“The more madder the better.” New Musical Express, 15 Jan. 1977, pp. 7 pages
The more madder the better
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New Musical Express | 15th January 1977
Sex Pistols
The more madder the better
The history of rock 1977 from the makers of Uncut
The Sex Pistols enter Europe. Behind them: Bill Grundy, tabloid outrage and a dispute with their label, EMI. Ahead: an unimpressed Dutch crowd and some long negotiations. We just acted our natural selves, says Paul Cook. It just beats me.
Amsterdam’s Paradiso is much bigger than I’d imagined it to be - at least twice the size of the Marquee, for instance, with the ambience of a much friendlier Roundhouse, a balcony, two quirky bars, pool and pinball, a high (five-foot) stage with stained-glass windows behind, and hardly any sign of the public dope scene for which it’s famous.
Two black guys morosely attempt to sell cocaine outside as Guardian rock writer Robin Denselow and I shuffle in just in time for The Vibrators’ opening number.
For most of the audience, No Fun is their first taste of live English punk rock, and there could hardly be a better way to start: tongue-in-cheek nihilism, stampeding guitars and grotesque flash. They’re amused, seem to enjoy it, give it quite a good reception. The Vibrators’ set is reviewed in full in On The Town.
Backstage, The Heartbreakers and Sex Pistols wander in as The Vibrators wander out. After awhile there’s a completely different population in the concrete-box dressing room, and I sidle over and set up the tape machine next to Pistols drummer Paul Cook.
Paul Cook: You done the one at the ’Undred Club that time, didn’tya?
NME: Yeah, along, longtime ago.
Glen Matlock: Was you the bloke that was gonna split down the middle?
NME: No, the main thing I’ve written about you was in the Stranglers piece, actually...
Cook: Luring ’em into saying naughty things. [Hugh Cornwell had called Rotten a paranoid clown.]
NME: People were saying at the time what a bad deal it was for the Pistols, running into all this trouble, and it seemed to me if anything it was helping you, because you were getting all these front pages. I mean, you’re a household name now. But I must admit it seems to have changed somewhat since then.
Matlock: Backfired? In some ways, yeah. It’s all part of it, though, isn’t it, all the mad hassle. The more madder the better.
NME: I don’t know how you stand the pressure of it, though.
Cook: We're used to it already. I just think it’s a load of bollocks. I don’t know why they all write about it.
Matlock: You don’t believe it till you’ve been the other side of it really.
Cook: Like that thing at the airport. I’m not kidding, straight up, we couldn’t believe it when we got over here. Someone phoned up, said this that and the other - we just couldn’t believe it. There was a press bloke waiting, I suppose; just waiting at the airport for something to ’appen. We just acted our natural selves. It just beats me. NME: Wasn’t there anything at all?
Cook: Nothing. Really. The bloke from EMI was with us all the time. He would have said if there was, but he didn’t.
NME: I’ve heard you’re gonna refuse to let them (EMI) break the contract.
Cook: Come on, we’re not just gonna let ’em say, get off the label, do this, do that. NME: You wouldn’t rather just go somewhere else?
Cook: That’s the point, innit? We’re just letting Malcolm sort it out. Matlock: A contract’s a contract.
If you sign a contract, right, and six months later they say you gotta tear it up...
Cook: If they do it with us, what chance have other bands got?
NME: But I would have thought that working with a company that was so against you, you’d rather just get out.
Cook: Yeah, but it’s the people at the top who are against us. The people in the record company, like the A&R guys who work on the shop floor, they’re behind the band, and they’ve got absolutely no say in it. It’s yer John Reads - he’s the guy that’s in charge of all of EMI, not just the record company. Matlock: He doesn’t normally interfere.
NME: What happened before the Grundy interview? It seemed at the time like you were just sitting there - right, here’s our opportunity, we’re gonna get on the box and...
Matlock: Swear!
NME: Create havoc.
Matlock: No, we just went there and sat in a room for a bit and had a beer each, and he asked us a few questions - we just answered them. That was it. We never even spoke to the guy before it. He was just, like, sitting there, y’know - he looked a bit kinda pissed.
Cook: I think he incited [obscured], but he asked John - John said shit under his breath - and he said, what was that? He said, nothing, no, nothing. He said, come on, come on, I wanna hear it, y’know. What does he expect?
Right, you fuckers, we’re gonna do one more: Rotten, at the behest of his manager, cues up another encore
NME: There’s also at the moment a rather nasty rumour going around that you didn’t play on the record.
Cook: We ’eard that too. We got on to them straight away and got a letter of written apology. We ’eard it on the radio, couldn’t believe that one either. It seems totally wrong to go... [obscured]
NME: One of the rumours is that Spedding was on the record.
Cook: Spedding can’t play as good as that (laughs).
NME: You did some work with Spedding, though, didn’t you?
Cook: Three tracks. A long time ago, though. We really rushed in, but we come out of it all right. He produced on ’em. It was all right.
NME: But the single is categorically you lot?
Cook: Sorry?
NME: The single’s definitely you lot?
Cook: Oh yeah, yeah. What a question! (laughs) How can you believe it? NME: I don’t believe. I gotta ask it, haven’t I?
Cook: Yeah, OK. We ’eard it on Capital Radio; we just couldn’t believe it. NME: How’s the audience here taking you?
Cook: Oh all right. They was getting going last night.
NME: They seemed to like The Vibrators.
Cook: All the bands went down really well last night.
NME: What are your favourite bands out of the other bands that are around?
Cook: These boys.
NME: The Heartbreakers? What do you reckon to The Vibrators? Cook: Ah, you’re trying to put me in that trap again what The Stranglers fell for.
NME: They didn’t fall for anything. They’d decided to give that interview before I walked in the room.
Cook: How other bands can just go out and say things about... I think any band that’s about at the moment, trying to do something new, give ’em credit for it whether you like ’em or not.
Don’t just go out and slag ’em off, whether you like ’em or not. I think it’s good that they’re just doing it, that it’s something new.
Jones: (From across room) Who’s this?
Cook: He’s from the NME.
Jones: What’s your name?
NME: Phil McNeill.
Jones: (Aggressively) Oh, are you?
Cook: No, they’ve been good to us lately.
NME: We’ve been good to you all along. What’s all this about spitting at the audience?
Cook: We don’t. You been reading too much Daily Mirror.
NME: Well, in the wake of reports of John spitting at the audience, some bands have started doing it.
Cook: We read that in the press too, and suddenly we were playing and everyone started spitting at us.
That’s what they thought we wanted, y’know. Gobbing at us.
In Manchester or somewhere.
NME: What’s your reaction to seeing people with safety pins through their cheeks?
Cook: I’ve seen that too, yeah.
NME: It seems like it’s a development of John wearing safety pins through his shirt.
Cook: Let ’em do what they wanna do, that’s what I say. Who cares?
NME: And what about the great Nazi thing that’s going around now? You got a lotta kids coming to your gigs these days wearing Nazi emblems and safety pins through their faces and God knows what else.
Cook: They take it too seriously, they really do. If they wanna wear a Nazi armband, let ’em. I don’t think kids are that political, really mean what they do. They like the shape of it. It’s a good shape.
NME: What about the Pistols? What’s your politics?
Cook: Do what you wanna do. That’s what we’re doing, and getting turned down for doing it. Do you wanna talk to John for a while? (Rotten is standing nearby, back to us; Cook tugs his arm) John. John! Here, this is Phil...
Rotten: No way.
Cook: He’s from...
Rotten: [Obscured, shrugging Cook off]
Cook: (Slightly put out) All right. He don’t wanna do it.
The Heartbreakers’ set flashes by. It’s been said here already - the Dolls, a heavied Ramones, not so fast, though - the reception’s comparatively quiet but the friendly atmosphere combined with the blazing rock onstage... it’s a helluva gig.
I interview The Vibrators in the Paradiso office. They’re euphoric because the guy from Amsterdam’s other main club, the Melkweg, who blew out the gigs he’d booked for The Vibrators when the Grundy/Pistols thing erupted, came down last night and has booked them in for two days’ time.
A charge shivers the room as Anarchy in the UK lams out in the background; Malcolm McLaren arrives and huddles heatedly with The Vibrators’ manager, Bread.
A few songs into the Pistols’ set we wind down the interview; it will appear here sometime soon. But let’s go check the naughty boys...
The Johnny Rotten Show is well under way. Long time no see. Not much sign of the vast improvements in playing we’ve heard about: the sound's much clearer than the early days, but the music is still primitive. Without Rotten they’re a good, hefty drummer, an ordinary bassist and a mediocre guitarist.
Substitute and others go by. The crowd are up for the first time, standing fascinated but diffident. Rotten goes through his ostrich-poses, the chin jutting, the mouth leering, the eyes rolling. They’re playing what seems to be No Future. It boasts the title line from the National Anthem.
There’s a long break, with a lot of aural and visual aggro between the punters and the Rotten/Matlock duo, then they resume the song, very loud. It’s sloppy, and it reaps silence.
A green-haired lady is sitting under a Christmas tree stuck on the wall behind the drums, and as they go into [We’re so pretty, oh so] Pretty Vacant it occurs to me, vacantly, that it looks like she’s wearing some gigantic hat.
The Pistols are playing tighter, but it’s still mighty basic. Jones compensates for his limited skill with a fair line in one-note breaks.
Johnny Rotten is a perplexing performer. He has an extraordinary ability to enrage his audience.
At the most basic level it’s his insults and his bad behaviour, but Rotten has something deeper. It goes deeper, too, than his contempt for society in songs like I’m a Lazy Sod. And surely it goes beyond his looks, his flea-bitten, hunchbacked cadaver.
Somehow this guy repels virtually everybody, and somehow his power reaches through the taunts to the sensibilities of thousands, maybe even millions, of people who have only ever heard his name and seen his picture.
Yet he is mesmerising. He can’t be ignored. He’s not just some hooligan who swore on TV, he drags the most »
We're not just gonna let 'em say, get off the label, do this, do that
March 2, 1977: Paul Cook and Steve Jones in the audience for The Heartbreakers at the Roxy in London’s Covent Garden
Casual observer into, usually, a love-hate relationship; probably the most charismatic rock star to emerge since Bowie.
Suddenly a couple of kids at the front who have been hitting Rotten with woollen scarves start throwing beer. Not glasses, just beer - but for this laid-back mob it’s the equivalent. While Rotten stands there,
Cook erupts from his stool and he and the girl chuck beer back, Matlock kicks his mic stand very nastily off the stage, and the rhythm section storms off, Jones still rifling, and Rotten sends the girl to get the others back. They eventually return for the only really furious piece of music they play all night.
Meanwhile Malcolm McLaren stands impassive upon the mixing desk riser, his three-piece-suited solicitor behind him. The show really begins about now. It’s got nothing to do with music, but so what? It’s entertainment. The band have left the stage - all but Rotten, who sneers, If you want more you can clap for it. Feeble applause. The disco starts, and feet start shuffling out.
But a chant is generating. Yes... yes... the Pistols are coming back. Whatcha Gonna Do ’Bout It, nihilism incarnate.
They end but don’t go. You’re boring, drones Rotten. This weird challenge to the audience to respond. I look round at McLaren and see that he is standing there gesticulating to Rotten, the upswept arms of the Get Up movement and the hands clapping overhead... and Rotten is mimicking McLaren. This show ends when Malcolm says so.
The crowd raise a half-hearted chant, Rotten’s response: Right, you fuckers, we’re gonna do one more, so move or else forget about it.
It’s a very good version of Anarchy, lots of echo on the voice. End of act. End of act? No way, McLaren is signalling Rotten again, and puppet-like, Rotten copies him. Whether the audience wants one or not, there’s going to be another encore. There is, and this time Rotten stomps off before Malcolm starts signalling.
The point of all these false encores eludes me, unless the Sex Pistols are actually unliberated enough to get an ego-boost out of such conventional trappings of success.
Their music is lumpen, but the spectacle is marvellous. That last sentence could easily be applied, coincidentally, to shows I’ve seen in the past years by Queen and The Stones - and like those bands today, the Pistols’ main success is in show business.
Malcolm has agreed to speak to Robin Denselow and me at his hotel. How the hell do we find it?
We wander off in pursuit of the beleaguered mad scientist.
It’s freezing and I haven’t eaten all day. We walk for miles. As we near our destination, Steve Jones runs past, bums five guilders off me virtually in return for showing us where he’s staying, much to my bemusement... Finally we’re there.
And behold, McLaren appears. For some reason we can’t go in, so we conduct the interview standing on a hotel step by a canal at three in the morning. McLaren looks even more wasted than I feel, talking unstoppably like a man possessed, staring into space. There could be 2,000 of us listening.
We’ve had word that most of the majors won’t touch us with barge poles. You haven’t had offers from people like Polydor, UA?
No, that’s all guff, man - who’s spreading those kinda rumours?
There’s nobody after us. We’ve had, I suppose you call it, votes of confidence from the shop floors of various record companies, but you begin to realise that those sort of people don’t have any control over the situation, just as it’s happened in EMI.
We’ve had people like the guy from EMI Publishing, Terry Slater; he rang me up today and he feels totally pissed off that he’s been totally overruled. He’s the head of EMI Publishing; he signed us four weeks ago for £10,000 and now he’s been told that’s all got to be quashed. He’s been made to look stupid.
December 11, 1976: the Pistols and manager Malcolm McLaren (left) at EMI’s Manchester Square studios, where they record demos of Problems, God Save The Queen, Liar and No Feelings
The same goes for Nick Mobbs, who threatened to resign. He’s now been told that would be very unhealthy for him, so they can produce a wonderful statement saying on EMI no one has resigned.
There are different bands with different points of view. The real situation is that people on the board of directors at EMI do not agree with our point. The people who actually work for EMI, they do. But if they come out and make a statement to that effect they will get the sack, or they’ll have to resign.
Those truths have never come out. What appears in the press is that we have been thrown out by all of EMI together, a wonderful consensus of opinion.
If it comes to the crunch and they force you to terminate, will you repay the advance?
How are we going to repay the advance?
We’ve already spent all the money maintaining ourselves here and on the tour. We’re out here promoting their single - it’s not just our single.
Is it out here?
Yeah, that’s the reason we’re here. We weren’t doing any other European territory simply because EMI sent a memo asking them not to release it. EMI Holland got the record out before that memo reached them.
Now they’re withdrawing it.
Are they blocking its sale in England?
Oh yeah, it’s being withdrawn in England.
If you do split with them, what happens to any tapes that are in the can?
Those questions have been raised. They would prefer that we take the lot and go away with it. It’s been very easy for them. Someone signs a contract for two years: that is an agreement between two parties. If you can tear that contract up in two months because they dislike the opinion of the band - by they I mean the EMI board of directors - it makes a farce of the whole situation.
What about all these other bands that are coming along? They sign a contract and some guy at the top, not some A&R guy who’s responsible for signing, says, I don’t like what I’m hearing about this band, I don’t want them on the company any more. So they go out the window.
Who are the guys who’ve come over here?
The managing director of EMI and the head of the legal department - Leslie Hill and Laurie Hall. They came over to terminate the contract and we haven’t terminated it. They want us to have another meeting; at the moment they haven’t met any of my proposals, probably because they have been told they can’t meet anything.
We had a two-hour meeting tonight. It’s been very nice. We’ve come away to Holland and someone’s decided behind our back to mutually terminate the contract. Legally, we’re still on EMI Records...
Now people on the EMI board are saying, why the hell did we sign them in the first place? They’re musically inadequate, it was too much money...
But I spoke to Leslie Hill, the managing director of EMI Records, prior to us signing. It was him that was exhilarated by the band and thrilled at the idea of signing the act. He was fully aware of their public image, and he will not deny that.
EMI had all the tapes to all the Pistols’ songs. They heard them, they were excited at the prospect of signing this act and commercially gaining through it. We had had offers from other companies, but I went there because the sympathy with EMI was strong on the shop floor.
Nick Mobbs, Tony Slater on the publishing side, David Munns on the promotion side, Mark Ryder the label manager, Paul Watts the general manager and Leslie Hill the managing director all wanted to sign this act. Now they’re saying, we have 4,000 employees on EMI and if we took a consensus of opinion I don’t think you would raise the amount of votes necessary.
I made a proposal; I said, OK, find us an equivalent contract. If I walk into Warner Brothers they’re going to say, well, man, you didn’t make it with EMI, the bad publicity, et cetera.
What they did on TV was something that was quite genuine. They were goaded into it, and being working-class kids and boys being boys, they said what they felt was... OK. They don’t regret it.
The KLM situation at the airport was fabricated up to a point. Yeah, the band might have looked a little bit extraordinary, they might have spat at each other. Big deal. And someone may have appeared a little drunk. But they weren’t flying the plane, they don’t need to be that sober.
There are these bands now that have some sort of petition, like Mud, Tina Charles, all these other Top 20 acts, and sent round this petition to all the record companies saying that they do not support this kind of music.
{NME talked to Mud’s manager, Barry Dunning, on Monday. He denied Mud had signed any petition, nor would they ever do so.}
My lawyer asked: we’d like a meeting with John Read or the rest of the money. They’d rather give us the rest of the money than have a meeting. John Read speaks on behalf of all the shareholders, he controls EMI Ltd, which covers far more than just a record company. He wouldn’t meet us. He sent Hill instead; every time you just get to speak to Hill. Hill has his orders and he can’t move from that point.
How much money have you had of the £40,000?
Half. The first year. But that has been spent on supporting a tour.
We ended up selling the fucking record at the bloody door in Rotterdam and at the Paradiso last night. It’s a joke.
What’s next, a big legal battle?
I don’t know. I asked Hill if they can reconsider their situation, quite simply - and if they can’t, why can’t Capitol Records, who we’re signed to in America? Oh well, Capitol Records decided to go along with Manchester Square. They don’t want any part of it.
I said, what happens if we’re on another label and the distribution is through EMI? Are EMI gonna distribute the record? They can’t really answer that. It’s very difficult, it really is. I feel pretty bad about it.
Hill’s now saying, can’t you go to Virgin Records, I hear that’s an interesting company. Bollocks, man - we went to Virgin Records before we went to EMI and they didn’t wanna know.
If we walk into another record company, what are they going to say?
If you can’t play anywhere and we can’t hear your records on the radio and EMI decided to drop you... what the hell are they going to do?
It’s not just EMI, it’s people behind the scenes, guys that go on the radio and say we didn’t play on our record, the guy that’s scared to put us on Top of the Pops even though we’re in the breakers because the BBC don’t want to be seen to be associated with us.
What’s it all about?
Until last week I had no sympathy whatsoever for the punks-as-martyrs line, but if what McLaren says about them not being able to land a contract anywhere is true (I still don’t really believe that one), and EMI Records do succeed in breaking their legal contract simply on account of 30 seconds of televised swearing, then I’ll, I’ll...
Phew, for a moment there I almost cut my hair!
The McLaren interview was recorded on an EMI tape. Phil McNeill •
EMI’s MD was fully aware of the Sex Pistols’ public image
The Sex Pistols in early 1977: (l-r) Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten
New Musical Express | JANUARY 15