These are the key moments of Manchester's music scene: without the Sex Pistols' two concerts at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in the summer of 1976, there would have been neither Joy Division nor The Fall, probably not the Smiths, not New Order, maybe even Simply Red. The founders of all these bands were in the audience at this concert.

The shows were organized by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley. The two students had traveled to London after a concert review in the "New Musical Express", had been in the "sex" store of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and had seen the Sex Pistols in the southern English provincial town of Welwyn Garden City and High Wycombe and the punk -Pioneers persuaded to come north.

In the meantime, Howard Trafford and Peter McNeish took down their middle-class names and formed their own punk band, which they called Buzzcocks. They were not ready at the first Sex Pistols gig in Manchester on June 4th, but already on the 20th of July, the second, the Buzzcocks played in the opening act. Howard Devoto as a singer with a bullish look that made one think of mass murderer. Pete Shelley's shabbily blond-haired hair shattered his guitar purchased from Woolworth.

Starting shot for British indie

How much the Buzzcocks embodied the do-it-yourself spirit of Punk was even more apparent in the first single: Because there were no record companies in Manchester, they borrowed money from Pete Shelley's dad and brought it out themselves - in January 1977 was still extremely unusual. There was no sales network for independent record companies. The fact that the "Spiral Scratch" EP nevertheless sold 16,000 copies inspired countless other bands that did not come from London - it was the starting signal for the British independent scene.

But the musical highlight of the "Spiral Scratch" EP was clearly the song "Boredom", and the highlight of the song is Pete Shelley's guitar solo, which consists of two alternating tones, before - breathless tension - it ends with a third. It is the most famous guitar solo of the punk era, quoted to this day and again.

Singer Howard Devoto left the Buzzcocks after the EP, he started his new band Magazine with a guitar riff taken over by Shelley ("Shot By Both Sides"), while in the Buzzcocks Pete Shelley took over the vocals - first with the song still written by Devoto " Orgasm Addict ".

But soon Shelley proved himself as a highly talented copywriter. While The Clash was dedicated to the political struggle and the Sex Pistols only disgusted about sex, the Buzzcocks sang about sex and also about romantic love - but as sharply as their tunes accelerated pop songs were: "After this love there'll be no other - until the razor cuts ", it says in" Love You More ". Love or the razor blade, "a waterslide into adolescence," as the US critic Mark Spitz later wrote. Shelley wrote a song called "16" - and later called "16 Again". Contemporary music was that, the song "Nostalgia" sings a nostalgia for a time that is yet to come.

"Bubblegum Punk" was what some listeners called it, short, sharp pop songs, just like in Northern Soul. "How much life feeling and energy can communicate such a simple thing as a pop song, without leaving the classical forms," ​​marveled the German critic Diedrich Diederichsen. Such music needed to hide in subcultures, there were real hits in it.

That's why the Buzzcocks switched to the big label United Artists after the DiY debut (impressed by the fact that their contact man had already been in charge of the Krautrock band Can there). And indeed, the Buzzcocks proved to be a reliable single band, with songs like "What Do I Get?", "Promises" or "Everyone's Happy Nowadays" in the English charts. From the biggest hit, "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someones You Should not've)" (1978), the text was printed in teen magazines; In 1986, the Fine Young Cannibals even hit the charts with a cover version worldwide.

The club hit "Homosapien"

Within two years, the Buzzcocks released three albums - and in late 1979, the incredibly strong compilation "Singles Going Steady". This pace soon made Pete Shelley look exhausted and disinterested. He left the band and recorded with the producer Martin Rushent an electropop album called "Homosapien" on. In a white suit, Shelley poses on the cover, the eighties have begun - and he wants to be there.

The pop theorist Simon Reynolds understands the title song as a "clipped Outing" and believes he was not played by the BBC and therefore not a hit. In interviews, Shelley called himself bisexual. In the US, "Homosapien" became a club hit and even had an impact on the emerging techno scene in Detroit.

In 1989, the Buzzcocks reunited, too early for the band reunions to begin later. "They ruined their brand," Simon Reynolds quoted a label maker: too many concerts in the province before a few aging punks. But the musicians are "simply happy that they still do not have to practice civilian professions, that they can work as musicians and make a living".

This musician's life took Pete Shelley to Estonia, where he lived since 2009 with his Estonian-Canadian wife. On Thursday evening it was announced that he had succumbed there a heart attack. He was 63 years old.