Were the Sex Pistols still viewed as a band in 1978/1979

You're not kidding - that was amazing.

 

I think the show on the Sid and the Idols album sounds pretty good.

 

Oh I know there were definitely plenty of fans above my rough age group estimate of 14-23 - I was writing in response to the idea that the Pistols' audience was mainly 12-16!

 

Oh which store? I was at the Marble Arch megastore on the first day, afternoon - no queue but I remember huge LA Tower Records-style piles of NMTB on the floor, and pretty much every other person walking down Oxford Street seemed to have the luminous cover showing through their carrier bags - average age: definitely adult - well at least they seemed much older than teenaged me.

 

To consider what kids who were too young to read the music press thought is like asking what a similar age group thought at the time about when/why Beatles' split or whether Paul was dead.
I would have thought it'd be better to ask whether people who had bought NMTB still thought they were a band when they released No One Is Innocent, to which the answer would be no.

 

The shop was small, you could only fit about 10 people inside, British punk kids were typical Brits they waited in line LOL

 

Virgin in Edinburgh, which was more a mini-store than a mega store

 

Anecdote:
In 1980, I worked in the art department of Pickwick Records in North London. When there was one of those 'orrible Top Of The Pops compilations to do, we would order a load of girlie photos for the cover (a company directive). We would have a fun time on the light box, looking at all the ektachromes in order to choose the best one. I clearly remember that among the selection one month were a few photos from that very photo shoot. Obviously we chose a different photo for the TOTP album cover. Funny too that the Pistols cover (McLaren's idea?) was a direct satire on what Pickwick had been doing for years. For these reasons, the I love the cover of Flogging A Dead Horse.

 

Well here in the UK Punk and New Wave were very big with younger people, obviously more exciting and fun than listening to a double concept album or whatever.

In my school it was a real divide - the people two years above were into Led Zep, Yes, Floyd etc, the year directly above were really mixed and my year was almost all Clash, Jam, Pistols, Damned etc fans. Obviously that's a little simplified but you could see quite clearly where the divide was, even if it was just the size of the flares.

Now the OP asks a question, and I think it's unfair to just limit that to a very select group. The question wasn't written that way. So it's perfectly valid to give my opinion (and I don't see why some above have such an issue with that) as it paints the overall picture, which is what I think the OP is really asking.

Of course for older music fans in touch with the NME and whatever they could see the Pistols were not really a band anymore, but that's just one sector of the population. For us kids we had no idea really, new Pistols singles were being released, Sid was singing but so what, at the time I had no idea who was singing Silly Thing. And for general pop fans who were not really into Punk seriously, the Pistols still were having chart hits.

They had three top five singles in the UK in 1979!

So anyway, I think it's valid to the discussion in the wider sense.

 

I will just say I was 17/18 - senior/first year college at the time of their introduction here in the states to me and my music friends at least. I know there were some who used their persona as rebellious to wear the torn jeans, clothes and hair and whatever as a fashion statement against conformity. To this day I wonder if they ever really knew the music. Whether these people understood their concepts or ideas I have no idea. The other, like me, had zero use for their musical style or anything else about them.

A band? Not to me even when they might have been and still to this day I can't and will never figure out the hype some 45 years later.

 

That's pretty much how I remember it. I bought the "Swindle" singles (I was 15-16) and liked them, but it was clearly something different from the NMTB group.

I recall reading in 1978 or '79 that Johnny Rotten had quit the group and moved to Jamaica to form a reggae group (LOL), so I was aware that the Sex Pistols brand was already running on fumes.

 

IMHO, The band backing Sid is what sounds halfway decent on this release. Sid is still the weak link. I guess this album is good when couched relative to a lot of the other live Sid Vicious material out there.

That show wasn't released until well into the '90s, though.

 

Not sure people who bought NMTB, a chart-topping album with 125,000 advance orders alone, and on the UK LP chart for a year, or even those who bought God Save The Queen is "a very select group". We can surely say that at the very least having bought the album is a fairly reasonable measure of whether someone was a fan. After all, the OP did ask "But did fans at the time actually think that Johnny Rotten had been replaced with Ronnie Biggs, or that Sid Vicious was now the new lead singer?"

 

I think the problem was a poster stating, rather too confidently, that most Sex Pistols fans were 12 to 16.

 

I was 11 in 1979, still too young to read import copies of the British music papers, and I remember seeing the “new” Sex Pistols in the bins as I turned 12 and 13 and got into punk. At this point I had no idea who PiL were or what the real story was. As late as 1985, there was still “new” Pistols product coming out fairly regularly. I remember buying this album when it came out in 1985? and playing it a good deal.

 

Between 12 and sixteen? That's a bit narrow and doubtful, I don't think any twelve year old would have even seen the Pistols in their short career considering any venue they would have played would have been over eighteens only. No way were they a kids band.

 

i read it every 2 or so years, the anecdotes that come alive (for the 12th time) make it worthwhile

I don't hate on Malcolm, i can understand if you were in the same room with him why you'd hate him...

 

I thought they were over after Winterland. It was a strange phenomenon, following their American tour was like observing the progress of a hurricane. But when Lydon quit, it was like, yeah, they're done.

 

the feuding was too violent, and there were deaths and that wasn't funny anymore

the Beatles gave us a more enjoyable feud, with withering comments to the media

 

I apologise for having a different opinion than you, just felt I could add to the general debate, obviously not.

 

I'd like to hear all opinions and recollections, whether they differ or not. That's the whole point of the thread. It's your personal viewpoint, and that's always fine.

 

you should be okay on this board, as long as you don't disparage Paul McCartney

 

Not by me. And I was a fan from the start, right from seeing the Grundy interview. They actually weren't a group once Matlock left imo but everything after Rotten left was a joke & a money making exercise and McClaren never even tried to pretend otherwise. I saw Rock & Roll Swindle but never bought any of the records after NMTB.

 

great posting, anyone else see the Grundy interview?

i heard about it in Southern Ontario, this just wasn't cricket....

 

Were the Sex Pistols still viewed as a band in 1978/1979

To my recollection the Sex Pistols were never viewed as anything but a contrivance. A sort of nihilistic Monkees.