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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  List of Illustrations

  Cast of Contributors

  Epigraph

  SEGMENT 01: Never Mind the Situationists; This Was Situation Comedy

  SEGMENT 02: Child of the Ashes

  SEGMENT 03: John Gray, a Longtime Childhood Friend

  SEGMENT 04: John Christopher Lydon, My Father

  SEGMENT 05: Steptoe-rag and the Fashion Victim

  SEGMENT 06: “I Want You to Know that I Hate You, Baby”

  SEGMENT 07: Stone-Cold Dead Silence/A John and Paul Summit

  SEGMENT 08: Every Mistake Imaginable

  SEGMENT 09: Hand on Eyes

  SEGMENT 10: The Skaters of Streatham/Nora, My Wife

  SEGMENT 11: Steve Severin on the Bromley Contingent

  SEGMENT 12: Shooting in the Dark

  SEGMENT 13: Paul Cook, Drummer

  SEGMENT 14: “How Brilliant! They Hate the Beatles!” Paul Stahl, Marco Pirroni, & Dave Ruffy

  SEGMENT 15: Kiss This—The Pistols Track by Track

  SEGMENT 16: John Wayne Look-Alikes in Dresses

  SEGMENT 17: Groundhog Day 1979

  SEGMENT 18: Big Draw, Then Hand on Face/Don Letts, John Lydon, and Jeanette Lee

  SEGMENT 19: Where’s the Money?

  SEGMENT 20: Never Mind the Lolling on the Sand, Here’s the Affidavits/A Legal Pie Fight

  SEGMENT 21: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

  SEGMENT 22: John Christopher Lydon, Slight Return

  SEGMENT 23: “Ever Get the Feeling…”

  CAST OF CONTRIBUTORS: Where Are They Now?

  Copyright

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Please note: Most of the photos that appear in this book are more of a personal nature than the usual Sex Pistol pictures you have come to expect. To the best of my knowledge, very few of these have been seen. Since they were taken by my family and mates, you’ll notice the deliberate lack of flash and polish. Some even take on an unintentional surreal quality. All Sex Pistols shots were taken by John Gray. Regrettably very few candid shots of Sid exist in my collection. However, I’ve included one of my favorites of Sid, Nancy and me, depicting life in a rotten living room. If you want posed Sid shots, consult other publications, none of which I recommend.

  INSIDE ENDPAPERS: Arsenal!! (John Stevens)

  My first passport photo. Note inverted Luftwaffe Nazi emblem on left worn deliberately and disrespectfully upside down, instigating an interrogation at the American Embassy, Grosvenor Square in London. I entered America shortly thereafter.

  The Lydon family leaning on our Finsbury Park limousine. I’m the shy retard on the right. Little Bobby in front. Jimmy is on the left. Mum in the middle. Age? Timeless.

  Cocteau-esque Lydon family beach party.

  Despondent Lydon at early age (far left) with Mother (center), Auntie Agnes (right) with assorted Lydon brats.

  Pistols mafia on the town. John Gray and Rotten.

  Father and son sharing quality time.

  After meningitis, I wore glasses due to poor vision.

  The haircut that got me thrown out of Sir William of York.

  Johnny goes to college. Me during my Hawkwind phase.

  Early 1976, before safety pins became fashionable and a moth-eaten sweater meant poverty, not popularity. (John Gray)

  The Thin Faces. Come back, sixties, all is forgiven. St. Albans. (John Gray)

  The very first Sex Pistols rehearsal. No equipment. One guitar pick. We’re ready to rock. Circa 1975. (John Gray)

  Where are my monitors? Wearing mummy’s watch at the Nashville in London. (John Gray)

  Johnny: Why am I in a band with him? (John Gray)

  Glen: Why am I in a band with him? (John Gray)

  Paul & Steve: early beginnings. (John Gray)

  Sid the fashion victim and John the toe-rag. (Bob Gruen/ Starfile)

  Surviving the Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the stickers to prove it. (Ian Dickson/Redferns)

  Malcolm, where’s the beer? (John Gray)

  Johnny “harping” on a hankie. (John Gray)

  Paddies’ night out in Finsbury Park. That’s Finsbury Park pal John Stevens on the right. (John Stevens)

  Jean junction, you won’t catch me in denim. (John Gray)

  Life on Gunter Grove. Can you find the following? Arsenal cup game on box. John playing reggae. Sid & Nancy drinking my booze. Gunners poster on wall. Guinness in abundance. Monopoly game on floor. Empty lager crate. Blessed crucifix on wall. Ancient Sex Pistols poster inscribed by fan, “I wish the fuck they would hurry, I’m getting impatient.” (Paul Young)

  “I want you to know that I hate you, baby.” (John Gray)

  Very first Pistols gig, St. Martin’s College of Art. (John Gray)

  John & Nora. Lovey doves. (Howard Thompson)

  Late night Gunter Grove. Paul Young (left) and Poly Styrene. Couch cover courtesy Harp Lager. (Paul Young)

  Before meningitis.

  CAST OF CONTRIBUTORS

  Paul Cook, the drummer

  Caroline Coon, the journalist

  John Gray, the boyhood mate

  Bob Gruen, the American photographer

  Chrissie Hynde, the Pretender

  Billy Idol, the Generation X’er

  Steve Jones, the guitarist

  Jeanette Lee, the King’s Road shopkeeper

  Don Letts, the reggae deejay

  John Christopher Lydon, the father

  John Lydon, Johnny Rotten, the singer

  Nora, as Nora

  Marco Pirroni, the Ant

  Rambo, the Arsenal football hooligan

  Zandra Rhodes, the fashion designer

  Dave Ruffy, the Rut

  Steve Severin, the Banshee

  Paul Stahl, the soul boy turned punk

  Julien Temple, the filmmaker

  Howard Thompson, the A&R man

  Much has been written about the Sex Pistols. Much of it has been either sensationalism or journalistic psychobabble. The rest has been mere spite.

  This book is as close to the truth as one can get, looking back on events from the inside. All the people in this book were actually there, and this book is as much their point of view as it is mine. This means contradictions and insults have not been edited, and neither have the compliments, if any. I have no time for lies or fantasy, and neither should you.

  Enjoy or die.…

  JOHN LYDON

  SEGMENT 01:

  NEVER MIND THE SITUATIONISTS; THIS WAS SITUATION COMEDY

  THE MORNING AFTER WINTERLAND, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 15, 1978

  “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” My famous last words on stage. The Sex Pistols ended the way they began—in utter disaster. Everything between was equally disastrous. That last Winterland gig was a failure, and I knew it more than anyone.

  The night of the gig I didn’t even have a hotel room. The morning after I still didn’t have a hotel room, did I? At least not with the band. Malcolm McLaren said there wasn’t any room left for me and Sidney. So Sid and I slept with the road crew in a motel in San Jose, fifty miles outside San Francisco.

  One of the reasons I stayed with Sid Vicious on the bus during the American tour, driving, rather than flying, from state to state, gig to gig, was to keep him away from drugs. He had already developed a keen problem back in London. The idea was to keep him clean. That’s what infuriated me so much. The minute we hit San Fr
ancisco, somehow or other, Sid managed to escape and get himself a whole parcel of heroin. Funny, that. Some would call that a coincidence. That buggered him up. Totally. As a result, dear reader, the Winterland show was a disaster.

  We never had a decent sound on stage. I don’t even remember the sound check. Winterland held about five thousand and was almost as big a hall as we had ever played. We were touted as the new Rolling Stones. It was horrible. Once anything got to a level of importance, the Pistols were let down—not by ourselves, but by the people who should have been looking out for us. I couldn’t understand why on earth Boogie, our British road manager, was behind the PA desk mixing the sound. At a major gig like this one, we should have had a professional sound engineer. It was awful, wasn’t it? It was worse where I was standing, center stage. You were lucky if you were in the audience; you didn’t have to put up with the feedback on stage. I couldn’t hear bugger all, except Steve’s guitar, which was constantly out of tune. It’s very hard when you can’t hear what you’re doing. You can’t tell. No monitors on stage were working. They were all feeding back.

  That kind of distraction would normally not get in the way, but it did that night in San Francisco. People expected too much from us. Bill Graham, the promoter, moved the gear off the stage and arranged a party afterward. I was told I wasn’t allowed in. At my own gig! I was told to go away after the way I had behaved.

  We hated each other at that point. I hated the whole scenario. It was a farce; I realized that from our first week of rehearsals as a band back in 1975. I must have left that band so many times. We all did. It was just nonstop. In and out. I walked off stage loads of times at gigs. The only one who really did go was Glen Matlock, our original bass player whom Sid replaced. But that made us all very happy. Things improved no end the minute he exited. Bringing Sid in brought a sense of chaos that I liked. Yes, Glen was responsible for a lot of the original tunes—if you want to call them that. He had a softening effect. Glen wanted to turn the whole thing into a sort of a Bay City Rollers scene and for us to look like some Soho poofs. Can you believe that? This was his image of the Sex Pistols: awful white plastic shoes, tight red pants. Really, really awful. Phony gay image.

  Who put the Pistols together? Not Malcolm, really. Born out of a clothes store he owned? That’s the pop myth. There were several people in the band before I came along. The first connection with the store, I suppose, was that Glen worked there. Whatever they were up to before, they were nothing like what they became once I joined up! They had no image. No point. No nothing. No purpose to it other than making really lousy Small Faces and imitation Who noises. It was vile. Really, really bad, but I liked it.

  They all bitched at the first rehearsals about how I couldn’t sing, which was true. I still can’t, and I don’t really want to. The kind of records they were playing—if they call that singing—were awful. The Faces must have been the worst band on the earth to model yourself after. Acting drunk. Teetering around the stage. That was the kind of thing Glen liked. He thought it was clever. I didn’t. I thought it disgusting pub rock.

  Quirky little pop songs is what they wanted. You should have seen their faces when I slapped the lyrics down to “Anarchy in the U.K.” It was classic. I wish I had had a camera. “God Save the Queen” was the final reason Glen left; he couldn’t handle those kinds of lyrics. He said it declared us fascists. I agreed with him. Just to get rid of him, I didn’t deny it. I don’t think being an anti-Royalist makes you a fascist. Quite the opposite. Silly ass. Isn’t he?

  There was no progress or advancement all the way through the Pistols. While we were touring America, there were large periods of not doing anything at all. However, I was constantly writing. Turns out I wrote a lot of songs for my next group, Public Image Limited, during that period. But I could not get the Pistols interested. They wanted to go back to that quirky little Who ditty thing. Songs about religion absolutely killed them. “You can’t sing that! You’ll get arrested!” Well, I fucking hoped so. That was the whole point.

  The only violence about the Sex Pistols was the anger. Nothing else. We were not violent people. There was no death at our gigs. The one thing that used to piss me most about the Sex Pistols was our audience all turning up in identically cloned punk outfits. That really defeated the point. There was no way I was going to give them a good time for that, because it showed no sense of individuality or understanding of what we were doing. We weren’t about uniformity.

  Malcolm was a very destructive force on that American tour. He was totally negative, and I really couldn’t see the point or purpose to it. We made our own scandal just by being ourselves. Maybe it was that he knew he was redundant, so he overcompensated. All the talk about the French Situationists being associated with punk is bollocks. It’s nonsense! Now that really is coffee-table book stuff. The Paris riots and the Situationist movement of the sixties—it was all nonsense for arty French students. There’s no master conspiracy in anything, not even in governments. Everything is just some kind of vaguely organized chaos.

  Chaos was my philosophy. Oh, yeah. Have no rules. If people start to build fences around you, break out and do something else. You should never, ever be understood completely. That’s like the kiss of death, isn’t it? It’s a full stop. I don’t ever think you should put full stops on thoughts. They change.

  I’m a spiteful bastard. I always have been. If I can make trouble, then that’s perfect for me. My school reports show this thoroughly. Negative attitude. Well, of course.

  * * *

  The last gig in San Francisco was the ultimate, the full stop. We ended up getting paid $67 for that gig, so people had no right to moan at us.

  The crew had to leave the morning after because the tour had folded. I had no hotel, no accommodations, so I went over to the Miyako Hotel, where Malcolm, Steve Jones, Jamie Reid, Bob Gruen, and Paul Cook were. I couldn’t find Malcolm. I didn’t know where he was, but I spoke to Paul and Steve. They were very distant and remote with me. Paul and Steve didn’t seem to know what it was all about, and they didn’t want to discuss it, either—other than the fact that I had ruined it for them. They wouldn’t even explain what I had ruined.

  I didn’t know they were planning to go to Rio de Janeiro to record and shoot film footage with Ronald Biggs, the infamous great train robber from Britain. I found that out through Sophie Richmond, Malcolm’s secretary. I thought it was a pretty shitty idea to support an aging tosspot robber like Ronald Biggs. It was appalling. I couldn’t condone the idea of going down and celebrating someone who took part in a 1963 robbery that resulted in the bludgeoning of a train driver into brain-dead senility and the theft of what was basically working-class money. It wasn’t as if they were robbing a bank. It was payroll from a mail train. Biggs never did any of the planning, he was just one of the people in on the robbery. His claim to fame was that he busted out of jail in England and escaped to Rio. I don’t know how much his take was, but he couldn’t have been rolling in it. I heard he was living in a shack on the beach in Brazil. That’s hardly my idea of big-time success. It wasn’t joyful, witty, or funny. It didn’t have anything to do with what the Pistols were about before that. Instead, it seemed dour, malicious, and grim. There was no humor in it, and it just seemed like belligerence for its own sake. To this day I have never understood the ins and outs of the Rio project. Judging from the footage Malcolm shot, it was mostly just Steve, Paul, and Ronnie Biggs on the beach.

  As far as I was concerned, the band had broken up. It had broken up when I had said what I said on stage. I felt cheated, and I wasn’t going on with it any longer; it was a ridiculous farce. Sid was completely out of his brains—just a waste of space. The whole thing was a joke at that point. It was all very bitter and confusing at the Miyako Hotel. Sid and I weren’t invited into that particular little enclave. The reason given was that we weren’t booked into a room at the Miyako in the first place, and there were no rooms left. Malcolm didn’t put the money up, and nobody booked the
rooms. I ended up staying in an extra bed in Sophie’s room. I was extremely tense, and I don’t think I ever went to sleep that night. Malcolm wouldn’t come out of his room, and I didn’t understand what was going on. He wouldn’t speak to me, even though several people—including Boogie and Sophie—tried to get him to come down and talk. He would not discuss anything with me. But then he would turn around and tell Paul and Steve that the tension was all my fault because I wouldn’t agree to anything.

  I had no money to speak of. I had twenty dollars on me. I tried ringing Warner Bros., the Sex Pistols’ American record label, but they didn’t believe it was me because they had been told I had left the country. I was stuck in America—no plane ticket, no money, nothing.

  Malcolm could never have presented that Rio trip to me because he knew what my answer would be. I don’t like breaking commitments, and for a band, touring is the most viable part of the process. There was another Sex Pistols tour lined up shortly after the American tour, starting in Stockholm. We had made a commitment to play the tour. People were already buying tickets, gigs were lined up. But for Malcolm to have taken us to Rio would have made that Swedish tour logistically difficult. Even though I thought the band was over, I still felt we had to finish the Scandinavian tour. Going to Rio was Malcolm’s dream—so fuck the gig and the band, fuck everything. He was only thinking of himself again and titillating himself. By going to Rio, he canceled the tour and asserted his vision. It had become a boring rock band, so going to Rio, he thought, would open new avenues of excitement. Yet the commitments to Stockholm and others were already made. You couldn’t just call it a day because Malcolm wanted to go to Rio. You needed to work with other people for things to succeed. Otherwise it was just a fantasy.

  My relationship with Steve around the time of breaking up was absolutely awful, especially before they all went off to Rio. I sat down with Steve and Paul in San Francisco. They thought that I didn’t want to be in the same hotel. I said it wasn’t true, but they wouldn’t listen. Didn’t believe me.