Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook nonetheless remembers the mayhem and concern that surrounded his band’s 1978 tour of the United States.

“It’s definitely all falling apart in front of our eyes on that American tour,” the drummer recalled throughout his current look on The Rockonteurs podcast. “It was a disaster, to be honest.”

Sex Pistols, of course, had been no strangers to controversy. The band fortunately embraced their position as anti-authoritarian leaders within the U.Ok., sparking riots at live shows and changing into the face of the punk motion. However, America was a unique beast altogether, and the group’s January ’78 tour of the States proved the be the nail in Sex Pistols’ coffin.

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Part of the band’s issues could possibly be attributed to the tour schedule. Rather than stopping in liberal, creative hotbeds like Los Angeles and New York, the group’s supervisor Malcolm McLaren booked Sex Pistols in golf equipment all through the Bible Belt.

“The thinking behind it was, well, we’re not going to play to all these trendies in New York, and let’s go and play in San Antonio and Dallas, Texas — you know, cowboy bars,” Cook famous.

McLaren anticipated – and even hoped for – a certain quantity of confrontation, assuming it could additionally give the band some added publicity. Still, he and the Sex Pistols received rather more than they bargained for.

Paul Cook Feared Someone Would Die During Sex Pistols’ U.S. Tour

“I thought somebody was going to get seriously damaged or die, really,” Cook admitted. “When we were playing, we had sheriffs on the side of the stage, with guns to each side of the stage just to make sure no one got out of all this, standing there as we were playing. And people were throwing all kinds of shit at us, you know, bottles, pig’s ears, everything.”

Compounding the difficulty additional was the insatiable drug habit of bassist Sid Vicious.

“We had all this tight security and Sid was trying to go and score all the time. And he was off his head,” Cook recalled. “It was totally falling apart, everything.’

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The final show of the tour was Sex Pistols’ lone West Coast date, a stop at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.

“Everyone was beat by then, really. And we just wanted to get it over with and get out,” Cook confessed. Despite an lively crowd of roughly 5,000 individuals, Sex Pistols’ anger and bitterness had been evident. Frustrated by the exhausting tour and drained of intraband turmoil, the group broke up following the San Francisco present.

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“Me and Steve, we went back to the [hotel],” Cook remembered. “And we just said, ‘We want out of this. You know, we’ve had enough.’ John was at another hotel and Sid was around at someone’s house O.D.-ing somewhere in San Francisco.”

Even a long time later – with occasional reunions and extra public battles underneath their belts – the ‘78 U.S. tour lives on in Sex Pistols infamy.

“It was like carnage, it really was,” Cook declared. “I don’t know how we got through it.”