December 1st: This date must go down as perhaps the most significant in the Pistols career.
The group Queen were unable to appear on a LWT television interview and at the last minute, EMI put forward the Sex Pistols to appear on the tea-time 'Today' show hosted by Bill Grundy. The band were busy rehearsing in Harlesden , North London for the upcoming tour but were chauffeured to the studios where they met McLaren and some of the Bromley contingent. Grundy was ill prepared for the interview and the band wound him up as he got ready to start . He has no real questions for the group and soon loses control finally egging on Steve Jones to swear on camera after trying to flirt with Siouxsie.
December 2nd: The press went mad in Britain, propelling the Sex Pistols to the status of public enemy number one. Bill Grundy was banned from appearing on TV for two weeks and his career never really recovered. On the eve of Anarchy in the UK tour the Pistols were front page news in all the tabloid papers. Most notable being the Mirror's headline 'The Filth and the Fury' with a story about a lorry driver called James Holmes who was so incensed by the interview that he kicked in his TV set . From this point on the Sex Pistols would not be able to move in England without the media in attendance. One outcome of this was an increase in violence against punk fans by readers of the tabloid invective.
December 3rd: This was meant to be the first date of the tour taking the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned and Johnny Thunders Heartbreakers to Norwich University. The gig was canceled despite protest from the students. Newcastle City Hall also canceled the gig booked for 5th .At EMI record plant, the workers who packed the Pistols single were refusing to handle it, causing a shortage in record shops who were enjoying steady demand.
December 4th: The tour moved on to Derby but was stopped again when councilors insisted on a private preview of the bands before granting permission to play. McLaren and the band decided not to go along with this .McLaren said 'We're not going to encourage censorship. If we perform for these idiots we'll end up doing matinees for every council in the country.' The tour moved on to Leeds.
December 6th: After a bit more media fueled trouble at the hotel, the Anarchy tour finally
opened at Leeds Polytechnic. Unfortunately what could have been a pressure valve for the mounting frustration failed to come right on the night. The audience were apathetic and hung back unsure what to do, failing to be drawn by Rottens taunting.
December 7th: The original date in Bournmouth was canceled and the tour moved on to Sheffield for a hastily arranged gig that evening. Disappointed again, this also fell through at the last minute. It was decided that the Damned should leave the tour as they had offered to play at the Derby gig when the other groups stood by the Pistols and refused.. It solved the problem of running order between the Clash and the Damned as well. At EMI's annual general meeting careful consideration was given to the future career of the Sex Pistols with EMI. In a press release they said that the company would do all they could to restrain the bands public behavior and mentioned terminating the contract. The single 'Anarchy in the UK' entered the charts at number 43.
December 9th: The tour arrived in Manchester and found that many of the city centre hotels wouldn't have them. Police were in attendance as the bands reached town and finally found accommodation at the Arosa hotel in Withington. The manager told the local paper, the Manchester Evening News,' I have booked them in for one night. They seem like decent people and I will expect decent behaviour from them.'
That night with Buzzcocks playing support as replacement for the Damned the gig went ahead at the Electric Circus in Collyhurst. Originally Granada TV was going to film proceedings but Tony Wilson was stopped from taking a camera crew by Granada bosses. Once again the audience contained many of the people who would go on to change the face of music in the next few years. It was at this gig that Ian Curtis met Peter Hook and Bernard Albrecht for the first time and talked about forming the band together who would become Joy Division.
Most people remember the night for the Pistols lacklustre performance and violence from people who had come to engage in some 'punk-bashing' spurred on by incessant media misinformation since the Grundy affair. At the Arosa hotel an hour after the gig finished the bands were ejected . The manager said in the next days paper that they had made too much noise, upset other guests and had had girls in their rooms. 'They were filthy and their language was filthy' he said.
December 14th: Following the cancellation of a gig at Cardiff the tour moved to the Castle Cinema at Caerphilly. The gig went ahead but a number of concerned townsfolk and the local vicar mounted a protest vigil outside the venue.
December 19th: Unable to find any more venues from the original list the Pistols return to Manchester for another gig at the Electric Circus. Again the location of the venue in a rough part of town led to a lot of trouble for those who attended the gig. Peter Hook (Joy Division and later New Order) remembers local youths throwing bottles at the punks from the top of the nearby flats.
The first and only issue of 'Anarchy in the UK' fanzine is on sale featuring photos of the London scene and pro-situationist sloganeering by McLaren, Westwood, and the rest of the Sex team.
December 20th: A spur of the moment gig takes place at Cleethorpes to replace the original Birmingham date which has been cancelled.
December 21st and 22nd: The tour finally ends with two nights at the Woods Centre in
Plymouth. This is in sharp contrast to the planned finale which was to have seen the bands play at the Roxy in Harlesden , London where most of the rehearsals had taken place and where a large 'home' crowd were expected. Despite the Damned having second bill on the ticket they had been thrown off the tour earlier in the month and the Clash had taken their place. The Clash had got better and better as the tour went on while the Pistols had seemed tense and lacking the spark of earlier gigs. The Sex Pistols single 'Anarchy in the UK' reached 27 in the charts but the bands arrived back in London broke and tired. Joe Strummer remembers getting off the tour bus and walking off cold and miserable with no where in particular to go.
December 21st was also the first night of the Roxy Club which was opened by Generation X with their new line up which had split off from Chelsea and the new version of Siouxsie and the Banshees. The club was funded by Andy Czezowski who took on the small rundown premises in Neal Street, Covent Garden and installed Don Letts as the club's DJ. He had previously been involved in ACME Atractions clothes shop near to Malcolm McLaren's shop on the Kings Road .Letts filled the time between bands with a selection of reggae and version dubs because at the time there were still only two or three 'Punk' records to play.In many ways he is responsible for cementing the bond between reggae and punk which characterised the original scene. Sniffin Glue advertised free membership in the December issue and soon the Roxy became the focus of the rapidly growing scene. As a regular hang-out many people turned up whether a band was on or not and it allowed a place for bands to be formed and ideas to be knocked about. In the increasingly hostile atmoshere towards punk, the Roxy also provided one of the only venues for newly formed bands to play in.
December 25th: The Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Damned attend a Xmas party at the home of Jonh Ingham the Sounds journalist. Also present are many of the bands entourage including Sid Vicious. Johnny Thunders band the Heartbreakers arrived and proceed to shoot up heroin and introduce the English musicians to this new and destructive habit. Nancy Spungen had come over to England earlier in the month looking for Jerry Nolan of the Heartbreakers. Sid managed to avoid smack at first but when Nancy latched on to him he took it up with enthusiasm. The party was a dead loss because by this time most of the bands and their managers were deeply distrustful of each other and were putting ambition ahead of any sense of unity. The unfortunate fact was that after Punk had hit the headlines , a lot of its possibilities had been destroyed. Lots of the more intellectual and artistic aims of the movement were ignored by the media who chose to dwell on the gratuitous and sensational aspects which sold copy . As bands formed up and down the country many chose simply to copy what had gone before rather than create new and original work. Fanzines appeared up and down the country which in many cases proved to be truer reflection of the punk spirit than the music itself.
December 26th: The Ramones are stuck in London having come over early for some gigs in the New Year. At this time London was virtually a ghost town over the holiday period so they spend a lot of time in their hotel and write the song 'I Wanna be Sedated'.
December 29th: In Manchester, Pete Shelley produces the first issue of his shortlived fanzine Plaything which folds when his brother loses the use of a photocopier after issue 2.
