Dateline: sometime in London 1977, in a basement club on a corner site at the top end of Neal St near Shaftesbury Avenue. Location: the Roxy, the punk venue which took on the name of the spaceâs previous occupant, a gay disco. On the street above, fruit and veg from Covent Garden market stalls come to die, slowly, in the gutter. In the toilets below, young (and not so young) women and men take drugs â snorting amphetamine sulphate, mostly.
Sniffinâ Glue: A fanzine that epitomized punk
Club Roxy
Stratocaster and a can of Ronson lighter fluid, symbols of this time
The Clash, ICA
Glue sniffing. Taking of any drugs is to escape the reality. This fits the current zeitgeist. The way they sniffed glue is as follows: you tipped some glue into a container of some kind, maybe a paper bag, cupped it to your face, inhaled the fumes and let them mess around with your nervous system.
Photocopied punk fanzine Sniffinâ Glue, Ballardian Mark P, rock and roll magazine.
Toby Mott: punk fanzines, posters and ephemera.












