In April of 1980, former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock had nothing to promote ( especially his role in the forgettable Iggy Pop album Soldier) when he gave Smash Hits this list of his All Time Top 10. It's jam-packed with blues and oldies ( including Dave Berry's original version of a Ray Davies tune), but the last number is from T-Bone Burnett's group, The Alpha Band.
On February 26, 1979 the Sex Pistols released the double album soundtrack to their mockumentary The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, a film that tells a fictional account of the rise and fall of the Sex Pistols from the point of view of their then-manager Malcolm McLaren. Featuring the tagline "the film that incriminates its audience", the movie blows up the Sex Pistols myth and suggests the whole thing was an ingenious marketing ploy ( the "genius" being McLaren with his 10 lessons on how to turn a bad band into the hottest act in the world).
John Lydon had quit the band before filming started, wanted nothing to do with the project, and sued McLaren fearing the damage the movie would do his career with P.I.L. and to the Sex Pistols legacy. The movie would not be seen in theaters until more than a year later.
In Anger Is An Energy, Lydon writes about seeing The Great Rock 'n'Roll Swindle with his new guitarist Keith Levene:
I was very, very happy because it was excruciatingly bad. Me and Keith were over the moon at how rubbish it was--over-long and full of Malcolm pontifications. There were various Nazi outfits and rubber masks, for no reason at all that I could see...It was everything that I wanted it to be, because now Joe Public could see what it was I'd escaped from . And, by contrast, what it is I'm actually capable of --please judge me thereon. If you think I should be involved in a world of swindle--well, fuck you!
Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones says the movie brings up bad memories. As a viewer there are moments that are exciting like the documentary style footage of the Pistols below, and when Sid sings "My Way", but most of the film is reprehensible.
Here's the remaining members of the Sex Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook, in Brazil meeting the notorious outlaw train robber Ronnie Biggs, who would write the lyrics and sing "No One Is Innocent", a B-side to "My Way".
Director Julien Temple made his film debut with The Great Rock n Roll Swindle. He would go on to make music videos for Culture Club, ABC and Dexys Midnight Runners before returning to the subject in 2000 with The Filth and The Fury.
With its foreign language versions of the hits, a disco medley, and a few sloppy numbers knocked off in the studio, the soundtrack is not an essential listening experience
On February 7, 1979, five days after Sid Vicious was died of a heroin overdose, hearings began in London on John Lydon's lawsuit against Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols management company, Glitterbest, which McLaren controlled. Lydon wanted to keep McLaren from using his nickname Johnny Rotten and he wanted to protect his future musical career rather than be associated with a movie suggesting his former band was a con job.
What it came down to, of course, was money. The judge in the case would eventually disclose that the Sex Pistols had earned £880,000 up to December 1978, but that £343,000 has been spent on the upcoming film The Great Rock n Roll Swindle. Only £30,000 remained, which would be put in the hands of a third party, along with the movie, to be split among band members.
McLaren told Melody Maker he believed Virgin's Richard Branson was behind the suit and that it would bankrupt him.
"I don't mind being sold down the river, but I'm not gonna drown in it too. It's like wiping your face in your own shit. That facts are that without me that group wouldn't've existed, and I feel that if I couldn't spend that money on the projects that I thought were right, then they should've thrown me out years ago. "
As the trial progressed, and it became clear that McLaren was spending their money pet projects like the film, Paul Cook and Steve Jones switched sides joining Lydon. Round one to Lydon.
As Lydon wrote in his memoir
"I didn't want to walk off with all the loot or anything. I made sure that when it came to a settlement, we surviving members would get equals shares of the spoils. Even though I was harbouring a really serious resentment for the way Steve and Paul had behaved against me, I didn't want blood money or dirty money, as I would view it. I just wanted what was mine, what Malcolm tried to take away from me. "
On the morning of February 2, 1979, Sex Pistol Sid Vicious was found dead in his bedroom, following a party the night before celebrating his making bail. He was charged with murdering his girlfriend Nancy Spungen four month earlier and was awaiting trial.
At Rikers Island, Sid spent seven weeks in a detox program. He was clean, his body not prepared to handle that night's injection of 80% pure heroin. At midnight, shorty after taking a dose, Vicious collapsed and went into a seizure. His skin and his lips turned blue. Partygoers covered him up with blankets and 40 minutes later Vicious came to. He even walked around the party which ended at 3 AM.
His mother, Anne Beverley slept on the couch while Vicious went to bed with his girlfriend, an actress named Michelle Robinson. The next morning Beverley, around 11 AM, Beverley tried to wake her son and discovered him dead. The doctor who performed the autopsy said Vicious "died much like a drowning person. There was an accumulation of fluid in the lungs characteristic of heroin".
His mother, a former addict, told the Daily Express she was holding on to her son's heroin supply and that she believed he took a second dose to fulfill his role in a suicide pact with Nancy. She claimed to have found a note in his leather jacket that read:
We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye.
Sex Pistol bandmate John Lydon always believed drug dealers framed Vicious for the murder of Nancy. He wrote, in his memoir Anger is an Energy :
Sid's passing was a pain in my life--a serious one. I wrote songs about him for quite some time after that. They're all in there somewhere...I always felt like I was protecting Sid, always. Wherever I'd take him, I knew-arrgh!-he's gonna cause a problem. But that's alright! Once he stepped out of line, and was left to his own devices, oh my God, it became stupid, stupid, stupid, no value, principle, system or logicality in it. Don't mess around with drug dealers, right? They mean it. They have to. Just say no.
The last thing any earnest punk band wants to be called is a super group, but that's exactly what The Rich Kids were referred as by the U.K. press. Expectations were sky high. Was the name prophetic? Um...no.
Formed by ex Sex Pistols Glen Matlock, that band's best songsmith, The Rich Kids had ex Slik Midge Ure on vocals and guitar, 17 year old Steve New as lead guitarist and Rusty Egan on drums. The band broke up before year's end after releasing a Mick Ronson produced punk classic most Americans have never heard, the album Ghosts of Princes in Towers. Ure and Egan would form Visage of "Fade to Grey" fame.
By that last gig in San Francisco, I'd lost interest really. I'd become incapable of caring about writing another song for this outfit. I felt like, 'That's it, there's the full stop. I've achieved as much as I can in this environment.' So that's how it ended up with me saying, 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?' We were a betrayal of what we started out as .
On January 14, 1978 The Sex Pistols played their final gig together (until 1996) at the Winterland in San Francisco. Their American tour was, to quote the band, "no fun". Manager Malcolm McLaren skipped the major markets like New York City to have the band play in redneck havens like Atlanta, Memphis, San Antonio, Baton Rouge, Dallas and Tulsa. ( I write redneck with love, by the way). In the meantime, Sid Vicious sank further and further into his heroin addiction, glorifying a dangerous drug that had nothing to do with punk rock. After the tour the band dispersed to different corners of the globe. When Lydon re-emerged later in the year, he was using his original name and fronting a new band called Public Image Limited.
To see Jonathan Richman on stage is to leave everything manly and mature outside the venue and give in to the enchanting world of this man-child. Released in January of 1978, "The Morning of Our Lives" could be the title of another bad James Blunt tune, but in the hands of Richman it's a sweet song of encouragement:
And our time is now, we can do anything you really believe in
I know it Our time is now, here in the morning of our lives Our time is right now, you can do anything you set your heart on Our time is now, here in the morning of our lives
And listen to the way the audience buys into the message and claps along.
This bit of transcendence peaked at #39 on the U.K. charts, surely helped along by an eight minute version of "Roadrunner".
Also 40 years ago today: The Sex Pistols play before 500 punk rock fans and another 500 C and W fans outside Dallas,TX. Below, Sid Vicious walked on stage with "Gimme a Fix" scrawled on his chest.
On January 5, 1978 The Sex Pistols overcame a visa dispute with the US government and finally opened their ill-fated American tour at an Atlanta nightclub in front of 500 people and Jack Perkins, once dubbed "America's most literate correspondent", and best known as the host of A and E's Biography. In the story below he sits in the band's abandoned hotel room and describes the stains left behind.
In 2000 Elvis Costello looked back on his own Class of '77 and put the following albums into a list he made for Vanity Fair of his 500 Favorite Albums. The song selections are his.
David Bowie Low, “Always Crashing in the Same Car” Heroes , “Joe the Lion.”
Ian Dury: New Boots and Panties!! , “Sweet Gene Vincent.”
Richard Hell and the Voidoids: Blank Generation , “New Pleasure.”
Iggy Pop: The Idiot, “Nightclubbin’” Lust for Life, “Some Weird Sin.”
The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols , “Pretty Vacant.”
On October 14, 1977 The Sex Pistols released "Holidays in the Sun". A #8 U.K. chart hit from the forthcoming album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, this would be the last single with John Lydon singing. Lydon says the song was based on a disappointing holiday in Jersey, followed by a visit to rainy Berlin where, at least, they were far away from London:
"Being in London at the time made us feel like we were trapped in a prison camp environment. There was hatred and constant threat of violence. The best thing we could do was to go set up in a prison camp somewhere else. Berlin and its decadence was a good idea. The song came about from that. I loved Berlin. I loved the wall and the insanity of the place. The communists looked in on the circus atmosphere of West Berlin, which never went to sleep, and that would be their impression of the West."
On July 1, 1977 The Sex Pistols released their third "Pretty Vacant", with high hopes they would have another huge hit on their hands. After all they weren't disrespecting the queen this time. That said, it does seem like Johnny Rotten is really hitting the CUNT in the word VACANT. NME magazine made it their Single of the Year in 1977.
On June 18, 1977, the day The Sex Pistols began recording the rest of the tracks that would make up their classic Never Mind The Bollocks debut album, Johnny Rotten was attacked by a gang of nine men wielding razors and at least one machete outside the Pegasus pub in Islington, London. The attack left him with a slashed arm and tendon damage.
Six days earlier, after the Pistols sabotaged the Queen's jubilee, The Sunday Mirror ran story with the headline "Punish the Punks!"
Apparently some readers took it to heart.
Johnny Rotten:
Chris Thomas and I were in the Pegasus, just around the corner from Wessex Studios,’[Rotten] says, ‘and as we left, we were attacked in the car park by a gang of knife-wielding yobs, who were chanting, ‘We love our Queen, you bastard!’ Normally I’d say they were National Front, but a third of them were black. They were just lads out for violence. I got some bad cuts from that. It severed two tendons, so my left hand is fucked forever, and as I’m left-handed, I can’t close the fist properly. I’ll never play guitar: there’s no power to it. I jumped into the car and someone jumped after me with a machete and cut me from there [he points to his thigh about a foot down] . . . to there [his knee]. I had on extremely thick leather trousers at the time, thank fucking God, because it would have ripped the muscle out and now I’d be a one-legged hoppity.'”
There were other attacks in June of 1977. Pistols drummer Paul Cook was attacked the next day by six men who struck him with a crowbar. Gaye Advert and TV Smith of The Adverts were beaten up on June 21. At the hospital they were asked what did they expect, dressing up like that? Rotten again was brutalized two days later. On the last day of the month , The Damned's front man Dave Vanian was attacked in his dressing room, sustaining a dislocated shoulder.
On June 7, 1977 The Sex Pistols crashed the Queen's 25th Jubilee with a cruise and concert on the Thames River. Sounds magazine writer Jon Savage was there:
Before the police came, it was a great party. Make that a capital G.
Let's take all this sequentially: after an hour of waiting, the Queen Elizabeth left Charing Cross Pier at 6.30, and, after a moment's hesitation, decided to head downstream. If you aren't on the List, you aren't on. Nobody jumps … not even Palmolive. Bye bye.
Begins very restrained – too too vous êtes, but come Rotherhithe, some booze and more food, and everyone gets mellow, if such a thing is possible. I mean it's a nice evening (albeit a bit chilly) and there's space all around instead of tower blocks, so why be surprised?
The disparate crowd mixes surprisingly well – the only jarring note in fact is the refusal of the bar to serve doubles … never know what these notorious punk rockers might get up to. Downstream aways, we turn as a banner is unfurled along the length of the boat – red on yellow, it proclaims proudly "Queen Elizabeth: the new single by the Sex Pistols, God Save The Queen", or something similar, really low profile.
Inside, the conversation's covering some pretty recherché territory, but, hey, upstairs, in the covered area the tapes start rolling. Dance. Great selection – moving from arcane dub to the Ramones thru Paul Revere and the Raiders. More boozing/dancing/yammering – general party patter – but expectation is heightened. They have to start playing outside the Houses of Parliament. We repass under Tower Bridge, picking up a police boat on the way – sniff sniff sussy sussy – but it falls behind: meanwhile Jordan's telling me about this group she's managing called the Ants. Upstream it gets chillier – most take refuge in the downstairs bar (big boat this), ostensibly for a film that never happens. There's no pretence now: we're waiting. More turns (Battersea funfair, for the detail-obsessed) and it's home run time.
The Pistols take the "stage" – at the back of the raised covered area: the conditions are appalling, and it's amazing that any sort of sound comes out. The main one is feedback – this delays their start and is never fully resolved. Any blasé traces are swept away – pulses race/everyone rushed to be the front. Pure mania. Rotten gives up on losing the feedback and the band slams into Anarchy, right on cue with the Houses of Parliament. A great moment. It's like they've been uncaged – the frustration in not being able to play bursts into total energy and attack. Rotten's so close all you can see is a snarling mouth and wild eyes, framed by red spikes. Can't shake that feedback: he complains, won't sing for the first verse of No Feelings, but the others carry on. More frustration to explode.
By now the atmosphere is electric/heart thumps too hard/people pressing, swaying – it's like they have to play to blast them away. They're also playing for their/our lives – during Pretty Vacant and the next song, two police boats start moving around in earnest. Now all adrenalin is flat out do it do it do it now now now NOW – suddenly in I Wanna Be Me they get inspired and take off, No Fun SCREAMED out as the police boats move in for the kill is one of the best rock'n'roll moments EVER. I mean EVER. (Think about that).
Shit, suddenly we're in the dock 'n' the power's off and Paul Cook's beating the hell out of the drums 'n' there are all those police and WHAT'S HAPPENING and what the fuck IS this … Fax. We dock. The power is off. The bar is closed. Suddenly no more party. Suddenly a lot of police on the quay. Altercations begin. Nobody wants to leave. The police want us to leave. So does the owner. The owner can terminate the contract of hire at any time. Small print, baby. Richard Branson loses his £500. Richard Branson doesn't want to leave. Tension. Indecision. People trickle off, slowly, after a half an hour. Most stay on. More police. The police move on the boat. People move off. Nothing happens, bar a bit of pushing and shoving on either side.
Someone gets nicked. Now things start getting crazy. People are aided up the long gangway. Explosion of movement. Fear. Confusion. Flash/people running/Ted restrains/"Get 'im"/crying faces/spin around/black mariahs/no objectivity/each for himself/quick spurts of movement/hate/"You're shit". And there's 11 people in the mariahs and we're on the pavement wondering what's been happening. Very quick.
We leave. We go to Bow Street police station, via the Zanzibar (whose cutesy-poo decadence is sickening). No message. No bail. No press. No, not an IPC card. "There are people we'd like to arrest but we don't know who they are." A direct hint. Buzz off. And don't wait on the pavement. No help.
And then the seven of us REALLY slip into 1984: we move to this pub where everybody is enacting this weird ritual which involves the wearing of red/white/blue hats and "singing" arcane folklore. They want us to join in/we can only make silly jokes out of pain. Zoom zoom /"I don't wanna grow up: there's too much contradiction." Chickens come home to roost baby, you'd best believe. Some jubilee. But look: I mean McLaren's brilliant at the Theatre of Provocation, didn't he set all this up? To an extent. Provocation, yes; incitement, no. OK, I mean all of us were expecting SOME interference, let's be frank – but not such emotional overreaction.
WHATEVER the rights and wrongs of the individual cases, objectively, yeah, Responsibly, that's what it was. You know – nothing doing in the centre of town and these allegedly "notorious foul-mouthed punk-rock-Sex-Pistols" … Image v reality. The charges run like this (approximately): Malcolm McLaren/"Using Insulting words likely to provoke a breach of the peace"; Vivien Westwood/"Obstructing a policeman"; Sophie Richmond and Alex McDowell/"Assault": Debbie and Tracy/"Obstruction"; Ben Kelly and Chris Walsh/"Obstruction"; Jose Esquibel/"Threatening behaviour"; Jamie Reid/"Assault". All have denied the alleged charges, and have been released on bail/surety until their case will be heard. No future, eh? Feelings are bound to run high. But wait. Neither "side" is blameless but there are a few things left to say: to a certain extent the barriers are down a bit more. That means if you look anything like a Sex Pistol, or a "punk rocker", you're likely to get pulled in. Right: that means – No martyrs, No victims, No heroes, No stereotypes. No games on this score, No provocation. Things have gotten more serious. No escalation … ? Uuuh. Um. Is it too late for me to say that it was a Great party and that the Pistols were amazing? Oh, it is, but it's a shame, because that's a part of the evening too
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb
On May 27, 1977 The Sex Pistols released "God Save The Queen", their first single on Virgin Records. It would--to the horror of Royalists celebrating the Queen's Silver Jubilee--race up the charts despite a unanimous ban on all radio and TV stations.
God save the queen
She's not a human being
and There's no future
And England's dreaming
Had The Sex Pistols released a song with lyrics like these in Thailand or Saudi Arabia, they would have been imprisoned or much worse. Had Jamie Reid defaced a monarch in those countries, same deal.
God save the queen
'Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems
A student filmmaker named Julien Temple directed the music video below. In his book, England's Dreaming, Jon Savage described the evening:
The shoot was chaotic with Johnny Rotten acting like a prima donna and Vicious still ill. Yet somehow the atmosphere of madness worked well - the footage was both electric and humorous.
These days everybody is trying to out-shock every one else, so it may be hard to remember what it was like to have a song like "God Save the Queen" released in the Summer of '77. The video below does a fine job of that.
"If Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Vicious is the attitude."
-Malcolm McLaren
On February 15, 1977 Sid Vicious joined The Sex Pistols, replacing Glen Matlock on bass despite the fact that he couldn't play the instrument. What Vicious brought to the stage was charisma, something quite apparent in the video below.
Sid Vicious had fewer than two full year to live. Hospitalized with hepatitis during the recording of Never Mind the Bollocks...Vicious played bass and has a songwriting credit on on one of the band's most hated songs"Bodies", but it was later overdubbed by guitarist Steve Jones.
The Sex Pistols would play their last gig in January of 1978. By then Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Spungen were full blown heroin addicts. In October of 1978, Vicious was arrested for stabbing Spungen to death. In February 1978, Vicious overdosed on heroin. His mother says she found a suicide note that read :"We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye."
On December 1, 1976 The Sex Pistols outraged British television viewers with shocking language during an interview they were never supposed to do. Queen had been booked on Today With Bill Grundy but backed out at the last minute. So EMI sent their label mates instead.
The Sex Pistols were told to show up at 4 PM for the 6 PM taping. They spent the two hours in the Green Room, taking advantage of the free alcohol. Grundy was there too, drinking and leering at Siouxsie Sioux.
In his memoir Anger is an Energy, John Lydon remembers :
It was actually me that swore first. Grundy goes, "What was that?' "Er, a rude word!"I didn't really want to be the first arsehole out the door with it, but there you go--he goaded me into it, so there it is. "You asked for it. It's not my fault at this point onwards, your honour. I am innocent" If you really understand the way the conversation's going, it's deeply fascinating. It should be in a psychology course, because of all the different things going on in all of our minds at the same time. It amounts to this Harold Pinter kind of scene.
It was guitarist Steve Jones who came on with the most confidence, calling Grundy a "dirty sod", a "dirty old man", a "dirty bastard", a "dirty fucker", and finally, the curiously phrased "fucking rotter".
"It was hilarious, "Jones would say later. "It was one of the best feelings, the next day, when you saw the paper. You thought, Fucking hell, this is great! From that day on it was different. Before then , it was just music, the next day, it was the media."
Manager Malcolm McLaren was less pleased.
Captain Sensible of the Damned says "After the show, (he) really tore into them, He was convinced they'd blown it. He was appalled. "You fuckin' idiots, you've ruined everything. We're finished". He was apparently in tears. He thought it was all over. The vibe was bad for the rest of the day.
For a long while it certainly seemed like McLaren was right. In two days the Sex Pistols were scheduled to headline a UK "Anarchy tour" with The Clash, The Damned and The Heartbreakers ( who arrived at Heathrow that day with Nancy Spungen in tow). The opening night gig at Norwich University was cancelled, as were all but three of the nineteen dates.
On November 26, 1976 the Sex Pistols released "Anarchy in the UK". The single reached #38 in the UK charts and is one of the greatest single of the punk era. After all, it is a true punk song and not just a loud, fast-paced love song ( like "New Rose" for Christ's sake).
Among the legendary lyrics :
I am an anti-Christ I am an anarchist Don't know what I want But I know how to get it I want to destroy the passerby 'Cause I want to be anarchy No dogs body * Anarchy for the U.K.
*A dogsbody is a someone who does grunt work in the Royal Navy.
In his memoir, Anger is an Energy, John Lydon explains the lyrics of "Anarchy in the UK" in depth:
With those opening lines, 'I am an antichrist/I am an anarchist", I wasn't trying to set myself up as some kind of bogeyman. I never thought of that at all. No, no, no, somewhere deep inside me, I was thinking I'd be seen as the victim of all of this, and great sympathy and outpourings of love and joy would be bestowed upon me! Honest! I had no concept of being the naughty bugger. It wasn't about that, and to my mind it certainly wasn't just about me. It was about us. We're being given an opportunity here -lets tell it like it really is, shall we?
Of course, everyone around the band at the time was saying, "Why don't you write a love song? Why don't you just write a hit single?" It'll be great then, everyone'll love you!""What, don't they already? Oh." To this day that's all I keep hearing from the business end and its utter nonsense they're talking...
On October 8 1976, The Sex Pistols were signed to two year contract by EMI records for £40,000 ($68,000).
EMI's Bob Mercer explained why his label wanted to sign the band to Q Magazine:
Basically, their message was "The Pistols may be a piece of shit, musically, but it's what's happening in the streets. These are the forerunners of the punk movement. It's a feather in our cap to be able to sign them. Besides which, what do you know? You're over 30!" So I said, "Fine. Go ahead". And I gave them a limit on the deal which was £40,000 for about two or three records in as many years, with options, which we would pay to record.
In his memoir Anger is an Energy, John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon writes:
Be very careful what you sign, everybody in the world! Even though you think you know what it is all about, you'll find out you didn't know nothing! The wording in contracts is riddled in tangles and lawyer -ese -- it might as well be Vietnamese.
The EMI contract would end within three months, after the release of the "Anarchy in the UK" single which the company then deleted from their catalogue. Following a now infamous appearance on Bill Grundy's talk show in December and other incidents, EMI later issued a statement saying it felt unable to promote the Sex Pistols' records in view of the adverse publicity generated over the last few months.
Lydon again:
I suppose EMI thought it would be a gigglefest and they really, really couldn't cope with what it actually was. The hardcore edge just rocked them to their foundations so it was get our of EMI quick. And in many ways it was great because the recordings that we did for EMI were shit.
On September 20th and 21st, 1976, the 100 Club hosted a two day international punk rock festival, an event which included The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, The Vibrators and a brand new band called Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Subway Sect opened the first night. They were followed by a completely improvised set by the Banshees. Siouxsie sang The Lord's Prayer over noisy instrumentation. The Clash followed. And then came the Sex Pistols.
Simon Wright was there:
"The first night, like all the early punk gigs I went to, was noisy and physical, but good-humoured. The spitting and the gobbing and the pogo-ing came later."
The second night was rougher. French punks Stinky Toys opened and were followed by Chris Spedding and his under-rehearsed band, The Vibrators. The Damned came on next with The Buzzcocks closing the festival.
Among those in the audience were The Jam's Paul Weller, future Pogue Shane McGowan (seen above with his fanzine Bondage), Chrissie Hynde, future Slit Viv Albertine and, on the second night, a drunken Sid Vicious. Vicious threw a bottle which shattered against a pillar during The Damned set. A young woman was blinded by a shard of glass.
On June 4, 1976 The Sex Pistols played in front of maybe 40 people at Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. It has been called one of the most legendary gigs in rock history, not just because of the band on the stage but also because of the number of future bands that would be formed by members of the audience. Among them: Joy Division, The Smiths, The Fall, and The Buzzcocks.
It was all documented in this scene from the movie 24 Hour Party People, though neither Tony Wilson, Ian Curtis nor Simply Red's Mick Hucknall were actually there (but then neither were the other 7500 people who have since claimed to have seen the Sex Pistols play in a space that couldn't fit more than 150).
A band emerged. Who knows what the drummer, bass player and guitarist looked like. The guy who took centre stage took the mike, took your mind. A swagger to make John Wayne look a pussy. A sneer so dismissive of everyone and everything, of God and civilization, in just one pair of twisted lips. And then they started playing…
They stared, open-mouthed, transported to a place where you didn’t need to pogo (it wasn’t invented till three months later). That place was real life; that place was the clearing in the undergrowth where meaning and elucidation live, that place where the music came from and the place it would take you back to.
But they knew nothing, these forty-odd strangers, gathered by chance and chat, they just knew their world would never be the same again. A past obliterated and No Future.
The band opened with future B side "Did You No Wrong" . The set included future Sex Pistols classics "Seventeen", "Submission", "No Feelings", "Problems" and "Pretty Vacant" as well as covers of Dave Berry's "Don't Give Me No Lip Child", The Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone", Small Faces'"What'cha Gonna Do About It", Iggy and the Stooges' "No Fun" and The Who's "Substitute".
Also in the audience was future Smiths frontman Steven Morrissey who penned the following review in a letter to NME.
“I pen this epistle after witnessing the infamous Sex Pistols in concert at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall. The bumptious Pistols in jumble sale attire had those few that attended dancing in the aisles despite their discordant music and barely audible lyrics. The Pistols boast having no inspiration from the New York / Manhattan rock scene, yet their set includes, “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone”, a number believed to be done almost to perfection by the Heartbreakers on any sleazy New York night and the Pistols’ vocalist / exhibitionist Johnny Rotten’s attitude and self-asserted ‘love us or leave us’ approach can be compared to both Iggy Pop and David JoHansen in their heyday. The Sex Pistols are very New York and it’s nice to see that the British have produced a band capable of producing atmosphere created by The New York Dolls and their many imitators, even though it may be too late. I’d love to see the Pistols make it. Maybe they will be able to afford some clothes which don’t look as though they’ve been slept in.”
