'Never Mind the Bollocks' LP (Signed)

A vanishingly scarce fully-signed example, one of the very few known to carry Sid Vicious's signature. A 1977 US first pressing of the Sex Pistols' debut, signed in black ballpoint on the graphic inner sleeve by Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones and Paul Cook. The signatures were gathered on the night of 11 January 1978 at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma — the penultimate performed date of the band's catastrophic US tour, with San Francisco to follow. The tour's final date in San Francisco three nights later ended with Johnny Rotten's closing line at Winterland — "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" — and the band's collapse. Tulsa caught the Sex Pistols at the precise moment before the end. Outside the venue, evangelical protesters in the parking lot worked a bullhorn and a banner warning that following the Sex Pistols would condemn the audience to hell. Inside, the room got what the original recipient describes as a show that was "nothing short of incendiary. Very loud and very intense, especially Johnny Rotten."

After the set, the recipient approached one of the band's security guards and handed over the album sleeve; the guard walked it to the band, the four members signed it in turn between themselves, and the sleeve was handed back. The Sex Pistols never played as a four-piece again after Winterland three nights later, and Sid Vicious would be dead by February 1979. A historically singular document of British punk's most notorious group, signed during the tour that destroyed them.

PROVENANCE:

Obtained in person at Cain's Ballroom, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 11 January 1978; thence from the collection of the present owner