Unsold Winterland Ticket #185

An original Bill Graham Presents box-office ticket for the Sex Pistols at Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, on 14 January 1978 — the band's final performance. Onstage that night Johnny Rotten delivered the closing line that became the band's epitaph — "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" — and walked offstage. Within days Rotten had publicly left the band; in the days following Winterland, Vicious overdosed on heroin, and subsequently fell into a coma on the flight back to New York and was hospitalised; and the original four-piece never performed together again. Sid Vicious died in New York on 2 February 1979, just over a year later, ending any possibility of reformation.

This is not the Ticketron variant most commonly encountered. It is the box-office version of the ticket — and it is ticket #185, unsold, retrieved directly from Bill Graham's Oakland warehouse after Graham's death in a 1991 helicopter crash. The ticket never left the box office; an unused, uncirculated example of a ticket variant rarely seen in any condition. The ticket carries a hand-stamped "SEX PISTOLS JAN 1978" on the reverse, applied at the box office.

PROVENANCE:

Bill Graham Productions, San Francisco; sold from Bill Graham's Oakland warehouse following his death in 1991; thence from the collection of Joshua White