It's January 14th 1978 and a band many Brits would be delighted to deport, let alone export, is attempting that evergreen industry challenge: to break America.
The Sex Pistols have all but exhausted the supply of righteous outrage and tabloid-inspired fear back home and are hauling their moral turpitude around the USA. It's the last show of their American trek and, eschewing the obvious choice of Los Angeles for San Francisco, they're booked into the Winterland Ballroom - the same venue The Band chose for their seminal 'Last Waltz' set. The Pistols, at this stage, are unaware this gig will be their last dance too.
The American media and local police departments have fallen for the same hype affecting their British counterparts, imagining the event represents some kind of seditionary revolution more than a straightforward rock gig. On motorbikes and in cruisers, the SFPD swarm around the queues outside the venue. Whilst this obviously appeals to the band's mischievous taste for antagonism, it's also a part of the constant turmoil and angry attention pushing them to breaking point. That and Malcolm McClaren's enthusiasm for a divide and conquer approach to rock management, ensuring Cook, Jones and Vicious now view John Lydon as a liability.
Glen Matlock has been sacked as the Pistols' bassist the previous year - too straight, too fond of pop music. But most of all, he is simply disliked by Lydon. Switching bass players doesn't always have a profound effect on a rock group, but most groups don't swap a useful songwriter for a deeply troubled, self-loathing youth who is keen on heroin and cannot play a note. Sid Vicious is some distance from the fierce, intelligent and intellectually provocative Lydon. In fact, he's the cartoon punk the press and establishment have been craving - an icon of dumb degeneration and a self fulfilling prophecy. He is a little over a year from death.
By the night of the gig, Californians have been introduced to the Sex Pistols via a networked entertainment TV show which they shared with Barry Manilow and Farrah Fawcett-Majors. They appeared on tape, performing 'God Save The Queen'. The audience found this vaguely funny. There is no jeering, filth or fury. Partly because the Queen doesn't oversee America (the reaction may have been different if the Pistols had suggested the President had moronic tendencies) and partly because there has been little controversy on the tour. Sid didn't even retaliate when his nose was bloodied at one show. Perhaps the Americans are beginning to see the band less as cultural terrorists and more a bunch of young men seeing how far they can push their luck.
Not much further, as it turns out. As the group take the stage, footage of recent interviews are shown on the screen behind them. The sound is awful, they can't be heard and any spiky messaging is lost. "You're a queer lot ..." says Lydon after the opener ('God Save The Queen' again). It's typical John - very dismissive and very English. He's also correct. The crowd is about a quarter Frisco punks and three quarters curious onlookers. Many of them are wearing plastic raincoats, imagining this to be authentic London new wave garb.
There is spitting, lots of spitting. The unsavoury trend has been transported intact from home to the States. But objections to the revolting practice ring a bit hollow as Sid is gleefully gobbing into the front row while he attempts to follow the basslines to 'Seventeen' and 'EMI'. A smoke bomb is hurled onto the stage. It obscures Lydon for a minute or so. He isn't fazed, merely complaining about the quality of items which have been thrown since the band fired up. "You'll have to do better than that." he says.
The American media and local police departments have fallen for the same hype affecting their British counterparts, imagining the event represents some kind of seditionary revolution more than a straightforward rock gig. On motorbikes and in cruisers, the SFPD swarm around the queues outside the venue. Whilst this obviously appeals to the band's mischievous taste for antagonism, it's also a part of the constant turmoil and angry attention pushing them to breaking point. That and Malcolm McClaren's enthusiasm for a divide and conquer approach to rock management, ensuring Cook, Jones and Vicious now view John Lydon as a liability.
Glen Matlock has been sacked as the Pistols' bassist the previous year - too straight, too fond of pop music. But most of all, he is simply disliked by Lydon. Switching bass players doesn't always have a profound effect on a rock group, but most groups don't swap a useful songwriter for a deeply troubled, self-loathing youth who is keen on heroin and cannot play a note. Sid Vicious is some distance from the fierce, intelligent and intellectually provocative Lydon. In fact, he's the cartoon punk the press and establishment have been craving - an icon of dumb degeneration and a self fulfilling prophecy. He is a little over a year from death.
By the night of the gig, Californians have been introduced to the Sex Pistols via a networked entertainment TV show which they shared with Barry Manilow and Farrah Fawcett-Majors. They appeared on tape, performing 'God Save The Queen'. The audience found this vaguely funny. There is no jeering, filth or fury. Partly because the Queen doesn't oversee America (the reaction may have been different if the Pistols had suggested the President had moronic tendencies) and partly because there has been little controversy on the tour. Sid didn't even retaliate when his nose was bloodied at one show. Perhaps the Americans are beginning to see the band less as cultural terrorists and more a bunch of young men seeing how far they can push their luck.
Not much further, as it turns out. As the group take the stage, footage of recent interviews are shown on the screen behind them. The sound is awful, they can't be heard and any spiky messaging is lost. "You're a queer lot ..." says Lydon after the opener ('God Save The Queen' again). It's typical John - very dismissive and very English. He's also correct. The crowd is about a quarter Frisco punks and three quarters curious onlookers. Many of them are wearing plastic raincoats, imagining this to be authentic London new wave garb.
There is spitting, lots of spitting. The unsavoury trend has been transported intact from home to the States. But objections to the revolting practice ring a bit hollow as Sid is gleefully gobbing into the front row while he attempts to follow the basslines to 'Seventeen' and 'EMI'. A smoke bomb is hurled onto the stage. It obscures Lydon for a minute or so. He isn't fazed, merely complaining about the quality of items which have been thrown since the band fired up. "You'll have to do better than that." he says.
By now Sid has all but abandoned efforts to play, preferring to engage in an exchange of saliva, beer and snot with the punters in front of him. A man clambers up and strides towards him. He means trouble. For his efforts he receives a glancing blow from the body of Sid's Fender.
Maybe the tour has occupied too much time, or maybe the Sex Pistols have nothing left to offer, but the entire set consists of a run through the debut album. There is no new material. And discounting the throwaway nonsense Cook and Jones release post-Lydon, nor will there be.
From the crowd's point of view, the show isn't a disaster. They've had a good time. But with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear there is no way forward. After a truncated encore of Iggy's 'No Fun' there's a pregnant pause. The gig is complete. The tour is over. The band is finished. "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" is Lydon's parting shot. The last time he will address a crowd using his 'Rotten' handle.
Intially, this comes off as just another stock cynical snipe from the eternally jaded Lydon. However in truth, the question is very much directed at himself. Where he was once the point man for a band genuinely capable of shaking things up - or at least pointing out some home truths and inspiring a grass roots surge of new acts - he now finds himself trapped in a boorish cliché, designed to stir nothing more than senseless violence, unthinking obviousness and easy money. He is transparently bitter, angry and so unhappy he knows the charade cannot continue.
Never mind the Sex Pistols this is just bollocks.
There's an after-show party. Britt Eckland is there. The four men for whom the celebrations are intended, are not.
In 1996 the band return for a round of shows all too blatantly named the 'Filthy Lucre Tour'. Glen Matlock is back on bass duties. They calmly confirm they still hate each other, this is just a payday. It's difficult to see how this would, or could, do anything to alleviate the crushing sense of wasted opportunity and disappointment that hung in the air at the Winterland Ballroom gig eighteen years earlier.
Maybe the tour has occupied too much time, or maybe the Sex Pistols have nothing left to offer, but the entire set consists of a run through the debut album. There is no new material. And discounting the throwaway nonsense Cook and Jones release post-Lydon, nor will there be.
From the crowd's point of view, the show isn't a disaster. They've had a good time. But with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear there is no way forward. After a truncated encore of Iggy's 'No Fun' there's a pregnant pause. The gig is complete. The tour is over. The band is finished. "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" is Lydon's parting shot. The last time he will address a crowd using his 'Rotten' handle.
Intially, this comes off as just another stock cynical snipe from the eternally jaded Lydon. However in truth, the question is very much directed at himself. Where he was once the point man for a band genuinely capable of shaking things up - or at least pointing out some home truths and inspiring a grass roots surge of new acts - he now finds himself trapped in a boorish cliché, designed to stir nothing more than senseless violence, unthinking obviousness and easy money. He is transparently bitter, angry and so unhappy he knows the charade cannot continue.
Never mind the Sex Pistols this is just bollocks.
There's an after-show party. Britt Eckland is there. The four men for whom the celebrations are intended, are not.
In 1996 the band return for a round of shows all too blatantly named the 'Filthy Lucre Tour'. Glen Matlock is back on bass duties. They calmly confirm they still hate each other, this is just a payday. It's difficult to see how this would, or could, do anything to alleviate the crushing sense of wasted opportunity and disappointment that hung in the air at the Winterland Ballroom gig eighteen years earlier.
