Post by Fuggle on Jan 7, 2008 17:14:35 GMT -5
The night Memphis met the Sex Pistols
By Andria Lisle
Special to The Commercial Appeal
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Jim Shearin/The Commercial Appeal files
Members of the Sex Pistols -- Sid Vicious (with cigarette), Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten
(behind Jones) -- arrived at Midtown's Taliesyn Ballroom amid a tense scene as the concert
had been oversold and angry fans mobbed outside the venue. Inside, the audience waited
90 minutes for the band to take the stage.
January 1978: Another new year in Memphis, heralded by Elvis Presley's version of "My Way," which, six months after the King's ignominious death, was in constant rotation on WHBQ.
"Saturday Night Fever" was pulling in the post-holiday crowds at local movie theaters, and Overton Square bars such as Yosemite Sam's and the Hot Air Balloon were packed with would-be Travoltas in gold chains and polyester suits.
Then on Friday, Jan. 6, the Sex Pistols' tour bus rolled into town for the second stop on their inaugural U.S. tour, which began in Atlanta Jan. 5.
Jeff Golightly was a 23-year-old aspiring folk guitarist at the time.
"I'd been reading about the Sex Pistols in Rolling Stone, and it was almost like, 'Oh god -- they're here,'" he says. "I knew it was something I needed to see and be a part of."
The controversial punk rockers were 22-year-old guitarist Steve Jones, 20-year-old bassist Sid Vicious, 21-year-old drummer Paul Cook, and 22-year-old front man Johnny Rotten.
The Pistols had already made headlines in their native England for their chaotic musical attacks on British society, which, despite yielding hit singles like "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen," so rattled EMI that the record label dropped the band from its contract.
In Memphis, the hubbub began days before the Pistols shambled into the city limits.
Police Director E. Winslow Chapman, acting on a tip that the band simulated sex acts on stage, decided to do reconnaissance at the Atlanta concert, held at the Great Southeast Music Hall.
"The Pistols screamed and mock-menaced the audience, but the nastiest thing they did was blow their noses onto the wooden floor of the stage," reported The Commercial Appeal on Friday morning.
Chapman was still wary, but in Memphis the show would go on.
"There was some nervousness, because the Sex Pistols had that unpredictable edge," says Ebet Roberts, a Memphis-born photographer who, after graduating from the Memphis Art Academy, had moved to New York and begun chronicling the punk rock movement of the mid-1970s.
"I was home for the holidays," Roberts says, "and I remember the city being on pins and needles. One headline said, 'Sex Pistols will not be allowed to perform simulated sex acts in Memphis,' which just cracked me up."
"For Memphis, they were a pretty avant-garde crew," confirms Henry G. Loeb, son of former Memphis mayor Henry Loeb.
In 1978, Loeb was the 26-year-old manager for Midtown rock band the Scruffs, who were slated to open for the Pistols.
"I had a deal with (concert promoter) Bob Kelley, who had booked the Sex Pistols as some kind of novelty act. Then the day of the gig, one of his subordi-nates called me and said, 'Sorry, ya'll are off the bill and this group Quo Jr. is going to play.' We were infuriated -- it made for an unbelievably unpleasant morning and afternoon."
Nevertheless, Loeb and Dave Branyan, the Scruffs' guitarist, decided to head over to Midtown's Taliesyn Ballroom to catch the show.
Golightly, one of 950 ticket holders, was already on the scene. "As I arrived, the Fire Department was telling everyone the concert had been oversold and it was shut down," he recalls.
"About that time, the Sex Pistols arrived in a MATA bus!"
As pandemonium ensued, Kelley led Golightly into the ballroom through a back entrance. Inside, just a few hundred people were watching Quo Jr. finish its set.
"Those of us in the ballroom were oblivious to the fact that ... there were angry people outside about to riot," says Bobby McClellan, then a 22-year-old employee at a Downtown Army surplus store.
The Commercial Appeal's music writer Walter Dawson later wrote that, "an unexplained hour and a half wait preceded the Pistols' appearance through the side door."
"Johnny Rotten wore a tartan jacket, which I admired very much," McClellan remembers. "Sid wore his ever-present motorcycle jacket with no shirt. And while they played, the Sex Pistols were constantly pelted by wadded-up paper cups. I don't think this was so much a critical response by the audience, but more like the 'punky' thing to do. Rotten told the audience, 'Stop throwing things at me! I don't like it,' in a very sneery voice."
The photographer Roberts, escorted in by the Pistols' publicist, remembers a frenzied, yet polite audience. "I saw one punk fan who had safety pins everywhere. He was sitting there screaming, and when I asked him a question, he went, 'Yes, ma'am,'" she says.
Meanwhile, Rotten goaded the crowd with comments about Presley and country music superstar Dolly Parton.
"The majority seemed to be rednecks looking for a fight," Golightly says.
"They spit all over the Pistols -- it was almost like they'd come to a circus, and the [musicians] were the monkeys. I'd read about stuff like this happening, but I thought it was disgusting. I'd never seen people pay money to hear music, and then try to start a fight with the entertainers. I was a Catholic boy from Whitehaven, and it seemed so bizarre to me," he says.
Rotten ultimately admonished the audience, "I'm not here for your entertainment -- you're here for my entertainment."
"I swear that his eyes lit up red," McClellan says. "It was the best comment of the night."
In a front-page review published the day after the concert, Dawson reported that, "What the Pistols proved was that they are indeed first-rate rock and rollers, soaked heavily in that tradition and possessing a frenzied rage that has been lacking from rock for too long."
The group managed to perform five more U.S. dates, before Rotten quit on Jan. 18.
Vicious decamped to New York's Chelsea Hotel, where his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, would die under mysterious circumstances in October. Cook and Jones formed a new group, The Professionals. And 13 months after performing in Memphis, Vicious died of a heroin overdose.
Despite the spontaneous combustion, the Pistols made an everlasting mark on some Memphians.
"The way Elvis was a turning point and the Beatles were a turning point, the Sex Pistols were a 90-degree turn in rock and roll," says Loeb. "Life was never the same hereafter."
Seeing the Pistols, he says, "changed what I expected, esthetically and artistically."
Inspired, Loeb and the Scruffs relocated to New York to join the burgeoning punk movement.
Roberts sold her images from the Memphis concert to music magazines like Creem and Trouser Press, and went on to photograph Vicious and Spungen, as well as Iggy Pop and other punk icons.
McClellan and Golightly became part of the scene at the Antenna Club, Memphis' premier punk venue, which opened in the late 1970s.
"Within 14 months, I started the Crime," Golightly says.
"Seeing the Sex Pistols turned me around musically from being an acoustic-guitar-playing guy into an electric-guitar-toting, amp-up-to-ten rocker. I bought a Gibson ES-335 and an amplifier.
"Not that there's anything wrong with Jerry Jeff Walker or John Prine, but this, I felt, was something I could do."
By Andria Lisle
Special to The Commercial Appeal
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Jim Shearin/The Commercial Appeal files
Members of the Sex Pistols -- Sid Vicious (with cigarette), Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten
(behind Jones) -- arrived at Midtown's Taliesyn Ballroom amid a tense scene as the concert
had been oversold and angry fans mobbed outside the venue. Inside, the audience waited
90 minutes for the band to take the stage.
January 1978: Another new year in Memphis, heralded by Elvis Presley's version of "My Way," which, six months after the King's ignominious death, was in constant rotation on WHBQ.
"Saturday Night Fever" was pulling in the post-holiday crowds at local movie theaters, and Overton Square bars such as Yosemite Sam's and the Hot Air Balloon were packed with would-be Travoltas in gold chains and polyester suits.
Then on Friday, Jan. 6, the Sex Pistols' tour bus rolled into town for the second stop on their inaugural U.S. tour, which began in Atlanta Jan. 5.
Jeff Golightly was a 23-year-old aspiring folk guitarist at the time.
"I'd been reading about the Sex Pistols in Rolling Stone, and it was almost like, 'Oh god -- they're here,'" he says. "I knew it was something I needed to see and be a part of."
The controversial punk rockers were 22-year-old guitarist Steve Jones, 20-year-old bassist Sid Vicious, 21-year-old drummer Paul Cook, and 22-year-old front man Johnny Rotten.
The Pistols had already made headlines in their native England for their chaotic musical attacks on British society, which, despite yielding hit singles like "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen," so rattled EMI that the record label dropped the band from its contract.
In Memphis, the hubbub began days before the Pistols shambled into the city limits.
Police Director E. Winslow Chapman, acting on a tip that the band simulated sex acts on stage, decided to do reconnaissance at the Atlanta concert, held at the Great Southeast Music Hall.
"The Pistols screamed and mock-menaced the audience, but the nastiest thing they did was blow their noses onto the wooden floor of the stage," reported The Commercial Appeal on Friday morning.
Chapman was still wary, but in Memphis the show would go on.
"There was some nervousness, because the Sex Pistols had that unpredictable edge," says Ebet Roberts, a Memphis-born photographer who, after graduating from the Memphis Art Academy, had moved to New York and begun chronicling the punk rock movement of the mid-1970s.
"I was home for the holidays," Roberts says, "and I remember the city being on pins and needles. One headline said, 'Sex Pistols will not be allowed to perform simulated sex acts in Memphis,' which just cracked me up."
"For Memphis, they were a pretty avant-garde crew," confirms Henry G. Loeb, son of former Memphis mayor Henry Loeb.
In 1978, Loeb was the 26-year-old manager for Midtown rock band the Scruffs, who were slated to open for the Pistols.
"I had a deal with (concert promoter) Bob Kelley, who had booked the Sex Pistols as some kind of novelty act. Then the day of the gig, one of his subordi-nates called me and said, 'Sorry, ya'll are off the bill and this group Quo Jr. is going to play.' We were infuriated -- it made for an unbelievably unpleasant morning and afternoon."
Nevertheless, Loeb and Dave Branyan, the Scruffs' guitarist, decided to head over to Midtown's Taliesyn Ballroom to catch the show.
Golightly, one of 950 ticket holders, was already on the scene. "As I arrived, the Fire Department was telling everyone the concert had been oversold and it was shut down," he recalls.
"About that time, the Sex Pistols arrived in a MATA bus!"
As pandemonium ensued, Kelley led Golightly into the ballroom through a back entrance. Inside, just a few hundred people were watching Quo Jr. finish its set.
"Those of us in the ballroom were oblivious to the fact that ... there were angry people outside about to riot," says Bobby McClellan, then a 22-year-old employee at a Downtown Army surplus store.
The Commercial Appeal's music writer Walter Dawson later wrote that, "an unexplained hour and a half wait preceded the Pistols' appearance through the side door."
"Johnny Rotten wore a tartan jacket, which I admired very much," McClellan remembers. "Sid wore his ever-present motorcycle jacket with no shirt. And while they played, the Sex Pistols were constantly pelted by wadded-up paper cups. I don't think this was so much a critical response by the audience, but more like the 'punky' thing to do. Rotten told the audience, 'Stop throwing things at me! I don't like it,' in a very sneery voice."
The photographer Roberts, escorted in by the Pistols' publicist, remembers a frenzied, yet polite audience. "I saw one punk fan who had safety pins everywhere. He was sitting there screaming, and when I asked him a question, he went, 'Yes, ma'am,'" she says.
Meanwhile, Rotten goaded the crowd with comments about Presley and country music superstar Dolly Parton.
"The majority seemed to be rednecks looking for a fight," Golightly says.
"They spit all over the Pistols -- it was almost like they'd come to a circus, and the [musicians] were the monkeys. I'd read about stuff like this happening, but I thought it was disgusting. I'd never seen people pay money to hear music, and then try to start a fight with the entertainers. I was a Catholic boy from Whitehaven, and it seemed so bizarre to me," he says.
Rotten ultimately admonished the audience, "I'm not here for your entertainment -- you're here for my entertainment."
"I swear that his eyes lit up red," McClellan says. "It was the best comment of the night."
In a front-page review published the day after the concert, Dawson reported that, "What the Pistols proved was that they are indeed first-rate rock and rollers, soaked heavily in that tradition and possessing a frenzied rage that has been lacking from rock for too long."
The group managed to perform five more U.S. dates, before Rotten quit on Jan. 18.
Vicious decamped to New York's Chelsea Hotel, where his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, would die under mysterious circumstances in October. Cook and Jones formed a new group, The Professionals. And 13 months after performing in Memphis, Vicious died of a heroin overdose.
Despite the spontaneous combustion, the Pistols made an everlasting mark on some Memphians.
"The way Elvis was a turning point and the Beatles were a turning point, the Sex Pistols were a 90-degree turn in rock and roll," says Loeb. "Life was never the same hereafter."
Seeing the Pistols, he says, "changed what I expected, esthetically and artistically."
Inspired, Loeb and the Scruffs relocated to New York to join the burgeoning punk movement.
Roberts sold her images from the Memphis concert to music magazines like Creem and Trouser Press, and went on to photograph Vicious and Spungen, as well as Iggy Pop and other punk icons.
McClellan and Golightly became part of the scene at the Antenna Club, Memphis' premier punk venue, which opened in the late 1970s.
"Within 14 months, I started the Crime," Golightly says.
"Seeing the Sex Pistols turned me around musically from being an acoustic-guitar-playing guy into an electric-guitar-toting, amp-up-to-ten rocker. I bought a Gibson ES-335 and an amplifier.
"Not that there's anything wrong with Jerry Jeff Walker or John Prine, but this, I felt, was something I could do."