As No Names is set in the punk scene of the late ‘70s, naturally it has its own built-in a playlist. The novel tells the story of a band called the No Names that blazed across the underground scene for less than a year. Their story intertwines with the story of a teenager who comes across the group’s only album in his mother’s attic in the ‘90s and becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to them. A young and famous Danish classical pianist becomes a fan of the group, so the list has more than punk on it. The songs missing from the list are, of course, those of the fictional No Names!
My own ties to punk are somewhat tenuous. When I was still a teenager, in the summer of ’77, I was traveling alone through Europe for three months before heading to Denmark to study for nine months. While in London, I met up with an Italian girl who was into the new music. I, a Joni-Mitchell-Leonard-Cohen-Bob-Dylan kind of guy, had heard of, but knew nothing about, punk. The Italian girl wasn’t punk, either, but she was cool, way cooler than me, and dug the music, and for some inexplicable reason also dug me. She was the kind of girl who could wear a vintage ivory satin slip in public and get away with it. The slip, along with platform shoes and a sun hat got her a lot of attention on the street. I, on the other hand, was a latecomer to hippie chic, wearing overalls with no shirt underneath and probably clogs. Regardless of our get-ups, the Italian girl took me to see now-iconic punk shows by Siouxsie and the Banshees (we traveled to York for that one!), the Buzzcocks, and the Boys, among others. I was shell-shocked by what I heard but also loved it.
When I returned to the States, I went to CBGB’s in the Village a couple of times. I saw an amazing Ramones show there. I saw Patti Smith at Cornell, in my hometown Ithaca. But soon I met a guy who was training to be an opera singer. We became lovers and started living together. He hated punk. Once, he became so enraged at hearing Patti Smith’s Horses, that he grabbed the LP off the turntable while it was playing, scratching it beyond repair. If I dredge up my repressed memories, he also destroyed Blondie’s Parallel Lines because Debbie Harry was shown on the cover with a tourniquet on her upper arm, and my partner’s brother was a heroin addict. I guess it reminded him of this family tragedy. That was, sadly and pathetically, pretty much the end of my punk days. Many years after the relationship ended, I did get into a Fugazi phase briefly.
The list:
Diana Ross and the Supremes, “I Hear a Symphony”:
Not exactly punk! But when the No Names’ lead, Mike, was a young boy, he thought the Supremes’ hit, “I Hear a Symphony,” was magical when he would hear it on his older sister’s transistor radio: “Whenever you are near, I hear a symphony…a tender rhapsody of love…” He didn’t know what a symphony was, or what rhapsody meant, but those words and the melody briefly transformed his oil refinery neighborhood into heaven. When he saw the Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show, he thought, as did I, that Diana Ross was the most beautiful woman in the world. Years later, after the No Names started, he remarked wryly that maybe he longed to be the punk guy version of Diana Ross.
Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water”:
In the mid-‘70s, before the No Names formed, when Mike and Pete first met, they compared record collections. Mike concluded that his was the cooler of the two because he had heavy metal, like Deep Purple. I chose “Smoke on the Water” not only because everyone knows the insistent beat and the refrain (“Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky”) but because it is explicitly a tribute to other rock musicians playing at Montreaux. Incidentally, at about the same time as Mike and Pete met, I went to my first rock concert, and it was Deep Purple, at Schoellkopf Stadium, in Ithaca.
Jimi Hendrix, “May This Be Love”:
As he has been for just about any teenager into rock, Hendrix was a god for Mike and Pete. Not long after they got guitars, it was the two of them playing “May This Be Love” in an empty swim hall they’d snuck into to use as a practice space, that they realized they had to form a band. It’s a mellow song, but for the second verse Mike spontaneously turned it loud and violent. It is also a profound love song: “I’ve got nothing to lose/ Long as I have you/Waterfall…”
The Ramones, “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement”:
When Pete brought home the Ramones self-titled album from the Vinyl Heart record store, it changed him as well as Mike musically and emotionally. Lying on the twin beds in Pete’s room listening to it, they understood everything they wanted from music and from life. This was their first real exposure to punk. Some months later, they were listening to this particular song, “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement,” in Mike’s basement room. The song suggests a horror story, and they were feeling pretty scared about their future, or the lack thereof: “Hey, daddy-o/I don’t wanna go down to the basement/There’s somethin’ down there/I don’t wanna go…” The boys played The Ramones so much the needle wore through the vinyl.
Iggy Pop, “Dum Dum Boys”:
The No Names loved Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. They couldn’t believe he made such an amazing and comprehensive album with only eight songs. “Dum Dum Boys” is about boys with failed lives, or who are failing, which is a recurring theme in No Names. The song could have been their anthem: “Now I’m looking for/The dumb dumb boys/The walls close in and/I need some noise.”
The Boys, “I Don’t Care”:
Straight-up punk. Almost Ur punk. This two-minute and something second song has the attitude and hard-hitting chords that fixated the No Names and transfixed me when, as a lad, I heard them at the Marquee Club in London. The lyrics might as well have been a credo for the No Names: “I don’t care about Rock ‘n’ Roll/I don’t care about Beat or Soul/I never had a hope, never had a chance…”
Blondie, “Fan Mail”:
The No Names boys liked Blondie for the same reason I do. The smooth blend of punk and New Wave goes down well between listening to tracks of hard-edged punk. The four of them all had crushes on Debbie Harry. Who doesn’t? The lyrics of “Fan Mail” hit home for Mike and Pete when they were at a low point: “I nearly fell, I feel like a lowlife in hell…”
Carly Simon, “You’re So Vain”:
The No Names play a crazy-loud-and-fast, in your face, punk cover of this brand of singer-songwriter pop that is the antithesis of what they are all about, and what punk is all about. “You probably think this song is about you…” Right.
Electric Light Orchestra, “Livin’ Thing”:
This catchy, light pop, “orchestral” song is everything the No Names hate. It is playing on the sound system of a crowded bar as the owners are trying to seduce Mike and Pete into making porn. The song distracts Mike. It is impossible for him to hear any music, whether terrible or great, and not focus on it. Paradoxically, the anodyne song speaks obliquely to the situation they are in: “It’s a livin’ thing/It’s a terrible thing to lose…”
Peter Serkin, “Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata”:
This long (over forty minutes) and fiendishly difficult piece, became the young Danish pianist Daniel Beck’ signature piece and what propelled him as a teenager to world fame. The mathematics mixed with emotion of this piece are mindboggling and sublime. Serkin’s insanely precise yet expressive interpretation is close to how I imagine my character Daniel plays it.
David Bowie, “Starman”:
Long after the No Names ended, Bowie’s music haunts Mike. In particular, “Starman,” a song of hope and salvation, takes a hold of him. He plays it for himself on an acoustic guitar: “There’s a Starman waiting in the sky/He’d like to come and meet us/But he thinks he’d blow our minds…” The song is Bowie at his most accessible and emotional.
Fugazi, “Waiting Room”:
In the ‘90s, Mike attends a Fugazi show at a club he’d played at in the ‘70s. He is impressed. He loves the athleticism and energy of their all-out punk performance. It also has depth. He feels they are more artistic, more intellectual, than the No Names ever were. He doesn’t want to go back to having a band, but he thinks Fugazi is what he wishes the No Names had become. The theme of the song resonates with what he believes are wasted years: “I am a patient boy/I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait/My time, water down a drain…”
