Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness

When punk first broke in the UK in 1976, music journalist John Ingham was on hand to document the very heart of the scene. Struck by the music, fashion and sheer iconoclasm of a little-known outfit called the Sex Pistols, Ingham conducted the first interview with the band, partied with its members and even bailed Sid Vicious out of jail; he also witnessed and documented the group''s evolution at legendary gigs shared with other pioneering punk bands in their earliest days, including the Damned, the Clash, Subway Sect and more. The result is Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness, a revelatory collection of photography and fly-on-the-wall reportage showcasing the punk movement from its most raucous, bewildering beginnings. Containing the only color photos from British punk s first wave alongside Ingham s inimitable prose, this volume constitutes a rare from-the-trenches report on the UK pun

In April 1976, John Ingham saw The Sex Pistols and knew it was the future. A week later he conducted their first interview. A writer for the British music paper Sounds , he spent the rest of the year chronicling the emergence of the Punk movement, including the first appearances of The Clash, The Buzzcocks and The Damned. Noting that much of it was going un-photographed, he started taking a camera to concerts and chronicled the final months of 1976 as Punk took over Britain. His writing has appeared in The Observer, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, NME, CREEM, Mojo, Uncut, The Word, and a number of anthologies.