The Sex Pistols Invade America

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 12 days of mayhem.

Mick O’Shea spent ten years in the finance industry before making the switch from numbers to letters on a full-time basis in 2008. Having started out penning magazine articles, he now has 16 books published to date with four new titles set for publication in 2018. He lives in Surrey, United Kingdom.

Mick O’Shea

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 208
Bibliographic Info: 60 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2018
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6939-7
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3184-4
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vii
U.S. Tour Dates xi
Preface 1
Introduction 3
One. Sex Pistols Will Play 7
Two. Atlanta 16
Three. Memphis 34
Four. San Antonio 54
Five. Baton Rouge 75
Six. Dallas 94
Seven. Tulsa 118
Eight. San Francisco 140
Nine. Endgame 165
Ten. Aftermath 178
Chapter Notes 187
Bibliography 191
Index 193