On January 15th, 1978, Johnny Rotten took a plane from San Francisco to New York and stayed with my friend Joe Stevens while announcing to the world he had left the Sex Pistols. Johnny spent two weeks before returning to the UK and inventing Public Image Ltd, and yet another masterpiece, the superb First Edition album (followed by the even better The Metal Box). I sw PiL at the New York Palladium in 1980 and that there is only two years between the concert you’ll find here (thanks John Neilson), from the Winterland the night before Johnny quit and PiL at the Palladium is astounding.
There is simply no comparison.
Not just Lydon (no longer Rotten), but Keith Levine and Jahn Wobble performed art rock dub based bass heavy pop music for the masses in an epic career trajectory changing performance in 1980. This video you are about to watch, Johnny Rotten, Paul cook, Sid Vicious and and steve Jones is so bad you can kind of see why Lydon bolted. Whatever it meant for the Sex Pistols to be the sex Pistols in this dreary slog through the album and the hits. “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Rotten says at the end of the evening, referring to both himself and the audience. “How does it feel to have bad taste?” he had asked just a little earlier.
This show was worse than I can have imagined, it is a part of musical history, a bad part of musical history.
Watch it and weep.
