Who were the first New York punk bands?

The New York Dolls and Suicide were active from the early seventies. The first bands of the CBGB generation were Television and the Ramones in 1974, followed by Patti Smith's group, Blondie, Talking Heads, the Heartbreakers and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

What is the difference between New York punk and British punk?

New York punk was smaller, older and more artistic. Its musicians were often in their mid twenties and came from poetry, art and the sixties underground. British punk was younger, louder, more political and became a mass youth movement with its own clothes and scandals.

Where did New York punk bands play?

Mainly at CBGB at 315 Bowery and at Max's Kansas City on Park Avenue South. Smaller venues and lofts played a role too, and from 1978 the Mudd Club in Tribeca became important.

Did the Ramones influence British punk?

Yes. Their debut album arrived in Britain in 1976, and their concert at the Roundhouse in London on 4 July 1976 was attended by many of the musicians who formed the first British punk bands that year.

New York punk, 1974 to 1978: bands, clubs, records

New York punk was the downtown Manhattan scene of 1974 to 1978 that gave rock music its reset. In two clubs, CBGB on the Bowery and Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue South, a few dozen bands played short, stripped down songs that ignored everything the charts were doing. Out of that small world came Television, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Heartbreakers and Suicide, and a handful of albums that still sit on every list of essential rock records.

New York came first. The Ramones’ debut album was in the shops in April 1976, half a year before the first British punk single. But New York punk was never one sound. That is its most important feature, and the reason why it led in so many directions.

Before CBGB

The roots are in the city itself. The Velvet Underground had played downtown in the sixties. The New York Dolls, a loud, cross dressing rock and roll band, filled the Mercer Arts Center from 1972 until the building collapsed in August 1973. Suicide, the duo of Alan Vega and Martin Rev, had been playing their drum machine and organ noise since 1970. Patti Smith gave poetry readings at St. Mark’s Church and in 1974 released her first single, Hey Joe with Piss Factory on the other side, on a tiny label.

What was missing was a regular stage. CBGB provided it from 1974.

The bands

Television. Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd’s twin guitars turned punk’s simplicity into long, intricate improvisations. Marquee Moon, released in February 1977, is the scene’s most ambitious record.
Ramones. Four men from Forest Hills in Queens who played two minute songs at maximum speed, wore leather jackets and jeans as a uniform and took their melodies from sixties pop. Their debut appeared on Sire in April 1976.
Patti Smith Group. Poetry over three chords. Horses, produced by John Cale and released in November 1975, is often called the first album of the scene.
Blondie. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein mixed girl group pop, surf and punk tempo. Their debut came out at the end of 1976 and included Rip Her to Shreds.
Talking Heads. Art school students from Rhode Island who brought nervous funk and a deliberately unrock look. Talking Heads: 77 appeared in September 1977.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Hell had been in Television and the Heartbreakers. His ripped clothes and spiky hair were copied in London, and Blank Generation in 1977 became a statement for the scene.
The Heartbreakers. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls. L.A.M.F. appeared in 1977, first in Britain.
Suicide. Two men, a drum machine and an organ. Their first album in 1977 was too radical for most of the audience and became one of the most influential records of the period.

The media

The scene documented itself. Punk magazine, founded by John Holmstrom, Legs McNeil and Ged Dunn, published its first issue in January 1976, with cartoons and interviews that helped tie the word punk to the scene. New York Rocker, launched by Alan Betrock the same year, covered the bands in more detail. The Village Voice and the photographers of the scene did the rest. Our article on punk fanzines tells the story of these magazines.

1976: record deals

The labels came downtown in 1975 and 1976. Seymour Stein’s Sire Records signed the Ramones and Talking Heads, Arista had Patti Smith, Private Stock signed Blondie, Elektra Television. The compilation Live at CBGB’s appeared in 1976. In July of that year the Ramones played the Roundhouse in London, and many of the musicians who formed British punk bands that summer were in the audience. The story continues on our page about London 1976.

1977 and 1978: success and split

By 1977 the scene had become a set of careers. Blondie, Talking Heads and the Ramones toured Europe, and Blondie’s Parallel Lines of 1978, with Heart of Glass, turned a CBGB band into one of the biggest pop acts in the world. Record companies preferred the term new wave for these bands.

At the same time a younger generation rejected what the scene had become. Their answer was no wave: noise, dissonance and no interest in careers. The Dead Boys from Cleveland, who had moved to New York in 1976, carried the louder punk side on, and by the early eighties CBGB’s matinees had become the home of New York hardcore.

The scene on a map

New York punk happened in a small area. CBGB stood at 315 Bowery, on a street of flophouses. Max’s Kansas City, the older art world hangout where the Velvet Underground had played, was at 213 Park Avenue South near Union Square. The Mercer Arts Center, where the New York Dolls had started, was inside the Broadway Central Hotel until its collapse in 1973. From 1978 the Mudd Club on White Street in Tribeca became the late night place for the next generation. Most musicians lived within walking distance, in cheap apartments in the East Village and on the Lower East Side. That closeness explains a lot about the scene: everybody saw everybody else’s band, borrowed members and argued in the same bars.

What New York punk left behind

New York punk gave the world a template that was artistic and simple at once: short songs, no solos, a strong look and a stage for everybody with original material. It influenced British punk directly, through records, tours and the visual style of Richard Hell and the Ramones, and it opened the door to new wave. For the albums, see our selection of the best punk albums, and for the full timeline our history of punk rock.