With his life on film and his work in Selfridges, the fiercely independent punk artist and iconoclast tells us why he’s still not selling out

Text Leigh Singer
Photography Anna Stokland

If you’re one of the select few who know Bruno Wizard, chances are you’d call him a punk. You might remember hearing him back in the movement’s 1970s heyday, fronting bands The Rejects and later The Homosexuals in London’s first official punk venue, The Roxy, in support of bands like The Damned, Wire and X-Ray Spex: the anarchic lyrics, clattering three-chord riffs and performances that made up in sheer visceral energy what they lacked in musicianship.

If you really know Bruno Wizard, though, you’d know “punk” is a label he has consciously rejected almost from the outset. “I felt I’d already had my revolution hijacked in the 60s by the establishment having control of the means of production, distribution and media,” he says. “It took about four years to happen to my generation. So when punk came around, they had learned from the last time and what I call ‘establishment punk’ got co-opted after, what, six months? I was outside of that.” Read more