by John Lydon
COOK: Ultimately we needed a record deal, so we proceeded to record a series of demos.
LYDON: Dave Goodman got into recording demos with us because we used his PA and monitor board with his mate, Kim, around July of 1976. They were two chaps from North London who had hand-built his gear, and it was in their front room. That’s how they got involved. Making demos became a bargain-basement opportunity with the people we went on tour with. We had previously cut three tracks, including “Problems” and “Pretty Vacant” with Chris Spedding. By then it was very important we eventually get signed. Abso-fucking-lutely. You cannot exist without that guarantee of cash. We had to have records on the market. Remember, a lot of these imitator punk bands had already been signed while we weren’t. The Damned and a couple of outfits claiming themselves as punks were already banging out records. It was very important for the Pistols to get a record out there to combat that stuff because we could have just fallen by the wayside in the same way the Pretty Things did way back in the sixties with the Rolling Stones. Everybody remembers that the Pretty Things were better than the Stones, but they didn’t get the records out there. That’s the point. You have to make your next move and be very decisive.
COOK: Malcolm was in a terrible fix, and he knew we needed a deal. We wanted a proper record company to compete with all the bands we were slagging off. We also had to get a good producer.
HOWARD THOMPSON: Many people were generally frightened of getting involved with the Sex Pistols. While they were without a deal, they were creating headlines in the papers just by the way they acted—whether they were insulting figures of authority or throwing up in an airport. They weren’t the kind of band you could take home to mother.
LYDON: The fix for Malcolm was to get a record company interested, period. He would receive absolute insults. CBS threw him out of the building while we waited across the street. It was quite clear from the start that the last thing we ever wanted was to sign with one of those small indie labels. Then we would be back down into pub rock land again and we’d never get out. What finally sold us to the labels was through all the put-downs, they would come to the gigs and see these audiences they could not recognize from any place else. That eventually became the selling point, and that always will be. If you’re playing the same old songs in front of the same old crowds, you’ll get nowhere. You can’t manipulate crowds and fill it up with a bunch of haberdashery specials. It has to happen naturally. No Situationist scheme will do. You can’t buy a public until after you’ve made a record. Look what EMI did with us—potentially the biggest band in the universe. They froze. They were used to bands in a Rick Wakeman and Steve Harley manner. It was safe, all about units. Adverse publicity was a new thing to them. They had never known anything like us. You’d think they would since they claimed to have marketed Elvis Presley records. EMI dug their own grave with the money they threw at us.
COOK: The old boys couldn’t handle the outrage that came with the Bill Grundy TV episode. People like John Reid at the Old Grey Whistle Test would get pressure from somebody else on top. That was it, and we were off. The A&R department at EMI didn’t want us off. It was all the bourgeoisie businessmen. I didn’t know fuck-all about them and their multicorporate organization. But they couldn’t handle us, and it wasn’t us who wanted to leave.
LYDON: One thing we absolutely understood: if we signed on a small label, we were going to be promoted and pressed in a small way. Not enough records to not enough stores. If you’re going to make change in this world, you have to attack from the inside out, and not be on the outside pinpricking your way in. We all turned down Virgin early on because of their smallness. They wanted us right from the start, but they didn’t have any money. At the time, all they had were a few stores. It would have been a stupid move to have signed with Virgin early on. It wouldn’t have worked. They needed to sell a few more Mike Oldfield records to be able to afford what we had in mind.
COOK: “Anarchy” got good reviews and was generally well received. It was withdrawn by EMI straight away, so it was all over in five minutes. It entered the charts at about twenty-eight, then out. The Grundy incident happened immediately after the record’s release. EMI had us on there to promote the single. We were getting ready to go on tour at the time.
LYDON: We were supposed to go on and be nice boys. Grundy must have had a drinking problem. Steve was goaded into swearing after something I mumbled. Grundy turned to me and asked, “What were you saying?” and Steve just jumped on it. Bill Grundy was a fat, sexist beer monster who knew nothing about us and shouldn’t have been interviewing us in the first place. All we did was point that out. All he was interested in was the tits. A few of the Bromley contingent came with us and were in the background. It was the Banshee’s first TV appearance. A Rent-a-Crowd for the Pistols. I remember we all danced around during the closing theme song.
COOK: Grundy had a problem—us. It was an exciting time.
LYDON: Except when finances were never resolved. We were young and asked to sign a contract without being furnished with separate legal representation, not good business by anyone’s standards. Malcolm was practicing a fifties kind of managerial policy. But there we were in the seventies. Then there I was in the eighties finally catching up with him. It’s almost poetry. That whole court thing was a nightmare. I remember one time jokingly saying, “Well, if push comes to shove and we all have to go to jail, I know I can survive it. But I know Malcolm can’t.” It eats you up. I was trying to keep PiL together as a band. Because of the lack of money—a situation I was well used to—it went on and on and on.
COOK: It’s surprising there was any money left at the end for anyone to get—with all the receivers and lawyers.
SEGMENT 08:
EVERY MISTAKE IMAGINABLE
Some visualize the Pistols era in shades of black and white. It wasn’t. Actually, the colors I envision are neon or army dirt green with fluorescent pink—anything that would annoy. Maybe I’m an intellectual after all, but I’ve always thought that colors, like words, like intonations, affect people.
BOB GRUEN: They did things in pink, green, and yellow Day-Glo. I found that childlike, bright, and happy—they were the colors little kids liked. Contrary to popular belief, the Pistols didn’t use a lot of blacks and dark blues. The graphics were well organized, and in America we hadn’t seen designs like that outside of an occasional band logo. In England, much more so than here, the record companies picked up on the wild and loud artwork.
There’s no such thing as a completely original thought. It’s not possible. You regurgitate one way or another. We took everything from the sixties we could and abused it. It was a free-for-all, and it still is to this day. Some of us dressed down, which was seen as dressing up—but never flared Levi’s or tie-dyed shirts. It was a youthful film noir look, but colourized. We were sixteen or seventeen, trying to dress smart and making it up as we went along, absolutely pretentious. Whatever you thought Cary Grant would have worn, that would be nice. If you looked appalling in it and matched it with plastic sandals, you didn’t know any better. I’ve always had this aversion to wearing denim. I had one pair of jeans that I borrowed from Paul Cook when my pants fell apart at the arse. I was forced to wear jeans for a week, and it was awful. The only other pair I had were straight legs, which caused howls of derision in the council flats. You see, flares were the order of the day.
HOWARD THOMPSON: People walking about in garbage bags, safety pins and syringes hanging off their epaulets, images of naked cowboys, photos of women’s breasts on their T-shirts. This was all very new! It was also inflammatory and immediately demanded a reaction. Either jail me or fuck off. Music and fashion had became a direct challenge.
When you see film footage of the Pistols live, visually we were quite stunning. It wasn’t drab. That was the shock of it all. Bondage outfits. Slashed-up suits. Torn up mohair jumpers. Every other band was a dowdy T-shirt, blue denims, and the acoustic guitar. The Sex Pistols were gaudiness incarnat
e. Musical vaudeville. Evil burlesque.
CAROLINE COON: I was able to watch objectively because I’m not from the Tom Wolfe school of journalism that puts yourself into the center of an article. For a while I was able to silently watch John as a young artist at work. The interesting part was sheer talent versus lack of training. The nerve it took to get out on stage and perform without any of the training that, say, a dancer would have. Without any technique, your talent struggles across your nerves. I thought John’s performances—which, of course, he would trivialize—were heroic. Here was the courage of a young performer without technique who had something really interesting to say. I don’t mean to belittle him in saying that he was a natural, charismatic figure, because I think that everything John was doing was very well thought out. I admired the way he was styling himself, the thought that went into how he presented his persona and the wonderful layers at work. I loved his talent for writing, which was a combination of nerves and ambition. Here was somebody, nineteen, writing poems. That’s what makes someone an artist. It’s what moves you. When you see that kind of performance, and the dynamic that’s going on—the electricity between the courage it takes to go on stage and to express yourself, and to learn your technique—it’s riveting to watch. It’s emotional. It moves you. The Pistols had a mythical kind of macho diffidence that said you don’t need technique, all you need is to strum a few chords. I think John had a precise idea of what kind of poet he wanted to be.
The sinister, kidnap letter graphics of our gig flyers and singles sleeves really threatened people. We used what was around. There were a lot of ransom letters and terrorist kidnappings on the news at the time. Malcolm, Julien Temple, and Jamie Reid would love to take all of the credit. Steve, Paul, and Glen showed no interest whatsoever in the Pistols’ graphic designs. I’d like to take all the credit for it, but to be honest it was a combination of everyone. None of these people had final and total say. To me the presentation was as important as the content. I would always insist on being in on where the direction of the graphic look was going. This used to drive Malcolm spare. Not so Jamie Reid or Bernie Rhodes.
BOB GRUEN: I found the Sex Pistols’ graphic presentation interesting, striking, and quite different. There was fear in those kidnapping/ransom note logos. At the time, it was almost frightening seeing the band’s name written as it would be in a threatening letter with everything safety-pinned. Having grown up in a Jewish community, I was a bit sensitive about the swastikas. They were verboten and scary, so it took me a while to realize the Pistols were using it to create fear as opposed to starting a Nazi movement. Or maybe they were poking fun at fear since they probably hated the Nazis as much as they hated everything else. Maybe they were merely trying to get a rise out of their fans.
Jamie and Bernie were quite talented in the arts, and if anybody got me into that aspect of it from the start, it was Bernie Rhodes. He was important to me in so many ways. When I first joined the Pistols, Bernie would often take me aside and tell me, “Go with it. Honest, it will be good. You’ll get there.” He would indicate to me where the problems with the Pistols would be in the future. He would sow a seed and then wait to see if I would pick up on it. After the first couple of rehearsals, he’d say, “Now you have to start thinking about how you’re going to be presented to the world. Who’s going to take your photographs? What about album covers?” That was the way before we were anywhere near that stage with the Pistols. Through Bernie, I learned to get involved early on.
CHRISSIE HYNDE: I didn’t think Bernie had any ideas. I know a lot of people credit him for the punk thing, but not me. Obviously he was in competition with Malcolm, and he wanted to get in there and do something.
Bernie Rhodes got on quite well with Glen Matlock, but Glen was an art school student with average talent. Matlock couldn’t paint very well. He didn’t like oppositions. His paintings would tend to look murky gray, and the colors wouldn’t stand out from each other.
It was laughable when Glen was in the band. When Steve Jones would masturbate, he’d pour hot water down a hollowed French loaf, chuck some raw liver down it, and then fuck it. The hot water would cook the liver, and I supposed his dick cooked it, too. Then he’d come in it and set it aside. I would turn up and Steve would say, “I’m sorry, I’ve done it again. Should we make Glen Matlock a sandwich?” I particularly remember how he used to love how soft the bread was.
I asked Malcolm about the Beatles when we first started. He told me what amazed him about the Beatles was that they could actually play and keep a sense of rhythm and order. You could hear them clearly.
JOHN GRAY: Malcolm hadn’t a clue about music. He’s totally tone deaf. Malcolm may have been a good “thrower together” of ideas, but his jukebox at the Sex shop was indicative of what he was really into—either kitsch, camp, or nostalgia. Phil Spector. He had a mess of musical tastes. I’ll never forget when I was deejaying at Screen on the Green for the Pistols gig, he tried to get me to play old fifties ballads and sixties crap. We were playing Yoko Ono, dub, and Irish jigs; over-the-top stuff. He would come up with his pile of scratched forty-fives—Johnny Ray or stuff like that.
People in London were used to more chaotic-sounding bands like the Pretty Things. That was something no London band at that time had. When you think about it, the Rolling Stones could never have taken off if the Beatles hadn’t written some songs for them. There’s a lot to be said for that; people are quite boring, and they do like good tunes. That will always confound me. I’ve always preferred the raw edge, the racket. A good tune is just a good tune, it’s neither here nor there. I’m not interested anymore once I understand it.
I never felt Malcolm and I were ever in synch with the Sex Pistols. I never, ever liked Malcolm as a friend. I always thought he was a bit of an operator. There was never a feeling of camaraderie or teamship. You could never sit at a bar with Malcolm, because he wouldn’t buy his rounds. He wouldn’t buy sod all. He would never put his hand in his pocket—not ever! He’s as tight as skin on God’s earth.
There was always this controversy about the Sex Pistols and New York’s Ramones. Who came from whom? Yes, there was a Ramones album out at the time, but they were all long-haired and were of no interest to me. I didn’t like their image, what they stood for, or anything about them. They had absolutely nothing to do with life in Britain. Sid liked them. But then Sid liked anything that he thought was stylish. The Ramones fitted in well with Sid’s visions of New York nightclubs—you could go and get fucked up on drugs while maintaining a healthy existence.
CHRISSIE HYNDE: The Ramones were the only American band that the English punks recognized. Sid learned how to play guitar playing with the Ramones albums for two or three days. He fucking loved the Ramones! Few punks recognized the rest of the American bands while the Clash element, the more art school types, liked Patti Smith. I don’t think Rotten and those guys had too much interest in her. They probably saw Patti as an old hippie.
I only found out about Richard Hell when he came over to England after the Pistols’ failed “Anarchy in the U.K.” tour. I saw him play at the Camden Palace, and the audience was giving him a terrible time. They were throwing stuff, and I walked on and said, “Let him play!” Then they stopped, listened, and didn’t like him anyway. We were being bombarded with this nonsense that we were imitating New York. It was not true at all. There was a connection with Malcolm, because he had something to do with the New York Dolls. I didn’t know that when the Pistols were forming. I couldn’t give a second toss about it.
It’s funny when people do things for the wrong reasons—for instance, when the gobbing craze started after I used to spit off stage. Nobody realized they were imitating a physical illness, not a political stance. I’ve spat like that all my life because of very bad sinuses and a phlegm problem. It also comes quite natural, particularly when you’re on stage and you’re ripping your tonsils apart through every song. So you just gob it on the stage. But the sheep out there who love to bleat do
likewise. Maybe if I’m feeling particularly spiteful and depressed, I’ll slash my fake plastic wrists and see how many followers I could take with me.
It was very unlike working-class kids to be doing the things we were doing just before the Pistols. Why are the working class so angry, lazy, and scared of education? Why are they so scared of learning and stepping outside of their clearly defined class barriers?
CHRISSIE HYNDE: The class system is what punk was all about. I never quite understood that because I’m basically a classless being.
The Brits love wallowing in their misery, I have to say it. They love their phone system not working. They love British Rail being as goddamned awful as it is. It’s the joke of Europe, the scandal of the world. Inefficiency helps them moan their way through life.
“How was your day, dear?”
“Oh, it was awful!”
“Must have had a good time then.”
Have you ever noticed that there’s always too much weather in England? It’s either too hot or too cold. It rains, or it doesn’t rain. They’re never happy. There’s no such fucking thing. They love to see their idols and stars take a good kicking from the press. Everybody gets their turn. They build you up to tear you down, then throw you away like used tissue paper.