St Martin's College of Art — Sex Pistols First Gig

The Sex Pistols played their first concert at St Martin's School of Art at 107 Charing Cross Road on 6 November 1975 — a short, chaotic set supporting Bazooka Joe that ended when the college's social secretary pulled the plug after a handful of songs. The performance was barely a performance: the Pistols had rehearsed for only a few months, Johnny Rotten could barely sing, and the audience was largely indifferent or actively hostile. But the gig is now one of the most historically significant debuts in rock history, the opening event of a sequence that would reshape British popular culture within two years.

St Martin's School of Art was at the time one of the most creatively charged institutions in London — a college that produced fashion designers, artists, and musicians with a disproportionate influence on British culture. Malcolm McLaren had connections to the art school world and had been developing the Pistols concept for months, managing the shop SEX at 430 King's Road and assembling the group around Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock. Rotten (John Lydon) had been recruited after McLaren saw him in the shop wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt on which he had scrawled 'I Hate' above the logo. The St Martin's gig was the first test of whether the concept had any reality beyond McLaren's imagination.

St Martin's College merged with other London art colleges to form Central Saint Martins, which eventually moved to a new building in King's Cross. The Charing Cross Road building has been redeveloped. No plaque marks the site of the Sex Pistols' first concert. The gig is documented primarily through the recollections of those present — accounts that differ on almost every detail except the abruptness of the ending.