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| origin/band history | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| in 1972, paul cook and steve jones, longtime friends, formed a band with the 'famous' wally nightingale. wally played guitar, steve sang and paul was the drummer. as they went on, they became frequent customers to malcolm mclaren's shop on the king's road, let it rock, which sold teddy boy clothes. they became friends with mclaren, and soon met glen matlock, who played bass. because they had so much equipment that steve (and paul, but mainly just steve) had stolen, some of it from david bowie's ziggy farewell concert, they started getting serious about what they were doing, and began pestering malcolm to manage them; because he knew a lot of people in the music industry. he said he would be interested if they got rid of wally and steve picked up the guitar and got a singer. this was in 1975, and, as luck would have it, another visitor to malcolm's shop (newly renamed sex, it sold rubber and leather fetish wear) was walking down the king's road wearing a tee shirt that said 'i hate pink floyd'. he was spotted by malcolm's friend bernie rhodes, and asked to come to a pub to meet the band. he agreed, and went, bringing along a friend. they went back to malcolm's shop and gave the singer an audition to alice cooper's "i'm eighteen," and he moved like a psychotic belly dancer. steve looked at his teeth, exclaiming, "you're fucking rotten!", and the band had a singer: johnny rotten. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| the group was appalled at rotten's appearance: torn clothes, safety-pinned together. as strange as it seemed, they began dressing similarly, although they always had their own fashion (steve contributed the hanky on the head), sometimes buying their clothes from mclaren's shop. it's a myth that malcolm brought everyone together and orchestrated the whole thing. he helped get it rolling, but the band made it happen. anyway. they started getting sporadic gigs, but they sounded pretty bad, since matlock was the only one who really knew how to play his instrument. steve and paul were still learning, and johnny didn't know the first thing about singing. they began to get a reputation and started playing in better clubs, where they built a following. their shows inspired bands like the clash and the slits to go out and form groups. the band signed to emi in 1976, and released their first single, "anarchy in the u.k.". in an effort to make them more widely known, after the band queen stepped out, the sex pistols were scheduled to appear on bill grundy's 'today' program, on december 1st, 1976. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| click here for more on THAT appearance... | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| what followed next was chaos. the band was fired from emi, and signed up to a&m records. however, as soon as they celebrated at the party, they woke up to find that they had been fired again. apparently, they overcelebrated. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| by this point, glen matlock had been kicked out of the band. "it had become like a cartoon-strip band, rather than a real rock'n'roll band that plays and does something for real," he said. the other members didn't much care for him anyway, and rotten says that matlock refused to play certain songs (ie "god save the queen") because his mother didn't like them. so, rotten brought in his good friend sid vicious. sid took lessons and learned quickly, not too bad for three-chord songs. he looked the part, but he more or less sucked at the bass. he had been a fan of the pistols, but, rotten said, "...being onstage with us, he couldn't cope." ANYWAY. after the group was fired from a&m, they were signed by virgin records, and finally got to record their latest song, "god save the queen"... | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ONWARD! | ||||||||||||||||||||||