Sex Pistols Drummer Recalls ‘Carnage’ of Their Infamous US Tour
· Ultimate Classic RockSex Pistols drummer Paul Cook still remembers the mayhem and fear that surrounded his band's 1978 tour of the United States.
“It's definitely all falling apart in front of our eyes on that American tour,” the drummer recalled during his recent appearance on The Rockonteurs podcast. “It was a disaster, to be honest.”
Sex Pistols, of course, were no strangers to controversy. The band happily embraced their role as anti-authoritarian leaders in the U.K., sparking riots at concerts and becoming the face of the punk movement. However, America was a different beast altogether, and the group's January '78 tour of the States proved the be the nail in Sex Pistols' coffin.
READ MORE: Paul Cook Admits Sex Pistols Firing Glen Matlock Was 'Stupid'
Part of the band’s problems could be attributed to the tour schedule. Rather than stopping in liberal, artistic hotbeds like Los Angeles and New York, the group’s manager Malcolm McLaren booked Sex Pistols in clubs throughout the Bible Belt.
“The thinking behind it was, well, we're not going to play to all these trendies in New York, and let's go and play in San Antonio and Dallas, Texas — you know, cowboy bars,” Cook noted.
McLaren anticipated – and even hoped for – a certain amount of confrontation, assuming it would also give the band some added publicity. Still, he and the Sex Pistols got much more than they bargained for.
Paul Cook Feared Someone Would Die During Sex Pistols' U.S. Tour
“I thought somebody was going to get seriously damaged or die, really,” Cook admitted. “When we were playing, we had sheriffs on the side of the stage, with guns to each side of the stage just to make sure no one got out of all this, standing there as we were playing. And people were throwing all kinds of shit at us, you know, bottles, pig's ears, everything.”
Compounding the issue further was the insatiable drug addiction of bassist Sid Vicious.
“We had all this tight security and Sid was trying to go and score all the time. And he was off his head,” Cook recalled. “It was totally falling apart, everything.’
What Happened at Sex Pistols' Final Concert?
The final show of the tour was Sex Pistols’ lone West Coast date, a stop at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
“Everyone was beat by then, really. And we just wanted to get it over with and get out,” Cook confessed. Despite an energetic crowd of roughly 5,000 people, Sex Pistols' anger and bitterness were evident. Frustrated by the exhausting tour and tired of intraband turmoil, the group broke up following the San Francisco show.
READ MORE: Famous Final (or Not-So-Final) Concerts
“Me and Steve, we went back to the [hotel],” Cook remembered. “And we just said, 'We want out of this. You know, we've had enough.' John was at another hotel and Sid was around at someone's house O.D.-ing somewhere in San Francisco.”
Even decades later – with occasional reunions and more public battles under their belts – the ‘78 U.S. tour lives on in Sex Pistols infamy.
“It was like carnage, it really was,” Cook declared. “I don't know how we got through it.”
10. Suicide, 'Suicide' (1977)
Suicide came out of the same New York punk scene that spawned other innovators of the genre, but the music on their self-titled debut album was one of a kind. Stripped to a duo of singer Alan Vega and keyboardist Martin Rev, Suicide's minimalist and primal form of electronic music sounded like it originated in the darkest, dankest corners of the scene. Even other punks were scared of them. Entire subsets of music owe a debt to this harrowing record, including whatever it is Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska' falls under.
9. Devo, 'Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!' (1978)
They looked weird. They sounded even weirder. And they pretty much pissed off every rock 'n' roll fan with their deconstructed take on the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Devo approached punk from a different direction, and their debut album remains a cornerstone work of the genre, as well as one of punk's first bridges to New Wave. Nothing on 'Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!' comes together like you expect it to – not the songs' structures, not the traditional rock instruments, not even the way the synths are played. More than any of their peers, Devo sounded like the future.
8. Wire, 'Pink Flag' (1977)
Wire seemed exactly like what you'd expect from a band formed by London art-school students: artier and more structured than the other bands they're often lumped in with. Their debut album tossed aside punk's nascent conventions and built songs from the ground up, often running out of time for things like verses and choruses. The songs on 'Pink Flag' are short, jagged and to the point: Little is wasted. Though nobody knew it at the time, punk's immediate descendant post-punk starts right here.
7. Green Day, 'Dookie' (1994)
Punk never went away; it just went underground and took on different forms for much of the '80s. Green Day were the first band to bring the music back to the mainstream in the '90s with their first major-label outing. It arrived at just the right time, as alt-rock found some commercial footing thanks to breakout bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. 'Dookie' was the closest any of these big albums came to early punk's core sound: choppy guitars, frills-free songs and a snarling attitude that summed up the feelings of apathetic kids everywhere. 'Dookie' jump-started a genre that had pretty much lost interest in reaching anyone but the already converted. A whole new world opened after this record.
6. Talking Heads, 'Talking Heads: 77' (1977)
Like Wire, Talking Heads approached punk music with the eyes, ears and methods of art students. Unlike the London-bred Wire, Talking Heads injected it with some of the tricks they picked up from their New York contemporaries. They later expanded – in both terms of band size and the scope of their songs. (See the world rhythms and musicians employed on albums like 'Speaking in Tongues.') But on their prickly, caffeinated debut they come off like punk was just a rest stop on their way to more global travels. But what a stop! An important record in punk's evolution.
5. The Clash, "The Clash' (1977)
Punk's most restless band was all spit and fire on its debut album, bridging the social and political under a battalion of guitars. They'd steer outside of the genre on subsequent albums (see No. 1 on our list), but on 'The Clash' they truly sounded, as their record company once boasted, like the "only band that matters" – at least the only punk one. Other punk bands made better first albums (see Nos. 2, 3 and 4 on our list), but none captured the music's culture-shifting potential quite like the Clash.
4. Ramones, 'Ramones' (1976)
Punk music the way we know it starts here. For seeds, you can go back to earlier bands like the Stooges, or even earlier to '60s garage rockers, but the Ramones' self-titled debut album pretty much inspired every three-chord punk record that followed its release in the spring of 1976. Thing is, they weren't even trying to spearhead a movement; they were pretty much playing a faster, louder version of the '60s bubblegum and girl-group pop they loved. And it even clocks in at less than half an hour – a nod to both an earlier vinyl era and its no-nonsense approach to rock 'n' roll.
3. Television, 'Marquee Moon' (1977)
Punk was supposed to be about wiping away '70s rock's bloated pretenses like long songs and even longer guitar solos. Television didn't get that memo. On their debut LP, the New York-based quartet tosses aside the genre's still-being-written rule book to play punk music that sounded an awful lot like classic rock once you scraped away Tom Verlaine's sneering vocals. 'Marquee Moon''s title track stretches to 10 minutes; another song clocks in at seven. The interplay between guitarists Verlaine and Richard Lloyd is as precise and as exciting as anything Jimmy Page and his disciples were doing at the time. A landmark record no matter where you want to file it.
2. Sex Pistols, 'Never Mind the Bollocks - Here's the Sex Pistols' (1977)
The album that launched the punk explosion in the late '70s remains one of the most important records ever made. Other punk records came out before it, but none had the impact of the Sex Pistols' only LP. It's a cornerstone work propped up by some of the era's best songs, including "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen." Everything associated with the genre – the middle-fingered attitude, the primitive attack of instruments, the sneer – are all wrapped up in 38 of the most ferocious minutes ever committed to vinyl.
1. The Clash, 'London Calling' (1979)
To classify the Clash's epic third album a punk record misses its point and scope. 'London Calling' is the history of rock 'n' roll told over two LPs and spanning everything from pop, ska, R&B, '50s rock, reggae and, yes, punk. (They'd add disco and proto hip-hop to the mix on their next album.) No other album managed to both envelop and shoot down punk's intentions and limits like 'London Calling.' They even managed to get on U.S. radio with the tacked-on "Train in Vain," but the album's many riches go way, way deeper than that hit single. From the opening call to arms/title track to the rock 'n' roll kiss-off "Death or Glory" to the iconic cover art (borrowed from Elvis Presley's debut LP), 'London Calling' both buried punk's expectations and carried the music into the next decade with new hope.