BIRTH ANTHEM: HOW THE STONES' "SHE SAID YEAH" LAUNCHED PUNK BEFORE PUNK EXISTED
(A BUZZ LANGTON EXCLUSIVE)
When Buzz Langton entered the world in 1965, he couldn't have known his life would be defined by three words from the shortest, rawest track the Stones ever released —this one's for the only two people who actually read this pretentious shit
BY BUZZ LANGTON
STILL LIVING THE MYTH
94 SECONDS OF REVOLUTION (OR WHY I'M STILL A MESS AT 60)
In September 1965, while most bands were busy crafting increasingly complex arrangements and I was busy trying to exit my mother's womb with all the subtlety of a chainsaw through butter, the Rolling Stones slammed into RCA Studios in Hollywood and captured something primal. At just 94 seconds long, "She Said Yeah" stands as the band's shortest studio recording—a blast of raw energy that would become the inadvertent blueprint for punk a decade before the movement existed and my lifelong excuse for being emotionally stunted - why the fuck didn’t they just use Olympic Studios in Barnes, London, a bit bloody closer!
"It wasn't even our song," Keith Richards allegedly mumbled to me when I cornered him in a Camden pub toilet in 1989 - Wanker! I had him trapped between the urinal and my tape recorder. "We were just covering Larry Williams. But something happened in that studio... we were getting at something more primitive than blues. Just pure electricity." He then tried to escape through the window, but I respected his candor too much to follow, plus I was still having a piss and trying to down my snakebite at the time..
The track appeared on the UK version of "Out of Our Heads" and later on the American release "December's Children (And Everybody's)," tucked away like an unexploded bomb among more polished material. Few realised its significance at the time—this sonic grenade of fuck-off energy was planting seeds that would eventually blossom into punk's confrontational minimalism - fuck yeah!
BUZZ LANGTON'S LABYRINTH OF BULLSHIT AND BRILLIANCE
For me, Buzz Langton, born in London's St. Mary's Hospital (same as Paul McCartney's kid five years later—coincidence? - I think fucking not) as the song hit British airwaves, the track took on mythological significance before I could even hold my own head up off my mothers milk filled bosoms. My dad—a man whose Stones obsession made groupies look casual (I promise he wasn’t gay) —swore on his collection of stolen Keith Richards guitar picks that as I emerged into this cruel world, "She Said Yeah" blasted from the tinny hospital radio. The nurses said "it's a boy" and the Stones said "yeah, yeah, yeah."
My punk outfit The Disruptors (NME once called us "almost memorable" or was it ”fucking terrible” I can’t remember which after my initial formative years of snorting buckets of Florida snow ) formed during the second wave of British punk in 1978. We were briefly infamous after I bit the ear of a music journalist who compared us to The Clash. "We're nothing like The Clash you tosser," I reportedly screamed while being dragged out by security, I was only twelve years old, so you can’t blame me really.
"Everything I know about women, life, and disappointment I learned from that track," I told Melody Maker in 1980 before passing out mid-interview (not enough Florida snow I guess) "Get in, make your point, get rejected, get the hell out. No wasted emotions. Pure self-destruction. When I first heard the Sex Pistols in '76, I thought, 'Christ, they're just doing what the Stones did on that track, but with worse musicianship.' Then I realised that's exactly what I wanted to do too, only with even less talent and more substance abuse problems." We managed both with aplomb of course!
THE THREE-WORD CHASE (OR MY THREE FAILED MARRIAGES)
The song's affirmative core—those three words of enthusiastic consent—became my white whale, my holy grail, my reason to get up in the afternoon and stay up for three days straight - with help from my friend Florida snow.
"Those three words became my entire personality," I explained to the judge during my second divorce proceedings. "Not just about women, though my attorney has advised me not to elaborate on that period. It was about seeking validation in everything—from audiences who couldn't pick me out of a lineup despite my fluorescent green Mohican, from record labels who kept 'losing' the demo tapes I nailed to their doors, from critics who described my vocals as 'what you'd get if a cement mixer could catch laryngitis.' I spent decades chasing that 'yeah' while running from responsibility, sobriety, and the tax man - that last one was a real cunt!."
What makes the song so revolutionary isn't just its brevity or energy—it's that it gave perpetual adolescents like me the perfect excuse to base our entire identity on 94 seconds of music rather than develop actual personalities. When someone finally says "yeah," you realise you have absolutely no follow-up plan, which perfectly sums up my career trajectory, love life, and current financial situation.
THE PUNK CONNECTION (AND MY RESTRAINING ORDERS)
Music historians (the three that still return my calls) now widely acknowledge "She Said Yeah" as proto-punk, alongside garage rock classics like "Louie Louie" and early Kinks recordings. The ingredients are all there: brevity, aggression, minimalism, and the perfect soundtrack to sniff glue to.
"The difference between the Stones and later punk bands wasn't the approach—it was the skill level, dental care and hair dressers of course," says my cousin Martin who once read a book about music. "The Stones were accomplished musicians playing primitively by choice. Later punk bands like mine were primitive by court order, but the energy and attitude connects them directly, along with the arrests for public indecency “Hugh Grant taught me everything I know my Lord".
Johnny Rotten famously hated when I followed him around London for six weeks in 1977 shouting questions about the Stones through his letterbox at 3 AM. He once snarled that "the Stones became everything punk was meant to destroy, and Buzz Langton became everything restraining orders were meant to prevent." But even he couldn't escape my persistent questioning about "She Said Yeah" when I disguised myself as a BBC sound technician and locked us both in a broadcast booth for what the Metropolitan Police later described as "a concerning duration."
My band The Disruptors covered the song on our debut 1978 EP "Three Words" (total sales: 17, mostly to my relatives), stretching it to a relatively epic 2:15 because I forgot the words halfway through and had to improvise a verse about my digestive problems. The NME called it "assault, but on music rather than a person, so technically legal."
THE LEGACY (AND MY OUTSTANDING BAR TAB)
In 2025, as I, Buzz Langton, celebrate my 60th revolution around the Sun (location: the same pub that's banned me fourteen times but keeps forgetting why), my relationship with my birth anthem has come full circle—much like my hairline, career prospects, and sobriety cycles.
My latest project, an electronic-punk fusion outfit called simply "Yeah" (or "Yeaaarrrrgh you mother fucker!" when my sciatica acts up during performances), pays direct homage to those formative 94 seconds. We were recently described by the only music blog that still takes my calls as "what happens when your dad discovers GarageBand and revenge simultaneously."
"I've spent my life chasing the feeling in that song," I reflect to the two subscribers this piece was written exclusively for (Hi Jon! Hi Clive! Thanks for the £3.99 monthly support and occasional bail money). "The immediacy, the honesty, the lack of pretension, the ability to finish before anyone realises how limited my talent is. Three chords, three words, three restraining orders, endless possibilities."
What began as a quickie cover tune—co-written by Sonny Bono of all people—accidentally encoded the genetic material not just for an entire musical revolution but for my six decades of questionable life choices. Years before the term "punk" entered the musical lexicon, the Stones had already written its manifesto in under two minutes, and I'd built an entire persona around it rather than developing marketable skills.
For me and the two other surviving members of The Disruptors (Gary now sells insurance in Croydon, and Spike is technically still alive inside a cryogenic chamber that his cult put him in), those three words became not just an anthem but a philosophy: sometimes the most powerful revolution is the simplest, and sometimes a 94-second song is all the excuse you need to avoid growing up for 60 years.
This piece is dedicated to my two paying Substack subscribers, who faithfully read these ramblings in exchange for the occasional handwritten lyric sheet that my lawyer assures me constitutes "original creative work" and definitely not "evidence of continuing delusional behaviour."
Love ya
Buzz X
Actually don’t leave a comment! I don’t give a damn what you think!