Jon Savage

In his previous landmark book on youth culture and teen angst, the award-winning England's Dreaming, Jon Savage presented the "definitive history of the English punk movement" (The New York Times). Now, in Teenage, he explores the secret prehistory of a phenomenon we thought we knew, in a monumental work of cultural investigative reporting. Beginning in 1875 and ending in 1945, when the term "teenage" became an integral part of popular culture, Savage draws widely on film, music, literature high and low, fashion, politics, and art and fuses popular culture and social history into a stunning chronicle of modern life.

A history of pop music from its underground origins through its low and high art phases to its current omni-presence. Includes fiction, reportage, fashion, art and fantasy as filtered through pop music.

Published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the band's formation, Johan Kugelberg and Jon Savage draw on an unprecedented wealth of material--from McLaren's handwritten letters to never-before-seen photographs of the band, and a range of ephemera from concert tickets to fanzines--to produce a comprehensive visual history of the Sex Pistols.

1966 was a year of noise and tumult, of brightly colored patterns clashing with black and white politics, of furious forward motion and an outraged, awakening reaction. There remains an urgency that marks the music and movies of that year, counterbalanced by traces of loss, disconnection and deep melancholy.