Even Pete Shelley Doesn't Know How Buzzcocks Are Still Around

It's now incredibly 40 years since Manchester outfit Buzzcocks made their first tentative forays into public life, having embraced the nascent form of punk they'd discovered upon seeing Sex Pistols tear apart a London show they'd travelled down specifically to catch.

But musically Buzzcocks stood apart from the bands who would become contemporaries at the punk vanguard. Their early stream of fantastic singles highlighted Buzzcocks' latent pop sensibilities, all bristling guitars, powerful melodies and oft-acerbic lyrics which veered towards personal rather than societal politics. Tunes such as Orgasm Addict, What Do I Get? and Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) have stood the test of time wonderfully, not that frontman Pete Shelley can shed any light on how or why.

"If you compressed it all into a 90-minute film then it would seem that there was always a lot happening, but there were huge tracts of boredom as well."

"I don't know, if I knew that I could bottle it and sell it," he laughs. "The songs were exciting then and they're still exciting to play now otherwise we wouldn't bother. I grew up in the '60s and on the radio in those days there was an incredible amount of pop music, so I suppose I was steeped in the three-minute tradition. Everything happened so fast, we were putting out a single every six to eight weeks so it was only afterwards — it would have been about 1979 — that they released."

That initial burst of punk music in the mid-'70s seem to exist entirely 'in the now', and even Shelley seems perplexed how his band are still functioning four decades on. "It does sneak up on you. I think if anyone had seen us at the beginning they wouldn't have thought that we'd last the hour," he chuckles. "It was an exciting time though, but probably not how people imagine: if you compressed it all into a 90-minute film then it would seem that there was always a lot happening, but there were huge tracts of boredom as well. As there is in every human endeavour in our lives."

Shelley struggles to pinpoint a specific highlight from amongst Buzzcocks' 40-year adventure, although he singles out 2014's ninth long-player The Way for acclaim before admitting that the band's recording future remains unclear. "I suppose all of it [is a highlight] really, even the times when things aren't going well," he reflects. "It's really hard to pick just one period because it encapsulates lots of things, but we enjoyed making the new album — that was good. We're still calling it the new album even though it's a few years now. It came together really easily given we hadn't recorded anything for quite a long time. Then we thought, 'Alright then we'll give this crowdfunding thing a go,' and it went really well!

"There's no plans to do anything soon, but who knows? About six months before [we made The Way] I would have said, 'No, I don't think we'll make another album,' but then it all came together."