Rotten

by John Lydon

  LYDON: We were terrified doing these gigs because of the fear of it all being totally new. It worked a lot better this way than if we would have spent six months to a year learning our craft in a studio, then coming out and just being musos. We had to learn our skills from a live perspective. It wouldn’t have worked any other way. That’s what was wrong with most of those bands then—and still is. They were too much into the perfection of it all.

  COOK: There were a lot of gigs where once we started playing, they just wanted to get us off.

  LYDON: Usually for an opening act, the worse they are, the better it was for the headliner. In our case, as bad as we were, it was too fucking good by far. We had something none of these people had—energy and sheer, brazen honesty. We couldn’t give a fuck what people thought because we felt what we were saying was much more relevant. And that sometimes became a threat. We showed up at a couple of Andrew Logan’s parties. We had done a gig there some months before. The second time I turned up was to a party I wasn’t invited to. Malcolm rang me up at my old man’s to invite me while I was in the pub across the street. When I got to the party, Malcolm had since decided it was a bad idea inviting me because Vivienne decided she didn’t want me there. I didn’t know what it was all about, but they wouldn’t let me in. I was considered too uncouth, so I kicked up a huge stink. Something was going on between Malcolm and Vivienne. They thought my image should be one of mystery. That was fucking shit: Malcolm rang me up, got me there, and then I was told that I wouldn’t be let in. He wouldn’t even come to the door.

  COOK: The Marquee Club gig in February of 1976 with Eddie and the Hot Rods was a lot of nervous energy. They thought it would be a good idea to put the Pistols on the bill because they thought we had something in common.

  LYDON: From what I could gather, Eddie and the Hot Rods were showcasing for a record company that night. They knew we had a reputation, and they wanted us there. “Sure you can use our monitors.” Since we never had our own stage monitors, we had to rely on others for their equipment, and if they bugger you about, that’s the end for you. If you can’t hear what you’re doing, you’re fucked. But when it came to the actual gig, somehow the monitors were turned off. I call that industrial sabotage or a major mistake and didn’t take kindly to it. That’s when things started to go sadly wrong for Eddie and the Hot Rods. I put a mike stand through one of their monitors.

  COOK: Bands like Eddie and the Hot Rods thought there was going to be some great movement, so they wanted everyone to huddle together into this cozy little alliance. Being totally selfish, we weren’t into that at all. It was all the other bands that had this idea of a great big movement together.

  LYDON: Eddie and the Hot Rods to me was everything that was wrong with live music. Instead of fighting all this big stadium nonsense, they would narrow themselves into this tiny clique by playing in pubs. It was all about denim and plaid shirts, tatty jeans and long droopy hair. Looking awful and like nothing … looking like Nirvana! That was the look then. It really annoys me now fifteen or so years later when these bands say they were influenced by the Sex Pistols. They clearly can’t be. They missed the point somewhere. You don’t wear the tattered uniform of blandness—not if you’re interested in the Pistols at all. It’s all about being yourself! Be a fucking individual. As a band, the Sex Pistols were all completely different as people—the way we dressed, everything. We didn’t give up our individuality just to be a Sex Pistol. That’s what made the Pistols, that difference.

  HOWARD THOMPSON: What occurred was a significant power shift that exists today, explaining such bands as Fugazi, the Riot Grrrl movement, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile … a strong political awareness now going on with bands to the point where they’re sometimes able to do it all themselves, creating their own labels, charging only five dollars entry to every gig they play, keeping the costs down so their audience can follow them on their own terms. That part of the Pistols revolution stuck.

  COOK: In April of 1976 we supported the 101ers, who eventually turned into the Clash. They were another pub rock band like Eddie and the Hot Rods, Ducks Deluxe, and Rugalator. That’s what was going on at the time. We didn’t want anything to do with them. We wanted to break out and be better and bigger. We didn’t like that “please like us and have a good time” attitude. We also didn’t want to play in pubs for the rest of our lives. People used to climb on stage, jump up and down, and fuck with us—

  LYDON: Usually because they thought they could do it better. Our fan base did start early, though it started quite small. The first tours, particularly in northern England, were a real nightmare for us. Up north they really couldn’t take us; they tended to be backward and primitive. We’re talking way up north, places like Barnsley, Scunthorpe. All these gigs ended in fights. Any kind of response from an audience, even if it’s hateful and resentful against you, is better than mild applause. Some of the best gigs the Pistols ever did was in front of stone-cold silence. We would headline shows in northern England discos where some Billy Choogleys were use ta’ their “blooody pop songggs.” Then out we’d come, and they wouldn’t connect it at all. It was an amazing feeling—hearing complete silence after kicking up a filthy racket on stage. It can be the loudest sound on God’s earth. Nothing. Not even chitchat at the bar. Stone-cold dead silence.

  HOWARD THOMPSON: The Pistols fans wanted to bring down the walls and change the face of music. So here I was, watching all this stuff going down. There were constant fights. I’d never seen any band jump off a stage and join in on fights before. That was novel. On stage, the Sex Pistols were pretty damn good! John was fairly nasty—ranting, spitting up phlegm between songs and being cynical. He would try to cajole the audience into reacting to him. He was like a red rag to a bull. The fabulous thing about it was there were only seventy-five to a hundred people in the audience.

  COOK: They wouldn’t come up and tell us what they thought after the gig. We would come out to the coach after the show, tired, and find our van’s tires slashed.

  LYDON: They had a “cockney bastards” approach to us. We certainly didn’t encourage it. I wasn’t aware of that nonsense. That wasn’t why I was in this band. The Sex Pistols were never into divisionism in England. You must bear in mind that it reflects on the moods of Britain at that time, very provincial in its attitudes. One town would absolutely hate everyone from the next town and so on. It was as if they were warring states. We were seen as filthy, uppity Londoners rolling in money. “You must be fucking rich, you must!” Why? “You come from London.”

  Nobody was turning up at the northern gigs because we were new outside of London. You’d see thirty of the local yobs behaving badly and throwing things at the stage. I remember Scarborough because we were told that the local casuals were going to come and duff us up. They threw a few glasses, and of course there was no security. I remember standing on stage and challenging them, but they wouldn’t come up to the stage.

  COOK: Malcolm would just set us up with a van and send us up north—just us and Nils Stevenson, the tour manager, driving. We set up our own gear. Looking back, I realize it was a bad move to do those gigs. We took nothing but grief from the local people, plus the van and the equipment would always break down.

  LYDON: What was the alternative? We played in an awful club in Manchester where there was a bunch of City and United football supporters. The Lesser Free Trade Hall was quite well attended. The Buzzcocks were fine, if not just a bit laughable. They were just starting themsleves. But they weren’t punk imitators; they had their own thing going, which was perfectly fine. I loved them because they did an old Captain Beefheart song. I thought Ha! That will do nicely. The bad joke before the gig was giving a banana and two apples to Pete Shelley!

  COOK: Ian Curtis and Morrissey turned up. The Buzzcocks played support. Howard Devoto phoned up Malcolm and got us the gig. It showed us that there were some people outside London who had seen us and hooked on to what we were doing. We always did all right for equipment. That was n
ever a problem. Steve was very good at procuring. Before John was in the band we used to steal a lot of our equipment. We were so poor, we couldn’t afford to buy. There was no other way we could have been in a band or learned to play. Steve was a kleptomaniac at the time, and money was always too scarce to spend on things like equipment. He actually made a living out of being a burglar. We were sorted out quite well. Even drum sets. We did get caught once or twice.

  LYDON: That impressed me right from the start. I thought this was really tough and hard, bleeding criminals rehearsing above a pub. I’d run through it. Hmm. This mike came from … I could catalog things like cymbals. It thrilled me. I thought it was hilarious. There was nobody else doing stuff like that. Nobody had that kind of gall and energy. Anything that wasn’t nailed down would be in the back of our van. A week after the Hot Rods show, we did a High Wycombe gig opening for Screaming Lord Sutch. That was one of the funniest gigs ever, seeing that fool come out of his coffin. We were all at the back of the hall in fits. They got upset because they said we’d broken some of their equipment. They wouldn’t give us a sound check or any space on stage to put up a drum kit. It’s still that way now; you can usually expect a bad attitude from the bands that had to put up with it before you came along.

  COOK: John would stand at the edge of the stage and mess up the people’s hair in the audience. It’s lucky he didn’t get killed because he wouldn’t back down. It would get frightening. There were fights at all of the gigs. John used to instigate them. He’d get that attitude from the crowd, an aggressive attitude that worked both ways. They would ask, “Why have you got short hair?” They couldn’t understand, and they would get jealous, then violent.

  LYDON: When you’re on stage, no matter how much you don’t like violence and all that, it is your stage. No one is going to tell you to get off—it’s as simple as that. If you give up and back away, then give up completely. My role was purely defensive. If you don’t like what I’m screaming and yelling about or the way I’m doing it, then go to the bar.

  COOK: The thing that came out of the High Wycombe gig was that some guy named Ron Watts saw us and we got the residency at the 100 Club. He promoted the Lord Sutch gig and also promoted the 100 Club on Oxford Street. He liked the chaos of it all, and he thought the madness would be great. Ron Watts was an old mod. We reminded him of that scene, but much more severe. We ended up getting banned at the 100 Club because they stopped doing punk gigs altogether. There was too much violence that wasn’t actually involved with us. Sid shattered a glass off a pillar, and a girl got cut in the eye. The press made a big thing out of it.

  LYDON: I never, ever found out the truth about that incident. You know how they run the press in the U.K.—the hearsay aspect and that’s it. What is said first is what counts. No girl was ever shown anywhere. The whole thing could have been complete nonsense. Chuck a couple of names in and see if the shit hits the fan. There was the legend about those two Shanes and how he bit her ear off. It was total rubbish. It was a lie. Shane MacGowan used to come and see us play all the time. He’d be down in the front totally pissed out of his head in his Union Jack T-shirt. When he joined the Pogues, he traded it in for a tricolor. So funny. Just like that—instant nationality swap. Drink was an important part of the Pistols because a large part of the audience would get so pissed.

  Booze was cheap; so was amphetamine sulfate. There was always a lot of speed and booze about. It was a nice marriage at the time. You would be up and down—in a deep state of confusion about everything. I suppose that was the best way to enjoy a punk festival. But that’s when the imitation bands would start to throw glasses, overdo it, and try to out-Pistol the Pistols. Fans let you down. They don’t get it. Sid really let us down, too. He didn’t get it, either. He was constantly trying to out-Rotten Rotten or out-Cook Cook or out-Jones Jones in every aspect. It was ludicrous.

  COOK: Malcolm figured Sid had the right image. In the early days, when he did rehearse, Sid was all right. He learned the songs quickly and could play. I think some of the best Pistols gigs were when Sid first joined the band. He was keen to learn the bass.

  LYDON: Sid used to have a very good image, where he would stand still in the corner, just play and look moody. It worked. Later on he ended up walking into the middle of things on stage, standing in front and forgetting the tunes. I think the only reason Sid really stayed in the group was Malcolm. Steve and Paul didn’t want it to continue. I know I didn’t. I felt deeply ludicrous because here was my mate, I was the one who put him forward. I didn’t know what a useless monster he would turn into.

  COOK: The March 1976 gigs at the 100 Club were good because they were regular gigs. All these other bands would start up because it was a place for punk bands. We relied on it each week as a regular place. I suppose that’s what actually started the punk movement going. We were shocked when we used to turn up for the gigs and there would be a queue right around the corner with these wild, crazy-looking people. We didn’t know where they came from. The gig would be sold out. We must have been doing something right. We used to play every Tuesday. So many people wanted to have a go at punk by this time. Everybody was just getting anything together just to play down there.

  BILLY IDOL: Johnny wore a red jumper with slits up the sides and little sunglasses. Steve Jones was really skinny and had the tits T-shirt on. I was always impressed with Glen Matlock because he was a great bass player. Despite all the things they said about him, I thought the way he brought out the rhythm was fantastic.

  HOWARD THOMPSON: I happened to be in the bar one night talking with some friends having a small discussion about punk music, which at the time was just about ready to break. My point was that in all kinds of music, there has to be certain amount of discipline. Upon hearing the word discipline, this person who was standing a yard or two behind me swung round and said, “Discipline? You don’t need discipline, you fucking wanker!”

  It was Johnny Rotten, to whom I said, “Well, you might not need discipline, but for this to go any farther, somebody’s going to have to organize things and bring together all this excitement in a proper and appropriate fashion so that everybody can enjoy it.”

  We bantered for a couple of minutes, then Johnny went away while I felt sheepish thinking that I sounded a bit like my old man. So I shut up and carried on drinking. That was our first meeting.

  LYDON: On Wednesday they’d have the Lord’s Prayer, which was Marco Pirroni, Sid, and Siouxsie. I named them the Flowers of Romance. They were followers, copyists. But we were very happy with that 100 Club crowd because at that time there was no punk cliché uniform. It wasn’t wall-to-wall studded leather jackets and Mohawks. That came a long time later.

  COOK: They were mainly a crowd that had been going to gay clubs—exsoul boys and girls, ex–Roxy Music fans, ex-Dave Bowie and Glam rock types, anyone who wasn’t a college student. It’s hard to explain this, but college students at the time were so fucking snobby. They were like the royal family in their attitude. They became the upwardly mobile yuppies of later generations. That’s the way these college kids used to behave during the Sex Pistols era. They were so damned self-righteous at their hippie festivals, never connecting with the general population. They knew how to save the world, and we had better learn to appreciate it! It’s funny because Malcolm, being an ex-student, was the source of a lot of antagonism. He and his Jamie Reids. This was my argument with them. They would try to run the Pistols in a student union way. Again, they would form a decision and attempt to tell us what they thought we should be doing. Then we wouldn’t do it, we would do what we normally did, but they took the credit at the end of the day. We could have gone on without them from the word go. That’s what really pisses me off about those people who were involved. They have such a conceited opinion of themselves involving the Sex Pistols. They really think it wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t there. Jamie Reid, Boogie Tiberi, Malcolm, Dave Goodman—all one of them. If they were so important, why weren’t they out there
on the stage—or, for that matter, on the streets—taking all the shit? Yes, there was always tension in the band because none of us ever expected to be in a band together when we left school. Trying to make a go of a band was the last thing on our minds. It was all a bit strange for us. Plus there was the most animosity between John and Glen.

  LYDON: By the end of April of 1976 I had a huge row with Glen at the Nashville. I could never bear Glen’s simplistic attitude about everything. He just wanted to be nice and not offend anyone. That’s not the way around solving problems. If you’re going to play that kind of a game, you’re never going to get anywhere. Nothing is concluded, and you look wishy-washy. This is the man who would ring up his mother on tour after a gig to tell her it all went nice. It used to deeply annoy me. It was just not on. I wouldn’t call my old man. He’d find out what he wanted to.

  COOK: He soon found out all about us when he saw “The Bill Grundy Show.”

  LYDON: Both Nashville gigs were horrid. During the first one there was an argument with Glen and a squabble in the audience. There was supposedly a fight, this big symbol of early punk rock violence. It was just a load of people falling all over the place. Vivienne smacked some girl. It was nonsense—fisticuffs and handbags, really. The pictures of that fight make it look a lot worse than it was. It was a bunch of silly bitches squabbling. There was an argument between Paul and me at the second gig. I don’t know what we were arguing about, but we were really yelling and screaming at each other. Then the curtain went up, and we stopped fighting and went on with it. That second gig was particularly bad. When the curtain went down, I went over to Malcolm and said, “I quit. I’ve had enough.” I had no money. I had nowhere to live. I was fucked off with it. The money from gigs did go for expenses. There just wasn’t enough of it. It’s hardly worth being a bitch about since we’re talking twenty to fifty quid here at most. But sometimes these clubs would be full and the bars would do very well. We would just go in, play, then leave. I had to go home on the fucking subway with half the audience—not the big star trip I had in mind. Seriously, it was damned fucking dangerous to be doing shit like that with our reputations. I would have thought a cab or a lift home would not have been an impossibility. There were plenty enough people who had cars.