The Sex Pistols Invade America ― The Fateful U.S. Tour, January 1978

In November 1977, Warner Bros. secured rights to release the Never Mind The Bollocks in America. The following January, The Sex Pistols—already the “scourge” of Britain—were discovered by unsuspecting American audiences in an infamous U.S. tour, accompanied by sensational media coverage and moral panic. Malcolm McLaren, the band’s manager, eschewed the established rock-n-roll markets of New York and Los Angeles in favor of off-the-radar venues in Memphis, San Antonio and Baton Rouge, sowing the seeds for countercultural clashes in the conservative South. Two weeks later the band split up but punk had invaded mainstream American culture. Drawing on input from fans, the author chronicles the Pistols’ first and only U.S. tour and attempts to separate fact from fallacy in mythology surrounding those 12 days of mayhem.

Mick O’Shea spent ten years working in the finance industry before making the switch from numbers to letters on a full-time basis in 2008. Having started out penning magazine articles, he now has 16 books published to date with four new titles set for publication in 2018. He lives in Surrey, United Kingdom.