The song that introduced John Lydon to the world: “A hard gig”
With his trademark sneer and penchant for confrontation, John Lydon was the natural poster boy for the blossoming British punk scene back in the 1970s, and he wasted no opportunity with the Sex Pistols to cause shock and outrage, going right back to his very first time stepping onto a stage.
The Sex Pistols always had an unlikely origin story, particularly for the self-claimed ‘anti-christs’ who spread the gospel of punk revolution across the nation. John Lydon was the final piece of the puzzle, being recruited for the band after manager Malcolm McLaren had already selected the rest of the line-up from the workers and patrons of the ‘Sex Boutique’ shop he shared with Vivienne Westwood at the time, in a kind of proto-Simon Cowell style of manufacturing a band.
Given the fact that McLaren had recruited each of the members based almost solely on their looks and attitude, though, the Pistols’ musical skill – or lack thereof – quickly became an issue. In time, of course, the manifesto of ‘Here’s three chords, now form a band’ would become the core principle of the punk revolution, taking power back from the untouchable pop stars who made up the singles charts week after week.
Nevertheless, the sheer racket made by the band during their early years did tend to put a lot of audiences off. In fact, Lydon himself has often been ultra-critical of his earliest flurries into the realm of frontmen, recalling to Rolling Stone in 2018, “To me, I sounded like a donkey.” Still, there aren’t many donkeys who could act as the leader of a cultural revolution.
As with any revolution, punk preached the rejection of the old, tearing down the established figures of rock and roll worship and installing outfits like the Sex Pistols in their place. It is interesting, therefore, that the Pistols’ first setlists were largely made up of cover songs, paying homage to the groups which had started this rebellious rock and roll streak all the way back in the 1960s.
It was at St Martin’s School of Art, back in 1975, when the Sex Pistols made their first-ever live appearance, supporting a now long-forgotten outfit named Bazooka Joe, which Glen Matlock had managed to wrangle due to being a student at the art school during that time.
As Lydon recalled, the bulk of the band’s set was made up of one 1960s favourite: “It was called ‘What’cha Gonna Do About It,’” the frontman recalled, namedropping one of the Small Faces’ finest hours.
“That was a hard gig because we had no monitors,” Lydon recalled of his first step into the spotlight. “I’d never heard my voice, really, until about eight gigs in – not even in rehearsal or anything. I was just imagining how wonderful I sounded and the first gig ever to have monitors was at The 100 Club in London, supporting Eddie and the Hot Rods.”
He added, “I was so freaked out when I heard myself.”
Presumably, Lydon’s freak-out was nothing compared to how freaked out the audience at St. Martin’s must have been, witnessing these spikey-haired aliens sneering and shouting their way through the mod rock classic, simultaneously paying homage to and utterly destroying the established expectations of British rock and roll.
