The release of Spiral Scratch, Buzzcocks’ debut EP, on 29 January 1977 was a watershed event in British punk rock and independent music. Recorded and mixed in about five hours at Manchester’s Indigo Sound Studios, the four-song EP epitomized early punk’s do-it-yourself (DIY) spirit. Friends and family of Buzzcocks members helped finance the initial pressing of 1,000 copies, which quickly sold out as songs like “Boredom” captivated punk fanatics and fanzines.
Aspiring bands and record labels took note, and Britain’s DIY scene was soon awash with independently recorded and marketed record releases. It was punk’s first collective blow against the corporatized music industry of the late 1970s.
Buzzcocks’ original bassist, later guitarist, Steve Diggle is justifiably proud of his band’s role in spearheading the punk movement. His new autobiography, Autonomy: Portrait of a Buzzcock, has all the fury and filth of a tell-all punk memoir. Diggle’s book also provides a wider account of the punk scene from a first-hand observer with a keen eye for drama and detail.
Buzzcocks never had a Sid Vicious or Darby Crash figure to mess things up on a colossal level. So while Autonomy lacks the explosiveness of, say, Glen Matlock’s 1990 autobiography, I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, Autonomy provides a valuable account of the inner workings of Buzzcocks – a longer-lasting and more survivable punk rock institution.
Spiral Scratch was both the debut and swan song of Buzzcocks’ original lead singer, Howard Devoto. Satisfied enough to have made one record, he unceremoniously quit the band. As it turned out, Devoto’s ambitions weren’t quite so modest. He soon formed Magazine, a band that – along with the Durutti Column, the Fall, and Joy Division – would spearhead the Manchester post-punk scene Buzzcocks helped inspire.
Devoto’s departure forced a Buzzcocks revamp that installed Pete Shelley as lead singer, moved Steve Diggle from bass to guitar (his first instrument), and brought in a new (temporary) bassist who was less “Sid Vicious” than The Office‘s David Brent character on steroids. Devoto’s angry outsider persona on tunes like “Breakdown” and “Time’s Up” gave way to Shelley’s lovelorn misfit on hits like “What Do I Get?” and “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve).”
This was punk rock the mainstream could reason with at a time when the Sex Pistols were bent on “Anarchy in the UK”, and the Clash were calling for “a riot of [their] own”. Buzzcocks gigged with both the Sex Pistols and the Clash, holding their own against spitting yobs and industry weasels looking to defang punk to boost profitability. When they belatedly signed with a major label (they couldn’t keep stuffing their own record sleeves forever), Buzzcocks chose United Artists, the one label affording them some measure of creative freedom.
Steve Diggle relates all this with the enthusiasm of a true believer in the punk spirit. “When you boil it down, punk rock was just another term for freedom,” he claims at one point. Autonomy is a refreshing take in an era, nearly a half-century later, when punk tends to be (over)analyzed in terms of its political and social consequences.
Buzzcocks serve as a reminder of the link between punk and earlier rock ‘n’ roll when melody and simplicity ruled the form. The group’s first two albums, 1978’s Another Music in a Different Kitchen and Love Bites, were like the Beatles Please Please Me (1963) or the Who’s “My Generation” (1965), updated for the new wave set. Songs such as “You Tear Me Up”, “I Don’t Mind”, “Ever Fallen in Love,”, and Steve Diggle’s own “Harmony in My Head” (a highlight of the acclaimed 1979 compilation, Singles Going Steady) had the conciseness and craftsmanship of great pop.
At the same time, they reflected youthful angst in ways that resonated throughout later decades. Listen to any early album by Nirvana, Green Day, Offspring, Blink 182, or Arctic Monkeys and there is more obvious Buzzcocks influence than the Clash, the Damned, the Sex Pistols, Wire, or any other seminal British punk band.
Throughout Autonomy, Steve Diggle maintains focus on Buzzcocks’ peak early years, when he and Pete Shelley were “the one unifying constant” in the group’s modest fame and fortune. Inevitably, tensions erupted within the ranks, causing a split that would leave Diggle musically adrift for most of the 1980s.
A reunion during the 1990s—when Buzzcocks were the acknowledged forebears of such “Madchester” icons as Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, James, and Oasis—led to new recordings and a two-decade legacy romp prior to Pete Shelley’s untimely death in 2018. Diggle summarizes this later history concisely in a handful of later chapters, a solid creative choice that prevents Autonomy from feeling overlong or self-serving.
Diggle’s natural gift for storytelling is evident throughout Autonomy: Portrait of a Buzzcock. Although he doesn’t shy away from sordid details – his struggles with addiction and regrettable behaviour in domestic life – he keeps the narrative lively with funny anecdotes from the world of punk. His tribute to Pete Shelley’s quiet genius is poignant and unpretentious. Beyond any interest readers may have in Buzzcocks themselves, Steve Diggle’s Autonomy provides stimulating insight into the bedraggled ups and downs of a hard-working rock band.