Marco Pirroni, future guitarist and songwriter with Adam and the Ants, had his life changed seeing Sex Pistols for the first time in 1976. “I’d never seen anything with that attitude. I’d never seen a singer who insulted their audience, who sang with his hands in his pockets like he was bored. It was all the clichés you hear – after one gig, you walked out a different person.”
Fifty years ago, the UK’s punk scene was erupting. Sex Pistols were leading the charge, playing incendiary, scrappy gigs around London and, famously, at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, where Morrissey, Mick Hucknall and future members of Joy Division were in attendance. Influential punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue had just published its first issue; The Clash and The Damned made their live debuts, with the latter releasing the first ever punk single, “New Rose”, in October.
A month before that, the first ever punk festival had taken place at the 100 Club in Oxford Street: Pirroni played with Siouxsie and the Banshees on their debut gig, with Sid Vicious on drums. By the time the legendary, short-lived Roxy Club opened in December, giving the scene its own version of The Cavern, punk was already notorious: Sex Pistols made an infamously sweary appearance on Bill Grundy on ITV; the tabloids painted punk as the spiky-haired, safety-pin-clad degenerate bogeyman scandalising the nation.
