Steve Jones - vocals
Wally Nightingale - guitar
Jimmy Mackin - organ
Steve Hayes - bass (replaced by Glen Matlock)
Paul Cook - drums
"Paul was in my class at school; Steve was in the lower class.
There were twelve hundred kids there; it was a hard school.
I started to try to get a group together. I had a guitar
and an amplifier, a Les Paul copy. After I left school,
I started to hang around with them, 'cos I liked Steve. He
was funny and things happened around him. He would make
them happen.
None of the others would have formed a group. Paul was heavily
into an apprenticeship as an electrician. Steve was going to
be a petty criminal, as simple as that. Stephen Hayes just ended
up being a punk, a weak personality. I was the only one who
could play." Wally Nightingale
Jones, Nightingale, and
Cook
"The biggest thing that got the ball rolling was that
Wally's dad was an electrician and he got this contract
to work on what is now Riverside Studios in Hammersmith:
it was an old BBC studio and he had to strip out what
wasn't needed. He got a set of keys cut, and it's got
this acoustic room in it which was one of the best in
Europe, so we started rehearsing there. Paul worked in
Watney's in Mortlake, so we had this bar set up. It
was like Aladdin's Cave. There was all this equipment,
which had been stolen, lying around." Glen Matlock
"We played Rod Stewart covers like "It's All
Over Now," "Twisting the Night Away," and Small Faces stuff
like "All Or Nothing" or "Sha-La-La-La-Lee." We pumped it
out, but Steve wasn't a good singer. He really wanted to be
like Rod Stewart, but there was something holding him back.
Steve was playing guitar behind my back. I was too naive to
think he wanted my position in the group. Malcolm was there,
and they just said, "You're not in the group any more." It was
very hard, I was so gutted that I didn't say anything. I even
went for a drink with them that evening. As far as they were
concerned, it was no reaction." Wally Nightingale
"Rotten looked really interesting, there was something about
him that magnetized you to him. He had all this punk stuff on, the
safety pins and everything. He was wild looking. His brothers
were boot boys. So he came down and I really didn't like him
at all, because of his attitude. He seemed like a real
prick." Steve Jones
Steve Jones
"I'd go to King's Road just to annoy people: it was necessary then. Long
hair was everywhere. What was there to do then? There was Soul boys and
Roxy Music kind of clothes: all that was naff, very weedy and not going
anywhere. People were very stiff and boring. I was bored with
everything.
Bernie Rhodes spotted me wearing my "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt and asked
me to come back that night to meet Malcolm, Steve, and Paul in the Roebuck
pub on King's Road. Malcolm asked me if I wanted to be in a band. I thought
they must be joking. It seemed very cynical, and that really pissed off
Steve. He was a bit thick, and he couldn't make out what I was talking about.
When the pub closed, it was Bernie who finally broke in and said, "Well,
let's go back to the shop and see if you can mime or sing to a few
songs." I couldn't sing a note. The only song I could cope with was Alice
Cooper's "Eighteen." I just gyrated like a belly dancer. Malcolm thought,
Yes, he's the one. Paul thought it was a joke and couldn't have cared less.
Steve was really annoyed because he instantly hated me. It was one of the
most bizarre meetings I ever had, and I never wanted to go through that
kind of nonsense ever again." John Lydon
"I had an eye, and my eye saw Rotten's ability to create an image
around himself. It was a gut feeling. I knew he had something, just
as I knew Jones had something. We had one rehearsal, and none of
them showed up because they thought Rotten was a c***. Right there,
first day. They never liked him. I liked Jones. I quite liked Cook, but
to me he was a bit boring. I brought Matlock into the group as an
anchor of normality. Rotten was just an arrogant little s*** who
thought he knew everything.
What brought us all together first was
that we hated what was on TV. Rotten thought being mindless was a
good pose. As soon as I got that sense, that he was terrified of
being in a group, of having to announce himself, I knew there was
a star there. I knew people would see that vulnerability and go for
it, and they did." Malcolm McLaren
