Read the story of straight edge hardcore, a curious clean-living subculture that emerged in reaction to the excesses of punk.
By 1980, punk rock, one of the most innovative and confrontational music and art movements of the modern era, was careering towards the “No Future” refrain from the Sex Pistols’ anthem ‘God Save the Queen’. Pistol’s bassist Sid Vicious had died, possibly committing suicide, and a year later the Germs’ Darby Crash followed him. The romantic “live fast, die young” mantra was increasingly becoming a grim reality, as many punks piled hard drugs on top of abundant booze, glue, and weed.
