Veteran rock photographer releases photos of Sex Pistols last U.K concert on Christmas Day in 1977

The Sex Pistols were all but over by 1977, just two years after they erupted onto the scene like a blazing, incendiary comet of punk rock pomp and pageantry.

They scorched the earth with hysterical performances fueled by drug abuse and replete with sexual innuendo, expletives, and insolence. They espoused anarchy and derisively scoffed at anyone or anything that represented ‘the establishment’ – most notably the Queen of England.

Now picture the notorious four on Christmas Day in 1977 –playing a charity show to raise money for the families of striking firefighters at a small nightclub named Ivanhoe’s in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

Johnny Rotten  handed out badges, posters and other Sex Pistols-branded merchandise as substitute-gifts. Teenagers and young children boogied with Sid Vicious on the dance floor to disco hits by Baccara and Boney M while Rotten judged a pogo dancing contest. Later, he presented them with a massive cake, emblazoned with ‘Sex Pistols’ that was the ‘size of a car bonnet’ before things descended into expected good-natured, punk-rock chaos with a food fight.

The party went on through the night, descending into requisite debauchery when the adult punks showed up for the evening concert that would inevitably be the Sex Pistols last gig in the U.K. This implausible combination of wholesome depravity that defined their final show would be forgotten if it weren’t for Kevin Cummins, a veteran rock n’ roll photographer who recently released previously unpublished photos from that final show in his book, Sex Pistols: The End is Near 25.12.77.  

Bassist, Sid Vicious would later be accused of killing his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen in 1978 during a drug-fulled haze at The Chelsea Hotel in New York City; he died from an overdose that same year while awaiting trial for her murder

Johnny Rotten holds up the microphone between Sid Vicious (left) and guitarist Steve Jones.  Earlier in the day, the band hosted a charity Christmas party for the children and families who didn’t have enough money to celebrate the holiday amid the firefighter strike. The concert was planned by their manager Malcom McLaren, who enjoyed the controversy the band attracted. According to James Parker in The Atlantic, McLaren would later describe Sid’s aura as a ‘halo of anarchy’

Years later Johnny Rotten said the concert was: ‘The ultimate reward. One of my all-time favorite gigs. Young kids, and we’re doing Bodies and they’re bursting out with laughter on the ‘f*ck this f*ck that’ verse. The correct response: not the shock horror ‘How dare you?’ Adults bring their own filthy minds into a thing. They don’t quite perceive it as a child does’ 

By Christmas 1977, the Sex Pistols were personae non gratae in every venue across England after a torrent of negative press accused the band of treason for their number one single: ‘God Save The Queen’ (‘The fascist regime…She ain’t no human being’). The polemic song was banned from airwaves after the band timed its release to coincide with Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee.

The planned U.K. tour had collapsed and the only locale willing to open its doors to the rowdy group was a tiny nightclub named Ivanhoe’s in West Yorkshire. After the relatively tame matinee performance was finished, Kevin Cummins left his family’s Christmas lunch to attend the evening’s R-rated punk rock version – the show that Rolling Stone said was played ‘with an energy and conviction that is positively transcendent in its madness and fever.’

‘My father didn’t speak to me for at least three weeks,’ Cummins wrote in his introduction. Cummins was just a teenager at the time, working for the New Musical Express but he would later go on to cover other musicians throughout his career including: Mick Jagger, Ian Curtis, Joy Division, Morrissey, Courtney Love, Patti Smith, and David Bowie. 

Taking one final dig at the royals, the Pistols derided the celebrated holiday tradition of the Queen’s televised Christmas speech. Johnny Rotten took to the stage to address his audience: ‘You’ve had the Queen’s speech. Now you’re going to get the Sex Pistols at Christmas. Enjoy.’ 

Three week later, while on tour in the United States, the band officially called it quits halfway through a show at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. The famous instigators once loathed by the British establishment would eventually became, what the celebrated music journalist Paul Morely wrote in the book’s forward: ‘as much a part of British history as Churchill, the Royal Mail post boxes, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare.’

Lead singer Johnny Rotten eyeballs his singing audience during the adult-performance part of the evening after the children’s Christmas party was finished earlier in the day. The Sex Pistols’ U.K. tour collapsed under public scrutiny for their polemic song titled: ‘God Save The Queen’ (‘The fascist regime…She ain’t no human being’)

 Johnny Rotten sings into the microphone between Sid Vicious (left) and guitarist Steve Jones. Kevin Cummins left his family lunch early on Christmas Day to see the historic show (which inevitably was the Sex Pistol’s last gig in the U.K.). ‘My father didn’t speak to me for at least three weeks,’ Cummins wrote in his introduction

Rolling Stone Magazine’s rave review of the Sex Pistol’s 1977 album titled ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ described it as: ‘It’s all speed, not nuance — drums like the My Lai massacre, bass throbbing like a diseased heart fifty beats past bursting point, guitars wielded by Jack the Ripper-and the songs all hit like amphetamines or the plague…’

Toward the end of the show, Johnny Rotten put on a beret. James Parker at The Atlantic explained that ‘there was this weird French strain to the Sex Pistols’ enterprise’

Ribbing the Queen: Johnny Rotten opened his Christmas performance with: ‘You’ve had the Queen’s speech. Now you’re going to get the Sex Pistols at Christmas. Enjoy’