Everyone’s talking about... The Sex Pistols
PUNK legends The Sex Pistols are back, hoping the re-release of God Save The Queen hits No1 on Jubilee weekend. Rumour has it the charts were rigged to keep the much-banned single off the top during the 1977 Silver Jubilee. So with director Danny Boyle’s TV series about the band hitting Disney+ on May 31, who are they?
Frontman John Lydon (called Johnny Rotten, because of his decaying teeth), guitarist Steve Jones (a kleptomaniac who once stole some of David Bowie’s sound equipment), drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock got together in 1975. Matlock was replaced by Sid Vicious 15 months later, even though Vicious (real name John Simon Ritchie) couldn’t play a note. A damaged heroin addict who once killed a cat, Vicious had been a hanger-on and at one gig attacked a critic with a bicycle chain. He got his moniker from Lydon’s hamster, Sid, who bit him, prompting Lydon to say: ‘Sid is really vicious.’
Why did Matlock leave?
Either he was booted out for the sin of liking The Beatles, or he quit over the band’s embrace of fascist imagery. But from the start, Jones confessed: ‘We’re not into music. We’re into chaos.’
As in?
Their infamous foul-mouthed interview with Bill Grundy on live TV in 1976. The ‘moral panic’ they caused, such as brawling at Heathrow, which caused label EMI to drop them. They lasted six days at their next label A&M after trashing the offices, vomiting over desks and harassing staff. They threatened DJ Bob Harris with a broken bottle. Police raided the launch of God Save The Queen on a Thames cruiser. And Vicious started a relationship with fellow addict Nancy Spungen, which manager Malcolm McLaren thought so toxic he planned to have her abducted.
How did it end?
A 1978 US tour was chaotic. Vicious carved ‘give me a fix’ into his chest, and was pelted with beer when he called an audience ‘cowboy faggots’. Closing the show in San Francisco, Rotten said: ‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ – and that was the end. In October that year Spungen was fatally stabbed in the Hotel Chelsea, New York and Vicious charged with her murder. While on bail, he died of a heroin overdose. Lydon went on to advertise butter.