Punk Revolution!: An Oral History of Punk Rock Politics and Activism
By (Author) John Malkin
Foreword by Klee Benally
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
4th September 2025
7th August 2025
United States
General
Non Fiction
Popular music
Social discrimination and social justice
History of music
Music reviews and criticism
Paperback
384
Width 152mm, Height 229mm
The most wide-ranging and provocative look at punk rock as a social change movement told through firsthand accounts
Punk rock has been on the front lines of activism since exploding on the scene in the 1970s. Punk Revolution! is a reflection on this cultural movement over the past 45 years, told through firsthand accounts of hundreds of musicians and activists.
John Malkin brings together a wide cast of characters that include major punk and postpunk musicians (members of The Ramones, Bad Religion, Crass, Dead Kennedys, Patti Smiths band, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Iggy & the Stooges, Talking Heads, The Slits, and more), important figures influenced by the punk movement (Noam Chomsky, Kalle Lasn, Keith McHenry, Marjane Satrapi, Laurie Anderson, and Kenneth Jarecke), and underground punk voices. These insightful, radical, and often funny conversations travel through rebellions against Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin, to punk activism that has taken on nuclear war, neoliberalism, modern warfare, patriarchy, white supremacy, the police, settler colonialism, the climate crisis, and more.
The result is a fresh and unique, global history of punk throughout the ages.
John Malkin is a musician, activist, filmmaker, photographer, and radio & print journalist. He is the author of Sounds of Freedom: Musicians on Social Change & Spirituality, and his interviews and writings have been published in many magazines including Punk Planet, Z Magazine, In These Times, Ode, Spirituality & Health, Shambhala Sun, Tricycle, The Sun and Sojourners. He lives in Santa Cruz, California with his wife and son.