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TIM QUIRK: All right, welcome everybody.
I'm very proud--
my name's Tim Quirk.
I'm the head of global content programming for Android.
And I'm very happy and proud to be here with Steve Jones
from the Sex Pistols.
[APPLAUSE]
TIM QUIRK: All right, so Steve and the Sex Pistols don't
really need much of an introduction.
But what's really interesting to note I think, is that this
band, insanely influential, genuinely revolutionary band,
put out basically four singles and one album in just a little
over two years?
STEVE JONES: Uh, yeah.
TIM QUIRK: All right.
And it had a massive world-shattering impact.
So we're going to talk about that album today, because it's
coming up in a 35th anniversary reissue.
Somehow they turned it into a four disc set.
STEVE JONES: Box set.
TIM QUIRK: I don't quite know how that works.
STEVE JONES: In one album.
TIM QUIRK: Yeah.
We'll figure out how they did that.
But I figured we should rewind a little bit, and start at
something like the beginning.
So I want to talk a little bit about how the band formed,
what happened before the album got made, and
then the album's impact.
STEVE JONES: OK.
TIM QUIRK: So, basically the band started as your and Paul
Cook's band, The Strand, right?
That was in the early '70s?
STEVE JONES: Yeah.
That was kind of just goofing around.
I acquired a bunch of musical equipment, and gave the drums
to Paul Cook, because he was my best friend.
And I've known Paul Cook, the drummer, since I was like 10.
And we had a couple of other guys from school who played
keyboards, and a bass player.
None of us could play a note, by the way.
And they kind of went to the wayside.
And me and Paul kind of carried on
a little bit longer.
There was another guy called Wally, Wally Nightingale.
He was the Pete Best of the Sex Pistols.
He could actually play a little bit of guitar.
And I was singing at the time.
And I didn't want to sing.
But I was just going along with it.
And it got to a point where it was just
me, Paul, Glen Matlock--
who used to work at Malcolm
McLaren's shop on the weekend--
and Wally.
That was the four of us.
And at that point--
we actually did one show on the Kings
Road, at Salter's Cafe.
And I was terrified.
And I was singing.
And we did about five songs.
And I hated it.
Singing wasn't for me.
And that's when Malcolm was getting involved.
And we originally were called QT Jones and the Sex Pistols.
I don't know what that means.
TIM QUIRK: I noticed you said you acquired some equipment.
You didn't say you bought some equipment.
STEVE JONES: You know what I mean.
TIM QUIRK: All right.
Well, tell them what you mean.
STEVE JONES: Huh?
TIM QUIRK: Tell them what you mean.
Where did you acquire it?
How did you acquire it?
STEVE JONES: I'm scared to tell them.
TIM QUIRK: I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations is up.
STEVE JONES: You think so?
TIM QUIRK: Yeah.
STEVE JONES: OK, in that case.
Well, I was a kleptomaniac when I was a teenager.
Through bad upbringing with my parents--
wasn't the best parents--
very poor working class, and I used to watch them steal, so I
kind of picked up the knack.
Plus, I enjoyed it.
It was like a buzz, too.
I went away to various homes.
One was in a place called Banstead.
It was in the country, south of London.
And I was there for a year and a half.
And I actually enjoyed it better than being at home.
They let us watch Top of the Pops.
Top of the Pops was a show once a week, where they showed
you the top 20 whatever was going on at the time.
And I was 15, or 16, or somewhere around there.
And I saw Roxy Music on there doing a song called "Virginia
Plane," and that changed my life, really.
I saw that and I'm like, that's what I want to be.
I want that.
Whatever that is, the glamour, and the cool, and the songs.
I mean obviously I'd seen Top of the Pops a million times
before that.
But for some reason, when Roxy Music did that song, that kind
was a turning point to me.
So when I go out of my rehabilitation
from being in Banstead.
I proceeded to steal a load of musical equipment.
And that was my connection to music.
It was kind of a perverted way of being closer to the band.
I wasn't so much stealing it because I wanted it to sell.
I just wanted to part of something they had.
It was kind of weird, but that was my best
thinking at the time.
And acquired way more than I needed of equipment.
And musical shops, by the way, many, many musicals shops I
broke into, which were a lot easier back in the early '70s.
They said they had alarms, but all the time I knocked them
in, nothing ever went off.
No one had cameras like now.
I couldn't break in here.
I'd be screwed in two minutes.
TIM QUIRK: So you said you didn't like singing.
So the band was looking for a singer.
And I've heard--
I don't know how much this is true--
I heard that Sylvain Sylvain was offered the gig, Richard
Hell was offered the gig, and Kevin Rowland, who later went
on to Dexy's Midnight Runners, actually auditioned.
STEVE JONES: As a singer?
TIM QUIRK: Yeah.
STEVE JONES: We never auditioned any of them guys.
TIM QUIRK: So tell me how you met Johnny.
STEVE JONES: Well, he used to go in the shop, Malcolm
McLaren's shop, which was a hang out for certain types.
It wasn't like any other shops that was on the
Kings Road at the time.
At the time it was basically shops where guys would wear
suits with flares and tashes.
That's what was going on the time.
And there was about three shops that wasn't like that.
There was Alkasura's, that sold clothes to like Marc
Bolan, like glamorous, glam clothes.
Granny Takes a Trip was owned by two American dudes.
It was a mess.
They were always shooting dope in the back.
I used to go in there so many times and them guys would be
in the back.
And literally you would just go, I'll have that, and I'll
have that, see you later.
And they had no idea.
Perfect.
Great, great clothes, though, at the time.
And then there was Malcolm's shop, which had various names.
Originally it was Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die.
Then it was Let It Rock.
Then it was Seditionaries or SEX--
I don't know what order.
I forget.
But it was one of them places, when it was Let It Rock, that
had couches in there and a jukebox.
And I used to hang out.
And I actually became friends with Malcolm McLaren way
before the band started.
And John was one of the guys who came in
there on the weekend.
And this is at the time when we had the Wally guy, me, and
we would be rehearsing.
And Malcolm started getting involved a little bit.
And we decided that I shouldn't sing, and I was
thrilled about that.
So I got pushed on guitar.
And then we auditioned singers.
And John was one of the guys I spotted coming in the shop
that he looked a lot different.
He had the green hair, short green hair.
And he had a "I Hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt.
It was a Pink Floyd t-shirt, but he'd put underneath it "I
hate."
And he had his own kind of thing going on, with safety
pins, and all that.
And he looked great.
I said we should try that guy out.
And we did.
And we actually auditioned him in the shop.
We made him sing along to the Alice Cooper "Eighteen." And
he was just taking the *** out of it.
But he definitely had something.
And we tried him out.
And it kind of worked straight away.
So we got rid of Wally, got me on guitar, and then we started
rehearsing.
TIM QUIRK: Set the scene in early '70s, mid '70s in
London, most people in the audience look old enough to
remember it.
But the milieu, just the economic situation, and what
was going on with the classes seems like it was so integral
to what you guys wound up becoming.
STEVE JONES: It's kind of like it is now.
TIM QUIRK: Explain that.
STEVE JONES: Well, back then in '75, there
was a lot of strikes.
There was a lot of people out of work.
And it was pretty grim in the country at the time.
Whether that was the reason, it was just a coincidence that
we kind of came along at that time-- we didn't come along
because, oh, look, everyone's out of work.
Let's start a band.
It wasn't like that.
It was just the timing.
And it was great.
I mean, I didn't really pay a lot of attention to all the
strikes, and all that stuff.
It never bothered me.
Because I always stole.
So I didn't have to get a job to feed myself.
TIM QUIRK: So now you've got--
STEVE JONES: I'm not proud of being a thief, by the way.
You're the one glamorizing it.
TIM QUIRK: I just asked you about it.
STEVE JONES: I don't steal anymore.
TIM QUIRK: All right.
So now you've got the heart of the band.
You've got Paul on drums, Glen on bass, you're playing
guitar, and Johnny singing.
It was Johnny Lydon originally.
Who dubbed him Johnny Rotten?
STEVE JONES: I did.
TIM QUIRK: And why was that?
STEVE JONES: Because of his teeth were rotten.
TIM QUIRK: See, the American conception is everybody's
teeth were rotten back then.
STEVE JONES: Well English people's teeth were rotten.
Well they were.
TIM QUIRK: But his were worse than most?
STEVE JONES: His were worst than most.
Yeah.
TIM QUIRK: What was the first song this band wrote?
STEVE JONES: Original song?
I think it was "Seventeen." It was called
"Lazy Sod," as well.
But that was a tune that was just a straightforward Buddy
Holly kind of tune, really.
And John just put his usual trademark lyrics on it.
It's not filler, but it's not the best song ever written.
TIM QUIRK: At what point did you write a song that you, or
everyone in the band was like, oh, wait a minute.
We've got something here.
STEVE JONES: I think "Anarchy" was the first one that we kind
of thought we had something going on.
"Anarchy in the UK."
TIM QUIRK: You had a quote at that time.
You said, "We're not into music.
We're into chaos." Tell me about that.
STEVE JONES: I remember, actually.
We did a show opening up for a band called Eddie and the Hot
Rods, at the Marquee, Wardour Street.
And we'd done about maybe five or six shows before then,
using my equipment.
TIM QUIRK: Your equipment?
STEVE JONES: My equipment.
And this was the first show we were opening up for this band.
And they actually had monitors.
We'd never had monitors before.
And we never sound checked.
We never had a roadie, anything.
And this band had been going a while.
They were part of this pub rock movement.
That was the thing that was happening.
There were all these bands, a circuit, all these bands would
play pubs and stuff.
And so John started singing.
And I think it was the first time he ever heard himself.
And he was terrified.
So he kicked one of the monitors in the stage, because
he didn't want to hear himself.
And then it started a big scuffle and the band, who we
were opening up for, was pissed off, and all that.
And it was just a big mess.
And then some guy came up to me afterwards, and asked me
that question.
And for some reason, I just said, "we're not into music.
We're into chaos." I don't know why I said that.
That's what it seemed like.
The gig, the show was kind of crazy.
And people didn't like us.
No one liked us in the beginning.
I've got to point that out.
I used to throw up sometimes because I was so nervous.
Because you didn't know what was going to
get thrown at you.
I mean, literally, that was what was going on.
TIM QUIRK: And yet very shortly, it wasn't too long
before wherever you guys went in England and played a show,
it seems like even if there weren't a lot of people in the
crowd, they all went off and formed their own bands.
STEVE JONES: So they say.
TIM QUIRK: Do you not believe them?
STEVE JONES: I don't know.
I mean, the 24 Hour Party People is a good example, when
we played the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester.
Supposedly Morrissey saw it.
Go on, you know the list.
TIM QUIRK: Buzzcocks, Joy Division and Morrissey was
apparently there.
STEVE JONES: Yeah.
So.
TIM QUIRK: And Marky Smith.
STEVE JONES: So there you go, you know.
TIM QUIRK: There's a lot of chaos and fighting
and stuff going on.
Malcolm McLaren and some other people were
trying to put this--
kind of say it's all part of--
recapitulating what the situationists had been doing
in the late '60s.
Did you're ever buy any of that?
STEVE JONES: No.
He was just trying to--
he had a big ego, Malcolm.
I like Malcolm.
He was a friend of mine.
But he was trying to rewrite history, like so many people
do after the fact.
I'm sure the Bible's got a lot of *** things in there.
You know what I mean?
Rewritten things.
I mean, who wrote it originally, the Bible?
Who knows, right?
But you know what I mean?
I mean everyone does it.
When you watch the Civil War on A&E, there's that guy.
He talked like he was there.
Me and Robert E. Lee, we did this, and blah, blah.
Everyone likes to try to put their twist on something
that's happened, and then go back and kind of quirk it to
make it look cool, and so on.
TIM QUIRK: So at the time, how much thought were you guys are
putting into what you were doing?
Did you have a goal?
STEVE JONES: No, we didn't.
There was no goal.
We were just a band.
With different lyrics, not the normal lyrics, and not the
normal aggression played.
Aggression, mainly a lot of people say, oh, we were angry.
I'm sure I was angry.
I didn't have a great upbringing.
But more of it was out of lack of knowing how to play.
When you don't know how to play you
tend to just go harder.
You know what I mean?
So I think that had a lot to do with it.
TIM QUIRK: I'm going to read you a quote.
This is from, I believe, I think it was Paul Nelson.
It was the Rolling Stone review of Never Mind the
*** when it first came out.
And there's two lines in it that really jumped out at me.
"Any theory of destruction as highfalutin as this also
contains the seeds of freedom, and even optimism.
Anyone who cares to hate this much is probably not a
nihilist but a moralist and a romantic as well." Does that
ring true to you?
STEVE JONES: There's a lot of big words in there, man.
Can you simplify that?
TIM QUIRK: He's basically saying, you might listen to it
and it sounds angry and hateful.
But it's actually optimistic.
And it's got a moral to it.
STEVE JONES: The album?
TIM QUIRK: You feel that way?
STEVE JONES: Yeah.
I think looking back on it 35 years later, I think it's just
a true album with no agenda.
For sure there was no agenda.
There was no agenda to, oh, let's get a
single on the charts.
Oh, let's do this, like so many bands do, then to now,
like a strategy with an album.
There was no strategy.
We had these songs.
We'd written them.
We'd been playing around in London in various places, not
many shows.
And it was time to record them.
And we just, there was no agenda at all.
And I think that's what's pure about it.
TIM QUIRK: It's always interesting to me because, I
was a 13- or 14-year-old kid in the
suburbs of New York City.
When I first heard the record, I was in junior high school.
Somebody played it at a party.
And I'd read a lot about punk rock, and I'd heard a lot
about punk rock.
But I hadn't heard any actual punk rock.
There was no internet.
There was barely college radio back then.
STEVE JONES: You had to work hard to be a fan back then.
Which is lacking now, by the way.
Sorry.
Go on.
TIM QUIRK: No, that's all right.
And when I first heard it, I remember expecting to hear
some otherworldly thing.
And I remember actually being vaguely disappointed.
It sounded great, but I said to my friend, I was like, this
is just rock and roll.
What's the big deal?
That was my initial impression, just as a kid in
the States.
But it still, even today, does sound blisteringly different
than anything else that was coming out at the time.
How do you achieve that?
STEVE JONES: What?
TIM QUIRK: Just the sound?
STEVE JONES: I don't know.
Yeah, it was just a rock and roll album.
But when we came to the States and we played down South, they
didn't see it as, oh, this is just a rock and roll album.
So many people have come up to me and said they were at our
last show at Winterland.
But they weren't there, really.
So years later, you usually get these
people come up to you.
Yeah, man, I'm a big fan, blah, blah, blah.
And they just weren't.
They probably hated us at that point, '78, '77
when it came out.
And it was different than what was going on at the time--
Boston, Journey, that's what was going on.
And Sex Pistols was a little bit different.
Don't get me wrong, now.
I am a fan of Journey and Boston.
For real.
TIM QUIRK: I believe you.
STEVE JONES: I used to sneak off closet Journey fan.
TIM QUIRK: To me there's always been two aspects to the
Sex Pistols.
And the bigger aspect is just everything that was going on
culturally around you guys.
And then, the music was almost smaller than that in a way.
Or at least it wasn't considered as much.
So I want to talk a lot about the music on the
record for a bit.
So start with, who's playing bass.
There's all kinds of conflicting reports.
At the time to record came out, Glen Matlock
had left the band.
Sid Vicious had joined.
But is he on the record at all?
STEVE JONES: Sid?
Sid is fumbling around underneath "God Save the
Queen" and "Bodies."
TIM QUIRK: OK.
STEVE JONES: And basically the whole album was played by me,
bass, "Anarchy in the UK" has Glen Matlock in it because we
recorded that before he got the boot.
TIM QUIRK: But everything else is you?
STEVE JONES: Yeah.
TIM QUIRK: And did you know how to play bass?
STEVE JONES: Nope.
TIM QUIRK: But you knew more-- you knew better than Sid?
STEVE JONES: Yeah.
I could go dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.
And that's basically all it is.
TIM QUIRK: You mentioned "Anarchy in the UK" before,
being the song where you felt things clicking.
So tell me a bit about that song, how it came together,
how you recorded it.
STEVE JONES: Well we initially recorded it--
could I get another one of these?
Thank you.
We had a guy when we went on the road called Dave Goodman.
He was our sound guy that we had.
See, we didn't have any guidelines to go by.
Because we'd never seen it before on the
other side of it.
So we rented this guy.
He was an old hippie.
And pot head, smoking all the time.
And he did our live shows, him and this other guy.
And then it came time to do some demos.
And we did these demos in this rehearsal room that I lived in
on Denmark Street in SoHo.
We acquired it, this--
they lived upstairs and we had the room downstairs.
We acquired it off a band called Badfinger.
We bought it off them.
I don't know if we bought it or we leased it.
So everything was done in there, all the writing, all
the rehearsing.
This album called Spun, that was our first demos.
We were experimenting.
On a track called "Submission," I'm literally
blowing through a teapot to make a bubble noise, to get a
bubbly effect.
It was all stuff like that.
Sonically, it sounded like demos.
And so we got the record deal with EMI.
And so we went to record "Anarchy," and we carried on
using this guy, Dave Goodman, who was still smoking 1,000
joints a day.
And we're in there, laying it down.
And this guy, we could never get this guy happy.
We did it 1,000 times.
No, no, you've got to do it more, more.
Finally, we said, you know what?
You're out of here mate.
We're going to get someone else.
He made us do it.
We didn't want to do it, because we liked him.
But he didn't know what he was doing.
So then it was time to pick a producer.
And I was a big fan of Roxy Music, like I said.
And the guy who produced Roxy Music was a guy
called Chris Thomas.
So it was like, let's get this guy.
He's good.
And then that's what happened.
And this engineer called Bill Price, they got hold of us.
We went in this studio, Wessex Studio in Islington.
We laid down the track, me and Glen and Paul,
the three of us.
I think John might have been doing a vocal in a booth.
And we put it down about two or three times.
He goes, OK, got it.
And it was not--
he knew.
He was a producer.
He's done it before.
So what was the question?
TIM QUIRK: You were telling me about "Anarchy in the UK," how
it came together, how you recorded it.
STEVE JONES: So that's it, yeah.
And then he got me to lay some tracks down.
We put a lot work making Never Mind the ***.
People think we're a punk band, we just went in and la,
la, la, and it's done.
No.
We probably spent more time doing that than most un-punk
bands, proper bands were doing.
TIM QUIRK: "God Save the Queen" was
another big one for you.
Give him his water, or whatever the hell is in there.
STEVE JONES: Oolong ginger tea is today's special.
TIM QUIRK: "God Save the Queen," sort of another
landmark track for you guys.
Was that the second single?
STEVE JONES: Yeah, it was.
That's when we was with A&M. That's when EMI had gotten rid
of us, and A&M stepped in.
TIM QUIRK: That that's quite a feat, to put out one album,
but be signed to three different labels-- signed and
dropped by two labels, and signed to three labels.
How did you manage that?
STEVE JONES: And we was with--
I think we still are with Warner Brothers in America.
I don't know.
It wasn't my idea to get fired.
TIM QUIRK: But something happened at A&M's offices.
STEVE JONES: Yeah.
TIM QUIRK: What exactly?
Different stories.
STEVE JONES: It's kind of naughty.
TIM QUIRK: We're adults.
STEVE JONES: Well, it started at 7:00 in the morning.
We did this fake signing of the contract outside
Buckingham Palace.
And we--
7:00 in the morning-- and we had already
started with the ***.
And so we went from there to some other place in this limo,
and then some other place.
We went to the studio to listen to the finished mix of
"God Save the Queen." And then we had a fight, in the
limo, all of us.
We were drunk, hammered, at 3:00 in the afternoon.
And then it was some bright idea to go to the A&M offices.
And we went in there, spraying *** on the walls.
And I had sex with a girl in the bathroom.
And one of the employees--
it was just a mess, basically.
And they thought, oh ***.
What have we signed here?
They didn't realize that it wasn't an act.
It's what these guys do.
It probably wouldn't have happened like that we hadn't
been drinking since 7:00 in the morning.
*** happens.
TIM QUIRK: So "God Save the Queen," tell
me about that song.
How did it come together?
STEVE JONES: Well, like I said, John was always in the
corner scribbling lyrics, while me, Glen, and Paul were
just thrashing out tunes.
And Glen came down with this tune,
sounded like the Beatles.
And then I got hold of the riff, and changed it to make
sound like the Sex Pistols.
And Paul got a hold if it, and then we just worked it out.
We worked things out pretty quickly, funny enough,
considering, now looking back.
And John went at these words.
And he'd say hang on, let me try this.
Blah, blah, blah, boom.
Next thing you know, we got a song.
TIM QUIRK: And at the time, I mean now--
I'm not British, so I don't know.
But there doesn't seem to be quite the same level of
respect for the royal family that maybe
there was in the '70s.
So how was it received when it came out?
STEVE JONES: Not good by a lot of people was offended.
Plus, it was, coincidentally again, it was the time for--
what Jubilee was that one?
Gold, no.
Silver?
I don't know.
One of them Jubilees.
And it was so offensive that they couldn't put
it at number one.
They left a blank spot when it came out.
Or, in fact, some people put Rod Stewart.
What was the song, Rod Stewart's song?
TIM QUIRK: I can't remember which song.
I just remember it was Rod Stewart.
STEVE JONES: That's going to drive me crazy now.
Oh no.
TIM QUIRK: Somebody Google it.
STEVE JONES: Someone Google it.
We're in the right offices.
Anyway, it will come in a bit.
But that showed you how offensive it was at the time.
And people wanted to beat us up.
TIM QUIRK: And you mentioned that Glen made it sound like
the Beatles.
STEVE JONES: It's "The First Cut is the
Deepest," Rod Stewart.
I think that's it.
Could be wrong.
TIM QUIRK: We'll get an answer.
STEVE JONES: Sorry.
TIM QUIRK: So you mentioned that Glen Matlock made it
sound like the Beatles.
And Glen Matlock was eventually no
longer in the band.
And Sid joined.
So what happened to Glen?
STEVE JONES: [SIGHS]
Poor Glen.
I don't know.
He just wasn't going in the direction we was going in.
It changed the dynamics a lot.
For the song writing for sure, and just his bass playing.
He was a good bass player.
But he just didn't seem to want to go down the road we
were going down.
And I think McLaren had a bit of manipulating in there to
get him out and get Sid.
Because Sid did look great.
I mean, he was your classic--
I mean you couldn't get a better image
guy for the Sex Pistols.
Him and John together looked great together.
It was that classic Mick and Keith look.
Unfortunately, he couldn't play bass,
which was not his fault.
But he was a fan.
He used to come to a lot of the shows beforehand.
And I was a bit--
I wouldn't say I'm sticking bits of tape on his bass, put
your finger there, and then go there.
I didn't want to be doing that.
I wanted to be concentrating on my own disabilities at
playing guitar.
TIM QUIRK: After Glen left, how many more songs did you
guys write?
STEVE JONES: "Holidays in the Sun." "Belsen Was A Gas." I
didn't write that.
I think that was it.
TIM QUIRK: "Pretty Vacant" is another one that I wanted to
touch on, because that's one of the standouts on
the album, I think.
STEVE JONES: Yeah.
TIM QUIRK: So tell me how that one came together.
STEVE JONES: Same way.
I think maybe John and Glen might have done that around
someone's bedroom.
Because I think it was around Glen's bedroom.
Because I remember John was always moaning, like, don't
ever let me do that again, write a song with Glen Matlock
in his house.
It wasn't a good memory for him.
So I think that was the original where it started.
And then it was brought down to studio and then it was Sex
Pistol-ized.
But John wrote all the lyrics.
He wrote all the lyrics.
TIM QUIRK: So the record came out, I think it was 10/28/77.
You guys would be broken up in three or four months.
So I want to talk a little bit about the
aftermath of the album.
Specifically, when you guys came to the States, you
mentioned this before, I don't know how intentional it was,
but apparently Malcolm McLaren had booked you guys outside of
the mainstream sort of touring circuit clubs, where he knew
you'd have a hostile audience.
I never saw you guys live, but I did see a couple of films
that had a lot of footage of those shows.
It was wild watching it.
Because they weren't really concerts.
They were more like confrontations.
So tell me what that was like, going through that.
STEVE JONES: It was horrible, not fun at all.
The whole experience, coming to America, was completely
what we wasn't used to, even if we were playing in places
that kind of wanted to see the band.
I loved it when I first came to America.
But we wasn't doing it--
we got off the plane somewhere, New York, and then
we got on the tour bus and went to Atlantic.
There was like, all the time, there must have been at least
50 people following us--
from the FBI to--
what was that magazine back then?
TIM QUIRK: Scream?
STEVE JONES: No, it was all about drugs.
I don't know.
AUDIENCE: High Times?
STEVE JONES: High Times, good job.
They'd be following us.
The roadies were like Vietnam Vets who were crazy.
There was people trying to film Sid shooting up, which I
think there actually is footage of that.
And it was just like--
it was intense.
And there was loads of media who would follow us the whole
time we were in America.
And it was bizarre.
Our first show was in Atlanta.
I remember having the flu.
And the one thing that did stick out was how much better
looking the girls were in America, and how eager to
please they was.
Unlike in England where there were all ugly and spotty, and
think they're doing you a flavor to have sex.
That's what stuck out in my mind.
I don't know what stuck out in the other guys'.
TIM QUIRK: How much actual playing
happened during the shows?
How may songs could you even get through?
STEVE JONES: We'd get through a set, Never Mind the
***, basically.
Maybe a couple of covers.
But [SIGHS]
it wasn't fun.
Sid wasn't really playing bass and that kind of deteriorated
through the--
and how many shows did we do, like 12?
TIM QUIRK: Yeah, it was just a handful.
STEVE JONES: And they were all in dodgy places.
The only one was in San Francisco that made sense.
TIM QUIRK: And then that one didn't last very long.
And basically Johnny quit on stage.
What was that like?
STEVE JONES: I don't think Johnny quit on stage.
He didn't want to quit.
But I wanted to quit, afterwards.
TIM QUIRK: Well tell me about that final show.
What's your recollection of it?
STEVE JONES: Well I was sick again.
I had the flu again.
[LAUGHS]
I don't know why I kept getting sick.
Maybe I was nervous, I don't know.
But it was a disaster, man.
We're playing at, I don't know, the Winterland.
It's like 5,000 people.
It was actually the biggest show we ever played.
All the other shows we did, we were in like
halls, cowboy places.
And there was no camaraderie between the band.
The crowd thought it was great.
And we were playing like ***.
And it made no sense.
And I was just like, I've had enough of this.
That's me, though.
I run.
That's how I deal with things.
And that's what I did.
TIM QUIRK: And where did you wind up right after that?
STEVE JONES: We ran to Brazil.
We was meant to go there anyway to film- we were meant
to do some shows there as the Sex Pistols.
And Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber, was going to
open up for us.
So the Pistols ended in San Francisco, but me and Paul and
Malcolm went to Brazil and carried on filming The Great
Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, the movie we were kind of
doing at the time.
And I had a great time there.
It was great.
Brazil was great.
I loved that place--
bubble butts and ***.
TIM QUIRK: And then what was it like after?
Sex Pistols split up, and you continued your music career.
What was it like playing with other musicians, and having
the professional other bands after the Sex Pistols?
STEVE JONES: I wasn't a happy camper.
I got involved in drugs a lot.
I was miserable.
It might have looked like I was having a good time, but
really, I was a lost soul.
And I've been sober now, probably
be 22 years in October.
11 years off cigarettes.
I'll be 12 years the next month off cigarettes.
And all I do now is eat.
[LAUGHTER]
TIM QUIRK: Tell me about Jonesy's Jukebox.
STEVE JONES: Well there was two Jonesy's Jukebox.
There was one on Indie 103.1 that obviously is defunct,
which I did for five years.
It started organically, and it turned into something that a
lot of people enjoyed.
I enjoyed it.
It was fun, and then that ended.
And about a year or so later, I don't know how long, I got
where I am now.
I'm on KROQ.
It's called Jonesy's Jukebox.
It's on Sunday night, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM.
And I've been doing that--
it'll be two years next month.
And basically the gist of it is I just play new music, with
physically CDs, and try and turn people on to new bands.
TIM QUIRK: And how do you find new music that excites you?
STEVE JONES: Well at this point, from doing it for
almost two years, people send me a lot of stuff.
I have a few little hipsters who know what's going on who
send me stuff, new bands.
I enjoy doing it.
TIM QUIRK: This year, I'm curious, what are some new
bands you've heard this year that you really admire?
STEVE JONES: Well there's so many bands.
Who did I play yesterday?
Ariel Pink's have you heard of them?
Tame Impala, I like them,
Because they're kind of original to me.
They're not just copying what's gone before.
They're kind of--
you ain't going to find it in Walmart.
But I still find it interesting, bands like that.
There's a lot of bands, but there's no movement.
You know what I mean?
Which there should be some kind of movement.
It should be the Sex Pistols 35 years later.
TIM QUIRK: Speaking of the Sex Pistols 35 years later, I'm
curious how you feel about the Sex Pistols being inducted in
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
STEVE JONES: I don't know.
I mean, it's kind of a joke, isn't it?
TIM QUIRK: Kind of, yeah.
STEVE JONES: But I've got my statue still in Cleveland.
I was thinking of getting it and selling it on Ebay.
[LAUGHTER]
TIM QUIRK: I like that idea.
AUDIENCE: If you signed it.
STEVE JONES: Or maybe I say, let me get the others from the
boys, and sell all four of them.
I don't know.
Yeah.
TIM QUIRK: At this point I'm going to
open up to the audience.
Anybody have any questions you want to ask, just wander up to
the microphone.
And while we wait for someone to get up the courage to do
that, I'll just ask you, tell me about
the Bill Grundy interview.
Kind of a seminal moment in the Sex Pistols career, a
career filled with seminal moments.
STEVE JONES: Well, if you don't know who Bill Grundy is,
it was a TV show.
There was two stations at the time, back in '75, whatever,
6, 7, I don't know.
And it was at 6 o'clock.
Uh oh.
Someone getting bold?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I'm getting bold.
STEVE JONES: Go on then, just get on with it.
AUDIENCE: I don't want to interrupt.
STEVE JONES: Shall I finish this question?
TIM QUIRK: You can finish your answer.
STEVE JONES: We were rehearsing to do the "Anarchy
in the UK" tour and promote "Anarchy in the UK." EMI sent
a limo down to where we were rehearsing.
And the guy said, we're going to the Today Show.
That was the show that this guy, Bill Grundy, was on.
And we're going to talk about the tour and the single.
Queen was supposed to do it, because we were on the same
label, EMI.
But for some reason canceled it.
So they quickly got us in there.
So we get there.
And like I said, there was two channels.
Everyone used to watch this show eating
their dinner at 6 o'clock.
They put us in the green room.
I went to the fridge.
There was all these bottles of Blue Nun, a kind of wine.
So I'm nervous, terrified, because we're going on TV.
So I'm guzzling them.
And then by the time we went on, this guy obviously had no
interest in talking about the tour.
He was like the classic interviewer of that time.
You know when you see the Beatles being interviewed in
the '60s and '70s, these interviewers kind of talk down
to you, like derogatory?
You know what I mean?
So you've got all this money?
It's ridiculous.
So this guy just got what he was dishing out.
And we didn't go there like we're going to
swear on this show.
He started making us look stupid, and then he got what
he deserved.
We didn't know the swearing was going out live.
I thought they had buttons for that.
Hello, mate.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I'm kind of curious about how you decided to learn to play
the guitar.
I mean, you mentioned you went to go see Roxy Music and that
inspired you.
So you acquired some musical instruments.
And so I imagine some kid with some musical instruments.
And now what do you do?
Do you have a friend that teaches you
how to play a guitar?
Did you go to the library?
How many hours a day did you practice?
STEVE JONES: Well that's a good question.
Because I actually didn't start playing guitar until
three months before we did our first show.
And how I did that was through speed.
And these pills called mandrakes, which
I'm sure no one knows.
But they're like the equivalent of quaaludes.
They're like quaaludes.
Anyway, I used to get them from this
quack in Harley Street.
Every deviant used to go to this doctor.
He was just a quack, just all right.
And it was a diet program.
Black beauties, and mandrakes, like 60 of each.
And so I would be in Denmark street.
Literally I'd take one in the morning, and I'd be like this
for 12 hours.
[MIMICKING GUITAR PLAYING]
And playing along to records.
And that's how I learned.
I didn't know what I was doing.
AUDIENCE: By ear?
STEVE JONES: Yeah, I'd just play along to certain records,
[INAUDIBLE].
I'd listen to the [? Faces ?].
AUDIENCE: Did you know about different
chords and chord changes?
STEVE JONES: No, I kind of knew a couple of chords from
the guy Wally.
But I couldn't carry a tune.
It was just one of them things.
You know, speed's great for that.
You should try it.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: No comment.
STEVE JONES: I'm sure I had ADD back then.
But that would make me focus like crazy.
AUDIENCE: Then did you continue that intensity
through your whole Sex Pistols?
Do you still play the guitar?
STEVE JONES: Do I still play guitar?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, do you still practice intensely?
STEVE JONES: No.
You're kidding me.
I couldn't care less.
I got acoustic that I play now and again.
My thing is to figure out more chords, Beatle
chords, awkward ones.
That's what I like doing now, in my old age.
TIM QUIRK: Next.
AUDIENCE: What band did your favorite cover of "Anarchy?"
STEVE JONES: Whose version did I like best, you mean?
AUDIENCE: Whose version, yeah.
STEVE JONES: Of "Anarchy?"
AUDIENCE: I mean, besides your own.
Megadeath?
STEVE JONES: No, I played on that one as well.
AUDIENCE: Nice.
STEVE JONES: I didn't really like any of them, to
be honest with you.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: OK, that's a valid answer.
TIM QUIRK: Another one.
AUDIENCE: When you were still first starting out, and you
had all this stolen equipment, were you ever afraid at a gig
that someone was going to be like, hey man,
that's my drum kit.
STEVE JONES: No, I never thought about it.
I was naive.
AUDIENCE: Wasn't there some crazy story about when you
guys were auditioning Johnny in Malcolm's shop and he was
*** around, and *** up horribly.
And Malcolm was like, tell him to cut that *** out, or I'm
going to kill him.
STEVE JONES: No, he didn't say that.
AUDIENCE: No?
STEVE JONES: I don't know where you heard that.
I was there.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: And I think you narrated a movie about this
crazy football match in a town,
where the town is divided.
And there's a ball, and they try to get the football from
one side of the town to the other.
STEVE JONES: Where'd you hear that?
AUDIENCE: A friend of mine produced it.
STEVE JONES: But they didn't use my voice in there.
Because they recorded it badly.
And I went back there to re-record.
Have you seen it?
AUDIENCE: No.
STEVE JONES: It was a mad thing that started.
It was two towns, and they'd have this big ball that looked
like a melon.
And the goal was to get it to this one place.
It wasn't a football.
But you put it--
and they used to beat the *** out of each other.
And it was a whole thing.
It was a shame really, because I really liked the idea of it.
And I did the voice over for it.
But the guys who recorded it didn't record it right.
And they wanted me to re-record it.
And I went down.
And they told me they had to cut the lines they
wanted me to do.
And they were bullshitting me.
And I don't like being ***.
And basically they wanted me to do the whole thing again.
What are you nodding for?
You're saying, no, that [INAUDIBLE].
And that's my manager, by the way.
And so, if they would have said that, I would have done
it, gladly.
But they messed it up.
They tried to con me into doing it, so I didn't
end up doing it.
AUDIENCE: You want me to talk to them?
STEVE JONES: No, I think they used someone else in the end,
because I didn't do it.
I left.
AUDIENCE: Well that's why I didn't see it.
Because I found out it wasn't actually
you doing the narration.
I protested it.
STEVE JONES: Shame.
TIM QUIRK: We got another question.
AUDIENCE: I saw you play in the mid '90s
with Neurotic Outsiders.
And I thought it was a really cool project.
I wondered if you could talk a little about that
collaboration with the guys from Guns N' Roses and John
Taylor from Duran Duran.
STEVE JONES: Yeah that was like '95, '96 we started up.
We were doing these shows at the Viper Room
every Monday night.
And it just starting as a loose thing.
Me and John Taylor were friends.
Ralph, I met a few times.
And Matt Sorum, the drummer, we knew.
Actually it was a benefit for someone, on a Monday night at
the Viper Room.
We continued to do it.
It turned into this thing.
And then [INAUDIBLE]
from [INAUDIBLE], who was working at Maverick at the
time, signed us, gave us $1 million.
Can you believe that?
That would never happen now.
Give you a million pesos.
So we did a record.
And unfortunately we weren't really there to promote it.
I was doing the Sex Pistols tour.
[INAUDIBLE]
was getting word that Guns N' Roses was
getting back together.
And so it kind of all fell apart, which was a shame.
I think we could have gotten more mileage out it if we
would have paid more attention to it.
It's just one of them things.
It's a good record produced by the guy from--
what's his name?
AUDIENCE: Elton John?
[LAUGHTER]
STEVE JONES: No, Elton John plays like this.
What was his name?
AUDIENCE: Billy Joel.
STEVE JONES: No.
He's not a keyboard player.
He was in--
aww ***.
AUDIENCE: Ray Charles.
STEVE JONES: No.
Hold on.
This drives me crazy, this stuff.
Jerry Harrison.
TIM QUIRK: Oh, Talking Heads.
STEVE JONES: Talking Heads.
He produced it.
He did play a bit of keyboard, right?
OK, good.
It was fun project, that.
TIM QUIRK: OK, so as we finish--
STEVE JONES: Hold on.
TIM QUIRK: Another question.
AUDIENCE: I'm not sure if I heard this right or not, but
during the Olympics, they were playing Sex Pistols.
What do you think about that?
STEVE JONES: Well, unfortunately, in America you
didn't get to see it, because NBC cut it out.
AUDIENCE: Right.
But the crowds were there.
That's the bottom line.
STEVE JONES: Well everyone else in the world saw it,
except in America.
TIM QUIRK: I assume it wasn't "God Save the Queen?"
STEVE JONES: "God Save the Queen" was in the beginning,
just before the lyrics started, when it was going
down the river.
But in the actual show, there was a bit where they actually
spent about a minute and a half, a minute seven, where
the whole thing stopped and it started and they use an old
footage of us.
And they did a whole number.
I still haven't seen it.
But your question is, what did I think about it?
I think it was great.
AUDIENCE: That's what I'm thinking.
It's amazing.
Here you are.
This band that came out there, like you said, made these
songs, didn't know what you were really doing.
But just did it with this inspiration, just energy,
that's all it's really about-- energy and having a good time.
But then it's like years later, the social media,
whatever, we never said, hey these guys, they're rock
stars, or whatever.
You were the underdog for a long time.
But then over the years, because of the steady fan
base, and the young kids listening to what their dads
listen to, and whatnot, it's just bam.
Great inspiration.
STEVE JONES: Thank you.
I think that scenario will probably never happen again.
It was only purely through Danny Boyle, his insight of
the history of England.
Basically that's what the opening ceremony was about.
I hated listening to it in America, with these idiots
talking, joking.
They didn't even know what they were talking about,
whoever the interviewers were.
Do you agree?
Did you see?
Oh, it was horrible.
I know.
Just spoiling it.
TIM QUIRK: So I take it if--
well, let me ask.
Mick Jagger got knighted.
If you were offered a knighthood, would you take it?
STEVE JONES: No.
TIM QUIRK: All right.
STEVE JONES: I don't think so.
TIM QUIRK: Ah.
There's a chance.
[LAUGHTER]
STEVE JONES: I couldn't face myself to
do it, I don't think.
Even if I wanted to in the back of my mind, Sir Steve
Jones, I don't think it would be.
Do you get any benefits from it?
TIM QUIRK: I know nothing about it.
STEVE JONES: Health insurance.
TIM QUIRK: Everybody calls you sir.
STEVE JONES: I heard that Ben Kingsley gets upset if you
don't call him sir.
TIM QUIRK: I heard that, too.
I don't know if it's true, but I heard it.
STEVE JONES: Well I heard it too, so it must be true.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] the Queen's got a good sense of
humor, though.
STEVE JONES: I thought it was great that she actually--
I thought it was one of them look-alike Queens with the
James Bond guy in the Buckingham Palace.
I thought that was outrageous.
That would never have happened 20 years ago.
AUDIENCE: Then they had that one where she
jumped out of a plane.
STEVE JONES: Well that wasn't her.
TIM QUIRK: All right.
So let's finish up here, with it's a 35 years ago, around
about maybe a month from now, Sex Pistols released this
lean, mean, Never Mind the ***, changed the world.
And now it's being reissued as a deluxe box set, four discs,
a whole bunch of other goodies.
Tell the world why they should buy the reissue.
STEVE JONES: I don't want to tell them to
go out and buy it.
No, I'm kidding.
No it's, like I said, basically it's one album we
did, which is an achievement in itself.
We were together for like three years, right?
One album.
I think that, in itself, I liked the fact that that is
it, and not 10 albums.
But this Universal, I think they're doing a great job.
They've dug up all this other stuff that I
didn't even know existed.
If you're a fan--
if I'm a fan of something, even though it's like, oh, but
I've kind of got it all, I still want it.
You don't have to buy it.
No one's forcing you to buy it.
There is some funny stuff on there.
For me, I don't know if anyone is going to be interested, but
it's me and Paul Cook screaming at each other for
about minute.
I thought that was the funniest
thing I've ever heard.
There's a bunch of outtakes.
If you're into the band, you'll enjoy it.
And it looks pretty.
There's a bunch of pictures that I've never seen before.
TIM QUIRK: All right, thank you very much, sir.
STEVE JONES: Hold on.
[APPLAUSE]
STEVE JONES: I'm Jonesy's Jukebox Twitter and Jonesy's
Jukebox instagram.
I'm no longer on Facebook.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]