Memories of the ‘76 Sex Pistols gig that never was

In April 1976 a writer on Sounds magazine, reviewing a concert at London's El Paradise Club, wrote: 'If you hate Patti Smith for all that noise and rock and roll energy at the expense of technique and sounding pretty, then you'll really hate the Sex Pistols. Their aesthetic is Shepherd's Bush-Who and speed-era Small Faces — they play it fast and they play it loud. The guitarist doesn't bother too much with solos, just powering his way through whatever passes as a middle eight. But this isn't to say they're sloppy, far from it. The rhythm section is quite tight, and the drummer very listenable'.
Two months later came an incendiary gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall – an event subsequently billed by the NME as the most important concert of all time, even though just 28 tickets were sold, according to a book, I Swear I Was There, by David Nolan.
In the audience was Peter Hook, who would go on to play bass guitar in Joy Division and New Order. 'It was absolutely bizarre', he told Nolan. 'It was the most shocking thing I've ever seen in my life, it was just unbelievable... It was so ... alien to everything'.
As Nolan writes, that Pistols gig on June 4, and another at the same venue on July 20, 'changed the world'. The audience reaction at the first one, he suggests, 'would spark a series of musical and pop-culture detonations that are still delighting and annoying people in equal measure today'.
As newspapers began alerting their readers to the punk phenomenon, the Pistols – Rotten, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Steve Cook – continued to travel up and down the country, and even played Dundee's College of Technology on October 12. An incendiary single, Anarchy in the UK, was released on the EMI label on November 19.
Then came the Grundy moment.
On December 1 the band and various friends appeared on LWT's Today programme, presented by Bill Grundy. Goaded by Grundy to say something outrageous, the guests duly obliged. The tea-time audience was astounded. And EMI, outraged, would soon fire the band.
The Anarchy in the UK tour was announced: the Pistols headlining, and supported by The Damned, The Clash, and Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers. But tabloid stories about 'foul-mouthed yobs' and Moral Majority protests forced local authorities and university bosses to pull the plug: most of the gigs were cancelled.
Glasgow was a case in point. The tour would have graced the Apollo stage on December 15 but for the District Council's licensing committee suspending the venue's license for that one night.
'This group has been attracting an undesirable element among young people', said the committee's chairman. 'We have enough problems in Glasgow without creating trouble by yobbos'.
The Apollo Centre manager, Jan Tomasik, observed that the City Fathers seemed to have judged the Pistols without actually seeing them. 'It would appear that the Lord Provost has no faith in the moral values of our city's fine youngsters, he added.
One fan who was disappointed by the councillors' decision was Bill Hamilton.
Bill, who was 22 at the time and is now 71, had first encountered the Pistols on a TV music show, So It Goes, which was presented by Tony Wilson and often featured punk groups.
'I remember trying to see The Jam in 1976, when they came to a tiny little disco in St Enoch Square', said Bill. 'It only had a capacity of about one hundred but I couldn't get in. But a friend of mine who worked in a record shop in Battlefield got tickets. I got a ticket and a poster, and a great big Jam badge.
'I worked for Glasgow's planning department at the time – it was my first job after university – and I put the Jam badge and the poster up on the wall.
'When the Sex Pistols tickets went on sale I was lucky enough to get one. But when they appeared on the Bill Grundy show, councils up and down the country decided that these punk boys weren't good for our young people.
'I may be wrong here but my memory is that it was the council that banned the Glasgow gig. I stuck my ticket up on the wall in my office. I don't have it now, unfortunately: it's maybe worth some money'.
On the Glasgow Apollo's Facebook page, other would-be attendees recall the fate of their £1.75 tickets.
'I had a ticket but took it back for the refund', says Gavin Paterson. Phil Kean adds: 'I had a ticket but my mum ripped it up along with others into little pieces because I left home to stay with my bird at the time'.
Bill moved to London in 1978 and never managed to see the Pistols at their peak. Is that a source of regret for him? 'Huge regret', he acknowledges.
'They were such cultural icons, and I loved that whole punk-rock scene. I thought it was brilliant if that you had three chords, a cheap guitar and an amplifier, you could get up there and make music.'. He shares the view that when the Glasgow date, and others on the Anarchy tour were cancelled, this was a cased of the establishment cracking down on working-class youth.
Like many others of a similar age, Bill was struck at the time by the sharp difference between punk music in 1976 and the music, particularly prog rock, heavy metal and US west-coast bands, that was in vogue at the time. The Old Grey Whistle Test, which was aimed at the discriminating fan, found no favour with the adherents of punk and its DIY aesthetic.
Glen Matlock, who co-wrote much of the Pistols' 1977 album, Never Mind the Bollocks – Here's the Sex Pistols, told Mojo magazine in 2017: 'I think we were fighting against apathy. Old fuddy-duddies. Boring music that didn't speak to kids',
The song Pretty Vacant was, he added, 'not a political song, it's not a love song, it's a primal scream. Reflecting what was going on in mid-70s London. For good and bad, punk made a big chink in the age of deference ... We did change the world. It's something that I'm proud of'.
Ahead of the Pistols in 1977 lay that controversial debut album and, in Nottingham Magistrates Court in November, a hearing into whether the record's title was indecent; the manager of a Virgin record store in the city had been accused of contravening an 1889 Indecent Advertisement Act by displaying the front cover. After a trial he was found not guilty.
The album remains famous. As Mojo's writer remarked in 2017, as a cultural artefact it instantly attained a status on a par with Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, and arguably remains punk's most powerful statement.
Bill Hamilton still has fond memories of those heady days. 'The Pistols, The Clash and The Jam – they spoke to me when I was in my early twenties', he says. 'I thought, they're saying things that I think are meaningful and important to me'.
* Sex Pistols (Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock) Featuring Frank Carter: Bellahouston Park, June 21)
RUSSELL LEADBETTER

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