Sex Pistlos, The Clash – Anarchy In The UK Tour

Listing the Sex Pistols and their UK tour dates, with support acts The Damned, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers and The Clash, who were all due to play in Liverpool before most of the tour dates were cancelled, framed and glazed. The striking magenta and black concert tour poster was created to promote the ‘The Anarchy in the UK Tour’ of 1976, featuring the Sex Pistols, the Damned, The Clash and Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers. The tour is seen as one of the most famous tours in rock ‘n’ roll history. The line-up consisted of the now legendary fore-fathers of the punk rock scene. In 1976 the band at the tip of everyone’s tongue was the Sex Pistols, consisting of Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, Paul Jones and the sneering, snarling and confrontational Johnny Rotten. The Anarchy in the UK single had just been released to a generally unsuspecting London crowd. The Johnny Rotten foul-mouthed outbursts on a TV show caused outrage and shocked the elder generation to its core, but it also turned a lot of the youth on to punk music. Two days later the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and The Heartbreakers got ready to tour the UK. Unfortunately, the 19 date tour turned into a series of cancellations as scared local councils banned the shows from going on in all, except three venues: Leeds Polytechnic, Manchester’s Electric Circus and Caerphilly’s Castle Cinema. Rearranged shows at Cleethorpes’ Winter Gardens, and Plymouth’s Woods Centre would make up the ‘full-scale’ tour. This Sex Pistols Anarchy In The UK Tour Poster provides the dates for the originally planned nineteen date tour. It was a generic printed poster that would be overprinted with specific date, venue and ticket retailer details in the panel at the bottom of the poster. This specific reproduction is of the show that was meant to be performed at Liverpool Stadium on Saturday 11 December 1976. On December 7th an article appeared in the Liverpool Echo: CALL FOR BOYCOTT ON SEX PISTOLS: “Let’s show the rest of the country Liverpool is too good for this sort of rubbish. We don’t want them here…” A Stadium spokesman said “The publicity they generate does not persuade me to allow them here… These Sex Pistols advocate anarchy and we don’t want to take the risk.” Asked to Malcolm McLaren if the concert would include obscenities, he replied: “Life includes obscenities. Our act reflects life.” In fact, only three of the scheduled ninteen gigs did go ahead, along with four other rearranged shows. The tour finally started at Leeds Polytechnic on 6 December, with further dates at Manchester’s Electric Circus (9 and 19 December), Caerphilly’s Castle Cinema (14 December), Cleethorpes’ Winter Gardens (20 December) and Plymouth’s Woods Centre (21 and 22 December).