The Sex Pistols’ most manic show in America: “I’m so frightened”
Before the Sex Pistols had released any music, a lot of punks in training around London were already well aware of the band, as it was hard to deny the impact of their live shows.
“‘HURRY UP, they’re having an orgy on stage’, said the bloke on the door as he tore the tickets up” – this was the opening line of the first-ever review of the band’s live show, and what better way to introduce the world to the punk band who would pioneer the genre and take it to heights that people previously thought were unimaginable?
“I waded to the front and straightaway sighted a chair arcing gracefully through the air,” continued the review. “Skidding across the stage and thudding contentedly into the PA system, to the obvious nonchalance of the bass drums and guitar. Well, I didn’t think they sounded that bad on first earful – then I saw it was the singer who’d done the throwing.”
People who saw the band perform live either despised them or were intrigued by them, there was no middle ground… their music was raw, energetic, and unforgiving, and when they played it live, all those attributes were pushed to the nth degree, and while their music was something that crowds in the UK simply weren’t used to, the same couldn’t be said for audiences across the pond.
While the punk movement was still in its infancy in a broken Britain, years prior, the Ramones had already taken that sound and projected it to the masses in the US. While the themes contained within their music might have been a bit less political, their live shows were packed with the same amount of energy that the Sex Pistols championed.
Johnny Ramone was well aware of the similarities between the two bands, both in regard to their sound, the way they produced their album, and the way they played live. So much so that when he was working on new music, he told the engineer Ed Stasium that he wanted all of these qualities amped up to 11. “These guys ripped us off,” he said, “and I want to sound better than this.”
It begs the question: given that the grainy punk sound was already quite popular in the United States, how did the Americans react to the Sex Pistols when they first headed over? Well, to put it plainly, it was manic. The tour was tumultuous at best and proved to be the downfall for the entire band; however, one of the craziest shows took place on January 10th, 1978, when they played the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas.
The American audience thought they knew about punk, but they hadn’t seen anything until Sid Vicious took to the stage, with “Gimme A Fix” written across his chest, hardly playing the instrument he’s been paid to and instead going up to audience members and asking them to fight him. The whole tour followed in these footsteps, hailed as being overly violent, poor-sounding, badly managed and a complete waste of record label money. The end of the band was spelt out before it had even started, and the letters were arranged in the right order thanks to shows like this.
In the face of the hostility, John Lydon, going by his stage name Johnny Rotten at the time, took to the mic and delivered the sarcastic angst for which he became famous. “Oh, I’m so frightened,” he said to the raging crowd in Dallas. “Aren’t we the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”
