Music Reissues Weekly: Sex Pistols - Looking For a Kiss in Kristinehamn

After Sex Pistols have played “New York,” the fourth song in their set, someone from the audience shouts “Anarchy in the U.K.” "We've already played it, you fucking idiot" responds Sid Vicious. They have. It was the first song they did at Kristinehamn’s Club Zebra.

The request begs the question of whether the person calling out knew what “Anarchy in the U.K.” sounded like. They may have known of “Anarchy in the U.K.” but not actually heard it. Considering where the particular show was, the information gap is possible.

Kristinehamn is a small town about 250km north-west of Sweden’s capital Stockholm. Sex Pistols were there on 19 July 1977 to play the sixth date of their tour of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The show was sold out. About 200 people were there. Club Zebra operated from 1971 to 1980. In 2014, the Swedish director Bengt Löftgren made a documentary about the venue. Back in 1977, Kristinehamn and its municipality had a population of around 25,000. Judging by pictures taken at the show, the audience wasn’t on board with punk rock. Longish hair, the odd denim jacket: a regular look (pictured below, © Nils Almgren). Nothing perceptible suggests sympathies with whatever it was Sex Pistols represented. “Anarchy in the U.K.” could have been no more than its title's words, rather than a song which was actually recognised.

Nonetheless here the band was, playing an unlikely venue, in an unlikely place on an equally unlikely tour. At this point, Sex Pistols were in the British charts with “Pretty Vacant,” their second Virgin label single. Its promo film had been shown on the 14 July Top of the Pops. They really ought to have been building on this profile-raising and boundary breaking opportunity by working their way round Britain’s venues. Their debut album should also have been close to release. Everything which would appear on Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols had been recorded – the latest track to be completed was “Bodies,” recorded on 18 June (some mixing and overdubbing was done at Oxford Circus' AIR Studios in August, but the actual recording sessions were done with in June). The album could easily have been in production, and being readied for release soon after "Pretty Vacant" was out. Yet it was belatedly issued on 28 October (18 October in France). Nothing seemed thought out. Instead of capitalising on their current situation, they were in Scandinavia.

Of course, at this time there were inherent problems with and restrictions on every aspect of how Sex Pistols operated. Close to the top of the list of issues was Sid Vicious. Before Scandinavia, their relatively new replacement for original bassist Glen Matlock had played just three times before an audience: at The Notre Dame Hall (21 March), The Screen on the Green (3 April) and the “God Save the Queen” promotional Thames boat trip (7 June). He needed to be worked in. Best to do so before audiences which wouldn’t be as nit-picking as a home crowd. Off to Scandinavia then.

Until the release of the extraordinary double album Looking for a Kiss in Kristinehamn, the show was just an entry on a list of where they played – the next day, they were in Norway’s capital Oslo. The tour began in Danish capital Copenhagen on 13 July and finished with two dates in Stockholm on 27 and 28 July. Looking for a Kiss… is the first-ever appearance of a previously unknown mixing-desk recording of the otherwise unheard Kristinehamn show. The sound quality is superb. If these weren’t enough, whoever was rolling the tape also recorded the soundcheck: where the band are heard running through songs without their singer. Johnny Rotten appears only for “Holidays in the Sun.”

Shows from this tour are familiar. The Bad Boys and Anarchy In Sweden '77 albums appeared in shops in 1978 – the former of Stockholm 28 July 1977, the latter of Halmstad 15 July 1977. Drolly, the labels of Looking for a Kiss… (pictured below right) parody those of Anarchy In Sweden '77. This has better fidelity than the two 1978 albums and subsequent Scandinavian live sets, and is as sonically sound as the two shows collected on the 2012 Never Mind The Bollocks box set (Trondheim, 21 July 1977; Stockholm, 28 July 1977).

Looking for a Kiss in Kristinehamn catches the band in efficient form, direct and relentless. The first two songs, “Anarchy in the U.K.” and its B-side “I Wanna be me,” are whacked out with barely a breath between them. This is a serious band, playing to their strengths despite (or perhaps because of) the low-key, out-of the-way venue and the non-partisan audience. “EMI,” “New York” and “No Feelings” are especially blistering. A lumpy “No Fun” struggles though. Despite his perceived inadequacies as a player, Vicious is in tune, plays on the beat and doesn’t drag things down. He is concentrating. Nothing fancy – he is not Glen Matlock and cannot do backing vocals – but he’s fine. The clarity of the recording particularly showcases Paul Cook’s precise, hammer-it-into-the-floor drumming. Steve Jones’s guitar is a paint-peelingly robust. Johnny Rotten is even more forceful, enunciating each word carefully.

The soundcheck is particularly illuminating. More a rehearsal than anything else, it is about incorporating Vicious into the band. This is borne out by the instrumentals of “Liar” and “Problems,” songs which aren't performed at the show. There is also an attempt at “Bodies,” which quickly peters out. Vicious is heard on his own playing the bass line of “Anarchy in the U.K.” Rotten is present for “Holidays in the Sun” (also, like “Bodies,” not played at the show). He repeatedly complains – he is not at all liking his voice as it is heard through the PA.

Side four has some bonuses: an interview with Rotten recorded on 23 July in Växjö, a Swedish radio ad and two tracks recorded in Trondheim on 21 July which were either not heard or not heard in full on the 2012 Bollocks box. The sound quality of Looking For Kiss… is not quite as fully fi as the live material on the 2012 box but the balance is better, especially when compared with the boxy sounding 28 July Stockholm show. Importantly, the band sound more engaged and in a better mood in Kristinehamn than on either of the box-set shows.

As the band’s first run of dates since the booting-out of Glen Matlock, the Scandinavian tour was the subject of media attention. NME’s Charles Shaar Murray and Sounds’ Giovanni Dadomo were in Stockholm for both of the final shows. Remarkably, John Rockwell of the New York Times was on board earlier and at Kristinehamn. He wrote “It was instructive to encounter the band here, and not just because in London one wouldn't have been able actually to see them perform now. It was helpful to be able to separate the Sex Pistols from the hysteria that has arisen so rapidly around the whole punk scene. In Sweden one could observe them as musicians and performers, and judge their impact on an audience that didn't know them at all.” (pictured above, Kristinehamn's Club Zebra)

Of the show itself, Rockwell observed “The room was full of neatly dressed, earnest and friendly Swedes, most of whom sat passively on the floor, as if they were expecting a hootenanny. The Sex Pistols deliver a near non‐stop assault of loud, tight, fast songs. The closest parallel in this country would be the Ramones. But the New York quartet assumes a deliberately self‐parodistic pose. The Sex Pistols are sharper and tighter instrumentally, more inventive (in their basic way) and more striking looking. And their songs have a strength and an individuality, both in the words and in the music, that sets them above nearly every other so-called punk band that this listener has encountered.”

Rockwell went on to comment “Visually, Paul Cook, the drummer, works steadily behind his kit, and Steve Jones, the guitarist, assumes a traditional assortment of rock‐guitarist poses. But Vicious lives up amusingly to his name with his scowls and grimaces, and Johnny Rotten, the singer, is simply quite extraordinary. Most of the time he hangs onto the microphone, his body bent forward rigidly at the waist. But he enlivens that stance with the angularity of his face and his carrot‐colored hair, with the fevered darting of his eyes and with a sweet little smile. Great rock performers, at least of the aggressive, Jaggerian sort, have generally projected an image of Dionysian irrationality, a barely contained craziness. Rotten has the perfect look of divine insanity, yet he humanizes it with vulnerability.”

Looking for a Kiss in Kristinehamn cannot recreate the experience which so bowled over Rockwell, but it is as close as it can get. This is the most important Sex Pistols archive release since the half-heartedly packaged and barely annotated yet still essential 2020 box set 76 77. Seek this out. It’s important.

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