Cain's Ballroom Part Two
DOA/Sex Pistols Tour Chapter 22: January 11, 1978
Here are a few of my personal observations from being on the 1978 tour and seeing the Sex Pistols all the way from Memphis to San Francisco. Unlike most people (who saw their first-ever punk rock band during the tour), I saw a lot of live punk rock from 1975-77: the Ramones, Dead Boys, The Damned (at CBGb for their first tour, top ten ever punk rock shows), Television with Richard Hell, the New York Dolls, The Alice Cooper Group, etc. I think I can give a decent account of whether they were any good or not compared to the competition back in the day. (I promise not to inflict this kind of stuff on you in the future, just gotta say it now. But I know how “music criticism” can be so boring.)
I have to say it: The Sex Pistols were the real deal: A great live band every time I saw them. That’s how we judged rock ’n’ roll when I was growing up, watching everyone from the Beatles and the Stones, James Brown (best performer ever!) and on and on. Studio recordings never mattered as much as live shows.
Honestly (and obviously), as PUNK Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief back then, I didn’t like the English punk scene as much as what happened in New York City from 1974-76. PUNK Magazine was all about the CBGB/Max’s scene of 1975-77. I still think that the early NYC punk scene in 1974-75 that was launched by the Patti Smith Group’s release of the D.I.Y. 45 rpm single “Piss Factory/Hey Joe”, early Television (with Richard Hell), Blondie, Talking Heads and the Ramones at CBGB, Lou Reed’s release of Metal Machine Music (always the greatest artistic/anti-music statement of all time), and the “second wave” bands at CBGB like the Dead Boys, The Cramps and the Sic F*cks were more interesting because the NYC bands were inventing a new music scene. They took a lot of chances and made a lot of mistakes. The English punk rock bands established (and stuck to) a formula that later punk rock bands followed. It was a great formula, but those bands lacked the originality, creativity and inventiveness of the early CBGB scene.
Those English bands were able to listen to that first Ramones LP, released in April 1976, and take off from there. New York bands (unfortunately) didn’t try to copy the Ramones’ formula, especially since they didn’t sell many records. They were still hoping for mainstream success and escape the Bowery and the CBGB scene. It was always weird to me that in 1976, there were no Ramones-inspired bands taking over CBGB and creating the kind of scene that happened in London. But now it’s all just ancient history.
All that said, having seen the Pistols during their 1978 US tour, I have to admit that they were the ultimate punk band. They lived up to all of the media hype and BS. They had the attitude and delivered the goods. Where a band like the Ramones ignored the controversy over the lyrics for “Now I Want To Sniff Some Glue” (an early, now-forgotten punk rock scandal) the Sex Pistols built their career on media coverage like that. They backed up their confrontational performance style with attitude and physical confrontation. They weren’t afraid to mix it up physically—they were small and scrawny, but tough kids who had to deal with a lot of crazy bullshit!.
During the 1978 US Sex Pistols, most people were there to see John and Sid and listen to Steve and Paul. Would anyone go to listen to Sid Vicious play chords on his bass guitar? Of course not. That’s why I think it’s silly when people say stuff like: “Sid couldn’t play bass guitar.” The Sex Pistols in 1977-78 before the break-up were not about the music. It was a phenomenon that we haven’t witnessed since. An outrageous, obnoxious cultural phenomenon that the mass media continues to denigrate to this day.
Sid Vicious did something better than anyone else in punk rock: He was a true “rock star” (even though that wasn’t the intention if you think about it). He had charisma. The “IT” factor. The look. The sneer, the attitude, the look and the energy. He was a natural entertainer. He loved being onstage and getting a reaction. For better or worse (mostly worse because he died so young), Sid was “The Punk Elvis” in the same way Jimi Hendrix was “The Psychedelic Elvis.”
On the other hand, Johnny Rotten wasn’t a rock star and never intended to be. He was an anti-hero. The villain you love to hate: “The Bad Guy” you learn to love. And one of the best performers I’ve ever seen. No one moved onstage the way he did. The combination of Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious at the same time was a sight to see: With Cook and Jones backing their stage antics this band could have taken over the world if they wanted toxin the same way The Alice Cooper Group had weird hit singles in the early 1970s, and that I though could power the music scene into the 1980s.
An odd thing about the “What they’re like” sidebar published in PUNK #14 is that before the tour, photographer Michael McKenzie (a mainstream rock photog, best known for shooting the Don McLean American Pie album cover), approached me in December because he was going to Tulsa to shoot the Sex Pistols. At the time, since I had no idea at all that I was going to be invited by Tom Forcade to go on the entire tour, I happily agreed to publish his photos, thinking that this would be the best coverage we could expect to get from the tour. Like everyone else, he was surprised after I returned from the tour and didn’t need any photos—but we agreed to run a few of his images anyway. He’s a good guy.
After the show (or maybe before, who knows), Sid punched a hole in the wall. At the time we had no idea this happened (no big deal, really), but the Cain’s Ballroom owners were canny enough to frame it, so it’s now on permanent display at the club. Here’s a good link to the whole story:
http://www.newson6.com/story/5e3678c82f69d76f6208ac43/cains-ballroom-alive-with-music-history
Another image from the Tulsa show features Sid Vicious drinking a beer with a glamorous blonde woman. She shows up in my next episode, so please remember her. She was the sexiest woman in Tulsa at the show that night, and attended my birthday party later that night:
https://sfae.com/Artists/Lynn-Goldsmith/Sid-Vicious-Drinking-Beer-Tulsa-OK-1978
NEXT: John Holmstrom’s Birthday Party in Tulsa
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Thanks! Of course, I forgot to mention Australian punk... The Saints and Radio Birdman!
Great statement about NYC punk - English punk.