the chaotic flow of difference and becoming; it does not refer to some kind of essence upon which a stable identity can be fixed (i.e., it's a superficial marker; a convenient fiction). 

 

Personally, I would encourage individuals to break free from the term so as to enter into an anonymous and nomadic state of pure potentiality. Unfortunately, however, the world is full of idiots who identify with the term and spend their days declaring punk's not dead.   

 

Ultimately, the word punk refers to the process by which the radical ideas and images born at 430 King's Road were recuperated by mainstream culture and bourgeois society; the process by which the Sex Pistols were neutered, disarmed, and commercially commodified in exactly the manner parodied in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) and illustrated by Reid on the cover of Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols (1979) [i].  

 

V. 

I know Rotten includes a line in E. M. I. about not judging a book by its cover - unless you cover just another - but I've never liked this idiomatic piece of moralism. As D. H. Lawence says, it is born of our dread of intuitional awareness and "if you don't judge by appearances, that is, if you can't trust the impression which things make on you, you are a fool" [j].    

 

So, I smiled when Bestley seemed to lend support to the idea that whilst design "may offer an aesthetically pleasing or appropriately functional window to content" [8] it is seldom the focal point and there are very few people who would "purchase a book or record purely for its cover" [8]. 

 

And I smiled too when he wrote: "books are to be read, records to be listened to" [8]. Because there are some books, such as Deleuze and Guattari's Mille plateaux (1980), which encourage readers to play them exactly as one would a record; starting with your favourite track or chapter, skipping the ones you don't much like, etc. [k]       

 

 

VI.

 

Finally, let me just say that the section within Bestley's Introduction for which I'm most grateful is the one which provides a punk design historiography. It really is an astonishing overview that is immensely useful to one such as myself who knows very little of the literature produced on this topic. 

 

In fact, of all the books mentioned here, the only two I know well are Jon Savage's England's Dreaming (1991) and Griel Marcus's Lipstick Traces (1989); the latter of which Bestley describes as "deeply flawed - and unfathomably influential" [13][l], although I know that Malcolm always loved the book (Rotten, predictably, less so).   

 

  

Notes

 

[a] All page numbers given in the post refer to this text.  

 

[b] Bestley is also Lead Editor of the academic journal Punk & Post-Punk, Series Editor and Art Director for the Global Punk book series published by Intellect Books, a founding member of the Punk Scholars Network, and head of the Subcultures Interest Group at UAL. His research archive can be accessed at hitsvilleuk.com. 

 

[c] For a post in memory of Jamie Reid who, sadly, died a couple of years ago, click here.

      Bestley is right to say that cover art "in many cases plays an intrinsic part in the cultural significance of 'iconic' albums". Never Mind the Bollocks, for example, would not be Never Mind the Bollocks, were it not for Reid's cover. It's the fluorescent pink and yellow cover that offers "special insight into the philosophy and character" of the Sex Pistols and which has a unique appeal "separate from the music" and over and above mere branding. See p. 7 of Turning Revolt Into Style.     

 

[d] Bestly recognises the tension beween "punk as attitude and ideology and punk as a new and distinct form of popular music" [5]. For McLaren, the music was the least important thing and a band that can't play is far more interesting and exciting than one who can. One of the final slogans used by Jamie Reid for his work with the Sex Pistols was: 'Music prevents you thinking for yourself.' 

  

[e] Melly, of course, borrowed the phrase revolt into style from a poem written by Thom Gunn about Elvis and published in his second collection of verse The Sense of Movement (1957). Quoting from memory, Gunn says that Presley peddles 'hackneyed words in hackneyed songs' and 'turns revolt into a style'. 

 

[f] '(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais' is a single by the Clash, released by CBS Records in June 1978. It got to number 32 in the UK charts.  

 

[g] This wonderful description of McLaren and company - the SEX shop people - was coined by Peter York in an article entitled 'Them' which appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976) and was quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.  

 

[h] The interview I refer to was broadcast on the BBC1 show Nationwide on 12 November 1976. Rotten insists that the word punk was imposed on the band by the press. For my discussion of the word, see the post published on 13 March 2025: click here.

      When I describe the term punk as a misunderstanding, I'm thinking of what Nietzsche writes of the word Christianity; namely, that it is a term derived from a system of beliefs based on a fundamental misinterpretation of the Gospel. In this case, punk is a huge failure to grasp the concept of the Sex Pistols - and this failure becomes nowhere more laughable than in the attempts to somehow sanitise their story and "shoehorn it into a retrosectively 'progressive' narrative that belies its original complexity and inherent contradictions" [4]. 

 

[i] For me, this process of recuperation began - and was completed - much sooner that I think it was for Bestley. He notes, for example, that by the year 2000 the punk movement had been "largely recuperated and institutionalised" and was "ripe for exploitation" [12]. I would date this at least twenty years earlier. 

      But arguing over dates as to when punk 'died' has always been a bit tiresome, so I'll not make a big deal of this and I agree with Bestley that this process of recuperation was largely achieved via the "cementing of a set of visual and musical tropes that could be picked up and regurgitated in the affectation - if not the performance - of a generic 'punk' identity" [235].    

 

[j] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 192. 

      In Chapter 2 of his book, Bestley refers us to the cover of the XTC album Go2 (Virgin Records, 1978) which states that anyone who buys (or doesn't buy) an album 'merely as a consequence of the design on its cover' is FOOLISH. For the record, they were precisely the kind of band riding the crest of the new wave that I very much despised at the time. See Turning Revolt Into Style, pp. 86-87.   

 

[k] In a Foreword to his translation of this text, Brian Massumi, writes: 

      "How should A Thousand Plateaus be played? When you buy a record there are always cuts that leave you cold. You skip them. You don't approach a records as a closed book that you have to take or leave. Other cuts you may listen to over and over again. They follow you. You find yourself humming them under your breath as you go about your daily business." 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. xiii-xiv.

 

[l] Later in the work Bestley will say: "Greil Marcus attempted (and largely failed) to make connections between the Sex Pistols, Dada, Surrealism and the philosophies of much earlier political agitators" [57]. That might be true, but it's often the case that we learn more from such failed attempts to form rhizomatic connections than we do from successful, self-contained books based on arborescent models that are proud of their own organic interiority, etc. 

      See what Deleuze and Guattari have to say on this in their Introduction to A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 3-25. 

 

 

The following post in this series - Notes on Chapters 1 & 2 - can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

Bloodstains on the Cobbles of Soho

 

Bloodstains on the Cobbles of Soho

(SA/2025) 

 

 

If you look closely at the above photo you'll see a few tiny drops of bright red blood. 

 

One wonders what a forensic scientist would make of these tell-tale marks were they subject to a blood pattern analysis.

 

Would they be able to determine if there had been a murder, a suicide, or merely an accident? 

 

Probably.

 

Would they be able to extract DNA evidence from the dried stains and thus tell us something bio-factual of the person who had shed their blood on a cobblestoned street in Soho? 

 

Perhaps.

 

But what they couldn't speak of is my horror at seeing you fall on a street where, many years ago, we were once young and in love ...   

 

Candid Camera (Notes on Secret Photography)

Monday 22 September, 2025, 11:31 

Stratford Station, London, England 

(SA/2025)

'The photographer is ... the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. 

Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world picturesque.' [1]

I. 

 

Candid photography is the capturing of images that, in a sense, have suggested themselves to the camera; spontaneous snaps of a scene, an event, or an anonymous subject that reveal the world in its randomness and objective innocence. 

 

If there is any hint of a pose - or any indication that the photographer is attempting to frame things aesthetically or ideologically, for example, and thereby impose their ideas or values on the image - then the picture is immediately robbed of its candid nature [2].

 

However, that's not to say candid photography reveals the truth of the world, even if it offers a glimpse of the world as is. And one must always be aware of the fact that no representation is ever really honest; the camera always lies and the world, no matter how exposed it may appear, is always fundamentally in darkness.  

       

 

II. 

 

The image used above is, I think, a good example of a candid (and covert) snapshot. It was taken yesterday, at Stratford Station, in East London, and shows a young woman standing on platform 8 waiting for an Elizabeth line train to Shenfield. 

 

I was standing opposite on platform 9 waiting for a Greater Anglia train to Liverpool Street. I thought it was unusual to see someone isolated on what is often a very busy platform and she struck me as very much a contemporary London girl; carrying a tote bag, holding an i-Phone in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, tattoed legs and green dyed hair. 

 

I've no idea who she is, but I like to imagine she's a student at the London College of Fashion; or a jewellery designer who has a studio in Hackney. Similarly, I like to think that, should this image ever come to her attention, she'll be fine with my having taken it and then publishing it here [3]. 

 

In a sense, a silent and secretive act - committed whilst in a shared public space and which involved what Baudrillard terms the photographic gaze (i.e., one that does not seek to probe or analyse or master reality, but, with a sort of insouciance, non-intrusively capture the apparition of objects) [4] - has brought us into initimate complicity. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1]  Susan Sontag, On Photography, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), p. 55.  

 

[2] Obviously, this is the ideal. In practice, it's very hard to take a purely candid photograph, if only because even the most naive and amateur of photographers - i.e., one such as myself who knows very little about composition and the technical aspects of taking a picture - still views things with an intelligent eye and cannot resist retrospectively imposing a narrative or philosophically-informed interpretation on the image. 

      I'm also vaguely aware of the history of photography and the important place of candid images within that history; so radically different from the traditional posed pictures. 

      However, as far as possible, I have snapped candidly by sticking to my one snap and one snap only rule, never trying to capture the same image twice, or make a technically superior version; if I miss the decisive moment well, that's too bad (there'll be others).   

 

[3] Whilst I don't have full knowledge of the law, I believe that in the UK one doesn't require explicit consent to take someone's photo if they are in a public space, especially if, as in this case, the image is reproduced solely for editorial and artistic purpose and is not being used commercially. I think France has much tighter laws around this whole area to do with image rights and personal privacy.   

 

[4] See Jean Baudrillard, 'Photography, Or The Writing Of Light', trans. Francois Debrix in Baudrillard Now (22 April, 2023): click here to read online.  

      This essay was originally published in French as 'La Photographie ou l’Ecriture de la Lumiere: Litteralite de l’Image', in L'Echange Impossible (Éditions Galilée, 1999), pp. 175-184. An earlier translation into English, by Chris Turner, can be found in Impossible Exchange (Verso, 2001), pp. 139-147, where it is entitled as 'Photography, or Light-Writing: Literalness of the Image'.

      I am aware, of course, that Baudrillard hates the digitilisation of photography as an art form and would not acknowledge my image taken on an i-Phone to be a photograph in the sense he understands it (lacking both sovereignty and punctual exactitude). See section IX in part 2 of the post on Baudrillard's 'Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?' (16 September 2025): click here.

 

Punk History is for Pissing On: Notes on PZ77 by Simon Parker

PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022) 

by Simon Parker

 

'Ah, those days... for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. 

Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed.' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Conceived, designed, narrated, and edited by Simon Parker - and published by an independent co-operative he established in 1996 to celebrate and promote contemporary Cornish writing - PZ77 is "a unique story of time, place, friendship, community, and an almost obsessive passion for making music" [2]. 

 

The book features more than ninety personal accounts, across 392 pages, from old punks like himself who grew up in a place "others came for their holidays" (Penzance) [3].      

 

It's not the kind of book I would normally read (for reasons we'll come to shortly). 

 

However, as a 40 page extract from the work - the first five tracks - is the chosen text for discussion by the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) [4] this coming week - a group with which I'm associated - I thought I'd take this opportunity to assemble (and share) some thoughts in advance ...

 

 

II. 

There are, as Russ Bestley reminds us, now hundreds of books on punk in the mid-late 1970s, and it sometimes feels as if everyone and their dog who was in any way connected to the scene has now had their say on the subject or shared their memories of the time. 

 

For those over a certain age, punk nihilism has now given way to punk nostalgia; the chaos of a life lived blissfully in the moment (now/here) has been replaced with a comforting and conformist vision of the past. 

 

In other words, instead of going with the flow of events and strange becomings that carry them beyond the constraints of a fixed identity, many old punks now prefer to relive the past as best they can at the Rebellion Festival [5] and produce narratives which reinforce the mythology of punk by "re-articulating variations of the same story, often through a nostalgic lens centred on personal experience and memories" [6].  

 

 

III.   

To be fair to Parker, PZ77 might be read as an attempt to give a voice to many punk fans whose stories and memories of the time might otherwise have gone unrecorded, thereby expanding our understanding of punk (certainly as it unfolded in Corwall in 1977).  

 

As Bestley rightly points out, "punk's standard narrative has become so deeply embedded, its cultural and historical position so neatly summarized, that there is a desperate need for alternative perspectives that might sustain a sense of engagement and highlight new contributions to knowledge within a tired and over-familiar field of study" [7]. 

 

However, from what I've read of the work, I don't like it ... 

 

And the reason I don't like it is because, as a Deleuzian - and as a member of the extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars [8] - I don't like writing that attempts to impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience and I don't like writing that is merely a form of personal overcoding; i.e., an opportunity for an author to give whatever it is they write about a familiar face that somehow resembles their own. 

 

Any form of writing that is heavily reliant upon the recounting of youthful memories is usually not only bad writing but dead writing; for as Deleuze says, literature dies from an excess of autobiography just as surely as from an overdose of emotion or imagination [9].   

 

Rather than transport us away from Oeidpal structures towards a zone of indiscernibility where we might lose ourselves, PZ77 attempts to take us back to a better time where we might rediscover our passions and dreams, renew old friendships, etc. 

 

Whereas I still believe in the ruins, Parker believes in building a sense of community. The interviews with participants in his project indicate a level of acceptance that punk has become part of mainstream culture; nice people, performing nice gestures, and leading nice lives, etc. 

 

 

IV. 

Ultimately, I was never going to like a book written by an obsessive Ramones fan: they may have been Sid's favourite band, but they were never my favourite band. 

 

And whereas Parker, a grammar school boy from a Methodist fishing village who likes to see the good in people is, by his own admission, "always thinking about music" [10], I don't care about the music; to paraphrase Malcolm, if punk had just been about the music it would have died a death long ago.   

  

It's his best mate, Grev Williams, however, who really irritates me. Thinking back to the Summer of Hate, he ponders just how important the period was to him: 

 

"Punk bursting into our lives was hugely invigorating and inspiring [...]  but I'd be lying if I said I found any expression of my inner self in it [... and] the idea that I was revolting against my background and community would be wholly false. I was blessed with the strength of knowing where I came from, I didn't want to smash it up - I loved it. Punk wasn't a spit-filled, nihilist cul-de-sac for me, it was a launch pad. As a budding musician it provided opportunities and informed my attitude, not my taste. [...] Anyway, long story short and truth be told, I didn't hate or revolt against much [...] [11]

 

Whilst aknowledging the benefit of his experiences in 1977, Williams has to ask himself whether he was ever really a 'punk': "As with so much, I'm really not sure." [12]

 

It's not, of course, my role to help him decide the matter. 

 

But I would say, given his confession above - every aspect of which (apart from his uncertainty) I find objectionable - that whilst he may or may not have been a punk, he was clearly not a Sex Pistol as I understand the term; i.e. in a manner largely shaped by McLaren's description in the Oliver Twist Manifesto (1977) - click here - and the ideas developed in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

I look forward to discussing this with other members of the SIG, including Russ Bestley [13]. 

 

However, I won't be buying a copy of Parker's PZ77. For those who like this sort of thing, as Miss Brodie would say, this is the sort of thing they like: but, for me, punk history is for pissing on ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] J. L. Carr, A Month In The Country (Harvester Press, 1980). 

      This quote was used as an epigraph to PZ77. It should be noted, however, that the narrator of the novel goes on to ask himself would he have always remained happy had he somehow been able to stay in the same time and place. And the answer is: "No, I suppose not."  

 

[2] I'm quoting here from the Scryfa website: click here. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is an informal collective operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL), concerned with what we might briefly describe as the politics of style and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different. 

      I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.    

      

[5] For those who don't know, Rebellion is the biggest independently run punk festival in the UK, that takes place each summer in the historic Winter Gardens, Blackpool. I haven't been and I don't want to go to this family-oriented event which celebrates Punk in all its forms with the blessing of the local council. For further information, click here. 

 

[6] Russ Bestley, 'Going Through the Motions: Punk Nostalgia and Conformity', in Trans-Global Punk Scenes: The Punk Reader Vol. 2. (Intellect Books, 2021), pp. 179-196. 

 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] This wonderful phrase was coined by Peter York to describe the denizens of 430 King's Road (i.e., the SEX people). It was used in his article 'Them' that appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976) and is cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.

 

[9] See the post dated 30 August 2013 entitled 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' - click here. 

 

[10] Simon Parker, PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022), p. 11.

 

[11] Grev Williams quoted by Simon Parker in PZ77 ... pp. 38-39.

 

[12] Ibid., p. 41.

 

[13] Russ Bestley's own review of Simon Parker's PZ77 can be found in Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 12, Issue 1 (Feb 2023), p. 131 - 134. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gain free access to this text online, so couldn't discuss it here.