“Backstage” before the Winterland show
DOA/Sex Pistols Tour Chapter 29: January 14, 1978
We were pumped. The tour had been a smashing success to date: Newspaper headlines after the near-riot in San Antonio, there were great performances in Dallas and Baton Rouge, and a nice birthday party for me in Tulsa, Oklahoma after a good, if uneventful, performance by the Sex Pistols. We were as close to the tour as anyone except the photographers Joe Stevens and Bob Gruen. (Joe was traveling with Malcolm, while Gruen was on the bus with Sid and Johnny.) The Sex Pistols would be playing a big stage in the city where “hippies” were born: San Francisco with legendary concert promoter Bill Graham running the venue. What could go wrong?
Roberta Bayley and I were hanging out backstage before the show began, and as it began to fill up. Everything seemed cool: We had tickets and even backstage passes for the night. We were hanging out with Malcolm McLaren and his crew. Roberta was taking photos of Malcolm’s crew:
Everything was going great! Then there was an odd encounter between Bill Graham and Malcolm. I couldn’t hear what was said between the two, but soon after Graham left, Malcolm muttered that Graham was a “Flower Power Fascist,” which summed up my feelings as well. There was no love lost between the people in power from the hippie-era and the upstart punk rockers back then. Punk rock was a new cultural phenomenon that old-style hippie-types like Graham just didn’t understand, while we were rebelling against everything they represented. The Winterland show was the proverbial “Match Made in Hell.”
Soon after the above photos were taken, Roberta and I were physically removed from Winterland. As I remember, they also wanted to kick Boogie, the Sex Pistols sound man, out of the building! As you probably know already, everything went downhill after this.
So much for the “unlimited access” Noel Monk promised we would have after the Tulsa gig. But why were we thrown out of the place? Was it because Tom Forcade approached us in the Tulsa airport? Did they connect that PUNK Magazine and the hated Tom Forcade (who was making an unauthorized film of the Sex Pistols tour) were working together? Or was this some kind of weird attitude Bill Graham had about journalists and photographers being allowed on the premises before a show?
Stay tuned.
I highly recommend Sean Howe’s thoroughly researched book about Tom Forcade—the most interesting character I ever met in my entire life.