Rotten day, John... punk star loses Sex Pistols court battle
SEX PISTOLS singer John Lydon has lost a High Court battle with his former bandmates over the use of their music in a new TV drama.
The punk icon – also known as Johnny Rotten – failed to prevent them using ‘majority voting rules’ to allow the songs to be included in Pistol, a Disney-made mini-series directed by Danny Boyle.
Former guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook had sued the 65-year-old under the terms of a band member agreement (BMA).
Ruling that Lydon must have been aware of the effect of the 1998 deal, judge Sir Anthony Mann said: ‘On his side he had an English lawyer, a US attorney and his manager... I reject the suggestion made by him that he did not really know or appreciate its effect.’
In court on June 21, Lydon argued that the BMA had ‘never been applied in anything we have ever done since 1998’, while also branding the TV series as ‘the most disrespectful s*** I’ve ever had to endure’. He added: ‘I don’t understand how Steve and Paul think they have the right to insist that I do something that I so morally heart and soul disagree with without any involvement.’
But Edmund Cullen QC, for Cook and Jones, accused Lydon of giving ‘false evidence’ and said original member Glen Matlock supported their position. In a statement, the pair said: ‘We welcome the court’s ruling [which] upholds the band members’ agreement on collective decision-making.’
The drama, due to air next year, is based on Jones’s 2016 memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol.