“The papers are a load of shit.”

Punk: The Early Years is a short documentary that takes a superficial, disappointing look at its subject matter. The footage was shot in 1977 and 1978 and includes interviews with the heads of EMI and Virgin Records, Glam rocker Marc Bolan and various bands–including The Slits, X Ray Spex, Generation X, Siouxsie, and the Adverts. If you are looking for an extensive history of Punk, this is not it.

There’s a little info about a few of the clubs in the Punk scene, and many brief interviews with various Punk fans. The film also spends some time discussing fanzines and a larger amount of time discussing punk fashion. There’s even a trip to McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop. There is very little mention of the political side of Punk (zero on Anarcho-Punk), there is no tracing of protopunk, no mention of the American Punk scene–apart from a brief allusion to the Ramones, and no analysis of the spread of Punk from America to England (where it soon found a thriving breeding ground–and that this was largely due to the social and political discontentment of the times). If you are interested in the roots and development of Punk, then I highly recommend the book, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

I don’t really care that the footage was a bit ratty looking in places. What bothered me more was the shallow treatment of the subject matter. While it’s nice to get various opinions from fans, there’s not enough substance here. There are a few clips of a very young Billy Idol, and those portions were great and worth watching. But as it is, the film’s title, Punk: The Early Years is a bit grandiose. A more accurate title would be British Punk: Early Clips. Less time should have been spent on the fashion use of safety pins, and more on the serious side of Punk. This is not a history, and it’s not even an overview.