Sex Pistols The Sex Pistols Invade America: The Fateful U.S. Tour, January 1978

by Mick O'Shea

McFarland & Company (series)

In November 1977, Warner Bros. secured the rights to release the album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols in America. The following January, the Sex Pistols--already the "scourge" of Britain--were discovered by unsuspecting American audiences in an infamous U.S. tour, accompanied by sensational media coverage and moral panic.

Malcolm McLaren, the band's manager, eschewed the established rock 'n' roll markets of New York and Los Angeles in favor of off-the-radar venues in Memphis, San Antonio and Baton Rouge, sowing the seeds for countercultural clashes in the conservative South. Two weeks later the band split up but punk had invaded mainstream American culture.

Drawing on input from fans, the author chronicles the Pistols' first and only U.S. tour and separates fact from fallacy in the mythology surrounding those twelve days of mayhem.