The Sex Pistols at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas
DOA/Sex Pistols Tour Chapter 18: January 10, 1978
Narrator: In our last episode, Tom Forcade held an impromptu meeting with John Holmstrom and Roberta Bayley at his Presidential Suite in Dallas. “Hilarity ensued” after he presented Roberta with a bar of pure gold.
(Actually, it was a lead bar covered with gold paint, just in case you were wondering. But it’s always the thought behind gift-giving that matters the most, right?)
I can’t remember how long our meeting with Tom Forcade took, but somehow we managed to see the Sex Pistols that night. The place was packed with the rowdiest crowd of the entire tour! This was a really fun show: the polar opposite of Randy’s Rodeo. Several dozen actual punk rockers were in attendance (instead of the cowboys, rednecks and bored college students in San Antonio).
The crowd were totally into the show to the point that several members tried to get as close to the stage and had to be… well, they didn’t HAVE to be… restrained by the biker/security guards that Warner Brothers hired to protect the Sex Pistols during the tour. You can see one of them temper the enthusiasm of a female in Joe Steven’s photos in the page from PUNK #14, posted below.
The violence didn’t stop at the stage, either. When you watch the film of the tour, D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage (financed by Tom Forcade and High Times magazine), one scene shows a female fan who got hit by the security goons in a parking lot. Don’t ask me why these guys often seemed to pick on the females, since it never seemed like a fair fight to me. And I doubt that the Pistols felt they had to have the groupies in the audience restrained and beaten up…
So here’s the stuff you’ve been waiting for: Several photos by Roberta from the Longhorn show. It wasn’t easy for her to get a good shot of the band because they were spread out: The Longhorn Ballroom was a lot wider than it was deep.
TRIGGER WARNING: If you are offended by someone wearing a swastika, please stop reading NOW!
(Here’s an interesting essay on the subject: http://scribe.usc.edu/swastika-chic/)



I came across a few excellent videos that captured the Longhorn Ballroom show, available on YouTube:
There are even more, if you do a simple search on YouTube.
Road manager Noel Monk’s account of the tour, 12 Days On The Road, and a few other eyewitness accounts suggest that there was a confrontation between Monk and Tom Forcade, but nothing can be corraborated, so I’ll leave the story here…
NEXT: Tulsa, Oklahoma
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