Which Band Actually Invented Punk Rock? 

The MC5, the Stooges, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols - everyone has a horse in this race. After 30+ years running a punk record store and arguing about it across the counter, here's my actual answer.

This is one of the most-debated questions in music history, and the one I get asked the most at the shop. Customers walk in convinced they already know - and they're usually wrong, or at least missing the bigger picture.

So let me try to do this properly. Not a Wikipedia summary. The version I'd give you if you walked into Headline Records and asked me face to face.

My Answer: MC5 — But With a Big Asterisk

If you put a gun to my head: MC5. Detroit, 1968-1969. Kick Out the Jams was recorded live at the Grande Ballroom on October 30 and 31, 1968, and released by Elektra in February 1969. That record set the foundation. Loud, raw, political, confrontational, and louder than anything else on a major label that year. Everything that came later - the Stooges, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols - was building on something MC5 had already started.

But here's the asterisk, and it's a big one: MC5 were too early. Too political, too bold, and too true?! Nobody cared.

That's the part most "who invented punk?" arguments leave out. MC5 made the record in 1969, and culturally, almost nothing happened with it. It charted at #30 on Billboard, got banned from a few stores for the language, and faded. Same thing happened with the Stooges right after them in 1969 - slightly more accessible because they weren't as overtly political, but still way ahead of any audience that knew what to do with them. Same thing happened in New York with the New York Dolls (1972-73) and the Ramones (formed 1974). All these bands were laying the groundwork, and almost nobody was paying attention.

The Sex Pistols Didn't Invent Punk — They Put It on the Map

Here's the analogy I use at the counter: the Sex Pistols were the Nirvana of punk rock.

Nirvana didn't invent grunge. Mudhoney, Green River, Soundgarden, the Melvins, and a dozen other Pacific Northwest bands had been doing it for years. But Nirvana put grunge on the map. Suddenly the whole world knew the word.

The Sex Pistols did the exact same thing for punk. By the time "Anarchy in the UK" dropped in November 1976 and Never Mind the Bollocks came out in October 1977, punk as a sound and a movement already existed. The Pistols just made the world pay attention. They turned an underground movement into a global phenomenon. That's a different kind of invention - and arguably more important than the original spark, depending on how you look at it.

The Sex Pistols also gave punk the other thing that ended up defining it: the look. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood basically commercialized punk fashion through their SEX boutique on King's Road. The ripped clothes, safety pins, bondage trousers - that wasn't accidental, it was packaged. Fashion became a huge part of the punk scene from that point forward, for better or worse.

What Even IS Punk? (You Have to Define It Before You Can Crown It)

Here's the problem with most "who invented punk?" arguments: people don't agree on what punk actually is. So they end up arguing past each other.

For me, punk has three ingredients, in this order:

1. Attitude. This is the core. Punk is dirty. Punk grabs your balls and squeezes them until you scream and spit your venom. It's "I don't give a fuck," anti-establishment, confrontational, rebellious. Without that attitude, it's not punk. The Sonics had the sound - fast, raw, distorted, all of it - but they didn't have the attitude, which is why people call them garage rock and not punk. You can even argue Little Richard was punk in his way: rebel, crazy, all attitude. But his music was rock'n'roll. So he doesn't count. Attitude alone isn't enough either.

2. Sound. Fast, simple, aggressive, stripped-down. No guitar solos. No prog noodling. Three chords and a sneer. That's the recipe.

3. Look. This came later, mostly thanks to the Pistols / McLaren / Westwood, but it's now part of the package whether you like it or not.

You need all three (or close to all three) for it to actually be punk.

The Most Common Mistake: Mixing Up Proto-Punk, Punk, and Hardcore

This is the thing that drives me crazy when people argue about who "invented" punk. They mix the genres. You cannot do that. They're related but distinct.

Proto-punk is the foundation. Bands that had elements of what would become punk but predated the genre as a defined movement. Death from Detroit is proto-punk - three Black brothers from Detroit who formed in 1971 and recorded "Politicians in My Eyes" / "Keep On Knockin'" in February 1975 on their own Tryangle label, only 500 copies pressed. They were arguably the first all-Black punk-style band, and the world didn't catch up to them for thirty years. The Modern Lovers are proto-punk too. Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" is one of the original templates.

Punk is the actual genre - Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, Damned, Buzzcocks, the Saints, Rocket From the Tombs (whose members went on to form the Dead Boys), Pure Hell. The international scenes too - UK had 999, the Vibrators, the Eaters; Australia had the Saints and Radio Birdman; Spain had Eskorbuto, La Polla, RIP, Parálisis Permanente, Decibelios; France had Komintern Sect. Punk rock was everywhere all over the world.

Hardcore is the next generation - faster, harder, more aggressive. Bad Brains are an all-Black band, often miscategorized as punk because of the surface comparison to Pure Hell, but they're hardcore. Different category entirely.

Get the categories right and the "who invented it" question gets a lot clearer.

The International Truth: Punk Wasn't One Place

The Detroit / NYC / London argument is the standard punk-history conversation, but the real story is bigger. The Saints in Australia released "(I'm) Stranded" in September 1976 — that was the first punk single released outside the US, ahead of any of the UK punk records from the Damned, Pistols, or Clash. Bob Geldof said the three bands that changed rock in the 70s were "the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Saints." The Saints are usually left out of US/UK conversations entirely. That's just one example.

The Spanish punk scene is another. Eskorbuto, La Polla Records, RIP, Parálisis Permanente, Decibelios — those bands are essential and most American punk fans have never heard of them. France had Komintern Sect. Japan had Gism, Gauze, SS to name a few. South Africa, Russia, Sweden, Brazil, Germany, all of it. Punk was a global response to the same conditions, happening in parallel, not just in three cities.

So Who Actually Invented It?

Here's my actual answer, after 30+ years of arguing about this: nobody invented it alone, but if I have to pick one band, MC5 lit the fuse. The Stooges kept it burning. The Ramones built the actual genre template in 1974-76. The Sex Pistols made the world care in 1976-77. Death and Modern Lovers and a hundred others were running parallel experiments at the same time.

The "who invented punk?" question is fun to argue, but it's the wrong question. The right question is: what is punk, and where do you want to start listening? That I can actually help you with.

One More Thing — What Punk Really Means to Me

Here's the truth I've come to after 30+ years of having this argument with customers, friends, bands, and other shop owners: every single person who loves punk rock has their own definition of punk rock. And that's not a bug - that's the whole point.

Beyond the attitude, the sound, and the look, what I really focus on - what I think actually matters - is being open to different ideas, even when you don't agree with them. Opening your mind. Putting your beliefs out front and actually talking about them. Agreeing, disagreeing, defending your take, listening to someone else's. That's part of the process of understanding each other. And sometimes, if you stay open, you reshape your own idea into a better one.

That's what punk is, to me. Not just a sound. Not just an attitude. Not just a look. It's a willingness to argue, to listen, to change your mind, and to keep the conversation going. The bands matter. The records matter. But the conversation matters more.

So tell me I'm wrong about MC5. Tell me the Pistols invented it, or the Ramones, or Death, or some band I haven't even mentioned. I'm here for it. That's the whole point.

Want to Hear It for Yourself?

If it's punk rock, I carry it. MC5, Stooges, Ramones, Sex Pistols, NY Dolls, Death, the Saints, Buzzcocks, Eskorbuto, Komintern Sect, Pure Hell, Bad Brains (hardcore, but you should own it anyway) - pretty much every band mentioned in this post is in the bins right now or available to order. Browse the full vinyl catalog here.

And if you want to go deeper into the history, my books and zines collection has the essential reads: Please Kill Me, American Hardcore, We Got the Neutron Bomb, Fucked Up + Photocopied, plus original 1977 Slash magazines in nearly-new condition while they last.

Come argue about who invented punk with me at the counter. I'll tell you a story.

John at Headline Records, Los Angeles

Below, text by John Sinclair, Minister of Information, White Panthers and MC5 manager. Friday, December 13th 1968, in the first year of Zenta – This text below was published in the gatefold folder of the first MC5 “Kick out the jams” LP

The MC5 is a whole thing. There is no way to get at the music without taking in the whole context of the music too—there is no separation. We say the MC5 is the solution to the problem of separation, because they are so together. The MC5 is totally committed to the revolution, as the revolution is totally committed to driving people out of their separate shells and into each other’s arms.

I’m talking about unity, brothers and sisters, because we have to get it together. We are the solution to the problem, if we will just be that. If we can feel it, LeRoi Jones said, “feeling predicts intelligence.” The MC5 will make you feel it, or leave the room. The MC5 will drive you crazy out of your head into your body. The MC5 is rock and roll. Rock and roll is the music of our bodies, of our whole lives—the resensifier, Rob Tyner calls it. We have to come together, people, “build to a gathering,” or else. Or else you are dead, and gone.

The MC5 will bring you back to your senses from wherever you have been taken to hide. They are bad. Their whole lives are totally given to this music. They are a whole thing. They are a working model of the new paleocybernetic culture in action. There is no separation. They live together to work together, they eat together, fuck together, get high together, walk down the street and through the world together. There is no separation. Just as their music will bring you together like that, if you hear it. If you will live it. And we will make sure you hear it, because we know you need it as bad as we do. We have to have it.

The music is the source and effect of our spirit flesh. The MC5 is the source and effect of the music, just as you are. Just as I am. Just to hear the music and have it be our selves, is what we want. What we need. We are a lonely desperate people, pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition, and we need the music to hold us together. Separation is doom. We are free men, and we demand a free music, a free high energy source that will drive us wild into the streets of America yelling and screaming and tearing down everything that would keep people slaves.

The MC5 is that force. The MC5 is the revolution, in all its applications. There is no separation. Everything is everything. There is no thing to fear. The music will make you strong, as it is strong, and there is no way it can be stopped now. All power to the people! The MC5 is here now for you to hear and see and feel now! Give it up—come together—get down, brothers and sisters, it’s time to testify, and what you have here in your hands is a living testimonial to the absolute power and strength of these men. Go wild! The world is yours! Take it now, and be one with it! Kick out the jams, motherfucker! And stay alive with the MC5!

text taken from: Rock & Roll Dope - Issue 74, March 5-19, 1969 - Fifth Estate Magazine

Thank you