Crasses et Voluptés

Legs McNeil: Glitter rock was about decadence: platform shoes and boys in eye makeup, David Bowie and androgyny. Rich rock stars living their lives from Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories, you know, Sally Bowles hanging out with drag queens, drinking champagne for breakfast and having menages a trois, while the Nazis slowly grab the power. Decadence seemed so lame, because decay suggests that there's still some time, and there wasn't any more time. Things had collapsed. We had lost the war in Viet Nam, to a bunch of guys with sticks in black pajamas. Vice President Spiro Agnew had to resign because he was caught taking bribes in the White House. And Richard Nixon had the Watergate burglars break into the Democratic national headquarters because he was so paranoid. I mean fucking Nixon had won the election by the biggest landslide in history. He was just insane. And then he had to resign. And then President Gerald Ford told New York City to drop dead when it went bankrupt. I mean, New York City declared bankruptcy! Compared to what was going on in the real world, decadence seemed kind of quaint. So punk wasn't about decay, punk was about the apocalypse. Punk was about annihilation. Nothing worked, so let's get right to Armageddon. You know, if you found out the missiles were on their way, you'd probably start saying what you always wanted to, you'd probably turn to your wife and say, "You know, I always thought you were a fat cow." And that's how we behaved.