It is now 50 years since punk exploded onto the streets of London, rupturing pop culture, fashion, and music and horrifying swathes of polite society for it. And in ways great and small, Jews were very much part of the iconic era.
The best known of these was, of course, the Sex Pistols whose manager Malcolm McLaren was brought up by his grandmother in Stoke Newington and who had fond memories of reading this newspaper in her home on Friday nights.
One of his contemporaries was Bernie Rhodes who was raised in a Jewish orphanage, and wasn’t just around when punk happened, but helped invent it. Rhodes designed provocative T-shirts before fashion got political, introduced Johnny Rotten to the Sex Pistols and created The Clash.
But while McLaren and Rhodes were punk frontmen, other less-known Jewish voices were also making abrasive noise. Writer and film-maker Phil Strongman whose new book, Acme Boy, the Birth of Punk and Anti-Fashion pays particular attention to the role played by former Londoner John Krivine, who lives today in Sde Boker, a small town in the Negev.
The book charts his own interest in the movement which gave rise to the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Ramones. “I first went to Acme Attractions, John Krivine’s clothes shop on the King’s Road, when I was 16. By the time I was 17 I was doing designs for them. But while there are many books about Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, there was never anything about Acme or John’s other punk store BOY, in Chelsea – and they were both destination shops for rebellious teens of 1976.”
Strongman had been curious about Krivine’s role in early punk long before he interviewed for his book, an interview for which he fought hard. Krivine finally agreed on the condition that Strongman flew out to Israel and talked to him face to face.
As for his shop Acme, it was notoriously hard to locate on the King’s Road, writes Strongman, identified as it was by a half-hidden sign “maybe twice the size of a car numberplate”, and accessed by walking down some rickety stairs. But instead there was a treasure trove: “a place that would be worth its weight in gold, even now. It was – literally and culturally – underground; an instant museum of the alternative fashion of the years 1975/6.”
And whereas McLaren’s punk boutique Sex, also on the King’s Road, was a slightly intimidating place. Acme and its owner were altogether friendlier.
Krivine also came from a middle-class Jewish home. His father, Freddie, worked in property and after graduating from Hull University and then travelling across America for a year, he reluctantly agreed to work in the family business.
From his father’s point of view, things didn’t work out. “John went shopping,” writes Strongman, “but the one thing he didn’t buy was properties.” Instead he bought “old pinball machines and art deco objects”, segued into buying jukeboxes, and, in his late twenties, set up Acme with his business associate Steph Raynor.
“I got involved in punk because it was such a fun development,” says Krivine. “But I wasn’t actually that interested in the music. I came to punk as an entrepreneur, really.” As a new father he was principally looking for a way to make money, he told Strongman.
But after running Acme for 18 months and then BOY for a further six years, he decided to make aliyah. “I really didn’t like being a Jew in England,” he says. “I felt that the Jewish coping mechanism of living in the diaspora was coming to an end… I would have liked to become English, part of English society. As it was, I felt that, as a Jew, I was disqualified from any real access.”
One person who did appreciate his contribution to punk was John’s American cousin Andrew Krivine who first visited his family in London in June 1977, when he was 16. “I hung out with my cousin at his shop, and I fell in love with punk.”
His passion for punk endured. Today, Andrew has one of the largest collections of punk memorabilia across the pond, much of it on display in a current exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Centre, a Jewish educational institution in Los Angeles.
“In the mid-Seventies, most music was really bad, but I loved the New York Dolls, the Velvet Underground, the Ramones. And John’s shops were a great place to listen to them.
“They had a turntable in BOY and I remember listening to the Clash’s first record over and over again. After three days of listening, I decided it was the greatest record on earth.”
Andrew’s collecting life began with his acquiring film posters from the 1930s. But they weren’t cheap and when he discovered that he could go to Rough Trade Records, in London, buy a few records and pick up posters and flyers for free, he said goodbye to 1930s memorabilia.
By his late twenties, he had about 400 pieces in his possession. Now he thinks he has around 6,800 punk posters and associated memorabilia, much kept in storage in New York. Among the Jewish artists featured in his collection are Chris Stein of Blondie, Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls (born to a Syrian Jewish family and originally called Sylvain Mizrahi), and two Jewish members of the Ramones – lead singer Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Ross Hyman) and drummer/producer Tommy Ramone (Tamás Erdélyi).
They and other Jewish American punks including Lenny Kaye (born Kusikoff), who worked with Patti Smith, and Jonathan Richman, frontman of punk band The Modern Lovers are featured in the Skirball exhibition, says its co-curator Cate Thurston.
As for whether there is an intrinsic connection between Jewish identity and punk is, she says, for visitors to decide. “I think Jews were drawn to its counter-culture and Lenny Kaye has said that being part of an ethnic minority led him to punk’s ‘outsider music’. As curators, we are interested in what punk looked like, how it sounded, how people participated in it, what values it embraced and pushed back against – and what drew people of many different backgrounds to it.”
And half a century after its raw, three-chord sound and ripped clothing exploded on to the streets of New York and London, it is “still alive and evolving,” says Thurston. “The youth movement, the rebellion, the speaking truth to power and the sense of humour – they will go on for ever.”
Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976–86 is at the Skirball Cultural Centre in Los Angeles until September 6
Acme Boy: the Birth of Punk and Anti-Fashion by Phil Strongman is published by Blurring Books
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.