“The audience was throwing everything from bottles to rats to pig’s ears at the stage." The Sex Pistols look back on their wild, dangerously out-of-control and ultimately doomed first US tour

Sex Pistols in the USA — (Image credit: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns))

“Were there any good moments?” Steve Jones ponders, thinking back on the Sex Pistols' ill-fated January 1978 US tour. “No, there were none.”

With Live In The USA 1978 - a three CD document of the London punk quartet's shows in Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco - set for release next month, Jones and Pistols drummer Paul Cook revisit their first trip to America in a new [paywalled] interview with The Times. And it's fair to say that the pair aren't exactly over-burdened with joyous recollections of the trek.

“By the US tour we were already public enemy number one," says Cook. “We were thrown into the lion’s den and it was a pretty dark time... It gives me the horrors even now, to be honest.”

“The whole tour was chaos from start to finish.”

“Malcolm [McLaren, the band's manager] played us up as the ultimate bad boys,” Steve Jones recalls. “‘They bite the heads off chickens. They throw up everywhere.’ All that shit... We were all sick of Malcolm’s crazy publicity stunts.”

The quartet - rounded out by frontman Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) and bassist Sid Vicious - had originally planned to play eight shows in America at the close of 1977 and beginning of 1978. But from the off, nothing went smoothly.

With members of the group having criminal records, ranging from drug arrests to assaults on a police officer. the band were initially denied visas to enter the United States, and only managed to secure visas at the 11th hour when their label stumped up $1 million as a guarantee of their good behaviour.

"Betting on the Sex Pistols to keep the peace at that time was like betting on a three-legged chihuahua to win the Grand National - not the best investment they would ever make," Steve Jones admitted in his autobiography Lonely Boy.

The group would face hostile, and in some cases dangerously violent, audiences in every city they visited, on a tour Steve Jones recalls as "a fucking circus", and "no fun".

“The audience was throwing everything from bottles to rats to pig’s ears at the stage,” Paul Cook remembers. “They had read about us being British devils, come to destroy their country, so they thought it was what they were meant to do... I thought someone was going to get killed.”

Later this month, with Frank Carter replacing John Lydon, and original bassist Glen Matlock restored, the Sex Pistols will play Punkspring festival in Osaka and Tokyo, Japan, then travel to Australia and New Zealand for shows in April.

“I know people are moaning that it’s not the Pistols without John, but Frank has been a breath of fresh air,” says Paul Cook.

Live In The USA 1978 is set for release on April 25, and can be pre-ordered now.

Carter, Paul Cook, Jones, and Matlock will be performing on March 24, as part of the annual Teenage Cancer Trust At The Royal Albert Hall series.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.