Sex Pistols, featuring Frank Carter on vocals, will undertake their first North American tour in over two decades this Fall.
Days after a triumphant homecoming show at London's Royal Albert Hall, the London punk legends - completed by original members Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook - are coming to America for the first time since 2003.
The tour will kick off at one of the venues the Pistols played on their very first, ill-fated US tour in January 1978, the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas, where guitarist Steve Jones recalls the quartet had “pigs' hooves and bottles and what not slung at us by cowboys.”
“I think everybody needs this band right now," Frank Carter tells ABC News. "I think the world needs this band right now. And I think definitely America is screaming out for a band like the Sex Pistols.”
“At the end of the day, we’re living in a really, really difficult time. So not only do people want to come and just be entertained, they want to enjoy themselves. Punk is an energetic music. It’s one where you can go and vent and let your hair down, hopefully in a safe manner. Fingers crossed, no bottles or pigs' hooves.”
Sex Pistols & Frank Carter North American tour
Sep 16: Dallas Longhorn Ballroom, TX
Sep 23: Washington, DC, 9:30 Club
Sep 26: Philadelphia Fillmore, PA
Sep 27: Brooklyn TBD, NY
Sep 30: Montreal Mtelus, Canda
Oct 01: Toronto History, Canada
Oct 03: Cleveland Agora Theatre, OH
Oct 04: Detroit Fillmore, MI
Oct 07: Minneapolis Fillmore, MN
Oct 10: Denver Mission Ballroom, CA
Oct 13: Seattle Showbox SoDo, WA
Oct 15: San Francisco Warfield, CA
Oct 16: Los Angeles Hollywood Palladium, CA
Perhaps unsurprisingly, former frontman John Lydon, who has a long history of disparaging his former bandmates, has been criticising the new iteration of the legendary band, having claimed to have seen some videos of their performances.
Lydon told LouderThanWar, “I’ve been shocked how awful it is. It just seems like they’ve rented a puppet and there it is. It is truly karaoke I think with really mediocre results."
Lydon, however, has clearly not seen the band in person. The band's March 24 show in London received nothing but rave reviews, including a 5 star Louder review.
On their first US tour, the Sex Pistols faced hostile, and in some cases dangerously violent, audiences in every city they visited, on a tour Steve Jones recalls as "a fucking circus", and "no fun".
“The audience was throwing everything from bottles to rats to pig’s ears at the stage,” Paul Cook told The Times. “They had read about us being British devils, come to destroy their country, so they thought it was what they were meant to do... I thought someone was going to get killed.”
