The backstage chaos behind the Sex Pistols’ Bill Grundy appearance
December 1st, 1976, is a day that lives in infamy in the world of the Sex Pistols.
Just as the band were starting to gain major attention outside of the cultish UK following they’d built at their gigs, they were invited onto mainstream TV, which obviously was going to be a disaster.
When Bill Grundy invited the band onto his Thames TV show, surely he knew that. Even though they were still a new name, what reputation they had fostered was one rooted in, or even reliant on, outrage, such that EMI signing them on a two-year contract was a shock to the music world. Punk was still only just blooming, so not only were the band a cost risk when the genre’s spending power wasn’t guaranteed yet, but they were a risk full stop as their entire brand was founded in their wild ways.
They’d been known for smashing venues up, getting into fights, offending crowds and just generally pissing people off. They were known for not playing by the rules, and even as they only got booked onto the show as a last-minute replacement for Queen, certainly Grundy and his team had done enough research to know that.
Inevitably, it was chaos. The band lasted mere moments onscreen before it all kicked off as Steve Jones quickly spat out, “We’ve fuckin’ spent it, ain’t we?”, talking about their label advance but dropping the f-bomb on prime time TV. Grundy was definitely negging it out of them, though, as he dared the group, “Go on, you’ve got another five seconds. Say something outrageous”. They already had, as they swore several times, but in those final moments, Jones couldn’t resist as he said, “You dirty bastard!”, then again calling the host a “dirty fucker!” and a “fucking rotter”.
Naturally, the complaint calls were pouring in.
However, that’s where the true chaos lay. While the band’s onscreen and on-set behaviour was wild, the true carnage of the day was actually happening backstage amongst their entourage. Naturally, they hadn’t just descended on the studio alone. Alongside Siouxsie Sioux, they’d come along to the studio with their entire gaggle of punk pals, and while they were on stage, the riff raff were waiting in the wings, downing free drinks. Then, as the complaint came in, a fatal mistake was made: all those calls were redirected to the green room.
The story goes that so many complaints were coming in that workers couldn’t keep up, so they were trying to redirect them elsewhere in the studios. However, they ended up going straight to the phone in the room where the Sex Pistols’ crowd were hanging out, leading to them speaking directly to the people outraged about their behaviour.
The scandalised viewers were calling up to rage about the TV show and ending up on the phone with the likes of Sue Catwoman, who would simply piss them off even more with a barrage of abuse direct from the lips of the punk crowd. After the band had been swiftly shuffled off set, rumour has it that they were answering calls too until the studio realised quite how badly they’d messed up.
What was Johnny Rotten’s advice to the angered callers furious about their appearance, you ask? “Haven’t they ever heard of the off button?”
