The Sex Pistols

[kg redhead]

The Sex Pistols were, despite their short existence, one of the most influential English punk bands. While The Clash were both more articulate and politically motivated, and Buzzcocks had more astute pop sensibilities, no other band so strongly exemplified the British punk movement's spirit and inherent contradictions or made such a lasting impression on British popular culture. In November 2005, it was announced that they would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

[kg redhead]

Originally called The Strand (in reference to a song by Roxy Music), the band was formed during 1972 by Paul Cook (drums), Steve Jones (vocals) and Wally Nightingale (guitar). During 1973 the band members began to frequent a 1950s-style clothes shop called 'Let It Rock' in the Kings Road, Chelsea area of London. Here they met the shop's manager, Malcolm McLaren. Jones, being aware that McLaren had some connections within the music business, asked if he would be interested in becoming the group's manager, although at the time McLaren declined. Del Noone, who they met at the shop, was recruited to play bass. By 1974, the group called themselves The Swankers and played their very first gig at a birthday party of a friend of Cook's at Tom Salter's Café in London. They also began rehearsing in a studio called the 'Crunchy Frog', near London's docklands. Noone left the band shortly afterwards because he was becoming unreliable and not turning up at rehearsals.

The remaining members recruited bass player Glen Matlock. By early 1975, Jones and Nightingale had begun arguing about what direction the band should take. Nightingale then left the group. Jones replaced him on guitar. Johnny Rotten, who was another of the clientele of the by now renamed and restyled 'SEX' boutique, showed up at the shop in August 1975 wearing a homemade 'I Hate Pink Floyd' t-shirt. He was asked to audition by miming to Alice Cooper's "Eighteen." He passed. McLaren became the new group's manager and was asked to think of a name for the group. Among the list were; 'Le Bomb', 'Subterraneans', 'The Damned', 'Beyond', 'Teenage Novel' and 'QT Jones and his Sex Pistols', The 'QT Jones' part was dropped, and 'the Sex Pistols' were born. The name, no doubt, brings to mind the male sex organ, but McLaren has stated that he wanted the band to be "sexy assassins" (in later years band members frequently accused McLaren both of cheating them financially, and of claiming credit for things that were not his idea as well as falsifying the bands' history). Under McLaren's guidance, the band was initially influenced in part by the simple, chord-based style of The New York Dolls and The Ramones. McLaren had given guitarist Jones the Les Paul guitar used by NY Doll Sylvain Sylvain, and the torn-shirt, spiked-hair look of Richard Hell, then bass player for Television. All of these figures were doyens of the New York City punk, and later new wave music, scene. Rotten and his circle of friends walked into the arrangement already possessed of a similar style -- a grunged-out version of the 'soul boy' fashion affected by fans of Roxy Music. McLaren also claimed that he wanted the Sex Pistols to be "the new Bay City Rollers".

The band played their first gig under their new name at St. Martin's School of Art in London on November 6, 1975. This gig would be followed by other performances at colleges/art schools for the remainder of 1975 until early 1976, when they started playing at clubs (like the 100 Club) and pubs (like The Nashville). On September 3, 1976, they played their first concert outside of England, when they played at the opening of the Club De Chalet Du Lac in Paris. After that they went on their first major tour of England which lasted from mid-September to early October (this included a performance at the Chelmsford Prison), which got them noticed by EMI.

[kg redhead]

Following a showcase gig as part of London's first punk festival at the 100 Club in Oxford Street, the band was signed (for a large advance) to the major label EMI. The Sex Pistols' first single, "Anarchy in the UK", released on November 26, 1976, served as a statement of intent -- full of wit, anger and visceral energy. Despite a common misconception that punk bands 'couldn't play', the evidence of live recordings of the time reveal the Pistols to be a tight, competent and ferocious live band.

However, on December 1, 1976, the group and their close circle of followers, the Bromley Contingent, created a storm of publicity in the UK when, goaded by interviewer Bill Grundy, guitarist Steve Jones used the word "fuck" on Thames Television's early evening television programme Today, as well as calling Grundy a "rotter" after he made a rather inept attempt at 'chatting up' Siouxsie Sioux. Although the programme was only seen in the London ITV region (and although Matlock had, unnoticed, been the first to utter the word 'fuck'), the ensuing furore occupied the tabloid newspapers for days. The shambolic 'Anarchy Tour' of the UK followed, with the majority of the concerts dogged by a hostile press and cancelled by local authorities, and many of the rest ending in states of semi-riot.

[kg redhead]

After the end of the 'Anarchy Tour' in December 1976, EMI decided it was too dangerous for the Sex Pistols to be in the UK, so they got the band some gigs at the Paradiso in Amsterdam in early January 1977. After getting some bad publicity at Heathrow Airport on their return, EMI finally had enough and dumped the band on January 27, 1977. The Paradiso gigs would be the last with Glen Matlock on bass. In February Matlock parted company with the band. According to legend he was sacked because he "liked The Beatles" - although in a 2002 television interview Steve Jones claimed the real reason was that he was "always washing his feet". Matlock himself now claims to have quit voluntarily (which was probably due largely to personality clashes with Rotten). He was quickly replaced by Rotten's friend and "ultimate Sex Pistols fan" Sid Vicious (real name John Simon Ritchie) of The Flowers of Romance, famously endorsed as a member by McLaren for his looks and "punk attitude" despite his very limited musical abilities. According to Jon Savage's biography of the Sex Pistols, England's Dreaming, at live performances his amplifier was often turned down, and most of the bass parts on the band's later recordings were actually played by guitarist Steve Jones or Matlock, who (according to Lydon's autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs) had been drafted in as a session musician. Sid played his first concert with the Pistols at the Screen On The Green in London on April 3, 1977.

The band signed to A&M Records on March 10, 1977, in a ceremony outside of Buckingham Palace. They later went back to the A&M offices for a party, at which the Sex Pistols' unruly behaviour included Sid Vicious trashing the Managing Director's office and vomiting on his desk. As a result, A&M dumped the Pistols on March 16. On May 12, the Pistols signed their third and final record deal with Virgin Records, with the promise of total artistic control.

The group's second single, released by Virgin on May 27, 1977, was "God Save the Queen", a stinging attack on the British Royal Family, and by extension the institutions of Britain, delivered in Rotten's trademark sneer. Coming at a time when deference to royalty was still a predominant trait in both the establishment and the country as a whole the record was quickly banned from airplay by the staid BBC, whose Radio 1 dominated music broadcasting.

Nevertheless, in the week of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee, the record officially reached number two in some UK charts (although the number-two spot was, tellingly, left blank in several listings, and many believe, with evidence, that the record actually reached number one, and that the charts were rigged to prevent such a spectacle). Meanwhile, the Sex Pistols decided to celebrate the Jubilee, along with the success of their record, by chartering a boat, upon which they sailed down the Thames, past Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, performing their live set. As usual, the event ended in chaos; the boat was raided by the police, despite being licensed for live music, and McLaren, the Pistols and most of their entourage were arrested and taken into custody. Arguably all good fun and a great publicity stunt, but matters took a distinctly uglier turn when young punk followers of the Sex Pistols became victims of physical attacks in the street by 'pro-royalists', and Rotten himself was assaulted by a razor wielding gang of 'Teddy Boys' outside the Pegasus pub (which was a music venue at the time) close to Newington Green, Islington who, it seems, didn't see the humour of the Pistols' antics. This delayed the tour of Scandinavia by a couple of weeks, which would have started at the end of June, but because of the attacks, it started in mid-July. This was followed by a secret tour of England at the end of August (known as SPOTS, Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly), when the band played under pseudonyms to avoid cancellation.

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The promise of the band's early singles was eventually fulfilled by the group's first album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols, released on October 28, 1977. The album included singles "Pretty Vacant" (released on July 2, 1977), an ode to apathy, and "Holidays in the Sun" (released on October 15, 1977). Again the band faced controversy when a record shop in Nottingham was threatened with prosecution for displaying the album's 'obscene' cover, although the case was overturned when defending QC John Mortimer produced expert witnesses, including Professor James Kinsley, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nottingham, who were able to demonstrate that the word "bollocks" was a legitimate old English term originally used to refer to a priest, and that although the word is also slang for the testicles, in this context it meant 'nonsense'.

The Sex Pistols' final UK performance was at Ivanhoe's in Huddersfield on Christmas Day 1977, a benefit for the families of striking firemen. Despite the band's state of disintegration by this time, the gig was considered by some as a vindication of their anti-establishment stance when they were, for once, united with what might be viewed as their true constituency, the dispossessed English working class. They played two shows, a matinee and an evening show. Tickets for the latter were furtively sold for a secret venue, announced shortly before the gig as a tactic to avoid the attentions of local councillors and the like, who had cancelled many of the Pistols' other shows. Those waiting outside for the second show were given turkey sandwiches from the remains of the meal laid on for the strikers' families. The atmosphere in the evening show was counter to the negative publicity that had been generated towards the band by the tabloid press; before the show, Johnny Rotten mingled with the crowd wearing his pith helmet, and the good humour of the matinee (which was a benefit played for free) lingered on. Years later the promoter of the evening show confessed that the Pistols never cashed his cheque.

Early in 1978 an American tour was booked by McLaren. Originally they were scheduled to begin the tour in December 1977, beginning with a performance on Saturday Night Live, but due to the members' minor scrapes with the law, they were unable to receive passports in time. (Elvis Costello and the Attractions went on instead). The two-week American jaunt was an exhausting, badly-planned, dispiriting experience for all concerned (Vicious was beaten by the bodyguards hired to protect him, Rotten had a fierce head cold, and the band's performances were plagued by bad sound and physically hostile audiences, mainly at unlikely venues in the South), and on the final date at Winterland in San Francisco on January 14, the disillusioned Rotten quit, famously asking "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" from the stage before walking off. On January 17, 1978, Rotten announced the break-up of the Sex Pistols. He later claimed to have been bluffing, but McLaren, Cook and Jones left for a working vacation in Brazil, and Vicious left for New York, leaving Rotten stranded without airfare in America. Warner Brothers paid his passage back to London, courting him as a solo artist.

In the summer of 1978, Cook and Jones helped McLaren make The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle movie and soundtrack. The movie was McLaren's fictionalized account on the band's history, claiming he controlled and manipulated the band. The soundtrack had Jones, occasionally Cook or Vicious, and sometimes Edward Tudor-Pole, trading on their vocals and engaging in McLaren-concocted gimmicks -- such as recording two songs on the album with notorious British criminal Ronnie Biggs.

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After leaving the Pistols, Johnny Rotten reverted to his given name of John Lydon, and formed Public Image Ltd with his old friend Jah Wobble (né John Wardle), a previous contender to replace Matlock. This group was signed by Virgin and Warner Brothers (in the UK and US respectively). Vicious meanwhile relocated to New York and continued to gig as a solo performer, recording an album that many consider substandard. He was shortly afterwards arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, in New York, and died of a heroin overdose before coming to trial.

A fictionalised account of Vicious's relationship with Spungen was later recounted in the 1986 film Sid and Nancy (dir. Alex Cox). Lydon has publicly dismissed this film, stating that it has little to do with the reality of what actually happened.

Cook and Jones continued to work as something of an 'instant band,' doing many dates as session musicians, and later forming The Professionals, whose records are in a strong continuum with the duo's post-Rotten 'Pistols recordings. Glen Matlock was involved in various projects, the most noteworthy being the Rich Kids, which featured Midge Ure, later of Ultravox, on vocals. Malcolm McLaren went on to manage Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow, and later scored a number of hits as a solo artist.

Paul Cook is currently playing in the band Man-Raze.

[kg redhead]

The Sex Pistols remain influential, however, both for their musical style and in terms of their influence on the British cultural landscape. Whereas previous challenges to the class system, and to the post-war British ethos of uncomplaining sacrifice, had come mainly from within, such as from the public school and Oxbridge dominated satire boom of the late 1960s and early '70s (including the Monty Python troupe), or from the social-realist novels and theatre of the 1950s and early '60s, the Pistols communicated directly with a much wider, more vernacular audience and, to some extent, the resulting shock waves can still be felt.

It can be argued that the Sex Pistols were the most influential British band of the post-Beatles era. In pure form, their chord progressions and pounding, primal bass lines can still be heard in the music of bands such as Rancid, The Libertines, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and other revivalists. They also had a major influence on Oasis, with Noel Gallagher claiming Never Mind The Bollocks was his favourite album of all time and Liam Gallagher stating that he tries to sing like a cross between John Lydon and John Lennon.

Conversely, it can also be argued that the Sex Pistols were a manufactured pop act in the vein of The Sweet, Mud, and other early-'70s 'hard rock' singles acts, inasmuch as their look and sound were in part innovations of Malcolm McLaren's. Opinions, however, differ widely on McLaren's actual responsibility for the band's artistic and cultural relevance, with the evidence suggesting that McLaren was never fully in control of events, and played almost no role in creating the band's actual music and lyrics.

The aim of shocking the establishment has always been a traditional aim for all groups who feel that a given music or art style is in serious need of renovation. The Sex Pistols emerged at a time when the economic boom had finished, youth unemployment was rising, and pop music was undisputably sugary. Their agressive lyrics and standpoints were taken literally by the conservative press, but really, as later in rap, they can be seen as a form of theatre of rage. In contrast with rap, making money was not glorified at this time.

The surviving members of the Sex Pistols have reunited for the six month 'Filthy Lucre World Tour' in 1996, two gigs (one in the UK and one in the US) in 2002, and the three week 'Piss Off Tour' in North America in 2003. They are also planning to do a concert in Iraq and a Japanese tour in the near future.

[colin]

My earliest memories of The Pistol's was from 1977..Jubillie year!! I was an eight year old shit kicker from a southern estate & they meant the world to me...they still do!! I was considered an outcast at school for having my parker covered in Pistols badges & self written slogans!!

Happy days indeed!!!

[kg redhead]

colin said:

My earliest memories of The Pistol's was from 1977..Jubillie year!! I was an eight year old shit kicker from a southern estate & they meant the world to me...they still do!! I was considered an outcast at school for having my parker covered in Pistols badges & self written slogans!!

Happy days indeed!!!

did u ever have a moheican???

[colin]

I attempted one in my early teenage years..It was a bit of a dissapointment...I will post some pictures one day

[kg redhead]

maybe you could enhance them with photoshop