England's Dreaming: Jon Savage

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That’s alright. A lot of adults bang on about youth culture being inauthentic these days, perhaps because of the massive influence nostalgia has had on our generation – particularly in fashion. What do you make of that? In July 1993, Kurt Cobain gave a dramatically candid interview to Jon Savage in which he freely discussed such controversial topics as Courtney Love, homosexuality, heroin and Cobain's relationship with his Nirvana bandmates. Conducted with Cobain the night before the now-infamous shoot with legendary photographer Jesse Frohman, and just months before the frontman's death. The US tour is another interesting chapter and the author's treatment of Sid Vicious's demise and death is told with clarity and sympathy, and include comment from Sid's mother. The Sex Pistols' greatly helped (it is too strong to say they alone) changed how music was played and written, how bands were signed and promoted, how records were sold and marketed, how music was read about and how fans treated their idols and their movement including its involvement in politics.

Britain’s Dreaming: Jon Savage on the future of youth Britain’s Dreaming: Jon Savage on the future of youth

In a new introduction to the book on its 30th anniversary, published here in full, the designer Scott King and the artist Jeremy Deller sat down to discuss the huge impact the book had on them as they came of age in the early 1990s. How we read it Savage's book, Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture, was published in 2007. It is a history of the concept of teenagers, which begins in the 1870s and ends in 1945 and aims to tell the story of youth culture's prehistory, and dates the advent of today's form of "teenagers" to 1945. [5] The book was adapted into a film by Matt Wolf. Do you think the death of the democratic consumer will lead to a death in subcultures? A lot of people already say subcultures no longer exist, I guess because they aren’t as glaringly obvious as they once were.

The author's politics comes through at times a little more than is required, but that is a minor point. He perhaps over blows Punks significance to the UK at large but only then when you consider my comments above, and that the Pistols remain a focal point in music and media whenever the 1970s is discussed then he may be justified. Oh, that’s a good question. Youth culture is changing considerably, and I think for deeper reasons than a whole load of crap television programmes like I Love the 1980s, to be honest.

England’s Dreaming introduced me to the power of urban

SK: It became very fashionable to be negative about Malcolm McLaren, didn’t it? It became very easy to do and lots of people did it. But Jon, I think, paints a fair picture of McLaren’s involvement, not just about the greed, but also about his more visionary ideas, about how he applied his “art school thinking” to both the fashion and the music businesses. It’s a very obvious point, really, but shifting vinyl records in massive units is only one step away from shifting vinyl trousers, isn’t it?Asisitiremos a como Malcom McLaren creo desde su tienda de ropa transgresora al grupo que haria del nihilismo y la crítica social su bandera y como otras bandas se encargaron de llevarlo a su esplendor. Yes. The Tories do nothing for us. The Tories actually have nothing for anybody unless you’re very rich and very greedy. They don’t like art, they don’t like music, they don’t like culture. It’s a really sterile vision. If you’re young, it must be intensely frustrating, so just go and do it – whatever it is. A lot of young people will always do that. It can be problematic, but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing. When I was 16, I used to haunt second-hand bookshops and record stores in grubby parts of London – there was one in Soho that was mega sleazy – hunting for something that might spark something. You see, punk was a product of focus. It was like going through a chicane where everything was narrowed down to points so that when it came out, it was even more powerful, focused and easy to grasp.

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J. C. Maçek III (6 June 2013). "Fashionably Anti-Establishment: 'Punk: From Chaos to Couture' ". PopMatters. SK: I think that’s what’s exciting about Jon, because obviously he’s Cambridge educated, he’s very smart and I think that was the great thing as a young person reading this book – that somebody with that kind of intellect was talking to you on a serious level about something you’d spent your whole life being fascinated by: pop music. It’s a justification of – or a vindication of – your own feelings. I think that’s very evident in the book. It’s so dense with information that it just makes you want to know more. It took me a long time to reread it because I kept googling stuff. It’s a kind of portal; it’s a starting point that leads you to a lot of other “secret histories”. The obvious one is that you read about the Pistols and that leads you to the Situationists, and then this whole other world opens up. That’s what I think was so attractive about the book. Also, the chapters often start with short quotes by people like Virilo or Rimbaud, which sounds very pretentious, but, again, it suggests this kind of other, something more than just pop. There’s this density and this seriousness with which he approaches what is essentially only pop music. Even though it is the Sex Pistols and punk, it’s still only pop music and that’s what I wanted to hear at that age. The book was almost telling you: you are right to be interested in pop culture to this obsessive degree. I was not there SK: It’s like what you said about being in bed all day – reading this book – still living at home and your mum and dad probably thinking you should be going to get a job. But, in fact, you were actually researching something that would eventually lead to what you do for a living. I don’t really remember what it’s like to be a 17-year-old, but I think if I were to read it now, at that age, I’d be enthralled and thrilled by it. An awful lot of it is about suburbia and how ordinary, young people transformed their own lives, and he paints a great picture of how boring most of Britain was at that time. If I were a kid at school, I’d certainly rather read this than about the Corn Laws. Jon Savage has managed to produce a very excellent and readable book. This must have been quite a task given the plethora of material but the complete, and in some cases deliberate camouflaging of events and reasons, that could have led to either some kind of hero worshipful bible-like book or to the usual skim, have generally been avoided. Mr Savage has made an excellent review of the period and analysed the precursors whilst managing to keep the sense of wonder that was there all through the punk years. Having been there (but hardly 'in' them) I found his book to be absolutely fair and very astute in it's analysis.

I’d had my eye on the book for a while, dipping into it while doing work experience at the local radical bookshop. Over the next two years I would read and reread it until the spine broke, and do what it implored me to do: move to London.