The first two of the book’s many epigraphs were from Jonathan Raban’s Soft City – “In the city we can change our identities at will” – and Lionel Bart’s Oliver! – “We wander through London, who knows what we might find?” How could you refuse? It's taken me a while to get through this, not because the book was dull or hard work, but because of the sheer volume of information inside, covering a relatively short time span. plus the fact it was too unwieldy for reading on my commute (how punk does that sound!) If you have any interest in the punk era this book will genuinely inform you and make you re-evaluate your preconceived ideas.

Jon Savage - Wikipedia Jon Savage - Wikipedia

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. Jon Savage (born 2 September 1953 [1] in Paddington, London) is an English writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his definitive history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England's Dreaming (1991).This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division (Faber and Faber 2019) ISBN 978-0-571-34537-3 My interest in this now looks at teenage superstar Greta Thunberg. There’s going to be a huge shift, I think, in the next 25 years, away from the idea of youth as consumers, and into something else. Ultimately, the way we live is not sustainable, and that’s got to be something for your generation or people younger than you to grapple with. JD: As middle-aged men, we are marinated in pop music, and we need to come to terms with the fact that we are potentially doomed to obsess over Top Of The Pops performances, B-sides and album covers. We are just so expert at the absolutely useless information of the pop culture we’ve absorbed. We would be into steam trains if we were 30 years older; Jon rescues punk from that “steam-train syndrome”.

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

I was too young for punk the first time around, but following my early teen heavy metal stage, I got into it in later years. Now I sometimes wonder – and I’m really throwing this to you, because it’s not my experience – but I would surmise that the sheer weight of information is sometimes quite daunting. 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? The machinations at record companies and the frankly mad, bad and downright chaotic behaviours of Malcolm Mclaren are fascinating and well told. How the band interacted (or not) with their manager and each other and well as with others within the Punk movement and without is also interesting.

The book built a picture of, to quote Savage quoting McLaren, “the human architecture of the city”, and provided an apocalyptic vision of England on the eve of Thatcherism – for Savage, a mirror image of punk’s suburban sado-masochism and its contempt for the woolly compromise of the welfare state. First of all, the book made me notice London. Suburban Southampton is an interminable, Americanised sprawl.

How England’s Dreaming told the definitive story of London punk

Whatever the problems are in the world, young people – if they’ve got any spirit and they’re not prepared to just go along with things – will have apretty good idea of what’s wrong,” says Jon Savage over aZoom call, ​ “because they are entering aworld made by adults.” Face front, we got the future/Shining like a piece of gold/But I swear as we got closer/It looks like a lump of coal' - The Clash: All The Young Punks. In these times of woeful X Factor/Pop Idol karaoke, manufactured dross I yearn for something to reset the social agenda again.Yeah, but around 10 or 15 years ago, you’d see all sorts of subcultures down your local high street. Skaters, ravers, goths, punks… I suppose it’s more diluted now, a little harder to find. In reality, it took me only a week to plough through and it was never a chore. It covers the history of punk, a detailed biography of the sex pistols and an overview of UK politics and culture in the late 70s. I’d like to think we’re the most sustainably-minded generation yet, making conscious efforts in any which way we can to reverse climate change, somehow. 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. After moving on to write for THE FACE in 1980, Savage’s cultural curiosity had him attend aNew York vogue ball with Malcolm McLaren, commentate on the rise and fall of Britpop and, over the past 20years, write three of the most significant, cohesive books on youth culture.