portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Always liked Johnny, still do somehow and expect he is still raising a ruckus and questioning everything somewhere . . . . . . a fellow curmudgeon he is likely to disagree with everything we say and everything we do which lands in him in some odd company for time to time . . . . . . 

On this day in music history: January 14, 1978 - The Sex Pistols play their final live show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA. On their first and only tour of the US in support of their album “Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols”, the tour is chaotic nearly every step of the way. Relationships between the band members deteriorate rapidly with lead singer Johnny Rotten feeling increasingly isolated from Steve Jones, Paul Cook, manager Malcolm McLaren, and disgusted by Sid Vicious’ drug use and erratic behavior. The band play The Stooges’ “No Fun” as the show encore with Rotten uttering the now infamous line “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” at the end. The concert is also simulcast live by legendary San Francisco radio station KSAN, with audio from the concert being bootlegged and widely circulated for years afterward. The audio is briefly issued by Sanctuary/Castle Music. The concert is also filmed, and though not officially released, also has circulated among fans. The Pistols (separately of each other) find their way to Los Angeles before parting ways for the last time. Steve Jones and Paul Cook go to Brazil to do a record with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, and Sid Vicious is taken to New York by a friend, who immediately checks him into a hospital. Broke and stranded in L.A., Rotten has to contact Virgin Records founder Richard Branson in order to fly back home to England. Four days later on January 18, 1978, Johnny Rotten announces in a newspaper interview that the band have split up.

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