Stay ConnectedFrom the Sex Pistols to The Raincoats, the Ramones to the New York Dolls, the punk movement’s impact on society is still being felt today. Host Richard Smith interviews the outsiders and misfits who drove this cultural revolution to discover what inspired them and what shaped their careers.
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Copyright: © Richard Smith
Punk changed more than music.
It changed the way identity could be constructed, performed, and seen.
In Episode 6 of Voices of Protest, Season 2 of Destroy! The Influence of Punk, we explore how punk reshaped identity through image — and how the refusal to conform evolved into an extraordinary period of visual self-invention.
Clothes, hair, makeup, magazines, and photography became tools through which people could reject the identities they had inherited and construct new ones.
Image was no longer simply decoration.
It could be authorship.
Featuring:
– Terry Jones, founder of i-D, left his position as art director at British Vogue and turned his attention towards the identities emerging from punk, post-punk, club culture, and the street. What began as a hand-stapled magazine became one of the most influential fashion and style publications in the world — and a platform for successive generations of creative talent.
– Nick Knight, image-maker and founder of SHOWstudio, whose work with designers and artists including Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Björk, and Lady Gaga has continually questioned the conventions of fashion photography, beauty, and representation.
– With contributions from Spizz, Alex McDowell, and Peter Saville.
Knight was himself one of the young talents whose work was championed by Jones and i-D.
That relationship sits at the centre of “The Image in Question.”
One generation creates a space.
Another uses that space to create something new.
Together, Jones and Knight discuss punk, fashion, identity, beauty, subculture, collaboration, experimentation, technology, creativity, and the continual urge to look beyond what already exists.
As punk’s visual rebellion entered fashion, publishing, and eventually the mainstream, another question emerged:
What happens when an image created as an act of refusal becomes an image everyone wants to copy?
Voices of Protest, Season 2 of Destroy! The Influence of Punk, explores the ideas, images, and acts of resistance that continue to shape culture.
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Visit destroypunkpodcast.com to learn more.
Destroy! is a BRB Studios production berightbackstudios.com
#voicesofprotest #destroy #punk #fashion #identity
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[Audio Update: We recently detected a brief audio glitch which we fixed on August 22, 2026. If you still hear the glitch or still have any audio issues with this episode, we suggest you delete the episode from your app and play or download it again. Alternatively, listen on another platform or logon through your account in a web browser. Thank you for listening.]
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Punk became a visual system built for reproduction and circulation. This episode explores how its graphic language evolved into a shared tool for dissent. Record sleeves, posters, fanzines, typography, collage, and appropriated imagery created a visual vocabulary that could be copied, altered, and circulated far beyond its original context, and authorship became less important than transmission.
FEATURING: Russ Bestley of the Punk Scholars Network; Andrew Krivine, collector and author of Torn Apart; and graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook.
Together, they explore DIY culture, the relationship between music and graphics, the disruption of established symbols, design as a political act, and why asking “why?” may be the most important thing a designer can do. Voices of Protest, Season 2 of Destroy! The Influence of Punk reframes punk through its visual logic and asks how a language born from disruption became a tool for protest across borders, movements, and institutions.
With contributions from Peter Saville, Malcolm Garrett, Red Saunders, Terry Jones, and Steve Ignorant. Archive excerpts include Vaughan Oliver, Malcolm McLaren, Jamie Reid, John Lydon, Mark Perry, Brass Tacks, and The Great Rock-n-Roll Swindle.
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Visit destroypunkpodcast.com to learn more.
Destroy! is a BRB Studios production berightbackstudios.com
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What happens when people stop performing the roles they’ve been assigned? Step outside the social guardrails. Take exception to the rules.
In E4, we look at the power of refusal: the women making noise before they were invited in, artists rejecting respectability in favor of disruption, writers recovering the voices left out of official histories, and outsiders turning noncompliance into culture.
Voices of Protest, Season 2 of Destroy! The Influence of Punk explores how punk’s real force was not just rebellion, but the courage to show up differently, louder, messier, disrupt the script, and leave the gatekeepers scrambling.
Featuring:
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Destroy! is a BRB Studios production berightbackstudios.com
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How does language operate under pressure? Rather than focusing on what is said, this episode looks at how speech is shaped, managed, or displaced when legitimacy is controlled.
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From institutional governance to cultural practice, expression is rarely banned outright. It is formatted, filtered, or redirected.
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Some voices move within those systems. Others persist outside them. Voices of Protest, Season 2 of Destroy! examines that struggle over expression.
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Featuring:
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Aja Monet, the Grammy-nominated surrealist blues poet, organizer, and author of “when the poems do what they do,” whose new album “the color of rain” continues her exploration of resistance, grief, jazz, and collective liberation.
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Denise Fahmy, founder of Freedom in the Arts and a leading advocate for artistic freedom and the protection of cultural expression under political pressure.
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Destroy! is a BRB Studios production berightbackstudios.com
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What happens when protest enters the system it opposes? This episode follows the collision between urgency and corporate control, where visibility comes with conditions and expression meets ownership. Voices of Protest, Season 2 of Destroy! The Influence of Punk examines that tension directly.
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Featuring:
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Steve Ignorant, the iconic voice of Crass, whose uncompromising politics helped define anarcho-punk and whose recent work with The Steve Ignorant Band and solo performances continue to carry Crass’s anti-war and anti-authoritarian message to new audiences.
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CrimethInc., the influential anarchist collective and publisher behind works including “From Democracy to Freedom” and decades of writing on direct action, resistance, and anti-capitalist organizing.
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Destroy! is a BRB Studios production berightbackstudios.com
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Set against 1970s Britain and a world in upheaval, this episode traces how youth culture, political rupture, and lived experience collided, forcing protest out of the background and into everyday life. Voices of Protest, Season 2 of Destroy! The Influence of Punk begins where dissent became impossible to ignore.
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Featuring:
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Red Saunders, the legendary anti-racist activist, photographer, and co-founder of Rock Against Racism, whose work helped unite music and political resistance in 1970s Britain.
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Jake Burns, the highly influential frontman of Stiff Little Fingers, whose writing chronicled violence, division, and working-class life during the Troubles, with the band continuing to tour internationally.
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Ana da Silva, co-founder of The Raincoats and a pioneering voice in feminist post-punk, whose work continues to influence generations of independent artists and musicians.
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Destroy! is a BRB Studios production berightbackstudios.com
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Voices of Protest isn’t about celebrating rebellion. It’s about tracing the conditions under which protest becomes an impervious force.
In Season 2 of Destroy! The Influence of Punk, we explore those conditions through our guests’ lived experiences - how protest moves from expression to consequence, through refusal, repetition, and the context that gives rise to action.
Follow us on Instagram @destroypunkpodcast
Visit destroypunkpodcast.com to learn more
Destroy! is a BRB Studios production berightbackstudios.com
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“Fond affections are never said, they’re only sung in song.” (Michael Allen, Rema Rema)
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Born in 1957 in County Durham, northeast England, British designer Vaughan Oliver stepped out of a world steeped in tradition and into the nonconformist realm of the music industry.
Growing up in an environment devoid of culture, it was through Surrealism and Pop Art that he discovered modern art, its power to open up his imagination, and provide a doorway to new adventures rich with possibilities.
Inspired by the work of record cover designer Roger Dean, he eventually found his calling at independent record label 4AD, where he worked with many of post-punk’s early pioneers: Cocteau Twins, Modern English, Colourbox, Lush, and of course This Mortal Coil.
In 1982, with school friend and photographer Nigel Grierson, he founded the design studio 23 Envelope, which quickly became a center for creative innovation and revolution.
In 1988, after Oliver and Grierson decided to part ways, Oliver went on to establish V23, fostering creative relationships with a new band of like-minded revolutionaries such as Chris Bigg and Simon Larbalestier, whose collaboration on the Pixies' Minotaur box set would earn them all a Grammy in 2010.
The studio’s work also expanded into TV and film, but Oliver was always at his most content sitting down with a group of students, talking about ideas and football.
He was a generous man, a loving father, a dedicated teacher, and an inspiration for generations of designers and musicians.
After he died in 2019 at age 62, his legacy continued through his wife, Lee, who helped establish the Vaughan Oliver Graphic Design Scholarship program with Northumbria University and 4AD in 2021.
Vaughan Oliver was a man of vast cerebral intellect with an impeccable sense of comedic timing.
His life’s work was a poetic journey through sight and sound, and his impact on art and culture is still being felt today.
This isn’t a biography. It’s a collage. Of images, of memory, of fond affections. The kind you can’t always say out loud—but you never forget.
Featuring interviews with: Simon Raymonde, musician, founder Bella Union records; Paul West, artist and designer, founder Form; Tim O’Donnell, designer; Tom Murray, filmmaker and musician, founder Tulipomania; Adrian Shaughnessy, author, designer, publisher; Miki Berenyi, songwriter and musician, founder Lush and MB3; Graham Wood, art director and designer, founder Tomato; Jonathan Barnbrook, designer; Chris Bigg, designer. Archival audio: Vaughan Oliver, designer; Nigel Grierson, photographer; Ivo Watts-Russell, founder 4AD Records. Additional contributions from: Malcolm Garrett, designer, founder Assorted iMages; Neville Brody, designer, founder Brody Associates. And with generous support from Lee Widdows, art director, trend consultant, School Academic Lead UCA, Epsom, and keeper of the light.
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Follow us on Instagram @destroypunkpodcast for the latest updates.
Or visit us online: https://destroypunkpodcast.com for transcripts, show notes, and more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
“Fond affections are never said, they’re only sung in song.” (Michael Allen, Rema Rema)
—
Born in 1957 in County Durham, northeast England, British designer Vaughan Oliver stepped out of a world steeped in tradition and into the nonconformist realm of the music industry.
Growing up in an environment devoid of culture, it was through Surrealism and Pop Art that he discovered modern art, its power to open up his imagination, and provide a doorway to new adventures rich with possibilities.
Inspired by the work of record cover designer Roger Dean, he eventually found his calling at independent record label 4AD, where he worked with many of post-punk’s early pioneers: Cocteau Twins, Modern English, Colourbox, Lush, and of course This Mortal Coil.
In 1982, with school friend and photographer Nigel Grierson, he founded the design studio 23 Envelope, which quickly became a center for creative innovation and revolution.
In 1988, after Oliver and Grierson decided to part ways, Oliver went on to establish V23, fostering creative relationships with a new band of like-minded revolutionaries such as Chris Bigg and Simon Larbalestier, whose collaboration on the Pixies' Minotaur box set would earn them all a Grammy in 2010.
The studio’s work also expanded into TV and film, but Oliver was always at his most content sitting down with a group of students, talking about ideas and football.
He was a generous man, a loving father, a dedicated teacher, and an inspiration for generations of designers and musicians.
After he died in 2019 at age 62, his legacy continued through his wife, Lee, who helped establish the Vaughan Oliver Graphic Design Scholarship program with Northumbria University and 4AD in 2021.
Vaughan Oliver was a man of vast cerebral intellect with an impeccable sense of comedic timing.
His life’s work was a poetic journey through sight and sound, and his impact on art and culture is still being felt today.
This isn’t a biography. It’s a collage. Of images, of memory, of fond affections. The kind you can’t always say out loud—but you never forget.
Featuring interviews with: Simon Raymonde, musician, founder Bella Union records; Paul West, artist and designer, founder Form; Tim O’Donnell, designer; Tom Murray, filmmaker and musician, founder Tulipomania; Adrian Shaughnessy, author, designer, publisher; Miki Berenyi, songwriter and musician, founder Lush and MB3; Graham Wood, art director and designer, founder Tomato; Jonathan Barnbrook, designer; Chris Bigg, designer. Archival audio: Vaughan Oliver, designer; Nigel Grierson, photographer; Ivo Watts-Russell, founder 4AD Records. Additional contributions from: Malcolm Garrett, designer, founder Assorted iMages; Neville Brody, designer, founder Brody Associates. And with generous support from Lee Widdows, art director, trend consultant, School Academic Lead UCA, Epsom, and keeper of the light.
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Follow us on Instagram @destroypunkpodcast for the latest updates.
Or visit us online: https://destroypunkpodcast.com for transcripts, show notes, and more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Legs McNeil didn’t just witness punk’s birth, he helped name it. From the chaos of late ’70s New York, McNeil carved out a space for misfits, outsiders, and anyone who didn’t fit the mold. As the co-founder of Punk magazine, he gave voice to the subculture, capturing its raw defiance and shaping its legacy in ways no one could have predicted.
In this episode, we trace McNeil’s journey from Connecticut to New York City, where he collided with the anarchic energy of CBGBs and the raw force of bands like The Ramones. His magazine wasn’t just about music, it was a declaration of war against the establishment.
“I never thought what I did was shocking, I just thought it was normal.” (Legs McNeil)
But McNeil’s story isn’t just about punk. His curiosity took him into worlds few would dare enter, the criminal underworld and the adult film industry. In this episode, we discuss how he went from punk provocateur to chronicler of outsiders, writing The Other Hollywood, a raw, uncensored oral history of the porn industry, and uncovering the dark truths behind Frank Lucas and the infamous American Gangster story.
“I’ve always wanted to understand the things most people don’t want to see.” (Legs McNeil)
Through his unflinching gaze, he found humanity in the shadows. McNeil’s journey is about more than rebellion; it’s about understanding the unseen, listening where others turn away, and finding truth in the chaos.
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Follow us on Instagram @destroypunkpodcast for the latest updates.
Or visit us online: https://destroypunkpodcast.com for transcripts, show notes, and more.
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