Sex Pistols

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sex Pistols formed in London in 1975, and within two and a half years they had altered the course of popular music. They never recorded a second studio album. They never completed a full American tour. Their most famous single was banned by the BBC and nearly every independent radio station in Britain, making it the most censored record in British history. Yet the audience at two performances in Manchester in 1976, numbering around forty people, went on to include Bernard Sumner, Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Morrissey, and Mark E. Smith. Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley, who organised one of those gigs, went straight home and formed the Buzzcocks. Joe Strummer saw the Pistols at a London pub and recognised punk rock as the future. Christopher Nolan later said that Johnny Rotten inspired his characterisation of the Joker in The Dark Knight. How did a band that barely lasted two years reshape rock, fashion, graphic design, and independent music? And who, exactly, was steering the whole thing?

• 2. The Shop on King's Road

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  Steve Jones and Paul Cook started out as teenagers in a band called the Strand, sometimes known as the Swankers, formed in London in 1972. Jones played on instruments he later admitted he had stolen. The band gravitated toward two clothing shops on the King's Road in Chelsea. One was Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's boutique, which had opened in 1971 as Let It Rock with a Teddy Boy theme, been renamed in 1972, and by the mid-1970s had transformed again into a shop called Sex, selling S&M-inspired anti-fashion. The other was John Krivine and Steph Raynor's Acme Attractions. Sex became a focal point of the early London punk scene, drawing in the future Sid Vicious, Marco Pirroni, Gene October, and Mark Stewart. The shop assistant Jordan is credited with, in the words of the source, "pretty well single-handedly paving the punk look." Glen Matlock, an art student who worked at Sex occasionally, joined Jones and Cook as bassist in late 1974. McLaren had been managing the New York Dolls before returning to London in May 1975, and it was only then that he began taking serious interest in the Strand. He and Bernard Rhodes, who would later manage the Clash, oversaw the band's rehearsals. When Wally Nightingale was dismissed, Jones shifted from vocals to guitar. McLaren briefly pursued the New York Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain as a possible frontman and also rang Richard Hell in New York, but both turned him down. The band began stopping short-haired strangers on the street to ask if they fancied themselves as singers.

• 3. Johnny Rotten Walks In

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  In August 1975, Bernard Rhodes spotted a nineteen-year-old named John Lydon wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words "I Hate" handwritten above the band name and the Floyd members' eyes scratched out. Lydon came in to audition and improvised to Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" on the Sex shop jukebox. Jones later described the moment: "he came in with green hair. I thought he had a really interesting face... he was a real arsehole, but smart." Jones gave him the nickname Johnny Rotten, apparently because of his notably bad teeth. Among the band names they considered before settling on Sex Pistols were Le Bomb, Subterraneans, the Damned, Beyond, Teenage Novel, Kid Gladlove, and Creme de la Creme. McLaren later said the name derived "from the idea of a pistol, a pin-up, a young thing, a better-looking assassin." Matlock arranged the band's first gig at Saint Martin's School of Art in November 1975, supporting a pub rock group called Bazooka Joe. They played covers including the Who's "Substitute," the Small Faces' "Whatcha Gonna Do About It," and the Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone." Midge Ure, later front man of Ultravox, claims he was approached to be the singer but refused. Lydon would write the band's lyrics; Matlock was the primary melody writer, though their first collaboration, "Pretty Vacant," had all its lyrics written by Matlock, with Rotten making small adjustments. Credit was shared equally among the four.

• 4. The Bromley Contingent and Jamie Reid

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  After the Saint Martin's gig, the band played colleges around London and gathered a core early following including Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin, Billy Idol, Jordan, and Soo Catwoman. This group came to be known as the Bromley Contingent, after the south-east London borough several of them were from. McLaren and Westwood saw the incipient punk movement as a vehicle for ideas they had absorbed from the May 1968 radical uprising in Paris, particularly the ideology of the Situationists. In the spring of 1976, their friend Jamie Reid took over the band's visual imagery. His cut-up lettering, based on the style of ransom notes left by kidnappers or terrorists, created the classic Sex Pistols logo. Reid later said he used "to talk to John a lot about the Situationists... the Sex Pistols seemed the perfect vehicle to communicate ideas directly to people who weren't getting the message from left-wing politics." The band's first review appeared in the NME after a February 1976 gig supporting Eddie and the Hot Rods at the Marquee; in the accompanying interview, Jones declared, "Actually we're not into music. We're into chaos." Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley read the article in Bolton and headed to London to find the band. After chatting with McLaren at Sex and watching the Pistols at a couple of gigs, they immediately set about forming their own band, the Buzzcocks. Devoto later said, "My life changed the moment that I saw the Sex Pistols."

• 5. Bill Grundy and the Tabloid Explosion

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  EMI signed the Sex Pistols on a two-year contract on the 8th of October 1976. Their first single, "Anarchy in the U.K.," was released on the 26th of November 1976, produced by Chris Thomas, who had previously produced Roxy Music and mixed Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Colin Newman of Wire called it "the clarion call of a generation." On the 1st of December 1976, the band appeared on Thames Television's Today programme, hosted by Bill Grundy. They were last-minute replacements for Queen, and were offered drinks while waiting to go on air. Grundy encouraged their bad behaviour and attempted to flirt with Siouxsie Sioux, which prompted Jones to swear repeatedly on live television. Although the programme only aired in the London region, the tabloid response was national. The Daily Mirror ran the headline "The Filth and the Fury!" The Daily Express wrote "Fury at Filthy TV Chat." The Daily Telegraph: "4-Letter Words Rock TV." Thames Television suspended Grundy, and the incident effectively ended his career. Jones later reflected that the Grundy interview was "the big dividing line in the Sex Pistols' story... Before it, we were all about the music, but from then on it was all about the media." The band launched the UK Anarchy Tour, supported by the Clash and the Heartbreakers. Of approximately twenty scheduled gigs, only about seven took place; local authorities and venue organisers cancelled the rest. A crowd including carol singers and a Pentecostal preacher protested outside a show in Caerphilly. Packers at the EMI plant refused to handle the band's single. A London Conservative councillor called the Pistols "the antithesis of humankind." Under political pressure, EMI released the band from their contract in January 1977, reportedly after the band "vomited and spat their way" to a flight, a claim the accompanying EMI representative categorically denied.

• 6. Sid Vicious and the Jubilee

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  On the 28th of February 1977, McLaren announced that Glen Matlock was leaving. Public reasons given at the time included that Matlock had talked too much about Paul McCartney, or that he liked the Beatles. Jones later admitted in 2005 that, whatever his songwriting talent, Matlock "didn't look like a Sex Pistol." Matlock himself attributed his departure to a bitter relationship with Rotten, who in Matlock's account changed once "he'd had his name in the papers." His replacement was Rotten's friend Sid Vicious, previously the drummer of Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Flowers of Romance. Jones and Cook were dismayed: "to Cookie and me, it just didn't make any sense to have someone who couldn't play a note trying to fill Glen's shoes." Vicious had previously hurled a glass at a Damned gig at the 100 Club Punk Special, blinding a girl in one eye. He had also assaulted NME journalist Nick Kent with a bicycle chain at the 100 Club. According to Chrissie Hynde in the documentary Punk Attitude, Vicious learned to play bass by staying up for three nights on speed, playing along to the Ramones' debut album. In March 1977, the Pistols signed to A&M Records at a ceremony outside Buckingham Palace; within days, A&M broke the contract after a series of incidents at the label's offices and a confrontation involving one of Rotten's friends and a label executive. About 25,000 copies of "God Save the Queen" had already been pressed; nearly all were destroyed. The band signed with Virgin Records in May 1977 as their third label in little more than half a year. The single finally came out on the 27th of May, timed for Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee. Its lyrics described the monarchy as a "fascist regime" and stated "there's no future / in England's dreaming." It was banned by BBC radio and television and by every independent radio station. By Jubilee weekend, it had sold more than 150,000 copies. On the 7th of June, McLaren chartered a boat so the band could perform while sailing the River Thames past the Houses of Parliament. Police launches forced the vessel to dock, and McLaren, Westwood, and many of the entourage were arrested dockside. "God Save the Queen" opened at number 2 on the official UK chart for Jubilee week, behind Rod Stewart's "I Don't Want to Talk About It." McLaren later claimed CBS Records told him the Pistols were outselling Stewart two to one. Evidence suggests the British Phonographic Institute took exceptional measures to exclude Virgin shop sales from the chart.

• 7. Never Mind the Bollocks

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  Recording for the album began in early 1977 with producer Chris Thomas, and it was initially titled God Save Sex Pistols before becoming Never Mind the Bollocks that summer. Vicious's inability to play was quickly apparent; Jones later said they "tried as hard as possible not to let him anywhere near the studio." Jones himself played most of the bass parts. Matlock was asked back as a session musician but Jones ultimately handled it. Vicious's bass is reportedly audible only on "Bodies," and even there Jones dubbed a second part over it, leaving Vicious's contribution low in the mix. "Pretty Vacant" was released on the 1st of July and "Holidays in the Sun" on the 14th of October, each reaching the top ten. The album itself came out on the 28th of October 1977, reaching number one on the UK album chart on advance sales alone despite being banned by Boots, WHSmith, and Woolworths. Rolling Stone called it "the most exciting rock and roll record of the Seventies." In 2006, Q magazine ranked it at number 28 in its list of the 100 Greatest Albums Ever; Rolling Stone had placed it at number 2 in its 1987 ranking of the top 100 albums of the preceding twenty years. The title led to a legal case in Nottingham after a Virgin store was threatened with prosecution for displaying indecent printed matter. Defending QC John Mortimer produced an expert witness who established that bollocks was an Old English term for a small ball, had appeared in place names without causing offence, and had been used in the nineteenth century as a nickname for clergymen: "Clergymen are known to talk a good deal of rubbish and so the word later developed the meaning of nonsense." The case was thrown out. Jones later recalled that he had come up with the title by accident during a debate about what to call the album: "Oh, fuck it, never mind the bollocks of it all." On Christmas Day 1977, the band played two shows at Ivanhoe's in Huddersfield, the first for the children of striking firemen. Those were the last UK performances the original lineup would give for more than eighteen years.

• 8. San Francisco and After

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  The US tour of January 1978 was cut to seven shows after American authorities delayed issuing a visa to Jones due to his criminal record, forcing the cancellation of several northeast dates. Vicious was arrested trying to buy heroin in Memphis and beaten by a Warner Bros. security team. He subsequently appeared onstage with the words "Gimme a fix" scarred on his chest. During a show in San Antonio, he swung his bass into the crowd. Suffering heroin withdrawal in Dallas, he spat blood at a woman who had climbed onstage and punched him. Rotten was ill and increasingly isolated, with Cook and Jones feeling that both Rotten and Vicious had become impossible to be around. On the 14th of January 1978, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, Rotten introduced the encore: "You'll get one number and one number only 'cause I'm a lazy bastard." That number was a Stooges cover, "No Fun." At the end, kneeling on the stage, Rotten addressed the audience: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night." He threw down his microphone and walked off. He announced the break-up on the 18th of January. Virtually broke, he called Virgin Records head Richard Branson to pay for his flight back to London. Over the following months, Vicious moved to New York and tried to launch a solo career with Nancy Spungen as his manager. On the 12th of October 1978, Spungen was found dead aged 20 in the Hotel Chelsea room she shared with Vicious, from a stab wound. Vicious was arrested and charged with her murder. He spent 54 days in Rikers Island jail undergoing enforced cold-turkey detox. He was released on bail on the 1st of February 1979. Later that night, following a small party, he died of a heroin overdose, aged 21. Legal proceedings Lydon had initiated against McLaren and the management company Glitterbest, begun in February 1979, eventually concluded on the 16th of January 1986, when Lydon, Jones, Cook, and the estate of Sid Vicious were awarded control of the band's heritage, including the rights to more than 250 hours of footage.