The Clash Live - Le Royale Cinema, Le Mans, France

However, the one that remains etched in the memories of the witnesses is that of The Clash, April 26, 1977, marking the very first French date of their tour. Still little known to the general public, the group performs in front of a few hundred dazzled and fascinated people. As Dominique Laboubée explains: "This is the first punk band we saw so close. Afterwards, many wanted to set up a group 

"It must be said that the sound, the staging, the commitment and the energy are completely new in the musical landscape of the time then dominated by the folk groups, blues-rock or variety that we listen to sitting on the floor or on armchairs. These first concerts attract a few dozen 

Faced with this new musical phenomenon, the local media, and especially the regional press, alternate between disinterest, curiosity and enthusiasm. As such, the vocabulary used to define this music oscillates between "punk-rock", "new wave", "music of today", even "Pop music". The Paris-Normandy newspaper thus publishes several passionate articles. Regarding the arrival of The Clash, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads in April 1977 in Le Havre and Rouen, we read:

"The so-called" punk "groups are growing like mushrooms in the American and English streets (there are also in France). The rock of the 70s is finally here, and if this music is sometimes awkward, sometimes opportunistic or without much motivation, something is happening." 

Clash's presentation marks the journalist's interest in the group: "The Clash come from London, they are one of the most exciting of these groups of clubs where lukewarm beer is drunk […]. The Clash write nasty songs, which they send without laughing. These are kids who love rock "

Society: The punks

To think yourself ugly and be proud of it…

Rarely, in any case, has a new phenomenon of youth been subjected as much as the punk movement to the crossfire of criticism, alarms and unpleasant epithets from adults all the more sententious because they claimed to be objective. Thus, in the best pages of the capital one could read headlines or phrases of this kind: “Attention, the punks are coming… The spite and the depression, the disgust and the contempt, there is all that among these degenerate by-products of the rockers and the hippies.” (Le Matin de Paris); “…fanatical nihilists, derisory stars.” (Le Point); “To signify their wisdom and their contempt, they pierce their cheeks with safety pins (…) adopt sullen, sulky, accursed poses.” (Le Monde); “…livid complexions, bloody mouths, stiff gestures, empty eyes…” (Le Nouvel Observateur).

Everyone talks about punk or has heard of it. But who really knows what exactly is covered by this phenomenon which affects young people from 15 to 20 years old and seems more concerned with imposing itself than defining itself? Conceived in the United States in the mid-60s, born in England at the same time as the crisis, the punk movement landed surreptitiously in France during last winter. It has especially, noblesse oblige, taken hold in Paris and its periphery and is developing around bands who claim to reinvent rock in a wild and thunderous style.

For its faithful, punk comes from rock and always returns to it. Fifteen years after Beatlemania, “punk mania” is crystallising, also, around English bands named Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned or Dictators. Their French imitators have called themselves, with all simplicity, Asphalt Jungle, Métal Urbain, Angel Face, Stinky Toys or Starshooter.

But, in the opinion of those who have attended punk rock concerts, it is not on stage that the phenomenon explodes but rather in the hall, where hundreds, even thousands of young zombies seem to commune in ugliness, boredom and provocation which they then take into the street.

An amiable catalogue to which should be added the judgment of Dr. Claude Olievenstein who sees in these “degenerate children of ultra-decay (…) a predisposition to all fascist adventures.” As for Yvan Audouard, recently confronted on Antenne 2 with the punk phenomenon, he promised to add a chapter to his “Dictionary of stupidity.”