Pete Shelley : The John Robb interview (2010)

The genius of Pete Shelley is celebrated in this 2010 interview with John Robb where the late and great Buzzcock talks about growing up in Leigh, the art rock and art glam of the seventies that was such a big influence on him. Discovering the Sex Pistols whilst reading a live review of the band in Sounds. How that interview sparked a legendary trip to London with Howard Devoto and Richard Boon to see the early Sex Pistols and meet Malcom McLaren and in turn how that sparked them to put Buzzcocks together. He described how they smuggled the college tape recorder down to London with them to record the Sex Pistols so they could work out what a punk rock band actually sounded like because they had just formed one and didn’t know yet!

He then goes on to describe the famous two Sex Pistols gigs in Manchester that changed the music, cultural and eventually whole of the city fabric. The gigs were legendary and very much in the spirit of punk rock DIY which  Buzzcocks pioneered and was very much part of their debut release – the Jan 1977 released Spiral Scratch EP.

He then talks about Spiral Scratch itself and how releasing your own record accidentally sparked post punk DIY revolution.

then we talk about Howard leaving and Buzzcocks brilliant career that saw them create some of the greatest pop records ever in the U.K. whilst at the time operating within an art punk parameter. He talks about the art of songwriting, his songs and the people around him in the brilliant interview – sorry about some of the sound quality – the technology available for recording conversations was not as good then as it is now. Pete is one of the great British song writers and Buzzcocks were like a art movement of their own who changed the fabric of a whole city and sparked Manchester into action.