An Amateur Among Punks
 
By Hector Saldaña
originally published in the San Antonio Express-News
January 15, 2003

On Jan. 8, 1978, Nancy Gray was an 18-year-old amateur photographer with plenty of brass in her pocket. And the good sense to keep her mouth shut, play fly-on-the-wall and just keep shooting 35mm rolls of the Sex Pistols concert at Randy's Rodeo.

Shoulder to shoulder with the likes of famous photographers Annie Leibovitz and Bob Gruen, Gray knew she was capturing history as she photographed the most notorious British punk band on its ill-fated, six-date tour of America. It was the only time the Sex Pistols would play the United States.

Those photographs are now part of a small exhibit at Jai Vintage and Art, 919 S. Alamo St. in Southtown. "25th Year Anniversary: Sex Pistols in San Antonio" captures that brief window with extraordinary intimacy. (Webmaster's note: now available online at Nancy Gray's website).

Gray's steady-handed, almost quaint concert shots don't convey the anarchy of that night (most likely the blurred shots that didn't make the Jai show are closer to the rowdy tone of the night, she says). But it is the post-mortem shots after the legendary show that truly crystallize and demystify the moment.

The Sex Pistols were foul-mouthed, headline-grabbing bad boys ushering in a new era in rock, but Gray managed to capture many moods, some casual, but just as many with the Sex Pistols mugging for the camera. These smiling tone-deaf devils were human, after all. Randy's Rodeo only adds to the outrageous surrealism of the entire episode. But the weird backdrop served the punk era well, as Gray's additional photos of the Ramones and Joan Jett attest.

"(Randy's Rodeo) was the most different place to go to, the most off the wall," said Gray, a former radio broadcaster. "Why would you have that show at a cowboy bar?" She says she was given access to the band after the show "because it wasn't a groupie situation" and "I kept my mouth shut."

There are shots of Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten drinking Lone Star beer. Vicious, smug in his chain and padlock necklace, looks almost goofy — a far cry from the thin, menacing, razor-and-needle-mutilated icon onstage. A pimply, sneering Rotten wore a defiant, X-rated gay cowboy T-shirt beneath his used plaid hobo suit.

Manager Malcolm McLaren sits under a snack bar sign, poker-faced. Drummer Paul Cook is a baby-faced street kid right out of "Oliver Twist." Guitarist Steve Young is a young thug, a loutish brute in black leather jacket with white electric guitar. All were easy to talk to, she said.

In the midst of the confusion - the show had been a defiant, violent, out-of-tune beer-drenched affair - Gray thought that the band "might someday be part of our culture." Punk rock's effect turned out to be enormous.

There was one moment of danger. Vicious confronted Gray and threatened to ruin her camera. "He told me if I took one more picture, he was going to take my camera and stuff it up my (expletive)," she recalled.

Gray said that she simply retreated to the bathroom, removed the film, and returned. She worried Vicious would try to carry out the threat. "That's how important I thought the film was," she said. "But I pushed it too far with Sid."

In total, she took about 100 shots. Twenty-five are on display. Asked about the difference between the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, Gray said: "There was no anger at the Ramones show. They were all about fun." The Sex Pistols were something different, "us vs. them."

Nancy Gray took the photgraph at the top of this page. Her photographs are for sale through her website. Click here for photo credits, or click on any of the photos to see the original, full-sized shots on their host pages.