In 1996, just two years after forming, Skunk Anansie were offered the opportunity to tour with the Sex Pistols, one of rock's most legendary bands, which initially seemed like a dream come true. But as vocalist Skin recalls in a new interview with British broadsheet newspaper The Times, in reality, supporting John Lydon, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook on the Australian leg of their Filthy Lucre reunion tour quickly turned into a "horrendous" nightmare for the London quartet.
"We knew [late bassist] Sid Vicious had worn swastikas, but seeing the audience doing Nazi salutes every night really wore me down," Skin admits. "And Johnny Rotten didn’t say anything against it. It got really violent on a couple of nights and we were thrown out of the venue for fighting back."
The quartet - Skin, guitarist Ace, bassist Cass Lewis and drummer Mark Richardson - had played a triumphant hometown show with the Pistols in John Lydon's spiritual home Finsbury Park in June 1996, but when they hooked up with the band again in October '96 for nine scheduled shows in Australia, they were disgusted to find themselves faced with racist abuse on a nightly basis.
Skin went into more detail about the experience in a 2019 interview with NME, admitting that the quartet "feared for their lives" at times.
"Honestly, I didn’t enjoy touring with the Sex Pistols," she admitted. "Apart from one time in Germany, it’s the only time we’ve had people chanting racist stuff at us.
"I think it’s partly because Johnny Rotten never even addressed it onstage," she continued. "Not once did he tell those people to shut the fuck up – they took his silence as encouragement. In contrast, Steve Jones would hang out with us afterwards and check we were all right.
"Their security guard would warn me where the Nazis in the audience were and say: ‘Don’t go over there’. In Adelaide, one of their racist fans attacked me, so we got thrown off the tour."
The incident happened on October 22, at the penultimate date of the Australian tour, while Skin was standing in the audience at the Thebarton Theatre watching the headliners. She told NME that a Sex Pistols fan confronted her, pulled off the hat she was wearing, and threw beer over her.
"I lost it," the singer confessed. "I’d faced the vilest racist abuse every single gig, so I smashed him right in the face. I hit him with anger, he fell over, and we got thrown off the tour.”
Currently on week one of a UK headline tour, Skunk Anansie will release their seventh album The Painful Truth on May 23 via FLG Records. The nine-song collection is the follow-up to the quartet's 2016 release Anarchytecture.
You can watch the lyric video for recent single Cheers below.
