Winterland Ballroom — Sex Pistols Last Concert

The Sex Pistols played their final concert at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on 14 January 1978 — the last date of a disastrous American tour that had accelerated the disintegration of the band. The show was filmed and later released as 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.' At its conclusion, Johnny Rotten addressed the audience directly: 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?' and walked off. It was the last time the original Sex Pistols performed together. Within days Rotten had left the band, Sid Vicious had descended further into heroin addiction, and the group that had transformed British popular culture in 1977 had effectively ceased to exist.

The American tour had been an exercise in sustained misery from the beginning. Malcolm McLaren had routed it through the Deep South — Rotten later said this was deliberate sabotage by McLaren, designed to generate conflict and hostility — and the band played Atlanta, Memphis, San Antonio, Baton Rouge, Tulsa, and Dallas before reaching the West Coast. Vicious was in severe physical decline; Rotten was furious with McLaren; the internal tensions that had been building for months came to a head in the days before the San Francisco show. The Winterland audience was large and enthusiastic, which only underscored the surrealism of the occasion.

Winterland Ballroom was demolished in 1985. The site at Post and Steiner Streets in San Francisco's Western Addition neighbourhood is now occupied by a residential development. The venue had a long history as a premier San Francisco rock venue — the Dead, the Airplane, and dozens of other Bay Area bands played there regularly — making the Pistols' final show at Winterland a collision of the British punk moment with the West Coast rock world that preceded and survived it.