Who Are the ‘Big 4’ of Punk Rock?

Pick a starting point for punk rock and someone is bound to quibble over details.

Did it begin in the mid-’60s with garage-rock bands bashing out three-chord songs? Or was it later in the decade when volume and hippie (or anti-hippie) aesthetics collided to form revolutionary new music? Or was it halfway through the ’70s as bands on both sides of the Atlantic reacted to what they saw as the blight of corporate rock with stripped-down primitivism?

In a way, punk rock was borne of all these things, coined at the start of the 1970s, blossomed in the middle of the decade and has thrived for years, as new bands, waves and attitudes take over. The “Big 4” of Punk Rock all came of age during the peak years of the music’s cultural significance: the mid-’70s, when punk bands were being scooped up by labels and dozens of new records by these artists were being released monthly. They merely scrape the surface of the music’s deep history.

The Clash

As part of the initial wave of punk acts that debuted in the mid-’70s amid a flurry of media scrutiny, fan support and records that dismissed rock’s past while gazing forward, the Clash was among the most visible and popular bands of the era. The core group featuring Joe Strummer and Mick Jones released only five albums, each reinforcing their legend; they were also one of the few punk artists to break through to the mainstream. On top of all this, their albums helped set the template of how a literate rock ‘n’ roll band should sound and act. London Calling, their two-LP third collection of songs from 1979, remains one of the greatest records ever made.

Ramones

Ramones are the Big Bang of “punk rock” as most people know it. Other artists may have gotten there before them, but no band in the public view had the impact of the Queens, New York-based quartet. Lasting almost two dozen years, outliving many of their contemporaries by a decade or two, Ramones’ legacy was sealed early on with their first four albums, starting with a self-titled 1976 debut that stands as ground zero for the movement. Clocking in at 29 minutes, that record spelled out punk’s modus operandi in fast, to-the-point songs with limited chords and words. It was a practice they maintained throughout their influential career.

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Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols defined punk rock in attitude, image and flair for self-destruction. Their fall was as quick as their rise – three brief years marked by one classic album, a handful of singles and enough controversy to last a lifetime. From a contentious TV appearance that resulted in original bassist Glen Matlock being replaced by trouble magnet Sid Vicious to their onstage flameout during a U.S. tour (“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”), no band played more acutely to the media. But what shouldn’t get lost amid the headlines is the music Sex Pistols made during that short initial tenure. Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols ignited a revolution, and for good reason.

Television

Unlike many of their punk contemporaries, Television took a different path to the music. Formed in 1973 and inspired equally by the Ventures and the Velvet Underground, the New York quartet didn’t disregard rock’s past; with their drawn-out songs and epic guitar solos, they shared as much with the arena bands of the day as they did with their fellow artists who played CBGB’s stage. But Tom Verlaine‘s clipped, jagged vocals, complementary to his and Richard Lloyd’s fractured guitar playing, put Television squarely into the punk category. Marquee Moon, their 1977 debut album, is a genre masterpiece growing in stature each year.