 | | John Berry with his Sex Pistols ticket |
"The fourth of June ’76. 30 years ago, and the last time a team in blue won anything worth shouting about. On that night however, the minds of five lads from Salford were not on things red and blue, but focused on matters green - hair, jumpers and snot - for we’d agreed that we would put our life in our hands and pitch up at a Sex Pistols concert at the Lesser Free trade Hall. "The five were yours truly, a rank outsider called Crazy Mike, and three others who would go on, in one way or another, to become Joy Division. "I’d say the five of us were untypical products of the 11 plus-Grammar-Technical School system, born into varying degrees of poverty, and had been though the usual scooter boy-suedehead-smoothie, Bowie Roxy route, and ended up slap bang in the middle of ’76 looking for a buzz.
 | | John Berry's Sex Pistols ticket |
"None of us really fit in to the pre-determined holes of articled clerks or worse, and we spent most of our time being as contrary as possible. Not for us the ‘pleasures’ of ELP, Led Zep, Uriah Heep and Greasy Bear. For us, it was Dr Feelgood, Sparks, Lou Reed, the dark voyeuristic pleasures of the Roxy Room at Pips and the strippers of the Manchester Arms. We never joined in, but oh, how we ogled! Our other ‘heroes’ were Doctors of Madness, not because of the music, but coz of their image – blue hair, ‘KID’ guitar, and ‘no star’ reviews in Sounds. | "For us, it was Dr Feelgood, Sparks, Lou Reed, the dark voyeuristic pleasures of the Roxy Room at Pips and the strippers of the Manchester Arms." | | John explains what drove him and his friends to go to the Sex Pistols |
"It was probably Terry (as always) who instigated going to the gig. We’d read all about the Pistols, and they sounded just up our street. Rude, obnoxious, violent musicians who can’t play. Just the thing to wind up ‘real’ music fans, and make us even more of the pariahs than we already were. "I’d say it was great trepidation that we climbed the stairs of the Lesser Free Trade Hall. Lesser? We’d never heard of it, let alone been there. I’m sure it took us an age to find, but there would have been a small throng of herberts making their way in when we arrived, so up we went. "I recall the hall being pretty small and almost empty. There was no bar, although we’d no doubt got beered up in Cox’s bar, and seen some sights there to make our hair curl. The tickets had been produced on a ‘banda’, and hand cut into thin little strips containing the typo ‘4th June 1076!’
 | | Sex Pistols (Pete Welsh/Penetration) |
"First up were some sub-hippy band called Solstice, just the type to set the necks hairs alight. They were tolerated though, coz this wasn’t an audience to boo the support band off stage, and they soon finished. We were positioned somewhere in the middle, we didn’t fancy getting too close in case it kicked off, and all of us slunk down low in our seats just in case the bottles started flying. "And so, on they came, I don’t recall any sort of announcement or kerfuffle, just four skinny, spotty, badly dressed youths who slunk on stage and began. They must have thought they were playing in the big hall, coz the equipment they had and the racket that it churned out was above the 96 decibels we were used to. It really was a wall of noise, and we had to really struggle to recognise any of the songs.
 | | John Berry in 1976 |
"Rotten went into his act insulting the audience, but on this occasion it didn’t work coz it was mainly the faithful in attendance, just waiting for the conversion blessing to be bestowed. There were no claps, cheers, boos or hisses. Just an awestruck bunch trying to fathom out what was going on. "One guy, possibly John the Postman, got up to ‘dance’ – more the spastic stormtrooper than anything you’d recognise. At the end, I recall Rotten being very friendly and smiling and chatting to the audience, as we trooped off past McClaren (and others) clocking the audience’s reaction. "Our reaction to the spectacle was mixed. Crazy Mike saying ‘worst crock of steaming ever witnessed’, yours truly excited coz it lived up to my expectations and the other three (Barney, Hooky and Terry Mason) being inspired to take up arms and start out on the long road to stardom. "We disappeared in to the night knowing that nothing would ever be the same again." John was just 20 at the time and getting ready to re-do his 'O' levels before going to London to Poly. Unlike several of the crowd that were there, he never really fancied having a go at being a band, saying he "didn't have the bottle at the time, although I hung on to the edges of the Joy Division scene via Terry Mason for some years and went to plenty of their gigs and parties." John now works as a procurement manager. |
