The Sex Pistols

Terry, how did you first find out about the Huddersfield gig?

The gig was advertised in NME. I cut out the ad and I still have it!

You actually weren't really a punk, but you went along anyway. What was it about the Pistols that excited you?

The Pistols were firstly 'political' in the broadest sense of the word and I liked that after so many of the 'old guard' were clearly right wing in their sympathies. The music was energetic and the songs short which was a welcome change - even I was getting jaded by long musical interludes in rock songs (I speak as a long term Grateful Dead fan!) or bland soft rock. I remember clearly Mick Farren's NME article about how rock had become a dinosaur. I think I may still have that article somewhere.

Sid: "Ribald and uncalled-for remarks"

What I also liked was the way the 'old guard' got wound up about punk's supposed lack of musical prowess, conveniently forgetting how The Monkees, for example, did not play their own instruments at the outset but still produced wonderful 'pop' music. Also, I already had a history of liking bands like MC5 and Stooges which may seem strange for a Grateful Dead fan but the Dead were, let's not forget, renegades in many ways in their early days. The debt of the Pistols to MC5 and Stooges was quite clear. The artwork on their singles sleeves was great as well, even before [the Pistols' debut album] 'Never Mind the B******s'!

You came all the way from Derby to Huddersfield to see the gig. How did you actually manage to travel on Christmas Day? And what did your friends and family think of you doing that?

I went by car with some friends from Derby. I don't remember getting any particular reaction since I didn't live at home but I do remember 'punks' being given a hard time in Derby's rock venues. I think The Heartbreakers were bottled off at one local gig the week after the 'Anarchy' gig was cancelled [during the Sex Pistols' much-cancelled series of tour dates in late 1976].

And what about the gig itself? What are your memories of the band when they got up on stage?

The gig was one of the best I have been to. They played really well, the rapport with the crowd was good but I did not appreciate the hail of phlegm I could see from where I was standing - and neither did [Johnny] Rotten who asked many times for it to stop. The noise was like walking into a brick wall especially as the club was not that big. There was lots of pogoing, of course, and the whole atmosphere is captured well in the section on the gig in 'The Filth And The Fury'. Sid Vicious let himself down a couple of times with ribald and uncalled-for remarks but, hey, I knew I was at an event that would be remembered like Hendrix at Woodstock or the Dylan 'Judas' concert.

Rotten: Target for punk phlegm

It was such a thrill just to see them in the flesh, but not in a 'celebrity obsessed' way. They were people of the street. I moved to London in '78 and was in a pub in Finsbury Park one night called The George Robey and Rotten just wandered in and had a pint! Nobody was star-struck or anything and he didn't preen around, acting like he was famous. As to the gig, what I remember with the most fondness were the cheers that went up when 'God Save The Queen' and ' Pretty Vacant' were played.

Even one of my children told the father of one of her friends in the 1980s that I had been there when he'd happened to mention that some people had been lucky enough to see them on Christmas Day in 1977...So, something very special!