Some art schools had a better class of social misfit, especially when it came to acquiring the ‘many radical ideas, extreme political and philosophical points of view and . . . archly opinionated notions of what was and was not cool’, which Pete Townshend considers their greatest legacy. Hornsey Art College, because of its (Not Quite) London location, cheap rents in its environs, and an active music scene, drew every delinquent who could paint with a stick. Graham Lewis managed to make himself social secretary during Hornsey’s mid-seventies heyday, and used his position to book his two favourite pub-rock bands, the Kilburns and the Feelgoods, on a regular basis. The Feelgoods got their first booking after Lewis had seen them ‘at the Lord Nelson [in Islington]. We turned up and basically it was empty – apart from [these] Teds . . . By the time it was over the whole place was just broken glass. These guys were just slamming glasses on the table. I booked them for sixty quid and paid their petrol from Canvey.’ Leaving aside his own later wiring for sound, Lewis also interacted with future members of The Slits, The Vibrators and the Ants at Hornsey. In fact, the college had its own proto-punk combo at the time, Lipstick. Fronted by Knox in pre-Vibrator mode, Lipstick was a threepiece with obvious influences – Dolls, Velvets etc. – who ‘used to do ‘‘Whips And Furs’’, and ‘‘Sweet Sweet Heart’’ in 1975 in The Elgin . . . [But] I didn’t think we were pub-rock.’ Lipstick were in that classic English tradition ‘of art-school students who get together, and . . . learn their instrument just well enough to play the songs that one of them’s written, [so] they’re more eccentric, therefore more original, [as] technique [often] flattens out the eccentricities.’ Such was the view of American producer, Joe Boyd. The annals of punk support his thesis. For those to whom the art-college route proved too demanding, there were always technical colleges. Also in north London was Kingsway College, which had its own punk credentials. It was here that John Lydon and John Beverley, aka Rotten and Vicious, did a course in ‘boozography’ as that other John (Gray) put it. Rotten admitted to Pistols chroniclers the Vermorels, ‘It’s easy money, isn’t it? [You] get your grant.’ For the fortunate few, these courses sometimes led to a place at a polytechnic or university, and three more years of grants. Pick the right course and it was even possible to rehearse a band as often as attend lectures. Such was the case with Tony James, co-founder of English punk’s ‘great lost band’, London SS. This Brunel student and Mick Jones had met at a Heavy Metal Kids gig at the Fulham Greyhound, signalling the end of Jones’s previous ensemble, the Mott-inspired Violent Luck (who included the luckless Barry Jones, later co-owner of The Roxy, who remembers his namesake at this time as ‘like this Tiny Tim on guitar, in this tiny girl’s shirt that didn’t fit him. He couldn’t play guitar’). Tony James, an equal novice on bass, was just as in love with the rock & roll world. But their search for other like-minded souls proved almost hopeless. Perhaps they were looking for the wrong type. Their first ad for musicians in a March 1975 Melody Maker asked for a: ‘DECADENT MALE VOCALIST. Must be exciting, pretty and passionately committed to the rock & roll lifestyle.’

Extracted from Babylon's Burning by Clinton Heylin, published by Viking at £20. Copyright Clinton Heylin 2007.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist