London, 1975. The streets are bleak, the economy’s in the gutter, and the mainstream rock scene is bloated beyond belief. It’s a scene set for something big, something ugly to rip through the overpolished landscape of British music. Enter: four scrappy kids and a fateful November 6 gig at Saint Martin’s College of Art, an event that would turn rock ’n’ roll on its head and give birth to the anti-everything spirit of punk.

The Sex Pistols were barely a band, held together more by attitude than any actual musical skill. Freshly branded by their shifty manager Malcolm McLaren, they showed up to their first-ever gig with a heavy dose of sneer, nerves, and not much else. They had their guitars and drums but no amps to make any noise. Their headliners, Bazooka Joe, didn’t want to share. But as Bazooka Joe guitarist Robin Chapekar recalled, he and his bandmates eventually caved, feeling sorry for the Pistols. After all, everyone’s been there at some point—broke and desperate. But the Pistols had more than desperation on their side; they had guts.

“We set up and played for about 20 minutes,” drummer Paul Cook later remembered. “Total chaos. None of us knew what we were doing.” For their debut, the Pistols ripped through covers like The Who’s “Substitute” and The Small Faces’ “Whatcha Gonna Do About It.” Their playing was jagged, their timing sloppy, and the sound? A frenzied, high-octane mess. Johnny Rotten, looking about as clean as a Camden alleyway and wielding a voice more caustic than a back-alley brawler’s, sneered his way through the set. He taunted the crowd, even kicked the amp cabinets—Bazooka Joe’s amp cabinets, to be exact.

One of those amps had hardly been paid off, and Danny Kleinman, Bazooka Joe’s other guitarist, wasn’t having it. He stormed the stage and tried to grab Rotten, sparking what onlookers described as a “schoolyard” scuffle. It wasn’t much of a fight, more a clash of egos. But the damage was done. If they weren’t the best musicians, they were the best disruptors. And for an audience of maybe 20 or 40 people (estimates vary wildly), that night was a chaotic revelation.

One of those spectators was Stuart Goddard, who’d later reinvent himself as Adam Ant. He described the Pistols as “a gang,” their look and vibe brimming with the kind of nihilistic disdain that rock had long buried under stadium shows and bloated production budgets. “It was f***ing wild,” guitarist Steve Jones recalled, later admitting that he was so nervous he took a Mandrax to calm down. It only made him louder. His amp was a hundred-watt beast in a small room, and his fingers tore into his guitar with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball.

And while the sound might have been a sonic trainwreck, Bazooka Joe’s bassist Stuart Goddard saw something that night that stuck. He quit Bazooka Joe soon after, citing the Pistols’ performance as a major turning point. Not everyone was impressed, though. “There was a little bit of not-too-competent playing,” Kleinman, who had clashed with Rotten, told GQ years later. For Bazooka Joe, this gig marked a disaster; for the Pistols, it was the start of a movement.

After the dust settled, there wasn’t a single handclap for the Pistols. And yet, the legacy of that night has lingered for nearly half a century. Rotten, Jones, Cook, and Matlock didn’t know it, but they’d just opened Pandora’s box. They gave the crowd something raw, unsanitized, and anarchic—exactly what they needed without even knowing it. By the time their infamous Bill Grundy interview scandalized British TV, they’d become a household name, punk’s prime instigators who would inspire others like Joe Strummer and Siouxsie Sioux to carry the torch.

That gritty, busted-up night at Saint Martin’s remains one of rock’s most legendary debuts, an explosion that, rather than fizzling out, ignited a movement. Rock ’n’ roll would never be the same, and neither would London.