I Don't Want Nobody Baby

A music born out of the social despair of the seventies. An existential cry. A true working class musical movement, whose influence is still felt today. Encompassing not only music, but also fashion, cinema and drug culture.

No. Not punk rock. That middle class art school pseudo movement, which in reality was a cynical marketing ploy. I’m talking, of course, about Disco.

Yes. Disco. As with almost all of the true working class movements, it was concerned less about ennui and despair, than it was about the escape from it. Derided by the intelligentsia who, in embracing Punk as the real working class music merely showed themselves to be as out of touch as ever. I’m talking about you NME.Punk was spawned in the four bedroom detached houses of the Home Counties, and in the Universities which, then, were for a privileged few.
On a Friday night, in council estates, trailer parks and suburbs in America and Europe, indeed the world, young people were getting dressed ready for a night of sex, dancing and drugs, listening to Earth Wind And Fire and Yvonne Elliman, not The Clash and The Sex Pistols.

Punk did of course spawn some fantastic music. Some of the bands were wonderful. But don’t kid yourself. The true soundtrack of the seventies has a backbeat, soaring strings and a killer chorus. And the dance is The Hustle, not The Pogo.

"I've always loved dance music, it's always been part of me, so I'm always checking out for that stuff." There was a time when one had to take sides - if you liked punk music you couldn't like disco. "Yeah, I know. [Laughs] You must be aware that this caused me great difficulty in the early years, because I loved disco, and I see no shame at all in admiring the Bee Gees and being a Sex Pistol. And, well, the Carpenters, there's another band that I absolutely adored." John Lydon