On their day – and there were many when their classic lineup was in place – the Sex Pistols were a great band. But of course the Pistols were destined to be more than just that. Whether by accident or design, and whether desired or not by their four members, their provocative sound, lyrics and attitude saw them become the voice of a counter-cultural movement.
And few moments in the band’s history were as controversial as their infamous concert at Chelmsford Prison, a top security jail, on September 17, 1976.
By then, the Pistols – whose lineup of John ‘Johnny Rotten’ Lydon on vocals, Glen Matlock on bass, Steve Jones on lead guitar and Paul Cook on drums had been in place for over a year – had played catalysing gigs in London venues like the Marquee, 100 Club and Nashville, as well as in Manchester. Bands like The Clash and Buzzcocks formed in their wake and opened for them at Islington’s Screen On The Green in August 1976, a seminal evening for the nascent punk movement. An even bigger moment – their career-defining TV interview with Bill Grundy – was only two months away.
In mid-September, the band played four northern dates – Whitby, Leeds, Liverpool and Blackburn – before heading to jail in Essex. Though the prison gig has been painted as a genius one-off publicity stunt by manager Malcolm McClaren, in Lydon’s 2014 autobiography it is remembered as “not from Malcolm’s planning, but by invitation”. Indeed, the Stranglers had played there in late July.
The crowd included 500 offenders as well as Pistols acolytes, segregated from the inmates. The 14-strong set featured impending first single Anarchy in the UK, as well as incendiary tracks like Pretty Vacant, Problems and No Feelings. There were versions of the Monkees’ Stepping Stone and the Stooges’ No Fun.
Memories differ as to how the Pistols went down. Lydon remembered it as a “Fantastic gig, and fantastic prisoners. The amount of gear them fellas had! They were all long-termers; there ain’t no-one in there for nicking a handbag, at least not in the crowd that came to see us. These were real people contaminated by a shitstem not of their own making and caught up in the problems there accordingly.”
“These fellas got the songs, I’ll tell you. Halfway through ‘Anarchy’, I go, ‘Cough, cough, the smell of marijuana’s slowing me down!’ But when they’re locked up like that, all those poor fellas had was drugs. The pain I felt for them locked up with no hope of getting out.”
Danny Boyle’s Lydon-derided dramatic adaptation of the band’s story, Pistol, also gives the impression that the prisoners loved the concert. Others remember the inmates as either indifferent or aggressive. You can hardly tell from the 1990 album release, Live at Chelmsford Top Security Prison, which is digitially enhanced not just to replace Matlock’s bass, unaccountably missing from the recording, but also has sirens, abrasive language and booing edited in from other gigs, together with inserts of Rotten – or an impersonator – goading the crowd.
For Paul Cook, the gig was a memorable one – the future Professional had decided to turn professional and had spent the day working his final shift as an apprentice. Excessive pre-gig celebrations later saw him fall off his drum stool during proceedings.
Lydon later saw the event as “one of the most important gigs we ever did. We weren’t just playing to people who were in there as punishment. There were political prisoners in there, people who had stood up against the government, and they were our audience as well. It was an opportunity to show them that they weren’t alone.”
However, some were equally concerned about the frontman. “Talking to them after, there was no kind of control, we weren’t separated from them,” he wrote. “They meant no harm to us, and quite a few of the fellas were expecting me to become a fellow prisoner. ‘You’re on the road to ruin, you are!’”