Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sex Pistols first gig, our guest writer Hugh ‘Shug’ O’Brian tells us what this all means from past to future in a riveting read from his own memoirs…

YEAR ZERO: Day 1.
50 years ago, today……..

Thursday, 6th November, 1975.
Top-floor Common Room, Saint Martin’s School Of Art, London.
Headlining act: Bazooka Joe.
+ support.

And so it came to pass……..
To almost everyone on the planet this was just any other day. In Britain, this was just any other day after Guy Fawkes’ where the euphoria of last night’s flames and fireworks had worn off after a good night’s sleep. To the 20 or so people who were at the Common Room to see Bazooka Joe play I’m sure that the concensus would’ve been that the support band were shite. To the support band and their entourage this was their first gig. It would last around 20 minutes and would end in chaos with the singer setting about Bazooka Joe’s equipment (which they’d been graciously allowed to use as they’d brought no backline with them) and a fight breaking out between the bands as a result. It was a shambles but a marker had been put down and the precedent had been set. It was a start.

To Stuart Goddard, Bazooka Joe’s bass player on the night, this was a life changing event. He would in the near future be enchanted by Jordan who worked in SEX, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s clothes shop on the King’s Road. He would go on to reinvent himself as our beloved Adam Ant. To the support band’s bass player who was a student at the School and who’d managed to secure the gig, this probably felt like it wasn’t a good night for him given how things had transpired. It wasn’t yet apparent but THE major seismic event of our musical times had just occurred. The planet shuddered to a halt then shook for a moment and restarted itself. The first cracks in the earth’s crust had just appeared in London and would soon spread across the globe. Unbeknownst to anyone who took part or bore witness, this was YEAR ZERO: Day 1. The music industry’s clock had just been reset to the beginning of time.

Sex Pistols had just played their first gig.

The stage was set. The time was right. Britain’s youth were kindling in a bonfire desperate for a spark and Sex Pistols created the spark that set the youth ablaze. The world had just changed forever and no-one knew it, yet. Everything that had gone before was now null and void. In the days and weeks to come the Pistols honed their craft. They were seen by others who’d never seen or heard anything of their like but who were already on the same page without knowing it. Some would take up instruments in response and start their own bands who in turn would inspire others to do the same. Some existing players changed tack and set their sails to surf the new wave, Joe Strummer of the 101’ers being one of those who knew that they’d boarded the wrong boat. Others gave up realising that their time had come and gone. The music press started to take notice of the Pistols. They increased their influence further and took their place at the head of the new and burgeoning movement. It didn’t have a name yet but Punk was born, the badge just hadn’t been pinned on.

The Pistols were first and the rest followed. It’s a fact. They created the space for everyone who saw them and joined the throng to do their own thing. I’ve never thought it likely that any of other main players might’ve gotten somewhere around the same vein as the Pistols. A lot of them would’ve had similar influences heading into that period but listening to their output once the party started, it’s probable that Punk wouldn’t have been the same beast or had the same bearing on the future as it did with the Pistols. It might never have been Punk but worn some other badge. We’ll never know. The Pistols just docked at the right port at the right time as the planets aligned and everyone jumped on board. While still very London-centric, two of the up and coming big boys, The Damned and The Clash played their first gigs separately supporting the Pistols in July ’76. In the previous month, Pete
Shelley and Howard Devoto who’d go on to form Buzzcocks having gone to London to see what all the commotion was around the Pistols booked them to play at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester but just couldn’t get themselves together quickly enough to play support on that infamous night although by a serendipitous turn of events, they did manage to secure Steve Diggle on bass as he’d turned up to meet someone else about the bass slot in another band and Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols manager who was on the door assumed that it was Buzzcocks as they too were looking for a bassist.

Buzzcocks did play support at the second Manchester gig at the bigger FreeTrade Hall in July. Now all three of the major players surfing in the Pistols wake had played their
first gigs supporting them days apart in July ’76. Then it really began. New bands popped up all over the shop. Some made it to releasing records but I’m sure that most will have never gotten anywhere although I’m certain that they’d have enjoyed the thrill of the ride while it lasted. The Damned beat everyone to vinyl releasing New Rose, the first Punk single on 22 nd October, 1976. An incendiary introduction to the new world. What a piece of work. “Is she really going out with him?”. A love song? Could be mistaken for one but it was Bryan James’ response to seeing the Pistols, especially Rotten and his realisation that his life had a new direction. A new meaning.

A month later the Pistols finally released Anarchy In The UK, the one everyone had been waiting for on 26th November in second place due to Malcolm (the Pistols manager) McLaren’s fucking about around securing a deal. I turned 12 on 19th December. I was a kid and way too young and remote in a small town in Scotland to be aware that any of this was going on at the time but my childhood died on the day in 1977 that I heard Anarchy for the first time. Most of the music that I’d heard by then had been from my parents records that they played on their old radiogram or on Top Of The Pops or on the Radio 1 Sunday Chart Rundown Show which my mum listened to religiously so my record collection at that point
consisted of two Gary Glitter lp’s, a few Gary Glitter singles, an Alvin Stardust single and the Space single, Magic Fly. I acquired The Jam’s In The City single in a straight swap for Magic Fly when I’d intrigued an older lad in my Boys’ Brigade company by showing him that although it appeared to be black vinyl, if you held it up to the light it was translucent red. I loved In The City and the b-side, Takin’ My Love.

When my pal spotted my Jam single he told his older brother who was the first punk I ever knew and who’d missed it when it came out. They both turned up at my door and the older brother offered me Anarchy or The Ramones Rockaway Beach as a swap for it. I listened to Rockaway Beach first. Fuck me, what a tune. My eyes lit up as I was chewing out a rhythm on my bubblegum but a switch flicked in my head or something reset my tuning completely when I heard Anarchy and I was never the same again. I asked for both singles. He gave me both. He was happy. He’d gotten the record he wanted, he’d moved on a couple of doublers, he’d just created a new punk and the movement had just become one member richer. Everything changed for me that day I suppose like it did for so many when they heard their first Punk record, whoever the band and whatever the song. In my head and my heart I‘ve been a punk since that day in ‘77 and the Pistols have been my band ever since. I developed an insatiable lust for knowledge and to learn everything I could about my new love. The music papers provided the information along with clippings to adorn
my bedroom walls. My clothes changed. My hair changed. My demeanour changed. I pogoed at discos. I got interested in girls. They got interested in me. I was the only one of the kids I grew up with who started a band being the singer in a short lived Punk cum Post Punk cum Sixties outfit called Deadbeat when I was still in high school at the turn of the 80’s and we gigged and there were more girls but we only played covers as none of us could write a song of any consequence and eventually we split and moved on.

I even went straight to a soundcheck once direct from the interview for my apprenticeship as a Shipbuilding Draughtsman in the infamous Scott Lithgow shipyards on the Clyde and changed out of my school uniform into my Punk clobber at the venue for the soundcheck and the gig. Glorious days. Fantastic memories. And all because of the Pistols. To me it’s inconsequential when anyone got into Punk or how deeply they immersed themselves or
which band they favoured. It’s just thrilling to me that they did. Only 20 or so were there on Day One remember and not all of those would have moved on into Punk. However, there was always a lot of internal politics involved back in the day relating to how early or late you got in, how in or out or how Punk or Plastic you were when it came to how you presented yourself and went about your day to day in the normals world. In time it paled into insignificance as testosterone fuelled youth mellowed into adulthood but it was a real millstone for some at the time. I had no time for that shite. That level of direction or demarcation of how you should be doing Punk or what it meant to be a punk in the heads of some was for those idiots, not for me. No-one determined how Punk I was.

No-one told me if I was doing it right or wrong or not trying hard enough. You need to remember, Punk wasn’t about a uniform or uniformity, it just needed to be different. It just needed to challenge the old guard. It felt like it needed to have something to say. It felt like it needed to get back to basics. It needed to be youth and even Strummer was looked upon as has been but for me it was about individuality, not uniformity. In the malevolent, violent late 70’s, being out at night there was always the sense that your were on the edge of danger just because you didn’t fit the normals template. It was a scary time. Punk was
divisive with the mainstream at the time just like any subculture versus the norm anytime. The masses found their soundtrack in the chart music of the day but I didn’t see them as being wrong. Well maybe the word sheep might have occurred to me but who am I to say what you should listen to or that I’m right and you’re wrong. Music is very subjective and individual and means different things to different people. I’m just clear in my head that I’m right. Of course I am.

Punk helped make me who I am. The songs were critical to my development and have been the main vein in the soundtrack to my life. Collecting the records and those of the genres I got into thereafter has been a constant throughout the years but live and in person is how the songs are meant to be witnessed. It’s how it all started before anything made it to vinyl and it’s what turns us into the people we can’t be most of the time. It’s what makes us part of the gang or feel completely alone in the crowd. It’s what transports us back to another time. It’s what brings back the day you bought the record and put it on your turntable and listened to it for the first time completely alone in your bedroom apart from mum shouting to turn that racket down. It’s taking the record to the disco and pleading with the clueless dj to play it for you. It’s Jonesy picking out the intro notes of Pretty Vacant as the panicking normals part and circle you and your mates as you writhe and pogo around the dancefloor like your life depended on it. It’s what brings out the best in us.

I didn’t get to see any of the bands in the early days. For me, my wee sister, my best pal and his wee brother, The Jam at Glasgow Apollo in ’80 was our first gig. I was 15 by then. Of course I’ve been to countless gigs since and don’t get me wrong of course I’d have loved to have been there to see them back in the day but I was just too young. I don’t dwell on it. In ’96 I was front and centre at Finsbury Park and at Glasgow Exhibition Centre to see the original seminal Pistols lineup. I saw the original Buzzcocks lineup at Manchester Apollo in 2012 and the original lineup of The Damned at Manchester Apollo in ’22. I know it’s not the same but that’s really not the point, is it? I bathed in nostalgia as I listened to the songs that made me who I am played by the people who wrote the songs for me when I was young. I was transported back to my youth to the days when I heard the songs for the first time. On the flip side you need to remember that Punk in its original state didn’t
hang around for very long and the bands didn’t stay in their original form if at all so they never got to play their songs to anything like all of the people who were buying their records as they were coming out. Youth, stubbornness, stupidity, manipulative cunt managers, one upmanship, competition, all sorts of things got in the way and would have conspired to pull them apart from each other. They were just kids after all. These gigs were also very much about the bands getting to play their songs to their audience who couldn’t be there at the time. We’re nothing without each other after all.

YEAR 50: Day 1. Today……..

And so it is written…….. 50 years on and we’re still talking about it. Punk is now in the mainstream psyche. It’s wormed its way into everyday life and culture like an insidious virus arguably more so than any genre that came before or after and it’s accepted like it never was at the time. In it’s heyday, it caused town councils to ban bands from playing their concerts, debates on tv, religious figures to try to convince us that Punk was very very wrong and unholy, tv screens to be kicked in when the Pistols swore on live teatime telly, violence on our streets and foul play to be widely suspected when the Pistols God Save
The Queen single was thought to have topped the nation’s record sales charts only to be denied in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee week probably in the name of someone or some fucking committee’s idea of decency. It re-drew the borders on the musical map. It seems to have influenced everyone and their dog that’s formed a band since, especially the Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols LP, a copy of which must be in just about every home by now. Hell, even the normals from back in the day who would’ve gladly eradicated Punk at the time have probably got a copy in the years since and told their new found friends and colleagues as they went that they were as Punk as fuck.

You couldn’t kid your mates from back in the day though, eh? And you don’t fool me either. Everyone’s gotten in on the act. I don’t feel bad or precious about it. I’ve always been happy to introduce anyone to the wonderful world of Punk. Although too young on Day One, I did get there early enough to enjoy the tail end of Punk as it headed for the horizon. Its flame flickered only for a brief moment in time but I was there to see its offspring take flight as it happened and I’ve been around to pick and choose of the fruits of it’s
offshoots and derivatives ever since. I have no regrets about not getting in on the ground floor. In time I got to see most of my favourite bands play the songs they wrote for me. I met my flawed idol and the most important man in Punk, Mr Johnny Rotten at the Glasgow Apollo stage door on 16th November, ’83 at PiL’s first Scottish gig and we shook hands and we smiled and we shared a few words and he signed my first press in the black sleeve on EMI Anarchy single on the label and my PiL First Issue lp sleeve on his cheek. I still have them.

Never saw The Clash though. By choice. They had a few tunes, some classics but they never really did it for me. Strummer grated on me too much. He knew he was too old (reflect on the hard time The Stranglers were given for not being youth) and he tried way too hard to compensate for his middle class background which I felt really wasn’t
necessary and was a bit too whiffy for my taste. I never fathomed why he felt that he needed to do that. He overdid it. I never got the stance. Punk’s been my lowest common denominator since my Anarchy epiphany in ’77 and it’s what helped make me who I am. I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, maybe just one. Every fucker seems to want to collect the records these days and it’s driving prices so high that it sometimes costs a fortune to
acquire those that I missed or replace those that I swapped, sold, gave away or overplayed and damaged to the point where it makes no sense to keep playing them. There are some proper cunts who are really upping the ante to drive the market for their own ends and it’s not right. On the flip side though, it’s a bull market and the value of my collection just keeps going up and up and up. Mind you, I’ll never enjoy any reward for myself in its monetary value but my kids will benefit when they sell it on after my passing. I like to think that they’d hold on to some of my most treasured pieces in memory of me. Well you do, don’t you? Anarchy signed by Rotten will go to the grave with me though.

I guess there’s a parallel that can be drawn here. On YEAR ZERO: Day 1, the Pistols could
have had no comprehension of the wealth of joy and definition that they’d bring to their offspring or to people’s lives in the coming years. Similarly, I had no inkling that buying Space’s Magic Fly single with my pocket money in ’77 would see me bring financial wealth to my offspring due to my collecting throughout the years. Punk and me, we’ve shared adventures. We’ve moved in some of the same circles. I’ve carried it and it’s carried me. Sometimes we share a cuppa and a biscuit. It’s been a constant throughout most of
my life and through me it’s touched others. The gift that just keeps on giving if you will.
I suspect that I won’t be here to share YEAR 100: Day 1. If I am I’ll be approaching 111 but I’m certain that I’ll not manage a pogo. I don’t feel that I could manage one today to be honest but I’ll give it a go. The 50 years have flown by since Sex Pistols reset the clock to zero. We’ve lost a few along the way but there are still plenty here to carry the flag and tell the story. See you in another 50, maybe.

Hopefully. In the interim do something for me. Get a hold of the Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols LP (The Bollocks) in whatever form works for you and listen to it start to finish alone, with no distraction and with the volume set as high as you can cope with. In the dark flat out on your bed is best, trust me. Fuck the neighbours! We did. This is the way that you should have your first listen of any record you acquire. You need to know what you’re dealing with before you can share it, right? I have no vested interest in this other than I’d like everyone to hear and maybe feel something approaching what it might have felt like and meant to me and my ilk when it was released in ‘77. Everyone should hear the most important and incendiary LP that there’s ever been at the very least
once. Everyone should know where it started and who started it. Enjoy!

Hear, hear! 50 years ago, today, Sex Pistols played their first gig. The earth shuddered to a halt,shook for a moment then restarted itself. The clock was reset to ZERO. Music had just changed forever. I’m off to play The Bollocks in recognition. Catch you on the flip side!