The Buzzcocks

SHEILA ROCK (B. 1952)
The Buzzcocks
signed and numbered '1/30' in ink (reverse)
silver gelatin
20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
this is number 1 from an edition of 30
this work is sold unframed and unmatted

Sheila Rock caught the Buzzcocks against a peeling wall in November 1977, the four Manchester musicians in button-badge jackets, overcoats, and new-wave hair. The sitting falls a few months out from the March 1978 debut Another Music in a Different Kitchen, the record that pushed the Buzzcocks to the front of the first-wave punk vocabulary alongside the Clash and the Sex Pistols. Rock had been self-funding her way through the London punk scene since 1976, embedded closely with the bands that would define the punk movement well before they hit the spotlight. The photograph was later selected for her anthology Punk+ (First Third Books, 2013), the published distillation of her 1976–1980 London archive and one of the primary visual records of the scene the Buzzcocks helped shape from Manchester rather than from the capital itself.