Not just another Sex Pistols concert

20 July, 1969.

A hot summer’s evening on a farm in the middle of Norway. I’m watching Armstrong’s moon landing live on TV.: «One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.»

8 years later. 20 July, 1977.

A hot summer’s evening in a bar in the middle of Oslo. I’m watching the Sex Pistols play live at the Pingvin Club. «One small step for four men, one giant leap for music.» The small venue is simmering with anticipation, sweat, alcohol, aggression, uncertainty – and irritation. We have waited almost half an hour without any announcements. No-one knows what we are about to experience, but we sense that it will be something extraor- dinary. Suddenly, we see four skinny lads storm through the hall, and just seconds after they jump up onto the low stage, the room explodes in an inferno of noise that shocks even the most experienced of concert-goers among us. We cannot hear the vocals or the music, we just feel the bass in our rib cages, the drums in our thighs and the vocals pound our temples. Still absorbing the acoustic shock, the two hundred young people in the room are slung into a Dante’s inferno – of premature, fumbling, but aggressive pogo dancing; someone swings from a canopy at the back of the hall, when suddenly, a beer bottle – or was it an ashtray? – is thrown through the air and unbelievably hits Johnny Rotten in the face. Sid Vicious charges the audience from the stage and tries to hit the closest spectators with the neck of his bass guitar until Johnny Rotten and Steve Jones manage to drag him back on stage.

Some 20 minutes later, the concert ends as abruptly as it started. The two hundred stunned eyewitnesses at the Pingvin Club probably had the hottest musical experience of their lives. In this cauldron of a gig few of us had the intellectual realisation that we were in the middle of a crossroads for rock music, but emotionally it penetrated and energised every nerve in our bodies. The importance of punk and the Sex Pistols for the development of rock was very much underrated then – and it still is, even by fans of rock music. Not one of us who attended that gig at the Pingvin Club on 20 July 1977 has forgotten it. Nor have those who were not there but wish they had been.

This is why we have devoted a book to a 35-minute gig, 40 years on.

Jon Morten Melhus
Publisher of the book «Banned in the UK – Sex Pistols Exiled to Oslo» by Trygve Mathiesen with co-researcher Harry Nordskog
Click here to buy and read more about the Sex Pistols books.
Boken om norgeshistoriens mest legendariske rockekonsert

«Sid’s Norwegian romance – Sex Pistols Exiled to Trondheim 1977«

ISBN 9788293130024

Trondheims-boken om Sex Pistols-konserten på Samfundet dagen etter senere fikk også fine kritikker, – og det ble en helt annen bok enn»Exiled to Oslo»,  ikke minst som følge av historien om den sjarmerende romansen mellom Sid Vicious og Trondheims-jenta «Teddie».

The Trondheim book about the Sex Pistols concert at Samfundet the day after later also received great reviews, – and it was a completely different book to «Exiled to Oslo», not least because of the story of the charming romance between Sid Vicious and the Trondheim girl «Teddy».

Read more and order The book here as paper or e-book

Reviews:

– Delicious presented, a good told story (…) Most interesting is key witness ‘Teddie’. She IS this book. Her story makes us feeling present
during the Pistols stay.
– Ole Jacob Hoel, Adresseavisen

– A treasure chest!
– Tommy Olsson, Morgenbladet

– I wasn’t sure if Sid’s Norwegian Romance would be a pale shadow of «Exiled To Oslo», a mere cash-in on the previous book’s success. I am delighted to report that it’s a superb book in its own right.
A treasure trove of photographs and memories. Another must have!
– Phil Singleton, sex-pistols.net

Here is Alex Ogg’s presentation of the book:

«SID’S NORWEGIAN ROMANCE» tells the inside story of a surprisingly sweet romance between Sid Vicous and a Norwegian teenager during the Sex Pistols’ two-day stay in Trondheim in 1977. Teddie worked for the band as assistant and translator and her highly personal story gives a unique insight into the band’s internal dynamic. While other Pistols associates and band members were by now hardened road warriors, Teddie’s crystal clear recollections are those of an innocent 16-year-old thrown into a world of surreal excess. Instead of the self-destructive caricature of Sid Vicious of popular myth, he is revealed as a troubled, vulnerable but emotionally generous young man; both fixed to the Pistols’ ongoing narrative but also psychologically detached from it.

Accompanied by more than 50 previously unpublished photographs of the band both off stage and playing at Samfundet in Trondheim, the book provides a rare first-hand view of four young men at the eye of an international media storm, labouring under the sudden weight of expectation on their shoulders. Trygve Mathiesen’s research into the two days the Pistols spent in Trondheim is thorough and revealing, covering both the poignant and the prosaic. The group who would tear up the rock ‘n’ roll rulebook, buy jeans, eat ice cream, fall in love and cause a riot, set to a backdrop of a Norwegian culture  attempting to understand and assimilate this frantic, fast-moving moment in history.

– Alex Ogg, author of No More Heroes and Independence Days

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