'A f**king great book' PETER HOOK, JOY DIVISION 'A fascinating insight into a gig that really did change the world' ROCKSOUND On 4 June 1976, four young men took to the tiny stage of the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. The noise they made changed everything... The NME named it as the most important gig of all time. When the Sex Pistols played Manchester in '76 they set off a series of musical detonations that are still being felt today. Despite thousands claiming they were in attendance, only a handful of people were actually there – but those that were went on to form bands including The Smiths, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, New Order and The Fall. They kick-started the Manchester music scene, created Factory Records and laid the foundations for the world-famous Haçienda nightclub. Forty years on, music journalist David Nolan tells the true story of that legendary gig, plus the Pistols' follow up performance and the band's first ever TV appearance at Manchester's Granada TV a few weeks later. The question has truly become one of rock 'n' roll's greatest mysteries: Who really saw the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976? So how does David Nolan finally solve it? By trying to track down the whole audience! In an updated edition comprised of scores of exclusive, extensive interviews with key players and audience members, and featuring previously unpublished photos, I Swear I Was There is the true story of the electrifying gig that changed the music scene forever. 'The gig that truly heralded the punk revolution. Who was there? David Nolan should know, he wrote a bloody book about it! Here he separates fact from fiction' NME 'Excellent, in-depth study...Hilarious eyewitness testimonies' UNCUT 'One of the greatest rock stories ever told' GQ

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.

'...short, sharp, to the point, minimal. 'Never Mind the Bollocks' is a blackmail note - and we got you all to pay up!' - JOHN LYDON 'When we first went in Wessex [recording studios] we went in through this side door. Freddie Mercury was there doing a vocal take and we walked right through with our guitars. He threw a wobbler.' - STEVE JONES ''God Save The Queen' was definitely the pinnacle. It all went sour after that.' - PAUL COOK 'Malcolm was a shit-stirrer. I think he's got a short attention span. He played this game of pitching me against John. Now we realise there was a lot of false information going between us.' - GLEN MATLOCK On the 40th anniversary of the release of 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols', The Sex Pistols - 1977: The Bollocks Diaries is the official, inside story of the whirlwind year of 1977- the recording and release of 'Never Mind the Bollocks...' and the year the Sex Pistols changed everything. From 'God Save the Queen' to 'Holidays in the Sun' and everything in between, it was a year of chaos and creation. Straight from the mouths of the Sex Pistols and their collaborators, with first-hand stories of secret gigs, recording sessions, fights, record label meltdowns and a media storm like nothing ever seen before, The Sex Pistols - 1977: The Bollocks Diaries is the inside line, told by the people who were there. Packed with photography and rare items from the Sex Pistols archives - from gig posters and early album art to master tapes and notes from recording sessions - this is the final word on a year like no other.

The Sex Pistols exploded onto the music scene in 1976, paving the way for the deluge of punk rock that would change the face of modern rock music forever. Their debut album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols, proved one of the most important rock albums of all time, fusingslammed rock chords with searing vocals. The Sex Pistols simply, and seemingly effortlessly, blew awayall that had come before them, setting an entirely new bar for rock acts that followed in their wake. In Sex Pistols: The Pride of Punk, Peter Smith explores the impact the band had on launching the punk movement, beginning in 1976 with their debut single and ending in 1978 with their American tour. Despite their brief career, the Sex Pistols illustrate an important set of political and cultural elements of 1970s UK and US culture: disaffected youth, strained international relations, and rapid changes in culture. Peter Smith digs deep to collate the factors that fueled the Sex Pistols and the punk revolution.

The explosive story of the Sex Pistols is now so familiar that the essence of what they represented has been lost in a fog of nostalgia and rock ’n’ roll cliché. In 1976 the rise of the Sex Pistols was regarded in apocalyptic terms, and the punks as visitors from an unwanted future bringing chaos and confusion. In this book, John Scanlan considers the Sex Pistols as the first successful art project of their manager, Malcolm McLaren, a vision born out of radical politics, boredom, and his deep and unrelenting talent for perverse opportunism. As Scanlan shows, McLaren deliberately set a collision course with establishments, both conservative and counter-cultural, and succeeded beyond his highest expectations. Scanlan tells the story of how McLaren’s project—designed, in any case, to fail—foundered on the development of the Pistols into a great rock band and the inconvenient artistic emergence of John Lydon. Moving between London and New York, and with a fascinating cast of delinquents, petty criminals, and misfits, Sex Pistols: Poison in the Machine is not just a book about a band, it is about the times, the ideas, the coincidences, and the characters that made punk; that ended with the Sex Pistols—beaten, bloody, and overdosed—sensationally self-destructing on stage in San Francisco in January 1978; and that transformed popular culture throughout the world.

From the creator of Godspeed: The Kurt Cobain Graphic and Eminem: In My Skin comes an explosive new graphic novel about the rise and fall of The Sex Pistols. Thanks to Steve Parkhouse’s wonderfully vivid illustrations and Jim McCarthy’s clever distillation of the script that rewrote rock ‘n’ roll and much else besides, the Pistols’ story returns to the rough and tumble of the comic strip from which it derived so much of its initial inspiration. England’s original punks explode from the pages with the same disrespect for authority that had the British establishment up in arms during the Queen’s 25th anniversary jubilee. And no one would have enjoyed this take on the Pistols more than the tale’s real casualty, Sid Vicious, who devoured comics almost as much as he did the destructive stuff.

Was punk just another moment in music history, a flash in time when a group of young rebels exploded in a fury of raw sound? Greil Marcus delves into the afterlife of punk as a much richer phenomenon and as a form of artistic and social rebellion.

A history and social psychology of punk music.

This book provides a theory that enables the concept of irony to be transferred from the literary to the visual and aural domains. Topics include the historical roots of the concept of irony as modes of oral and literary expression, and how irony relates to spatiality.

" [An] endlessly fascinating and frankly addictive masterpiece of safety-pin journalism." -- Austin Chronicle An oral history of the modern punk-revival's West Coast Birthplace Outside of New York and London, California?s Bay Area claims the oldest continuous punk-rock scene in the world. Gimme Something Better brings this outrageous and influential punk scene to life, from the notorious final performance of the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra?s bid for mayor, the rise of Maximum RocknRoll magazine, and the East Bay pop-punk sound that sold millions around the globe. Throngs of punks, including members of the Dead Kennedys, Avengers, Flipper, MDC, Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, and AFI, tell their own stories in this definitive account, from the innovative art-damage of San Francisco?s Fab Mab in North Beach, to the still vibrant all-ages DIY ethos of Berkeley?s Gilman Street. Compiled by longtime Bay Area journalists Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better chronicles more than two decades of punk music, progressive politics, social consciousness, and divine decadence, told by the people who made it happen.