Sex Pistols ( B9 )

The Sex Pistols played their first concert outside Britain on 3 September, at the opening of the Chalet du Lac disco in Paris. The Bromley Contingent made the trip and Siouxsie Sioux was hassled by locals due to her outfit with bare breasts. The following day, the So It Goes performance aired; the audience heard "Anarchy in the U.K." introduced with a shout of "Get off your arse!" On 13 September, the Pistols began a tour of Britain. A week later, back in London, they headlined the opening night of the 100 Club Punk Special. Organised by McLaren (for whom the word "festival" had too much of a hippie connotation), the event was "considered the moment that was the catalyst for the years to come." Belying the common perception that punk bands couldn't play their instruments, contemporary music press reviews, later critical assessments of concert recordings, and testimonials by fellow musicians indicate that the Pistols had developed into a tight, ferocious live band. As Rotten tested out wild vocalisation styles, the instrumentalists experimented "with overload, feedback and distortion...pushing their equipment to the limit".

EMI and the Grundy incident

 On 8 October 1976, the major record label EMI signed the Sex Pistols to a two-year contract. In short order, the band was in the studio recording a full-dress session with Dave Goodman. As later described by Matlock, "The idea was to get the spirit of the live performance. We were pressurized to make it faster and faster." The results were rejected by the band. Chris Thomas, who had produced Roxy Music and mixed Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, was brought in to produce. The band's first single, "Anarchy in the U.K.", was released on 26 November 1976. John Robb—soon to be a cofounder of The Membranes and later a music journalist—described the record's impact: "From Steve Jones' opening salvo of descending chords, to Johnny Rotten's fantastic sneering vocals, this song is the perfect statement...a stunningly powerful piece of punk politics...a lifestyle choice, a manifesto that heralds a new era". Colin Newman, who had just cofounded the band Wire, heard it as "the clarion call of a generation."

continuare