"In April, the Sex Pistols played the Nashville for the
first time, supporting us. I walked out onstage
while they were doing their
soundcheck, and I heard Malcolm going to John, "Do
you want those kind of shoes that Steve's got or
the kind that Paul's got? What sort of sweater do you
want?" And I thought, "Blimey, they've got a manager,
and he's offering them clothes!" The rest of my
group didn't think much of all this, but I sat out
in the audience. Lydon was really thin. He pulled
out his snot rag and blew into it and he went,
"If you hadn't guessed already, we're the Sex
Pistols," and they blasted into "Substitute."
They did "Steppin' Stone" which we did, but they were
light years ahead of us. The difference was, we
played "Route 66" to the drunks at the bar, going
"Please like us." But here was this quartet who were
standing there going, "We don't give a toss what
you think, you pricks, this is what we like to
play and this is the way we're gonna play it." They
were from another century, it took my head off.
They honestly didn't give a s***. The audience were
shocked." Joe Strummer
"You should," someone informed me after the Sex Pistols'
act at London's Nashville Rooms on Saturday, "come and
see them tomorrow night. They'll be even worse."
It was an earnest and sincere recommendation for, you
have to understand, the whole contrived and misguided
ethic of "they're so bad they're great" has, with the
Sex Pistols - a recently much-vaunted four-piece band
of total incompetents from West London - been taken to
unprecedented levels.
Their dreadfully inept attempts to zero in on the kind
of viciously blank intensity previously epitomized by
the Stooges was rather endearing at first: the predictably
moronic vocalist ("go on - pick yer nose," a fan
encouraged him at one point) was cheerfully idiotic, and
the lead guitarist, another surrogate punk suffering a
surfeit of Sterling Morrison, played with a determined
disregard for taste or intelligence.
The novelty of this retarded spectacle was, however, soon
erased by their tiresome repetition of punk cliches.
They do as much for music as World War II did for the
cause of peace. I hope we shall hear no more of them. Allan Jones, Melody Maker
April 23, 1976
"When I first saw the Sex Pistols at the Nashville Rooms,
I remember coming away from the show with a million questions
in my head. I'd just seen something unlike anything I'd
ever seen before." Howard Thompson
"If you want an audience, start a fight." Gaelic proverb
"I'm standing at the back and watching them. I knew some of the
songs, like "No Feelings" and "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone."
They're not being very good. It was in the middle of "Pretty
Vacant." All of a sudden Vivienne [Westwood] is slapping this girl's face.
She's right in the front row slapping this girl; her boyfriend
has been standing six feet away and he just comes barrelling
over and grabs Vivienne and starts to hit her. I don't know
whether Malcolm had watched the whole thing, or whether he
just saw some guy trying to bash up his girl, but the next thing
you saw was a clear image of this guy ten feet across the front
of the stage with Malcolm a foot behind him with his fist flying
out - a classic photograph.
John, with this look of glee, immediately dived off the front of
the stage and started throwing punches. Steve came forward and
started trying to pull them apart. It was complete chaos but they
went on to finish. Vivienne said to Caroline [Coon] afterwards that
she was bored, the Sex Pistols were boring, she decided to liven
things up. So she slapped this girl for no reason, just did it.
It was extremely electrifying. Up until that point, it was just
another date." John Ingham
"That fight at the Nashville: that's when all the publicity got hold
of it and the violence started creeping in. I don't know what caused
that, except I think everybody was ready to go and we were the
catalyst. People just wanted to go mad, but we didn't instigate
it." Paul Cook
April 29, 1976
"We played under the pretext of hiring the club for a private
party. That was a good gig because we had our own sound system.
It was so much better when we had control of the situation.
We could set the gig up and use it for our own end. We would
have monitors that worked. We were relaxed and playing well by
this stage, and the crowd really liked us. The gigs we could
organize ourselves always turned out to be the best shows." Paul Cook
"There was an argument between Paul and me. I don't know what we were
arguing about, but we were really yelling and screaming at each other.
Then the curtain went up, and we stopped fighting and went on with it.
That gig was particularly bad. When the curtain went down, I went over
to Malcolm and said, "I quit. I've had enough." I had no money. I had
nowhere to live. The money from gigs did go for expenses, there
just wasn't enough of it.
Sometimes these clubs would be full and the bars would
do very well. We would just go in, play, then leave. I had to go home
on the f***ing subway with half the audience - not the big star trip
I had in mind. Seriously, it was damned f***ing dangerous to be doing
s*** like that with our reputations. I would have thought a cab or a
lift home would not have been an impossibility" John Lydon
