Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley: Present At Punk’s Creation (An Appreciation)

AP Photo / Marco Ugarte, File – Pete Shelley
In this May 19, 2018, file photo, Pete Shelley, of the British punk band Buzzcocks, performs at Plaza Condesa in the 6th edition of the Marvin Festival in Mexico City.

“I’ve taken this extravagant journey/So it seems to me/To arrive from nowhere/And to go straight back there,” — “Boredom”

Without Pete Shelley (nee McNeish), who sadly passed away Dec. 6 and Howard Devoto (nee Trafford), a pair of students in Manchester, punk rock in the U.K. might never have happened the way it did. The two booked the city’s Lesser Free Trade Hall for a June 4, 1976, gig to present the first local appearance of a band they had just seen in London that February, with the incongruous name of the Sex Pistols.

There were less than 50 people in the venue, “and I’m not sure that’s counting even Howard and me or even the Sex Pistols,” Shelley later recalled, but that crowd included future members of such iconic Mancunian punk bands as Joy Division (Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook), The Fall (whose Mark E. Smith passed away in January), The Smiths (Morrissey) and legendary Factory Records founder Tony Wilson. Exactly a month later, The Ramones came over to play the Roundhouse in London on July 4 of the bicentennial, opening for the Flamin’ Groovies, and the reverse American Punk Revolution was totally under way.

In the wake of the Pistols’ appearance in Manchester, several members of that audience were inspired to pick up instruments and form bands, much as U.S. teenagers had 12 years before with the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. McNeish and Trafford changed their surnames to Shelley (which would’ve been Pete’s name if he was born a girl) and Devoto, then formed a band called Buzzcocks after a headline in a review of a TV series, Rock Follies. “It’s the Buzz. Cock!” referred to the rush of adrenaline you get performing on-stage, while “cock” was British slang for a mate. Nevertheless, the combination of vibrating sexual pleasure and pugnacious punk attitude perfectly described the band’s minimalist precision and non-stop hooks.

Independently releasing the seminal, four-track Spiral Scratch EP in January, 1977, which included the above-quoted clarion call “Boredom,” it was one of the seminal records in the annals of British punk-rock, preceded only by The Damned’s “New Rose,” the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” and two singles from the Vibrators. The Guardian dubs it “the first indie rock record,” and gushed, “Its four songs hurtle by breathlessly, nearly stumbling over themselves, as if the band are consumed by urgency, a belief that their window of opportunity is about to pass.”

When lead singer Devoto left the band to form post-punk outfit Magazine with John McGeogh and Barry Adamson, Shelley took over Buzzcocks, altering the sound, replacing his ex-mate’s nasal sneer with a warmer, high-pitch vocal featuring an “arch, camp north-western accent… [which] proved perfect for delivering withering put-downs” to the increasing chaotic audiences.

Shelley and the band — including guitarist.co-writer Steve Diggle (who remained until the end) and bassist Steve Garvey – then launched a series of arguably the greatest pop-punk singles of their era (hinting at Shelley’s own closeted bisexuality) in “Orgasm Addict,” “I Don’t Mind,” “What Do I Get?,” “Ever Fallen in Love… (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve),” a song memorably covered by Fine Young Cannibals, “Harmony in my Head” and “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays,” hinting at depths of unrequited love and lust, two topics as far away from punk-rock dogma as possible.

By mid-1978, Buzzcocks were familiar figures on the U.K.’s reigning chart show “Top of the Pops,” with a succession of catchy, sarcastic ditties like “Love You More,” “Promises,” “Fiction Romance,” “Sixteen Again,” “Get on Our Own,” “Nostalgia.” These earworms were accompanied by examples of Pete’s love of Krautrock on experimental songs like “ESP,” “Late for the Train” and “Moving Away from the Pulsebeat,” the last cut on their 1978 debut, Another Music in a Different Kitchen.

The band’s third album, A Different Kind of Tension, released on their label United Artists (and subsequently reissued on both I.R.S. and EMI), was their highest-charting in the U.S. at No. 163 on the Billboard 200. Their 1979 “greatest hits” album, Singles Going Steady, was also their first U.S. release, on Miles Copeland’s I.R.S. Records in September 1979, to coincide with their maiden stateside tour.

Shelley’s second solo album featured the title track “Homosapien,” a post-punk dance anthem banned by the BBC for “explicit reference to gay sex.” Signed to Arista Records in the U.S., the single become a popular dance track, even reaching the Top 15 of Billboard’s Club Play singles chart, but never crossed over to Top 40.

Shelley reformed Buzzcocks with Diggle in 1989, releasing a full-length album, Trade Test Transmissions, in 1993, while continuing to tour, perform and put out new music (including 1996’s All Set, 1999’s Modern, 2003’s Buzzcocks and 2006’s Flat Pack Philosophy) with The Way, their final album, emerging in 2014. At the time of Pete’s death, the band were planning a summer 2019 tour, including a June 21 date at London’s Royal Albert Hall with The Skids.

As The Guardian concluded, “Pete Shelley had written songs that did the one thing no one at the time thought punk would do: they lasted, slipping their overtones of spittle-flecked confrontation to become universal, a beloved part of the musical landscape.”

That extravagant journey ended up far from nowhere.