The funny thing is that, years later, the Roebuck became a Dome Cafe. The place was run by this huge bloke, called Fat Jack, with one eye and a bald head. Andrew remembers it well: ''The raids were hysterical, 40 or 50 policemen from Chelsea nick descending on the pub and lining people up.
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You could even buy smack over the counter, along with a pint of Guinness."Īnother Chelsea resident recalls walking past the Roebuck just as the police arrived: "Out of the windows there came this enormous cascade of drugs, hurriedly thrown into the street. They would be studiously ignored, because it was uncool to recognise them. Lydon was very shy and Sid was really f-ed up. They'd sit in the corner not drawing attention to themselves, looking wary. Andrew, a local teenager at the time, looks back: "You'd get Phil Lynott, Johnny Lydon and Sid Vicious upstairs in the Roebuck's pool room. Truant schoolgirls mingled with drug dealers in the place where McLaren had introduced his new discovery, Johnny Rotten, to the other three Sex Pistols. If you sought respite from the sun, there was no shadier place in the whole King's Road than the Roebuck pub. There was revolution in the air, and the weather helped, too: 1976 had a longer, hotter summer than anyone could remember. Then there was the sub-Roxy Music look, Alkasura and Antony Price and the 'real' rock star stuff from Granny Takes A Trip, which was kind of cool."
The King's Road was peppered with shops who'd do watered down versions of the Rock Star look, loon pants and star tops, tulip lapels, stack heels, horrendous stuff. The mainstream look was Chelsea Girl and Lord John. Glen Matlock watched the dying days of the old regime: ''The fashion trend was for Oxford bags. But suddenly there were upstarts at large. The King's Road traded on its fading reputation as swinging London's trendiest thoroughfare, and the more glamorous merchants of the hippie era still reigned.