Sid Speaks 1978 phone interview by Roberta Bayley PLUS martha stewart's living's sid vicious's girlfriend nancy spungen's sister susan spungen's recipe for white bean toast
Susan Spungen was the founding food editor and editorial director for food at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia from its launch in 1991 until 2003.
She wrote a bimonthly column called "Easy Entertaining" for the magazine until June 2004, and helped launch MSO's first all-food title, Everyday Food.
She is coauthor of the best-selling Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook. She lives in New York City.
White Bean and Tomato Toasts
Add some flavor to your summer nights with these Latin-inspired dishes from
Susan Spungen
Serves 8
INGREDIENTS
• 1 crusty baguette (18-to-20-inch)
• 1 tomato, cut in half crosswise
• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
• 2 garlic cloves, 1 chopped and 1 whole
• 1 can (15.5 oz) white beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1 Tbsp white or red wine vinegar
Sid Speaks
a 1978 phone interview by Roberta Bayley
The Sex Pistols American tour ended at Winterland in San Francisco, January14, 1978. Two days later the band had officially broken up. On January 20, Sid Vicious boarded a plane for London via New York. He passed out en route, an apparent drug overdose, and was taken unconscious to Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York. The biggest blizzard of the year had immobilized New York, so we spoke to Sid that night over the phone. He sounded very weak, but anxious to talk. He was lonely and bored.
Sid Vicious In Tulsa
Sid: Hello.
Roberta: Hello, Sid?
Sid: Hello.
Roberta: Sid?
Sid: Ouais?
Roberta: It is Roberta.
Sid: The OH -, ouais of remembers them of the fact to this... They visit in the hospital come?
Roberta: Nevertheless it snows.
Sid: The Oh -.
Roberta: He and in the ordered series could not make an automobile to go.
Sid: They are single.
Roberta: We let ourselves upset tomorrow. Such thoughts happen always you inside tomorrow?
Sid: They had been external course still London tomorrow.
Roberta: How GONE to think?
Sid: Weak.
Roberta: It is not nobody sees or the whole?
Sid: No.
Roberta: They are external therefore favorable part. I consider that you can see them with the television.
Sid: Ouais, I exactly come to make contact above with
enemy cleaned of one.
Roberta: How it starts off commits here - yesterday just he is being even exactly wishes her?
Sid: Mum, ours.
Roberta: That thing has encariñado vario this in everything? Who was in the surface with you?
Sid: Bogey (they sound for the injectors of sex). That the thing is produced was given the form, milligrammo Methadone, pagination of the right of the 80? Taken with and if - and approximately 6 or 7 valiums -- and if raised in the sky, he that an effect has, that is very the greater one in you like him, if you stop to come from the transformation relation. They know that taken with him the urinate to much fastest him in the sky.
Roberta: Ouais, takes with drunkard vastly more to it.
Sid: As he is this, the one that happened...
Monday, January 9, 1978
Kingfish Club
By the time they got to Baton Rouge, the Sex Pistols found themselves in a rut.
How could they top the San Antonio Shoot-Out?
They wouldn't come close tonight.
The audience tonight was comprised mostly of college kids.
Although there was still verbal warfare between the audience and the band, the performance at the Kingfish Club was much less assaultive than the show at Randy's the night before. Sid even got some play from a female fan during "New York."
Most of the audience seemed fairly interested in the Sex Pistols' music, and "EMI" even inspired a sing-along. Nonetheless, apathy plagued the band.
Steve seemed particularly bored tonight, introducing the songs without a shred of enthusiasm. The put-downs exchanged between Sid and members of the crowd sounded forced. Instead of throwing food and trash, the audience threw money. After getting hit with a handful of coins, John said, "If you're gonna throw money, throw dollar bills."
During the encores, Sid and Johnny collected over 15 dollars. After the Kingfish show, Steve expressed his frustration by refusing to travel with the band on the tour bus.
Set list:
God Save the Queen, I Wanna Be Me, Seventeen, New York, EMI, Bodies, Belsen Was a Gas, Submission, Holidays in the Sun, No Feelings, Problems, Pretty Vacant, Anarchy in the U.S.A., No Fun, Liar
Kingfish Club, Baton Rouge: i'm outside
Johnny In Baton Rouge: still outside
from JohnyTofo
Dallas, Texas
January 10, 1978
Longhorn... Dallas, Texas
January 10, 1978
Longhorn Ballroom
Randy's Rodeo is named after a nightclub in San Antonio, Texas, where the Sex Pistols played one of their few American gigs. After founding the website, I became curious about the club's murky genesis. I had first learned about the Randy's when I came across an old photo in an Austin thrift shop - the kind of snapshot that nightclubs used to hawk as souvenirs. The photo jacket (top) touted Randy's as "the finest western dance hall and night club in San Antonio," and the beehived barflies in the picture (left) radiated a wary willingness that spoke to both my prurient interests and my innate curiosity about human nature.
Later, of course, I learned about Randy's connection to the Sex Pistol's infamous, one-and-only American tour - the road trip from hell that gave the movie "Sid & Nancy" many of its finest moments. (Click here to view a detailed history of the performance and the tour.) As a teenager, I had missed out on what turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the Pistols at Dallas' Longhorn Ballroom on January 10, 1978. It was a lot easier to sneak into bars back then - sneaking out of the house was harder, actually - and I still regret my lack of will and foresight. Regardless, the San Antonio gig happened just two days before, and by all accounts, it was an incendiary, chaotic highlight of the tour. Johnny Moped, a punk rock historian, describes the Pistol's gig at Randy's thus:
The band arrive in San Antonio to play Randy's Rodeo, a ballroom that has sold out its 2,200 capacity. As soon as the band take the stage, they are pelted with beer cans, hot dogs and popcorn. Vicious tells the crowd, "You cowboys are all a bunch of f---ing faggots!" When a young cowboy tries physical retaliation, Vicious hits him with his bass. The show is stopped for several minutes while the cowboy is taken away by police. He later denounces the Pistols as "sewer rats with guitars" on TV.
Margaret Moser, an Austin Chronicle founder and staffer, was at the Randy's Rodeo Sex Pistol's show (click here to read her personal account) as well as other punk shows Randy's subsequently hosted. To her recollection, Randy's Rodeo had been almost exclusively a country bar," a real cowboy joint with real cowboys." The club had a simple floor plan - one big room with the stage set on the far wall from the door. According to Moser, the show was actually underwhelming - more a circus than a concert - but it had a far-reaching impact, kick starting Austin's now renowned music scene. Steve Earle, for one, credits the experience (peripherally, at least) as a major inspiration in a Rolling Stone interview with David Fricke:
I missed the punk thing when it started. I was living in Mexico. But I was up in Austin, staying with a friend, and someone said the Sex Pistols were playing at Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio, which was a block from where I grew up. I rode with them, and it was an awful gig. Sid Vicious got hit with a bottle in the second song. He just staggered around and bled for the rest of the night. But on that same trip, I went by the house of another friend in Austin, and he said, "You gotta hear this." It was My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello. I went, "OK, now I know why I need an electric guitar."
McClinton, "Live At Randy's Rodeo"
When scouring the web, though, I discovered very little else about the club beyond its uncharacteristically controversial moment in the spotlight. Though I've pieced together a number of factual tidbits (many from links now broken), I've never figured out exactly when the club was founded, and the only thing I've learned about the owner is his name - Randy Sherwood. The earliest mention I could dig up was on a message board (link defunct) where the author of a posting makes the claim to have played there in 1970. However, another Sex Pistols' history describes Randy's as a "former bowling alley," and this was confirmed via email by Kerry Peyton, a visitor to this website:
Randy's Rodeo was indeed built originally as a bowling alley. I spent many late evenings there as a very young teen, hanging out with all the slick-haired Fonzy's. It wasn't until my late teens that they renovated it and changed it into a Western dance hall. That would have been in the late 60's. I lived across Bandera Highway (State Highway 16) from the place.
Back then there wasn't much to do around there, and when "Bandera Bowl" was built and opened, it was like a godsend to us young bored kids. Not sure whether the place kept us out of trouble or got us into it. In fact, we were a bit resentful when it became a concert hall, then a country and western dance hall, then a Tejano joint, then a mixed music club, and finally went back to Country.
There wasn't anything else around there for years when I was growing up, and I can still remember the hoots, hollers, and singing wafting across the woods in that relatively silent area of San Antonio. The business and traffic that Randy's Rodeo generated was probably instrumental in getting some of the dirt roads in the area finally paved. Bandera Highway itself was only a two-lane, no-shoulder paved road at the time. (7/8/02)
Another email (1/25/03) from another reader (a certain Diane, who admitted "spent many Saturday nights boot-scooting across that dance floor") actually identified the bar girls in my iconographic picture (above). "The blonde's name was C.C. and her friend was Martha (at least, I think... something that started with an 'M'). Anyway, this photo was probably taken around 1966." Diane went on to confirm Randy's origins as a bowling alley (Bandera Bowling Lanes, according to her), and recalled that a number of big names played there after it was converted to into a country and western dance hall. In addition, local talent like George Chambers and the Country Gentleman also graced the stage at Randy's Rodeo.
Diane recommended that I write to Don Strange to learn more about this period. Mr. Strange currently owns a catering business located across from the present-day Randy's Rodeo; back in the 60's, though, his business was barbecue, and he operated a rib joint of some renown on the same spot. Concerning the Bandera bowling alley, Don added that, "The bowling alley was built to be world-class, and it earned some national exposure. But the caliche-laden soil - along with the heat - caused the ground to shift, and the lanes never remained even. Our walls were always cracking and we eventually had to tear our building down and build a newer bigger one." Hence, the bowling alley failed, setting the stage for Randy's Rodeo.
A photo (left) on Jim Loessberg's Pedal Steel Guitar Site picks up the Randy's story in 1972. Note the "Randy's Rodeo Regulars" seal behind Rick Price, a member of Johnny Bush's touring band. Buddy Rich fan Mark Overstreet recounts seeing the legendary jazz drummer at Randy's in 1972, and a message board visitor claims to have been the first western dance instructor in San Antonio - every Thursday night at Randy's Rodeo (circa mid-70's). AYet another
In 1973, soul singer O.B. McClinton released an album, Live At Randy's Rodeo (photo above), on Enterprise Records, a Stax subsidiary - presumably recorded about the same time. McClinton, a minor figure at best, is best remembered for writing "You've Got My Mind Messed Up," one of James Carr's better songs, as well as tracks by Arthur Conley, Clarence Carter, Denise LaSalle, and the Staple Singers.
Yet another reader, Mark Gierth, writes about a close encounter he had at Randy's Rodeo in 1976. Mark's father owned a rock and roll club called Charlie's Quarter Place in Universal City (just east of San Antonio). He did a lot of advertising on a radio station called KISS-FM, a hard rock outlet at the center of San Antonio's thriving heavy metal community. One of the DJs, Lou Roney, was tight with Mark's father:
Lou told my dad about a Canadian band that needed a place to play in San Antonio, so Lou and my dad co-promoted the band at Randy's Rodeo. The band was, of course, Rush! The night of the show, so many people came out that there was a near riot outside, and the show went on great. My brother, myself, my dad, and Lou all went with Rush to a pizza place, smoked dope, some did coke, ate pizza, and played a few pinball and video games. Video games were rather scarce back then, but Neil Pert and I played a few together. Since then, my father and brother have kept in contact with them, and we are going again to see them this year. My brother still has his tickets from that show - $4.50 each! (4/29/02)
And, that's about it for the history of Randy's Rodeo - pre-Sex Pistols, at any rate. Apparently, the club took a a sharp left turn after that watershed event. Margaret Moser recalls that, prior to the Pistols' show, Randy's booked mainly country & western acts, but thereafter hosted more rock shows. Squeeze played there in June, 1978 (just months after the Sex Pistols' show), and the Ramones blitzed Randy's stage in 1979. Reader Eric Nordin recalls:
I was at the Ramones' show at Randy's Rodeo in 1979. My sister and I were invited back after the show for a beer-and-pizza bash, and we were photographed by a local newspaper. I was wearing a cut-off black Ramones t-shirt!. At the time, I was in a band called Smash Left, and we did some Ramones' cover tunes. We were said to do the best Ramones covers of any local band in San Antonio. (8/9/90)
Jim Loessberg, a steel guitar player and enthusiast (see above), saw this page and wrote in, adding this fascinating tidbit:
In the early 1980's, Randy's Rodeo was briefly renamed "Whiskey River." Randy was partnered in the venture with Johnny Bush - the country singer who wrote and first recorded the song of the same name. It lasted a few weeks. I was the steel player in the house band, and I remember Willie Nelson (who later made "Whiskey River" his signature) and Asleep at the Wheel being the only "name" acts to be brought in during the club's brief tenure under that name. (11/25/02)
Another website quotes a San Antonio Express-News story about U2 playing to a small crowd at the venue on Valentine's Day, 1982, before they made it big in America (Moser attended that show, too). However, by the time of the U2 gig (by all accounts, another significant event for the Central Texas punk scene), the club had been renamed Cardi's and was presumably under new ownership. Moser remembers Cardi's as a fairly sleazy chain of 80's daiquiri bars. I found little else about the club's post-Pistols, rock-oriented period, though, until I found a web page that lists Randy's Rodeo on the 1999 tour itinerary of Slipknot and Coal Chamber. Gregg Allman also played there about the same time.
At some point, the club came roaring back to life as Randy's Ballroom - same sign, different audience. Now, Randy's is one of the premier Tejano showplaces in Texas.
Selena played there in 1994, and Intocable and La Firma both list Randy's on their resume. The club (in photo, left) also hosts a variety of other events - including bingo (what would Johnny Rotten say?) - and is located at 1534 Bandera Road, San Antonio, TX, 78228, (210) 434-6266.
Still, at this point, the Sex Pistols gig would seem to be Randy's most credible claim to fame. The web is peppered with references to and descriptions of the event, and I have found numerous photographs of the actual show - Randy's Rodeo logo visible in many. Click here to read more and see the pictures.
By the way, there was a Randy's Rodeo in New Jersey; it could still be there for all I know. I can only assume that it was named after (but has it has no other relation to) the Texas club due to the Sex Pistols' notoriety. A Beastie Boys show recorded at the Jersey club is very popular among bootleg traders....
Introduction. This website is named after Randy's Rodeo, a nightclub in San Antonio, Texas. The Sex Pistols' gig there on January 8, 1978, and the riotous events that surrounded it, became one of the most notorious chapters in rock history. The Pistols' Svengali-like manager, Malcolm McLaren, booked the band primarily into country & western nightclubs like Randy's in small markets like San Antonio. It was a perverse, provocative joke. His intent was not to sell tickets, but to incite controversy and mayhem. He succeeded famously.
John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, later expounded on McLaren's strategy in his autobiography, Rotten: "It wasn't a question of throwing the band to the wolves when we chose to just play the South during the American tour. We felt that if we were ever going to be taken seriously in America, it would be from a base we built down south. The cowboys seemed to take it for the joke it was meant to be. We weren't there to destroy their way of life or anything like that. We sought to bring a little freshness into their boring, daily routines."
The Sex Pistols landed in New York on January 3 and performed their American debut in Atlanta on the 5th. Just nine days later after whistle stops in Memphis, San Antonio, Baton Rouge, Dallas, and Tulsa, the tour ended ignominiously with a dispirited show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco - ironically, the only reasonably appropriate venue on the itinerary.
The Sex Pistols broke up only days after their final performance. Within months, Sid Vicious was found dead of a drug overdose at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Soon after, John Lydon claimed the Pistols had "killed" rock and roll and embarked on his next musical adventure with Public Image Limited. In the late 90's the Sex Pistols reunited (with original bass player Glen Matlock standing in for Sid) for the aptly monikered "Filthy Lucre" tour.
The following pages present facts, photographs, and (sometimes conflicting) accounts of the Randy's Rodeo show and the American Tour.
by Jeremy Frey
from his website Welcome To The Rodeo
Sid & Johnny at Randy's Rodeo
On Sunday night, January 8, 1978, Randy's Rodeo, a former bowling alley in San Antonio, was packed with 2200 rowdy Texans waiting to see what this thing called punk music was all about. The Sex Pistols broke the rule that "if you're gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band." Both band and audience were prepared for war.
Sid, Early In The Show
The band gave their most spirited performance of the American tour in San Antonio. Johnny came out wearing a T-shirt depicting two homosexual cowboys, and Sid greeted the crowd with some very unkind remarks. The audience hurled anything onstage that they could get their hands on. Items of choice were spit, popcorn, beer cups, cans, hot dogs, whipped cream, bottles, and pies.
Sid, Later That Night
Steve and Paul did their best to hold the show together while Sid and Johnny took every possible opportunity to insult and infuriate the crowd. Sid removed his leather jacket to reveal "Gimme A Fix" scrawled on his chest. Johnny blew snot into the crowd, and he snarled and screamed the whole night. Steve promptly broke a string during the first number, and he later used his guitar as a weapon against threatening audience members.
Paul Cook After The Gig
The audience fought amongst themselves, and one heckler decided to go after the band. He started yelling at Johnny, but John ignored him. The heckler decided to antagonize the next easiest target, Sid. When Sid was hit in the face with a can of beer, the man mocked him. During the last seconds of "New York," Sid unstrapped his bass and attempted to club him. Instead, he hit a Warner executive. The lights went off and the show was delayed for several minutes. The Rodeo's manager took the stage and instructed the crowd to stop throwing things at the band. After being escorted out of Randy's, the heckler said, "I don't like what they stand for. They are just sewer rats with guitars." Later in the show, Sid was hit hard enough to receive a bloody nose. The next day, the local paper read: "Sex Pistols win the San Antonio Shoot-Out."
Set List
God Save the Queen
I Wanna Be Me
Seventeen
New York
EMI
Holidays in the Sun
Bodies
Belsen Was a Gas
Submission
No Feelings
Problems
Pretty Vacant
Anarchy in the U.K.
I Met Sid!
an interview with Frank Pugliese,
reprinted from Discorder Magazine
Sid eating a hot dog.
Local San Antonio band the Vamps opened the Sex Pistol's show at Randy's Rodeo. Their singer, Frank Pugliese, now leads the Sons Of Hercules, a terrific garage punk band. He was interviewed about the experience in October, 1996, by Discorder Magazine, a publication of the University of British Columbia.
Discorder: What was the behavior of The Sex Pistols' entourage? Did you get to meet the band? Did you get to hang out with any of the roadies at all? Noel Monk? Malcolm McLaren?
Frank: I talked to Sid. I was outside with my guitar player who was tuning up. Sid came over and sat down and talked for quite a while.
Sid & Johnny in Atlanta
Discorder: What did you talk to Sid about? Did you see him shoot up at all?
Frank: No, he was wasted at that point. The bus pulls up and there were a few people hanging around. They run up to the bus and hand them their albums. They'd be jerks and scribble something on it and spit at the people. There was real tight security. They brought a whole bunch of security with them. You really couldn't get close to them.
Sid just happened to come over. He was normal. He was a little weird, but he was OK. He took my guitar player's sunglasses, so if you ever see those wraparounds in any pictures of him, they are Ed's sunglasses. (Sid said,) "Let me borrow them for the night. I'll give them back to you when we're through."
Kingfish Club, Baton Rouge
Discorder: So what did you think of the Sex Pistols' '78 show?
Frank: They sounded really, really good. They sounded great. I was surprised. I thought it was going to be bad. They were tight and everything. The problem was in Dallas the next night, I heard they were really terrible ... It was a weird scene. Freshly ripped clothes. Somebody was selling -- he made a lot of money -- fake safety pins that had a crack in it that you could stick it in your nose, so it wasn't really going through your nose, or through your ear or whatever. Fake piercing.
Sid on stage in Tulsa
Discorder: How were they received?
Frank: Most of the people that came to enjoy The Sex Pistols had to come from Austin which is 100 miles away. Mostly the people that were from here were like, "Well, we're going to kick their butts," or something. The place held about 2,500 people. I'd say at least 2,000 of them were there to do destruction to the band if they could. Somebody brought a whole bunch of pies and started throwing them. I even knew this one guy who imported some people from Detroit to try to kick their butt, but they couldn't get close enough.
Discorder: Like biker gangs and stuff?
A Personal Account
Margaret Moser Goes Punk
a Randy's Rodeo exclusive by Randall Anthony
Sid at Randy's Rodeo
In the mid-70's, Margaret Moser was a dyed-in-the-wool blues-freak and nascent hippie stringing stories for the Austin Sun, a precursor of the Austin Chronicle (which she helped found and for which she still writes). Her appreciation for music was typically Texan - eclectic and synergistic in the tradition of Doug Sahm. Country music, Tex-Mex, and psychedelic rock commingled with the vibrant blues scene of which Moser and her groupie troupe, the Austin Blondes, were denizens.
Being consummate rock 'n' roll chicks, though, Moser and the Blondes were more than aware of the Sex Pistols and punk rock. The Texas punk scene was just emerging, though, so when Moser and her then-husband, photographer Ken Hoge, made the trek down to San Antonio to catch the Sex Pistols, it was more curiosity than punk fervor that motivated them.
Sid With Friends In Texas
What Moser witnessed, however, made her a true believer. Recalls Moser in the Austin Chronicle, "Randy's Rodeo was a real cowboy joint with real cowboys hanging around. I was pretty close to Sid when he started swinging his bass, but the thing is, I remember less of the music than the atmosphere, which was almost electrically charged." Towards the end of the show, Moser remembers that the locals and regulars starting to wander in and looking "pretty shocked" at the carnage--musical and otherwise.
Sid, Johnny, and Steve in Atlanta
With her love of blues and outlaw country, Moser wasn't overly impressed with the Pistol's rudimentary punk music, per se. Instead, she was overwhelmed by the attitude, the approach, the gestalt of the band. "Emotionally," she said, "I was thrilled." Her mind opened up to new possibilities in art and music, and soon after, she began to listen to a much broader range of music. Moser left Randy's Rodeo that night knowing she had witnessed something very important, but it took her years to process exactly what had happened and how it had changed her.
Bloody Sid in Dallas
According to Moser, the Sex Pistol's gig in San Antonio had a big impact back in Austin. The show was a defining, galvanizing moment for Austin's counterculture (though ironically, Moser believes that the gig was scheduled in San Antonio in part to insult Austin's in-crowd, with their hipper-than-thou attitude). Musically, of course, it helped inspire Austin's punk scene - one of the earliest and best outside of New York City. But beyond the obvious, the common experience of Austin's attendees fostered many new connections. It was an energizing, polarizing event. Virtually everyone who worked at the Austin Chronicle in its early days witnessed the show, and the Chronicle's staff influenced much of what the city became artistically and politically in the 80's and 90's.
When she awoke in Austin on January 8, 1978, Margaret Moser was already living outside the mundane, complacent world so many of us inhabit. Still, she was hardly one of the punk faithful. That afternoon as she drove the 90-minute stretch of Interstate 35 that leads to San Antonio, she was simply expecting to witness the latest music biz hype. But like many so people who witnessed the Sex Pistols at Randy's Rodeo, she returned to Austin transfixed and transformed, eager to make her mark on an unsuspecting world.
Photographer Bob Gruen remembers the Sex Pistols,
reprinted from Great Modern Pictures
Sid With Cut Arm
The Pistols came to America in 1978 and I traveled with them on the tour bus. On January 5, the Pistols opened the first show of their U.S. Tour in Atlanta, Georgia. They were playing in a small club for only 300 people. The place was packed; they played a loud fast set with people spitting and throwing things at them. I had planned to go back to New York in the morning and hoped I could take some photos of the Pistols getting on their tour bus. I woke up late and the bus was already gone.
I was leaving the motel when I ran into Sid and the road manager. They had missed the bus because Sid had cut his arm badly during the night and was taken to the hospital. Sid said he asked one of the guards if his knife was sharp and to test it he ran it over his arm and made a two inch long, one inch deep cut into himself. The doctors at the hospital didn't get along with him and wouldn't stitch it or even put on a bandage. I went to the airport with them and changed my plans and we flew to Memphis together.
Sid On The Bus, New Orleans
We had a long drive from Dallas to Tulsa through five inches of snow and ice. Sometime in the night we pulled into a gas station where there was a restaurant. I went in with Sid and sat at the counter. Before I knew it Sid had started a conversation with a cowboy and his family. They invited him to sit with them and Sid carried his eggs to their table. After the cowboy heard that Sid's name was Vicious he started to challenge him. He crushed his cigarette out in his own hand, then he asked Sid what could he do. Sid just took his knife, cut his own hand and kept on eating as blood flowed on his eggs like ketchup. The cowboy grabbed his family and ran out.
Winterland, San Francisco
The Pistols played at Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio. When Sid took off his leather jacket, he had 'Gimme a Fix' carved on his chest. A blonde girl in the front row called to Sid and when he leaned over she punched him on the nose. He started to bleed profusely and seemed very happy. Later that evening fans sprayed slogans like 'We're So Pretty Vacant' and 'Anarchy in the USA' all over the Pistols' tour bus.
The Pistols reached San Francisco after causing a sensation on several Sunset Strip bars. On January 14, 1978 they gave the biggest show of the tour, five thousand people at Winterland Theater. It was also the Pistols' last performance. After the show, the band broke up.
Photo Credits. Bob Gruen took all the shots on this page. His Sex Pistols photography was published as a book, Chaos, in 1990. Gruen's website, www.bobgruen.com, includes Sex Pistols pictures and much more. Click here for more photo credits, or click on the photos (when possible) to see more.
A Fan's Story
by Martin Medina,
exclusively for Randy's Rodeo
Johnny In Baton Rouge
It was quite an event. The place was full and it seemed like forever waiting for them to hit the stage. There were press there from all over the world - all the biggies. They were all behind a roped off area to the left of the stage. The whole punk thing had not hit here yet but we had heard and read all about it. We were all still "freaks" or "hippies."
I remember sitting on the dance floor in front of the stage waiting for the show. There was this couple front of us who were fashioning beer can pull-tabs and attaching them to their noses and eyebrows in a futile attempt at punk fashion.
Johnny At Randy's Rodeo
As soon as the Pistols hit the stage we all pelted them with beer cans - hundreds of them! Johnny Rotten was awesome - singing, sneering, screaming and dodging cans. Between songs he would threaten us to stop throwing stuff and kept calling us "cowboy faggots." Great stuff!
Then the legendary "pie-in-the-face" incident happened. Someone threw what looked like a pie or something at Sid Vicious.
He retaliated by taking off his bass and pummeling the guy. The show was stopped for a few minutes as security tried to restore order, not that there was much to begin with!
In the movie Sid And Nancy, the crowd was portrayed by a bunch of cowboys.
That was inaccurate - if there were cowboys there, I didn't see any. What a show - it ranks as one of my best concerts ever!
Sid Speaks
a 1978 phone interview by Roberta Bayley,
reprinted from the Sid Vicious section at www.sex-pistols.net
The Sex Pistols American tour ended at Winterland in San Francisco, January14, 1978. Two days later the band had officially broken up. On January 20, Sid Vicious boarded a plane for London via New York. He passed out en route, an apparent drug overdose, and was taken unconscious to Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York. The biggest blizzard of the year had immobilized New York, so we spoke to Sid that night over the phone. He sounded very weak, but anxious to talk. He was lonely and bored.
Sid Vicious In Tulsa
Cain's Ballroom, Tulsa
Roberta: Do you have a TV at least?
Sid: Yeah. What I could do with would be something to read.
Roberta: Yeah, magazines or something, huh?
Sid: What I really want is like a very very large pile of Marvel comics.
Roberta: I've got some great comic books.
Sid: Yeah, so do I, but Boogie's got them, the asshole.
Roberta: You don't have any way to get in touch with him?
Sid: No. He said he'd call me later today, but he hasn't bothered. And he won't be bothering either. He's a cunt.
Roberta: Well, what happened with this group of yours anyway?
Sid: I left them.
Roberta: Yeah, it seems like everybody left them.
Sid: Well. I don't think anybody really wanted to continue, but no one had the guts to actually say it. So I just phoned John up and told him what I thought of him and where I thought he was at and ummm... I mean I still think I'm pretty good. I think I was better than any of the others.
Roberta: But what do Steve and Paul want to do?
Sid: I don't know. They'll probably try and get another band together and fail. John's completely finished.
Roberta: That seems to be the general consensus.
Sid: (Cheerfully) Does it?
Roberta: Well, everybody's just saying well what can he do now and nobody can figure out anything that he can do.
Sid: Yeah, right and he's finished as a person as well. He's just not what he used to be.
Johnny Rotten
Roberta: Well, maybe this will shake him up a little bit?
Sid: Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. That it'll shake him up and then he'll be able to do something, that'd be goad if he could do that, but otherwise if it doesn't shake him up and get him out of it, then as a person, not only will he not do anything, but also nobody will even want to know him. They'll say, oh didn't you used to be Johnny Rotten?
Roberta: Yeah, I guess in England everybody's gonna be really upset about this. How do you feel about it?
Sid: I'm glad that it's over now because it was like...I feel like I was the only one still putting any real energy into it. Did you see our show at Frisco? I mean John wasn't doing very much was he?
Roberta: The shows got worse instead of better.
Sid: Yeah. I think the one we did in Dallas or something was....
Roberta: San Antonio. I thought that was best.
Sid: (Excited) What, was that the one when I got butted in the face?
Roberta: No, that was Dallas. But I liked the one when you hit the guy with the guitar. (Randy's Rodeo)
Sid: Was that the one when I was going really nuts?
Roberta: Yeah, and John was jumping around a lot and the people were throwing lots of beer cans (at the band). That was a really exciting one. If the planes go out in the morning will you go back to London tomorrow?
Sid: Well, I said I would go. Sophie'll have booked the ticket.
Roberta: But they may not be letting the planes go....
Sid: I hope they don't in a way 'cause I wanna like stay in New York for at least one day.
Roberta: Yeah, you should. All kinds of people want to see you and everything. You've never been here before. You could have a good time. I mean you're healthy enough to do it.
Sid: I don't know whether I am. I can't drink. I can't like...The doctor said that if I drank anything like vaguely remotely like the way I've been drinking for the past...however long, that I've got about six months at the absolute outside to live, and like the drugs as well, so I more or less can't do anything so if I went out anywhere I'd just like...sit there. If I went out anywhere I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation - that'd be the trouble. Like I'd end up just boozing myself out.
Roberta: Well, what're you going to do? If you go back to London, it's just the same thing.
Sid: Yeah. I probably will die in six months, actually.
Roberta: You have to straighten out for a while.
Sid: I can't straighten up. I just can't be straight.
Roberta: You could. Just as an experiment.
Sid: I suppose I just have to. I haven't figured out yet quite how I'm gonna do it 'cause I haven't been straight in like four years. I had hepatitis and when I got out of hospital I just really fucked myself up as badly as I could. I don't know why, but everybody said you can't do it, so I just went ahead and done it. It's my basic nature.
Roberta: Well, your basic nature's gonna get you in a lot of trouble.
Sid: My basic nature's gonna kill me in six months.
Holiday In San antonio
by Margaret Moser
originally published in the Austin Chronicle
January 10, 2003
Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten, & Steve Jones
January 8, 1978, began like most Central Texas winter mornings: gray, but not terribly cold. It was the same in San Antonio - except for the rumbling. The Sex Pistols were coming.
Playing their third show in four days, the third of only seven dates in the U.S. - six of which were played in the South and Southwest - the Sex Pistols weren't going anywhere near New York City, and San Francisco was chosen over Los Angeles as the eighth and final date.
The Sex Pistols. Even their name provoked reaction. Three months prior, in October 1977, the English quartet had detonated in the media with Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols . The music was crunching, the songs boisterous, and the lyrics delightfully offensive to the average Seventies rock fan who was fed a diet of bloated arena rock, mind-numbing FM radio, and cocaine-glutted rock stars.
Witnessing the spectacle in person was possibly the most sterling example of peer pressure passing as independent consciousness in local history. And yet, while it's an overstatement to suggest that everyone who was anyone was in San Antonio that night, an extraordinary number of people in attendance went on to notable accomplishments. Friendships and alliances formed that night have lasted decades.
Cowboy faggots: the audience at Randy's
Eight of us Austinites who saw the Sex Pistols 25 years ago this week remember the event in varying but equally powerful ways. "In my life, I've never been involved with anything as cathartic as that night," recalls Chronicle editor Louis Black. The sentiment is echoed by many.
The Sex Pistols left no unfinished business. Those of us in attendance were handed marching orders, effective Jan. 9, 1978, to rage against mediocrity. It was a lesson not always followed, but never forgotten.
During The Show
Before The Show
Bill Bentley: There are certain shows you just know not to miss. The Sex Pistols in San Antonio, on Elvis Presley's birthday, playing at Randy's Rodeo on their first American tour. Gas up the car, grab the crank, and let's get it. The music world was so polarized on whether the Pistols were either utter dog poop or the absolute saviors of rock & roll that fistfights almost broke out just talking about it. Lord knows what would happen when the boys showed up in person for a concert. But on January 8, 1978, there was no other place to be but on I-35 heading south toward the Alamo City.
Ken Hoge: I did not get the whole punk attitude/scene in England. It seemed violent and scary, but I loved those catchy tunes and was very eager to photograph the band.
Margaret Moser: Ken was my boyfriend then, so we drove down together. He'd bought the tickets for $3 in advance at Joske's at Highland Mall. The irony of buying tickets for the most fuck-you band ever at a suburban mall was too rich. And we were howling over them playing at Randy's Rodeo, of all places!
Johnny Rotten observes the chaos
Frank Pugliese: When I heard they were booked at Randy's, I thought, "What the heck?" But then I heard their reasoning and thought, "OK, they're gonna get what they want." They thought it would be cowboys in the audience.
Bentley: It was a paying gig for me. Through a few previous Austin Sun co-workers, who were now toiling at Larry Flynt's L.A. Free Press , I'd been hired to cover the show. With visions of Hunter S. Thompson dancing in my addled head, I enlisted amateur investigator Glenn Jones to be our driver and borrowed a friend's front-wheel drive Tornado for some extra traction. It felt like we were going to need it.
Jesse Sublett: Like other pockets of spiky-haired people around Austin, we thought the local scene sucked big-time, with its cosmic cowboys and progressive rock geeks. We were rock & roll terrorists, primed to strike. My band, the Violators, tried to snag the opening slot for the Pistols. We gave the promoter a demo tape and photo. He said the gig was ours if he could fuck one of the band members (it wasn't me). We told him to fuck himself. We got free tickets anyway.
Pugliese: My brother Joe worked for (San Antonio promoters) Stone City Attractions. The boss would not have put us on the bill, but he was out of town, and the guy in charge was a friend of my brother's, so...
Louis Black: I'd read about the Sex Pistols, and they sounded kind of bogus, but every time I stopped at Inner Sanctum, the guys were saying, "This is great stuff." The night of the Sex Pistols show, James Cooper from the store was getting married, and there was a party at Soap Creek; Alvin Crow & the Pleasant Valley Boys played, a buffet spread, tons of folks. At a certain point, people started to leave. An hour and 10 minutes later, a bunch of us ran into each other in the parking lot at Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio.
Sid Vicious' infamous sneer
Sublett: Our troupe, consisting of Eddie Muñoz, Carla Olson, Kathy Valentine, and Marilyn Dean, drove down to San Antonio in Eddie's VW bus and then hooked up with [current Chronicle senior account executive] Lois Richwine. I was very excited, because the concert was my first date with Lois. Kathy had played matchmaker. We loved proto-punk bands Blondie, the Ramones, Dr. Feelgood, Lou Reed, Roxy Music; we had every single by the Pistols, the Damned, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe. Lois and Kathy brought some of their singles direct from London, while Lois had seen Blondie and the Ramones at CBGB when she lived in New York.
Pugliese: As soon as the Sex Pistols came into Randy's that afternoon, everybody got cleared out. Big mess there, bouncers playing bodyguard ... not much of a chance to hang out. Sid Vicious approached my guitarist and me. I don't know what he was mumbling about - I couldn't understand him. Sid wanted my guitarist's sunglasses, so he pulled them off his head and said, "I'll give 'em back to you after the show." And we were like, "Sure thing, Sid." He went stumbling off with the sunglasses, and that was the end of that.
During The Show
Bentley: The night smelled like trouble from the start. During the Seventies, San Antonio was the No. 1 hard rock market in the country. A quick look at the crowd in the club made one fact clear: Punk rock and heavy metal were one and the same to 99% of the audience. These were devil-worshiping, head-banging heathens, and they couldn't have cared less about safety pins, or really, the Sex Pistols. They were in it for the curiosity factor, like they were visiting the zoo to see the newest animal attraction. That and the fact they were ready to kick Johnny Rotten's ass all the way back to London.
Pugliese: The Vamps had been around playing the Stones, Velvet Underground, basic hard rock. We played our regular set. We did the Dolls, a Stooges song, a couple of Stones songs, a couple of originals. We didn't have but a half-hour's worth of music at the most. After we got off the stage, people were like, "Hey, where y'all from?" and I was like, "From around the corner." I could almost walk to Randy's, it was about a mile and half from my house.
Johnny Rotten: happy?
Sublett: Frank was doing essentially the same thing he is now with Sons of Hercules - channeling Iggy and the New York Dolls. Carla, Kathy, Marilyn, and I had a punk band called the Violators. Eddie and I, with drummer Billy Blackmon, had just formed the Skunks. We were primed for the Pistols.
Bentley: We walked in just as opening act the Vamps were walking offstage. Randy's had the distinct feel of a made-over bowling alley, all Formica counters and fluorescent lights. The low ceiling made everything feel even more claustrophobic than the packed house normally would. In a hip marketing move, the band's label, Warner Bros., nixed any press freebies but were happy to sell journalists a $2.50 ticket at the door.
Black: In the back are all these folks in leisure suits - friends of the owner who came to see the freak show. Someone says, "Oh, there's (music critic and Chronicle founding editor) Jeff Whittington." I stood on my tiptoes trying to see who he was; I read him in the Texan regularly.
Moser: I didn't know Louis then, but I knew Jeff. Kathy and Marilyn I knew from when we tried to start a rock trio very briefly in 1977. Eddie was the big stud musician always seen squiring these beautiful little confections at the big concerts. He and Jesse said they were starting the Skunks. And Bentley and I worked together at the Austin Sun.
Sublett: The band hit the stage blasting like a pack of howling coyotes loose in a chicken pen: blowtorch guitar, machine gun drums, snarling vocals, sneering faces, bass rumble. They were half rock & roll messiahs, half sideshow freaks. Johnny Rotten fomented chaos and rebellion; Steve Jones and Paul Cook anchored it with napalm-drenched Eddie Cochran riffs and a backbeat crackling like a nail gun. Sid Vicious spewed venom. The storm of beer, spit, and other debris raining down was the punk baptism of Texas.
Pugliese: I liked the record, so when they got onstage, I was hoping they'd sound like that. And they did. When people bombarded them with stuff, Johnny would talk crap back to them, but the others were like, "No big deal." They just kept playing.
Gimme a fix!
Black: Musically, I remember it sucked. I don't remember one positive, quality musical moment that evening. It was more Johnny talking. Remember the first time Talking Heads played or when John Cale did "Sabotage," and it ripped the top of your skull off? There was none of that. It wasn't music, but it was important. When the attitude transcends the music, the attitude can redeem the music.
Bentley: The foursome stumbled their way into the opening song, which sounded like dogs being slaughtered inside a big tin drum. It was that good. Guitarist Steve Jones could actually play three chords, and unlike bassist Sid Vicious, seemed to know where he was. Drummer Paul Cook kept a rock-solid, if singular, beat and seemed to enjoy his safe vantage point behind the drums. Singer Johnny Rotten was obviously running the show and took great pains to be the biggest prick onstage.
Moser: It sucked musically. Jones could play, but Vicious couldn't, so the overall sound was inept. Except for Rotten, who couldn't sing, but visually, he exploded onstage. I don't even remember the songs they played, but I remember Johnny Rotten, raging, running amuck, cueing the crowd like he was a director and them the actors in a riot scene. The show was all about theatre and volume.
Sublett: It was instant mayhem. Cups, beer cans, food, trash, spit flew toward the stage. The sound was loud , extremely lo-fi, but the band was tight - for about 10 seconds. Steve Jones broke a string and "Holiday in the Sun" almost fell apart, but they got it back together and performed like gangbusters. Except for Sid, who was a pretty awful bass player; his mistakes kind of got swallowed up in the roar, and he was fascinating/revolting to look at, so it balanced out. Jones was an excellent guitarist, grounded in roots-rockabilly and heavy metal, and paired with Cook's rock-steady, Charlie Watts-style drumming, the band's sound was as instantly classic and retro as it was revolutionary and just plain scary. Especially with Johnny Rotten's primal howling and cackling on top - not to mention those fabulous lyrics.
Hoge: It was a face-off between the band and the audience, something I had never experienced or expected. Everyone was play-acting the violence, with the audience throwing Schlitz and Pearl cans while the band cursed the audience, egging them on, but there was a definite edge where you knew that it could turn really ugly at any moment. In fact, it did, and it almost ended the show prematurely.
Johnny dodges beer cans
Bentley: Wearing a red plaid suit and sporting the most demented grin since Arnold Stang, Rotten howled like Bevo was stepping on his balls and kept baiting the crowd for all he was worth. The metal boys in front of the stage, fueled by Pabst and paint, gave it back in aces, throwing beer, Cokes, popcorn, and pizza at the band in an endless barrage of garbage.
Hoge: Someone hit Sid in the face with a beer can, and Sid saw the celebrating put on by this guy, who had been goading and taunting him all along. Sid took a swing at the guy with his bass. This happened real close to me, and it was real crowded. I was afraid of losing my camera but snapped what I could.
Moser: Ken was up in the front shooting. I was standing by Bill Bentley about six feet from the front of the stage when Sid was hit. Sid went ballistic, mowing his bass recklessly through the audience like a scythe. Bentley stuck his arm in front of my shoulders and pushed me backward. "Step back, Margaret," he said. "This could get ugly."
Black: Sid hit the person in the audience with his bass, and Johnny stood there and said, "Oh, Sid dropped his bass."
Bentley: It was at this point that rock & roll murder barely got missed, and I'll never forget how close it all came. Johnny Rotten started screaming at the band's attackers: "All you cowboys are faggots." Of course, there really weren't any cowboys at Randy's that night. If Rotten had said, "All you Mexicans are faggots," I have no doubt he would have been killed. There was zero security, the audience could reach out and touch the band, and to insult the audience's manhood like that was stone cold.
Johnny Rotten & Steve Jones
Moser: People imagine the show with a crowd of mohawked and dyed-hair punks, but it wasn't. It was mostly longhaired San Antonio heavy metal fans. The punk "look" hardly existed. Those in the crowd that did dress punk, like future Huns singer Phil Tolstead in his "Void" T-shirt, were in the minority. There were some straight people walking around. The audience was half the show.
Sublett: People say there were more rednecks there than fans, and that's how Malcolm McLaren wanted it, but I recognized a lot of people from the tiny but intense crowd of 150-300 for Iggy Pop at the Armadillo about a year earlier. When the Pistols launched into Iggy and the Stooges' "No Fun," we all felt like payback time was right around the corner.
Aftermath
Bentley: On the way out, I noticed a 16-year-old carving a swastika on the forehead of Ray Price's photo hanging by the front door. It was then I realized how much luck has to do with listening to punk rock and was able to safely steer our little crew to Club Ooh La La on Culebra Road for the swinging sounds of Sonny Ace and the Twisters as a much-needed musical antidote. My only worry was wondering how to describe a whole, new world for those who weren't there.
Moser: After the show, there was this feeling of survival, as if we'd been through a significant joint experience. I guess we had. There were so many people there I'd never seen before but would come to be friends with or work with. It was that big of a catalyst. The thing I remember most vividly about the aftermath was a few Randy's regulars strolling in afterward, real shit-kickers in their hats and boots. They looked horrified at the carnage inside.
Pugliese: Getting the opening gig didn't do a thing for the Vamps.
Sid Vicious takes aim at unruly fans
Sublett: A lot of people say the Pistols concert was where Austin's punk/New Wave scene all began; I say it was between the concert and the Raul's debut of punk. Not necessarily because of our particular bands, but because so many people missed the Pistols and realized they'd committed a colossal screwup, so they flocked to all our early shows with evangelical fervor. Things accelerated with hurricane force in 1978. Everybody got spiky hair, ditched their bell-bottoms, and started a band.
Black: It started with Sex Pistols.
Hoge: The show changed my life, literally. My musical tastes and attitude about performance art were never the same. I do not think they would have mattered at all, though, if the music had not been so real or if Johnny Rotten had not been such an amazingly gross performer or if Sid Vicious had not been such a suicidal maniac. It was an impossible combination that somehow clicked, like winning the cultural lottery.
Moser: A few years later, I realized the Sex Pistols were as manufactured as the Monkees. In a way, that was perfect, but it was also like, so what? It turned music upside down and put the music back in the hands of musicians, and that's just what the music business needed.
Black: This was a manufactured musical event that had nothing to do with music. In my life, I've never been involved with anything as cathartic as that night. I didn't go home and change anything I did, but nothing was the same after that show. In a way, the Chronicle happened at that show. A few years later I met Russ Meyer, who was supposed to film Who Killed Bambi?, the Sex Pistols film. Russ goes, "Steve Jones and Paul Cook, they were reasonable guys. Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, they were assholes."
Sublett: There's a bold, throbbing line that runs more or less directly from that noisy, glorious night in January 1978 to the Live Music Capital of the World era we're living today. Austin was rocked to the marrow by the Pistols' anarchy, and the aftershocks are still being transmitted through every successive generation of rock & rollers. Twenty-five years since that first date with my wife Lois, and when I listen to some of our 9-year-old son Dashiell's favorite bands - the Hives, the Vines, Smashmouth - sometimes it sounds like just yesterday.
Pugliese: I'm glad I got to see them like I'm glad I got to see Iggy, glad I got to see the Dolls with everybody intact. The Sex Pistols sounded good so, no problem. Thank you very much, boys.
