Peter Smith - Sex Pistols: The Pride of Punk

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smith, Peter, 1956 author.

Title: Sex Pistols : the pride of punk / Peter Smith.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2018] | Series: Tempo : a Rowman & Littlefield music series on rock, pop, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018026466 (print) | LCCN 2018027734 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442255593 (electronic) | ISBN 9781442255586 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Sex Pistols (Musical group) | Punk rock musicHistory and criticism.

Classification: LCC ML421.S47 (ebook) | LCC ML421.S47 S65 2018 (print) | DDC 782.42166092/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026466

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Many thanks to the following who kindly allowed me to use their material within this book: Bill Gillum for his narrative account of the Pistols gig at Middlesbrough Rock Garden; Peter Dont Care for his narrative account of the Pistols gig at Wolverhampton Lafayette Club; and Tom Graves for allowing me to use When the Sex Pistols Came to Memphis, which is his chapter in Louise Brooks, Frank Zappa, & Other Charmers & Dreamers by Tom Graves. Toms chapter also appears on the www.guerrillamonsterfilms.com site of Mike McCarthy. Many thanks also to my wife, Marie Smith, and my son, David Smith, who spent many hours supporting me in the production of this text.

After barely holding together for three tumultuous years, the Sex Pistols were no more. Their influence on rock history, however, is disproportionately great for their years of being an active part of it, and that, in and of itself, was, perhaps, punks secret weapon. Small footprint; big impact, all things considered, with plenty of crass, crude, and foul attitude to leave nothing tidy or settled once punk showed up. For author Peter Smith, he found in the Sex Pistols the makings of a revolution of my own from 1975 to 1978, and his contribution to the Tempo series marks the rise and fall of the Sex Pistols amid the cultural upheaval of the times, all of which he bore witness to in real time and which he shares here, writing as a music historian, cultural critic, and autobiographer.

For many fans, their first Sex Pistols concert was one of those nights that changed my life experiences, and Smith is no exception to having felt that way. Smith takes the good, bad, and tragic into account as the Sex Pistols rode, shaped, and defied the cultural currents that flowed from rock to pop to disco and punk. He ends his story as a survivor who appreciates the great irony of how even the Sex Pistolsonce a great threat to Western civilizationhave been accepted with pride into mainstream cultures archive of rebels.

Scott Calhoun

Series Editor