After the anarchy

If the commercial legacy of punk rock proves anything, it's that an idea is far more interesting than the person who has it. In the slew of press surrounding the jubilee, the Sex Pistols and the product Johnny Rotten and Virgin Records would like us to consume in honour of the band's impact, the tedious self-aggrandisement has been sadly predictable. According to John Lydon and Malcolm McLaren, their conflicting genius was, and remains, the whole story. What their audience did with the information contained within "God Save the Queen", or the inspiration received watching Rotten subvert the sex-god role of the rock frontman, is irrelevant. So much for breaking down the barriers 'twixt star and audience.

This is especially ironic where John Lydon is concerned. Because it was Lydon, through the formation of Public Image Ltd and their dramatic rejection of traditional rock, who played a major part in the best thing to emerge from punk. This thing lasted, in essence, for just three glorious years, from 1978 to 1981. It was created by women and art students and rude boys and New York intellectuals and rastas black and white and bookworms and disillusioned mods and squatters and disco bunnies and lonely boys playing one-finger synths in their bedrooms. It invented indie and acid house and understood hip hop before anyone else.

It's finally getting its just deserts, courtesy of the movie 24 Hour Party People, which celebrates the music of the era, and the success of bands such as Gorillaz, Belle & Sebastian, the Strokes, the Streets and Le Tigre, who directly take musical and attitudinal inspiration from the time. It was pop's greatest period – yes, including the Sixties, if for no other reason than our obsession with the Beatles and all that continues to stultify Britain's pop creativity through inferiority complex. For want of a better phrase, and in respect of just how broad yet undoubtedly connected it all was, we call it post-punk.

Now, the problem with this post-punk business is defining the terms. I figured I'd start with a good old-fashioned list of bands, but gave up once I got to hero No 56 – there were just so many unique and courageous noises from so many differing perspectives. They were all linked by one fact: that it was not the Sex Pistols' music, but Johnny Rotten's asexual, exasperated, uncompromised stance that let you know that rock, as an artform, was all used up, and that something less boorish and macho and celebrity-based was necessary. In order to mark out new territory in image and attitude, a rush of anti-cock-rock musical influences were courageously co-opted. Lydon's PiL used dub, Krautrock and disco; the Specials, ska and easy listening; Magazine used Roxy Music and John Barry soundtracks, the Slits looked to reggae and feminist ranting; while Dr Feelgood and Joy Division... well, some bands are just no one but themselves.

But once you'd realised that punk rock was Sham 69 and blokes in big boots who found women, gays and black people a bit scary and alien, you embraced it all, from the tradition with a twist of the Jam and Costello to the scratchy DIY anti-pop of Wire and the Pop Group. And you knew that if you took time out to blink you'd miss something not just good but important.

So why was post-punk so successful and why did it end so abruptly? While acknowledging the vital influence of Sixties artists such as the Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart and Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, and later cult renegades Pere Ubu, Patti Smith, Suicide, Can, Kraftwerk, Eno and, of course, Bowie, a reasonable place to start is with the release of "Hong Kong Garden" in August 1978, the first single by Siouxsie and the Banshees. What made the record so striking was not the slightly daft juggling of various Oriental stereotypes, but the fact that Siouxsie and co had been expected, after their association with the early Pistols, to make a thrashy punk standard. Instead, we got tribal drums, xylophones, gongs and the weirdest guitar sound we'd ever heard, with John McKay unleashing a noise somewhere between banjo and bell, flailing away at some kind of discordant funk. Mental. Fantastic. But, crucially, this new noise was on Polydor, a big, scary major label. It went Top 10 and made a dark, clanging noise on Top of the Pops.

From then on, the floodgates were opened. PiL released the even weirder "Public Image", also a hit, and went on to create Metal Box, post-punk's artistic peak, a terrifying mash-up of dub, art-rock, disco, psychedelia and a defiant, damaged young man at the very end of his tether. With jokes. And it came in the shape of three 12-inch singles in a tin. It was, "God Save the Queen" apart, the most exciting purchase of my life and, although it wasn't a huge-seller, everyone who bought it formed a band. It was a life-changer.

Then there was the deluge of new and beautiful indie labels – Rough Trade, Cherry Red, Mute, 4AD, Postcard, Fast. Sticking with the UK for a moment, it seemed that every city had its own sudden wellspring of bands, often based around an indie label, all with a particular vibe. Sheffield (Cabaret Voltaire, Human League) was arch and electronic. Leeds (Gang Of Four, Mekons), political and famously "bleak and industrial". Manchester was just on a differ- ent planet: the spooked yet completely exhilarating sadness and horror of Joy Division; the speed-freaked trailer trash art of the Fall; the parched disco of A Certain Ratio; the grand mystery movie misanthropy of Howard Devoto's Magazine.

This new-found strength of provincial voices, ranging from Edinburgh to Coventry to Bristol, had one of post-punk's most profound effects – the end of London as the creative centre of British pop culture. From then to now, our capital has been nothing more than a financial clearing house for British music. Has there been one single decent London rock band since the Clash split?

But, by the beginning of 1982, this classic period of British music was all but over. When musicians are constantly touring and recording and suddenly realise they're not making a penny, one of two things inevitably happens – they give in, or they sell out. Between 1981 and 1983, indie bands signed to majors and started disowning their early edge and talking about "changing the system from within". The stylists, producers and expensive studios entered the picture, and bands like the Gang Of Four, the Associates and Echo And the Bunnymen lost their way. The Jam and the Specials split up because of the pressure of commercial success, while Magazine, Wire and the Slits split because of the pressure of having no commercial success. Again, Lydon caught the mood perfectly in 1983 when singing "I'm crossing over to the other side.../Big business is very wise/I'm inside free enterprise!" on his minor hit single "This Is Not A Love Song", a bloated parody of PiL's sound.

The Human League, Joy Division/New Order, the Fall and Dexy's Midnight Runners all adapted or survived the glossy, bland, production-led new Eighties Thatcherite pop realities in their various ways, but the initial surge of art and agitation, the celebration of difference, the feeling of a shared experience between bands and audience, was over. Still, great ideas don't die – they just wait for their turn to come back around. Between 1 and 4 June a four-day festival called Future Rock & Roll is being held at London's Institute Of Contemporary Arts. It's accompanied by a compilation that reveals a bunch of UK and US bands who, when they're not doing Sixties garage thrash, are so in hock to post-punk it hurts. But what delicious pain there is in the funny, irresponsible, abstract, irritant noises of Electrelane, mclusky, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the fabulous femme rebellion of one Joan of Ass.

Of course, you could miss out on the ICA and spend your hard-earned on the Pistols at Crystal Palace. It was, after all, all about the fat bloke with the comedy hair playing stadium rock. And if you believe that, then you deserve the punk panto you'll undoubtedly get.