full sex pistols tour of london movie

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Fremantlemedia Enterprises PHED 22 43 Feature running time: 77 mins approx Extras running time: 97 mins approx Released: June 30th 2008 (UK) October 14th 2008 (US) (via Rhino)

Full-length concert DVD – directed by Julien Temple – from the now legendary November 2007 Brixton Academy shows celebrating the 30th Anniversary of ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’.

Also includes an additional 90 minute interview feature entitled ‘The Knowledge’ where the Pistols re-visit parts of London.

To document the Sex Pistols run of five sold-out nights at London’s, Brixton Academy the band enlisted director Julien Temple (The Filth and The Fury & The Swindle) along with ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ producer Chris Thomas. The DVD was filmed in High-Definition and recorded in 5.1 Surround Sound.

‘There’ll Always Be an England’ – named after Vera Lynn’s stirring intro music – was recorded on Saturday, November 10th and captures the energy and excitement of the band and the crowd. The whole of the classic ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ album is performed, together with a mixture Pistols cover versions, b-sides and even an impromptu crowd sing-along of ‘I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside’. This could only ever be the Sex Pistols.

‘The Knowledge’ – specially filmed to complement the live concert – is the Pistols guide to London. Steve and Paul re-visit old haunts such as the Denmark Street and South West London. Glen takes us to the 100 Club and St Martins College. And Mr Rotten gives us an open-top bus ride through the streets of London; stopping off in Finsbury Park along the way. The film is mixed with behind-the-scene clips from the Brixton shows and rare archive Pistols footage.

The DVD is set for release in the UK via FremantleMedia Enterprises on June 30th 2008, with a US release following on October 14th via Rhino (in association with Fremantle). To coincide with the US release Rhino Records re-issue the US LP edition of the legendary ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’on 180-gram vinyl on Tuesday, October 21st 2008.

Julien Temple : “This film is about the unique electricity between the Sex Pistols and their audience. The amazing cross section of the crowd at a Pistols gig is like no other, and the Brixton shows last year brought the band to a whole new generation as well as to those that have been there from the very beginning. There’ll Always Be An England documents a unique band in every sense.”

John Lydon : “Buy one get one for the same price as one.”

Tracks : There’ll Always Be An England (intro) Pretty Vacant Seventeen No Feelings New York Did You No Wrong Liar Beside the Seaside Holidays in the Sun Submission (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone No Fun Problems God Save the Queen EMI Bodies Anarchy in the UK Road Runner (bonus track, accessed via ‘Set-List’ menu)

Special Features : The Knowledge – The Pistols guide to London John Lydon’s open-top bus ride

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DOA: Never Mind The Bollards - Here Are the Sex Pistols

Posted on 7th September 2018 by Mark Mawston

John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten with Johnny Ramone in a relaxed conversation backstage at The Roundhouse, London before a Ramones gig (with Talking Heads supporting) in June 1977. © Jill Furmanovsky

There comes a point where being the right age doesn’t really mean as much as it did. For example, a 20 year old going out with a 25 year old wouldn’t raise an eyebrow but take five years off each and it certainly would, especially now. This ‘not quite being old enough’ can also apply to music when you’re a kid.

I was 10 when punk broke and just too young to understand why it was so important. To me it just seemed frightening. Had I been 4 or 5 years older I may have been caught in the maelstrom of the short-lived punk tornado that swept across the UK and the US, wrecking all in its path and destroying or deriding all that stood before.

By the time I was 12 in 1978, punk was already dying out; a faint breeze replacing the angry storm; an ill wind rippling the calming waters as it was already being replaced by the ‘New Wave’ movement of bands such as Blondie , Talking Heads, Devo and in the UK, The Jam . Those US bands had started as punk but, like The Clash in the UK, were just a bit more astute and aware than many of the punk bands that started with the moniker “pick up a guitar, get three friends, learn three cords, form a band”.

Sex Pistols performing at The 100 club on Oxford Street, London. © Ray Stevenson

That was the only beauty in punk; it allowed bands to rage against the machine and against the bloated excess of prog rock when twenty minute songs were reduced to two adrenaline fuelled minutes. This was the moment when people in the audience saw bands so basic that they thought they could do better themselves and many did. Bar the mid 50s, never has there been a time where kids really lived for the music and rather than just dress like their idols, they wanted to give them a run for their money and challenge them as well as the system, putting all they hated about it to music.

This reason alone makes punk one of the most important eras in music. Not because of the excellent music (most of it wasn’t) but for the fact that revolution wasn’t just something a '45 did when played, it was what was on the vinyl cuts that caused one and something that truly frightened the establishment, exemplified in how the UK charts were supposedly rigged in 1977 to make sure that Rod Stewart was #1 during the Queen's silver jubilee rather than the  Sex Pistols God Save The Queen . Britain in the mid 70s wasn’t the rose garden it once was as the repercussions of WW2 were still being felt and the only blooms seemed to be in the wild flowers that grew from the still numerous bomb sites that many kids used as playgrounds. It was a dark place even in the hottest summer on record in 1976 with strikes and riots were common place.

Photographer Richard Mann recalls "This was the middle part of a Record Mirror commission to illustrate a piece on Sid and Nancy’s relationship. At this point they were happy to pose and presumably found the surroundings harmonious." © Richard Mann

This is why I feel punk was a British phenomenon, with the key bands being English and Irish, as although American kids seemed to embrace it, it was in the US that punk, represented by its most famous leaders The Sex Pistols went to die, in the elephants graveyard of the country and western bars of small towns and crowds with smaller mindsets. It was these places that Pistols manager Malcom McLaren thought he’d mine gold rather than play New York and although the newspaper headlines were 24 carat, the rich seam he was digging for soon caved in on all who dug it.

This dying of the light is exactly what the film D.O.A.: A Right of Passage documents. The film, which was originally released in 1981 and is directed by filmmaker Lech Kowalski, takes the pulse of the late 70s punk scene when the Sex Pistols began to implode and American punk bands and performers were on the rise. It is now getting a much-needed release on DVD and Blue-ray.

And it’s a Shakespearian tragedy where key players, quite literally, don’t make it to the final encore but the cord(s) they struck still echo through to today. This is the film where we see Sid and Nancy, the Romeo and Juliet of punk (a term Shakespeare brought to the masses) as they really were; not just star-crossed lovers but puppets whose strings were about to be cut. This pair sum up the difference I was pointing out earlier. Spungen is the US—the brash up-taker of the band and their music who sees Sid Vicious as not only her prince but her ticket to the ball, although the clock was about to strike 12 for both of them.

Photographer Jill Furmanovsky recalls '"I was a little afraid of Sid and kept my distance when I saw him in clubs etc. Nevertheless I was brave enough to snatch this image of him and Nancy in the dressing room after a Ramones gig that took place on New Years' Eve, hence the bottle of champagne in Nancy's hand. In the murky background is Linda Stein who was married to Seymour Stein of Sire Records, and Dee Dee Ramone listening intently to Sid. None of those mentioned are alive now." © Jill Furmanovsky

In reality, Vicious was any but a prince (c)harming. He comes across in D.O.A.: A Right of Passage  as a slightly backward naughty boy who lost his way and just wants to go home. He’s the face of the band but has nothing to smile about anymore and seems sick of sneering, although the moment he swings his guitar at disgruntled fans is another iconic ‘Sid’ scene. Blood pouring from his nose where he’s head-butted fans, and from his ghostly anaemic torso where he’d carved 'I Need A Fix', years before Richey Manic followed suit.

It’s tragic to behold the now famous ‘interview’ that the filmmakers managed to capture of Sid and Nancy in their bedroom and you can plainly see that the writing, or graffiti, was on the wall for Sid, Nancy, The Pistols and punk as a whole. All the safety pins in the world couldn’t stop it tearing apart.

This film is truly punk, unlike many of the bands who wanted to ride on the movements ‘banned’ wagon. It is guerrilla filmmaking at its best, and although it’s famous for the incredibly rare footage it scored of The Sex Pistols on stage, it’s those around and behind the camera who sum up the movements ethic. These are the people who took the chances—be it the filmmakers sneaking cameras into gigs and facing the wrath of its fans or the wrath those fans in turn felt when they walked down the street in Hicksville to the gig.

The Sex Pistols enjoying a stroll on Carnaby Street, London during the early days of Punk in 1976. © Ray Stevenson

This isn’t the fake news of a film like The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, whose only great moment is Sid Vicious singing "My Way". No, this film is more of a reality show 30 years before the term came to be. This is how it was, warts and all. It’s like a freak show at the fun fairs of old where you’d dare yourself to lift the canvass just for a second to see if the banners proclaiming the horrors inside were true to their word. It isn’t people sitting round a pool bemoaning bad hair days as so called reality shows do now—this is as close to a snuff movie as you will get, where key musicians and the movement as a whole really was about to self-combust and by the time it was released in 1981, punk and the key bands that optimised it, really were Dead On Arrival.

And yet, through this film they will all live forever, captured in amber trying to climb the tree. This film should be in the Smithsonian as although it comes across like a home movie, it's a perfect document of the time, filmed by those who lived it and whose stories, which appear on the superb documentary that supports it, make you realise why, in its brief flame, its ethic shone so bright. This supporting doc is longer than the film itself and is essential viewing to fans, not only of the movement, but to music lovers as a whole and is so good it could have been released as a standalone film.

Photographer Jorgen Angel recalls, "I took this shot of Johnny Rotten in July 1977 at the first show of what allegedly was a secret Scandinavian tour. The Sex Pistols did two nights in a small club, Daddy’s Dance Hall, in Copenhagen, Denmark. I love this shot because this punk, supposedly insane in his straitjacket, looks like a sweet boy, and though he is completely still, this shot has all his energy in it." © Jorgen Angel

It’s fascinating to look at the dictionary and see what the term punk means, all of which fit its ethic so perfectly: An often aggressive or violent young person; inferior, rotten or worthless . That description may have fitted the general consensus of the term and certainly the views of many older peers interviewed in the film. One wonders if John Lydon got his stage name from it.

However, punk is also the term for the tinder that was used to build fires and used to light fireworks. Surely that’s the better description; the brief explosion that lights up a darkened sky before falling quickly to earth in burning pieces leaving only the echo of a sound that could have broken windows.

DOA has one of the most famous lines in music, where Johnny Rotten (Lydon) turns to the crowd and says “Ever felt like you’ve been cheated?”. The fact that the other description of the term punk that stood out was To dupe or deceive . Perhaps that was the plan all along? Make up your own mind but if you want the hard evidence, go and buy DOA  right away. 'D.O.A.: A Right of Passage' gets a UK release on Blu-ray and DVD Dual format from Second Sight on 10 September 2018. Check out a trailer for the doc below.

Rockarchive is delighted to be able to offer many iconic Sex Pistols images as limited edition photographic prints which you can buy  here.

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This article was published more than 7 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols promoting the Anarch-Tea at the W hotel in London. Evoking the 1970’s and the start of the punk counterculture era, the cakes are themed around iconic punk music including ‘God Save the Queen – The Sex Pistols’: a red, white and blue Battenburg, complete with its a marzipan icing crown. £30 a person

Among the more disparate commemorations in Britain this year are the 90th birthday of Her Majesty and the 40th anniversary of punk music. A tenuous connection perhaps, but it was the Sex Pistols who released their version of God Save the Queen during her Silver Jubilee.

While the Queen is still going strong, punk seems to have faded. I returned to London to see what remained of punk's famously gritty days. In my youth, which I now wish was more misspent, I once stumbled onto an early punk performance. Armed with a freshly issued Visa card and a $200 credit limit, I had flown to London where my friend Jane was spending a term off working in an Aussie bar.

On the advice of patrons, we found ourselves in a scuzzy bar in a non-touristy area of London. The name and location is lost to us now, but I do remember the pub's backroom and its elevated stage where a group of malnourished, sun-deprived kids in torn clothes staggered about. The lead singer vomited, on-stage. I was pretty convinced that was a career-ender. Later, they went on to notoriety as the Sex Pistols. I remembered the floors were so sticky every step took on a Herman Munster stagger. "Hmmm. Spit and cider pub. Which is what pubs were like then," says Stuart Bridgeman.

Since I was booked on a punk walking tour the next day, I did the equivalent of a cram session with Stuart to ground me in punk basics. Stuart is a friend who has worked in the London music scene for the past 25 years. He was with Food Music when they signed Blur and works now as a music "pusher" for Alan James PR, helping them get air time for up and coming groups.

He tells me that punk, which gets its name from "pub music" since many groups started by playing backrooms that could be rented cheaply, came from two massively different schools.

"England was in the toilet. It was a transitional time. Things were so bad both economically and musically that something needed to change," Stuart says. "American punk was much more pretentious, more pseudo-intellectual and far more arty. But here it was far more political and from the street. It was a working class movement that was much grittier, much tougher."

If London had a musical map, 1970s punk was centred in and around Soho, which was then a low-rent district populated by sex shops and dodgy clubs. And that was where I was heading to see what remained of that gritty era.

The next day, I took Aidan McManus's Soho Punk Tour ( flipsidelondontours.com ). McManus is a proud working-class Londoner who grew up with punk music. To commemorate the anniversary, he turned his encyclopedic knowledge into this walking tour to complement his other tours (Music Movies Murder & Mayhem, Gangland Soho, and Westerly Walk), subjects he says are "the history London ignores."

We met at the Tottenham Court Road tube station and McManus spent two hours sharing his passion for the scene in a fun, gritty, antidote-rich type of punk pilgrimage through Soho.

Our first stop was Denmark Street, London's Tin Pan Alley. Music shops line this short block. It's a place where you can buy anything from instruments to sheet music. Peeking through the No.Tom guitar shop window at No. 6, McManus points to a courtyard. Behind the ground floor window is where the Sex Pistols rehearsed. They lived in a rodent-infested room above. Next door, the Relentless building was once a seedy hotel with in-room inhalers connected to a basement opium burner that glowed 24/7.

In the decades since the golden, gritty age of punk, Soho has been gentrified, bringing a certain respectability to former punk haunts. The old Marquee Club, where the Stones, David Bowie, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Billy Idol, Generation X and others performed and where the Pistols premiered God Save the Queen , has morphed into the Soho Lofts and a restaurant/bar/music club named for its address: 100 Wardour St.

Nearby, the Leicester Square Theatre was a punk venue called the Notre Dame Hall. It was notable not only for the performances it hosted but its location in the basement of a Catholic hospital.

The former Roxy at 41 Neill St., near Covent Garden, which everyone played at, is now a Speedo shop. The St Martin's School of Art, Charing Cross Road (the school moved and the building is now offices and condos), is where the Sex Pistols played their first gig. It was so bad the students booed and fists followed. There were other clashes between audiences, club owners and groups, such as the Teds (Teddy Boys), who more than once chased the Pistols to their solicitor's offices at 119 Oxford St. Once the HQ for the Sex Pistols, it's now a Clark's shoe store.

When not being chased, many punks hung out at Louise's Club, 61 Poland St. It was a lesbian after-hours bar run by an elderly French woman who dressed in men's clothing and didn't discriminate against punkers. The building now operates as the Milk & Honey members bar. Non-members are admitted by reservation ( mlkhny.com ).

The last of the old punk venues we visited was the 100 Club on Oxford Street. Curiously, it survives. Squeezed between the red front of an Anne Summers lingerie shop and the blue-and-white of a Boots drug store, is a respectable 10-foot-wide black granite slab and generic glass office-style door that looks like it should lead you to an accountant's office instead of a legendary music venue. Walk down the first set of steps and you start to feel the transition from Oxford Street sobriety to dodgy piss-up.

The 100 Club is a large basement room with a rural legion feel. The floor, ceiling and pillars are black. The chipped red walls are covered in framed photos and posters for past acts. A bar is cut into an end wall behind rows of yellow plastic stacking chairs. A modest stage faces an elevated, fortress-like DJ area. It was during the club's first punk festival that Sid Vicious, seeing how tightly packed the people were, invented "the Pogo," jumping up and down as a dance substitute. He later said, "It shows how gullible people are."

A week after I was there Eddie and the Hot Rods were booked. Originally formed in 1975 Eddie and the Hot Rods were part of the first wave of Brit punkers. This is the band's fifth incarnation. Its one constant is that Barrie Masters has been the lead singer for all 41 years.

The tour over, I continued my exploration with an edible act of punk's gentrification. Chefs at The W Hotel, Leicester Square developed an Anarch-Tea. For my tea, served on a tiered cake stand made of vinyl albums, were cakes and sandwiches on punk themes. The Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen was represented by a small marzipan crown sinking into a corner of a vanilla and almond Battenburg cake. A turquoise Mohawk rose from another cake to portray Sigue Sputnik's 21st Century Boy . Shut Up by the Stranglers was represented by a pair of strawberry mousse red lips. There were Gang of Four sandwiches (smoked salmon, cucumber, roast beef and horseradish, and cheese). In addition to tea, you could opt for champagne or a Lust for Life cocktail of cachaca, zesty lime, sugar and passion fruit.

Real punks might cringe, but seeing a YouTube video of a 60-year-old Johnny Rotten wearing a camel-hair topcoat while revisiting scenes of the Sex Pistols' youthful infamy gave me permission to enjoy the W's tea.

First-wave punks may have gotten paunchy and pedestrian, but the music and movement once filled a need. This anniversary offered an unvarnished reconnection to old ideas and a laugh at some of punk's new-found respectability.

The writer was a guest of VisitBritain and WestJet. They did not review or approve this article.

--------------------------

Punk London events continue through the fall. Here are some of the highlights. For the full lineup visit punk.london.

Being Punk , Museum of London , until July 28 : This mini exhibit shares the fashions and stories of people who lived through the scene. It's just one of several Punk London events planned for the museum. museumoflondon.org.uk; free

Punk 1976-78 , British Library , until Oct. 2: This archive of fanzines, recordings, concert flyers and more explores punk's early days, beginning with the Sex Pistols. Time Out's review: "You get a sense of just how exciting and inspiring punk was before heroin and disillusionment killed it off." bl.uk; free

Don Letts Presents Punk On Film , Aug. 1 to Aug. 31, BFI Southbank : Don Letts, a film director, musician and DJ who worked with such acts as the Clash and the Psychedelic Furs, curates this collection of films including Eraserhead, and – of course – Sid and Nancy. whatson.bfi.org.uk; £8.35-£11.75

Joe Corre Burns His Punk Stuff , Nov. 26 : In what is truly a punk move, the son of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren has said he will set memorabilia valued at £5-million ablaze. The location is yet to be confirmed. burnpunklondon.com; free.

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'We're not into music, we're into chaos': watch the new trailer for Sex Pistols TV drama Pistol

Director Danny Boyle charts the anarchic rise of the Sex Pistols in forthcoming TV drama Pistol, based on guitarist Steve Jones' autobiography

Disney+ have release an extended trailer for Danny Boyle's forthcoming Sex Pistols' drama trailer Pistol , which is set to air in the UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore on May 31.

Pistol is based upon Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones ’ acclaimed 2018 memoir Lonely Boy , and has been adapted for television by writers Craig Pearce ( Strictly Ballroom , The Great Gatsby ) and Frank Cottrell Boyce ( 24 Hour Party People ), who also worked with Boyle on the staging of the theatrical opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. “Imagine breaking into the world of The Crown and Downtown Abbey with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent,” Boyle said when the series was first announced. “This is the moment that British society and culture changed for ever.  It is the detonation point for British street culture… where ordinary young people had the stage and vented their fury and their fashion… and everyone had to watch and listen.....and everyone feared them or followed them. The Sex Pistols. “At its centre was a young charming illiterate kleptomaniac, a hero for the times, Steve Jones, who became in his own words, the 94th greatest guitarist of all time. This is how he got there.” Upon its publication, Lonely Boy was described as “the story of an unlikely guitar hero… who transformed 20th century culture and kick-started a social revolution.” 

Set to air on Disney+ (home to acclaimed Beatles documentary Get Back ), Hulu and FX, Pistol  stars Toby Wallace ( Babyteeth ) as Steve Jones, Anson Boon ( Crawl, 1917 ) as vocalist John Lydon, Louis Partridge ( Enola Homes, Medici ) as bassist Sid Vicious, and Jacob Slater as drummer Paul Cook, as well as Fabien Frankel ( The Serpent ) as Glen Matlock, Dylan Llewellyn ( Derry Girls ) as Wally Nightingale, Sydney Chandler as Chrissie Hynde, Emma Appleton as Nancy Spungen, and Game Of Thrones star Maisie Williams as punk icon Jordan.

John Lydon has voiced his opposition to the series, calling it "disrespectful shit." “It is so destructive to what the band is,” Lydon said last year, “and so I fear that the whole project might be extremely negative.”

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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica ( Birth School Metallica Death , co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography ( Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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Anarchy in the UK: The Legacy of the Sex Pistols

• March 27, 2023

Anarchy in the UK. The Legacy of the Sex Pistols is an article all about the legendary Sex Pistols. Below we take a look at this iconic band and answer a number of common questions.

Who was the Sex Pistols?

The Sex Pistols were a British punk rock band formed in London in 1975. They were known for their provocative and controversial lyrics, rebellious attitude, and anti-establishment stance. Their debut album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” released in 1977, is widely regarded as one of the most influential punk rock albums of all time. Despite having a relatively short lifespan, the band left a lasting impact on the punk rock genre and on popular culture as a whole. The band evolved from an original group alternately known as The Strand and Swankers, with the members being Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Wally Nightingale.

Members of Sex Pistols

The band consisted of vocalist Johnny Rotten (real name John Lydon), guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, and bassist Glen Matlock, who was later replaced by Sid Vicious.

When did Sid Vicious join the sex pistols?

Sid Vicious (real name John Simon Ritchie) joined the Sex Pistols in early 1977, replacing original bassist Glen Matlock. Vicious had previously been a fan of the band and was a regular at their concerts, where he often caused trouble and was known for his wild behavior. Despite his lack of experience as a musician, Vicious quickly became a central figure in the band’s image and persona, known for his aggressive playing style and punk rock fashion sense. He remained with the band until their breakup in early 1978, and tragically passed away later that year at the age of 21.

How long were the Sex Pistols together?

The Sex Pistols were active for a relatively short period, from 1975 to 1978. During this time, the band released one studio album, “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols,” in 1977, and embarked on several tours, including the infamous “Anarchy in the UK” tour. The band disbanded in early 1978, following a tumultuous tour of the United States and the departure of lead singer Johnny Rotten. Although the Sex Pistols’ tenure was brief, their impact on punk rock and popular culture has been significant and enduring.

Why did the Sex Pistols break up?

There were a number of reasons and factors that led to the breakup of the Sex Pistols in early 1978. The band had already been dealing with internal tensions and conflicts over the management of the band and the direction of their music. Lead singer Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) had become disillusioned with the band’s management and the media attention, and he felt that the band had lost its original purpose and message. He announced his departure from the band during their American tour in January 1978, citing personal and creative differences.

After Rotten left, the band briefly continued with replacement vocalist Sid Vicious, but they were unable to maintain their momentum and eventually disbanded in February 1978. Other factors that contributed to the breakup included the band’s drug use and legal troubles, which had caused strain on their relationships and finances. Despite their short-lived career, the Sex Pistols remain one of the most influential punk rock bands of all time, and their impact on popular culture and music is still felt today.

Who wrote sex pistols songs?

The Sex Pistols’ songs were mostly written by guitarist Steve Jones and vocalist Johnny Rotten, with contributions from other band members such as bassist Glen Matlock and drummer Paul Cook.

The band’s songs often dealt with controversial and provocative topics, and their lyrics were known for their social commentary and anti-establishment messages. Some of their most famous songs include “Anarchy in the U.K.,” “God Save the Queen,” “Pretty Vacant,” and “Holidays in the Sun.”

God Save the Queen lyrics

“God Save the Queen” was written by the band’s guitarist Steve Jones and lead vocalist Johnny Rotten with contributions from the other band members.

The song was intended as a critique of the British monarchy and the wider political establishment, as well as a commentary on the social and economic issues facing England at the time. Its lyrics and provocative imagery caused a great deal of controversy and led to the song being banned from many radio stations and venues in the UK.

Despite this, “God Save the Queen” became a major hit in the UK and helped to establish the Sex Pistols as one of the leading bands of the punk rock movement. The song has since become a cultural touchstone and is widely regarded as one of the most iconic and influential tracks in the history of popular music.

In addition to its political and cultural significance, “God Save the Queen” is also notable for its distinctive musical style, which features a driving bassline, jagged guitar riffs, and Rotten’s distinctive vocal delivery. The song’s production was overseen by Chris Thomas, who also worked on albums by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Roxy Music.

Below are the lyrics to “God Save the Queen”

God save the queen The fascist regime They made you a moron Potential H-bomb

God save the queen She’s not a human being There is no future In England’s dreaming

Don’t be told what you want Don’t be told what you need There’s no future, no future No future for you

God save the queen We mean it, man We love our queen God saves

God save the queen ‘Cause tourists are money And our figurehead Is not what she seems

Oh God save history God save your mad parade Oh Lord God have mercy All crimes are paid

When there’s no future How can there be sin We’re the flowers in the dustbin We’re the poison in your human machine We’re the future, your future

God save the queen We mean it, man There is no future In England’s dreaming No future, no future No future for you No future, no future No future for me No future, no future No future, no future No future for you No future, no future No future for you

How many albums did the sex pistols release?

The Sex Pistols released only one studio album during their career, which was “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” in 1977. Despite this, the album is widely regarded as one of the most influential punk rock albums of all time, and it helped to define the punk rock sound and ethos. In addition to the studio album, the band also released several singles, including “Anarchy in the U.K.,” “God Save the Queen,” and “Pretty Vacant,” which became popular anthems for the punk rock movement. The Sex Pistols also released a few live albums and compilations of their music after their breakup, but these were mostly collections of previously released material.

What happened to the sex pistols?

After the breakup, the band’s members pursued various solo projects and collaborations. Vocalist Johnny Rotten (real name John Lydon) formed the band Public Image Ltd (PiL), which achieved success in the post-punk era of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook formed the band The Professionals, while bassist Sid Vicious briefly pursued a solo career before his death from a drug overdose in February 1979.

What sex pistols are still alive?

As of writing this, two of the original members of the Sex Pistols were still alive: Johnny Rotten (real name John Lydon), who was the lead vocalist of the band, and Paul Cook, who played drums.

Glen Matlock, who was the original bassist for the band, is also still alive and has continued to work in the music industry, both as a solo artist and as part of various bands.

Sid Vicious, the band’s second bassist, died in 1979 from a drug overdose, and Steve Jones, the band’s guitarist, is still alive but no longer actively involved in the music industry.

Did the sex pistols make any money?

Although the Sex Pistols only released one studio album during their brief career, they were still able to achieve significant commercial success and make money through live performances, merchandise sales, and royalties from their music. Their album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” sold well and became a critical and commercial success, reaching number one on the UK album charts. The band’s merchandise, which included t-shirts, posters, and other punk rock fashion items, was also popular and profitable.

However, the band’s financial success was often overshadowed by their management’s controversial and often unethical practices. Band members were frequently underpaid and denied royalties, and their contracts with the management company were later found to be fraudulent. Despite this, the Sex Pistols remain one of the most iconic and influential bands of the punk rock movement, and their impact on popular culture and music is still felt today.

Little known info about the Sex Pistols

Here are some unusual or little known information about the Sex Pistols:

The band was initially called “The Strand” and only changed their name to Sex Pistols after seeing a clothing store with that name.

The band’s iconic logo of the two overlapping arrows was designed by artist Jamie Reid.

Before joining the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious was a member of a New York punk band called The Flowers of Romance.

The Sex Pistols’ infamous appearance on a live television show in 1976, where they swore and insulted the host, led to widespread outrage and condemnation in the UK.

The band’s first manager, Malcolm McLaren, was also the manager of the New York Dolls and later went on to manage Bow Wow Wow.

The Sex Pistols played their last show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on January 14, 1978.

In 2015, a London restaurant called “The Sex Pistols Experience” opened, which featured memorabilia from the band and a menu inspired by punk culture.

Sex Pistols and Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood was a significant figure in the early days of the Sex Pistols. She and her then-partner, Malcolm McLaren, played a key role in the band’s formation and early image.

McLaren, who managed the Sex Pistols, was also the owner of a clothing store called SEX, which Westwood helped to run. The store became known for its provocative and avant-garde fashion designs, which often featured punk-inspired elements such as ripped clothing, safety pins, and offensive slogans.

Westwood and McLaren’s influence on the Sex Pistols can be seen in the band’s early fashion choices and overall image, which were heavily influenced by the punk aesthetic that Westwood helped to popularize. Westwood’s designs and ideas also played a significant role in shaping the larger punk subculture, which emerged in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Although Westwood and McLaren’s relationship with the Sex Pistols was sometimes fraught with tension and conflict, their influence on the band’s early career and lasting impact on punk culture is widely recognized.

Sex Pistols and Chrissie Hynde

Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of The Pretenders, was briefly associated with the Sex Pistols in the early days of their career.

Hynde was a key figure in the London punk scene during the mid-1970s and befriended members of the Sex Pistols, including guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook. She contributed backing vocals to the band’s first single, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and was present during the recording sessions for their debut album, “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”

Hynde’s friendship with the band was strained, however, by her romantic relationship with Ray Davies, the lead singer of The Kinks, who had a longstanding feud with the Sex Pistols. Hynde eventually left London and relocated to the United States, where she formed The Pretenders and went on to achieve significant commercial success.

While Hynde’s involvement with the Sex Pistols was brief and somewhat limited, her status as a pioneering figure in the punk movement and her close associations with key members of the band have helped to cement her place in the history of punk rock.

Danny Boyle and Sex Pistols

Danny Boyle is a British film director who is known for his work on movies such as “Trainspotting,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” and “127 Hours.” He has also worked on several television projects, including the miniseries “Trust,” which explores the story of the Getty family.

Boyle has expressed his admiration for the Sex Pistols and the punk rock movement on several occasions. In 2012, he directed the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London, which included a segment on British popular music that featured a brief tribute to the Sex Pistols. This segment included a performance of “God Save the Queen” by the London Symphony Orchestra, as well as images of the band and other punk rock icons projected onto large screens in the stadium.

Boyle has also cited the Sex Pistols as an inspiration for his filmmaking, noting that their rebellious spirit and DIY approach to music-making have influenced his own approach to storytelling.

Sex Pistols movie

There have been several movies made about or inspired by the Sex Pistols, including:

The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980) – A mockumentary directed by Julien Temple that tells the story of the Sex Pistols from manager Malcolm McLaren’s perspective. It stars Sex Pistols members, including Sid Vicious, as well as actors playing various roles.

Sid and Nancy (1986) – A biographical film directed by Alex Cox that follows the life and death of Sid Vicious and his relationship with Nancy Spungen. It stars Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb in the lead roles.

Jubilee (1978) – A dystopian film directed by Derek Jarman that features the Sex Pistols in a cameo role. It tells the story of Queen Elizabeth I transported to modern-day London.

Punk (1993) – A documentary series directed by Don Letts that explores the origins and development of the punk rock movement in the UK, including the Sex Pistols.

Who Killed Nancy? (2009) – A documentary directed by Alan G. Parker that investigates the death of Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious’s girlfriend, and explores the events leading up to it.

Sex Pistols TV series

There have been a few TV series about the Sex Pistols, but the most notable one is “The Filth and the Fury,” which is a documentary film about the band. Directed by Julien Temple, the film features interviews with the band members, archival footage, and commentary on the band’s legacy and impact on the punk movement. The film was released in 2000 and has been widely praised for its insightful and candid look at the Sex Pistols.

“Pistol” is a TV mini series on Disney Plus which tells the story of the Sex Pistols. The series comes from acclaimed, Academy Award winning director Danny Boyle, who puts his own spin on the band’s initial years together.

The Legacy of the Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols left a lasting legacy on the music industry and on popular culture as a whole. Their aggressive and confrontational approach to music challenged the status quo and paved the way for punk rock and other forms of alternative music. The band’s influence can be seen in the work of countless musicians who followed in their footsteps, and their impact on fashion, art, and politics continues to be felt to this day. The Sex Pistols were also instrumental in bringing attention to issues such as social inequality, poverty, and the frustrations of working-class youth, making them more than just a band, but a cultural force that sparked a revolution.

Bands influenced by the Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols impact can be seen in numerous bands and musical genres that followed in their wake. Here are some examples of bands that were influenced by the Sex Pistols:

The Clash : This London-based punk band was contemporaneous with the Sex Pistols and shared a similar sound and ethos.

Nirvana: The grunge band from Seattle cited the Sex Pistols as one of their primary influences and covered their song “Anarchy in the UK” at live shows.

Green Day: This punk band from California drew inspiration from the Sex Pistols and their politically charged lyrics.

The Damned: This punk band from London was contemporaneous with the Sex Pistols and shared a similar DIY ethos.

The Buzzcocks: This Manchester-based punk band was contemporaneous with the Sex Pistols and shared a similar sound and political edge.

The Exploited: This Scottish punk band drew inspiration from the Sex Pistols’ anti-establishment message and aggressive sound.

Bad Religion: This punk rock band from California drew inspiration from the Sex Pistols’ politically charged lyrics and DIY ethos.

Dead Kennedys: This American punk rock band was influenced by the Sex Pistols’ irreverent and confrontational approach to music and politics.

The Ramones: This American punk band was contemporaneous with the Sex Pistols and shared a similar sound and DIY ethos.

The Stooges: This proto-punk band from Michigan was an influence on the Sex Pistols and shared a similar raw, aggressive sound.

Will Sex Pistols tour again?

It is difficult to say whether the Sex Pistols will tour again, as the band has been known to have a tumultuous history and has faced multiple legal battles and conflicts over the years. The last time the original members of the Sex Pistols played together was in 2008 for a series of shows celebrating the 30th anniversary of their only studio album, “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.” However, the band has not announced any plans for a future tour as of now.

In 2022 Paul Cook dismissed any possibility of the band reuniting, stating that it will not happen. Cook expressed his disinterest in the idea, citing the band’s court case in the previous year as the reason for his reluctance. In an interview with NME for the ‘Does Rock N’Roll Kill Brain Cells?’ series, Cook revealed that he did not want to revisit the experience of being in court, being questioned by judges in wigs, and called it a “horrible experience.”

Sex Pistols Location Tour

Although its likely that the remaining members of the band will never tour again, fans can go on a 2 hour walking tour of London’s Soho and visit locations relevant to the band. Guided by a knowledgeable, approachable & fun tourist guide, fans can get a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of this iconic British band.

This Sex Pistols tour is a must-see for music enthusiasts and anyone interested in the punk rock genre’s history. Discover the band’s first rehearsal space, their initial performance location where Sid met Nancy, and more, providing a unique and captivating insight into one of rock and roll’s most influential and controversial bands. Feel the energy and essence of the band and the punk movement that they helped shape.

Tour Highlights

Explore the site of the Sex Pistols’ first-ever gig Visit the drinking spots frequented by the Sex Pistols Learn about some of the outrageous acts committed by the band Witness the location where Glen Matlock was wrongfully arrested Stroll down London’s iconic Tin Pan Alley Step into the rehearsal space where the Sex Pistols lived and practiced

For more information and booking the tour. Click here.

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Sex Pistols and Punk Music Walking Tour

• Expert Guide
• Gratuities (optional)
• Oxford Street, Oxford St, London W1D 2DH, UK Meet your guide outside Exit 1 of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. See the image below. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to the tour. If you have any issues please contact the guide - Aidan.
• Oxford Circus, Oxford St, London W1B 3AG, UK
• Wheelchair accessible
• Service animals allowed
• Near public transportation
• Transportation is wheelchair accessible
• Surfaces are wheelchair accessible
• Confirmation will be received at time of booking
• Most travellers can participate
• This tour/activity will have a maximum of 20 travellers
• For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours in advance of the start date of the experience.
• Oxford Street
• Tin Pan Alley

Similar experiences

• You'll start at Oxford Street Oxford St, London W1D 2DH, UK Meet your guide outside Exit 1 of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. See the image below. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to the tour. If you have any issues please contact the guide - Aidan. See address & details
• 1 Soho Stop: 90 minutes See details
• 2 Tin Pan Alley Stop: 15 minutes See details
• 3 Oxford Street Stop: 15 minutes See details
• You'll end at Oxford Circus Oxford St, London W1B 3AG, UK See address & details

• mylittlek 0 contributions 1.0 of 5 bubbles Waste of time This is probably one of the worst tours I’ve ever gone on. It was boring, uninformative, and a waste of my time and money. Please choose another. Read more Written 15 May 2024
• DonnaSue24 0 contributions 1.0 of 5 bubbles The right tour guide makes all the difference, Spencer is not someone I want to spend 5 minutes with and it was 2 hours If Spencer is your tour guide then instead of "Rock and Roll walking tour" it should be called "Spencer, my life me,me,me,I,I,I". Within the first 10 minutes he was laughing at how I was dressed in a heavy coat and hat because "he" was warm. He then insulted how we just visited Stonehenge. I explained that we have wanted to see it for many years and we enjoyed ourselves. He wouldn't drop it and again stated that it's "just a pile of rocks". So within the first 10 minutes he insults how I am dressed and laughs at where we chose to stop and visit. It really should be renamed "Spencer, drink you way around Soho". If you take a shot every time he said "I" or "me" you would drunk within an hour. We thought this would be an informational tour and not about all of his "friends" that he knew from the 1970's. When others in the group would try to answer one of his endless questions and got just a small bit wrong he would immediately point out how wrong they were. Spencer did admit that he was filling in for another tour guide that was sick and being on the tour made me sick...of him. Read more Written 13 May 2024
• louiseturner193 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Legend So happy to see all the sites and history of David Bowie. From the early beginnings. Got some great photos. Jenny was very enthusiastic. Read more Written 12 May 2024
• stevencS5049OG 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Private Beatles Tour with Michael Michael was our private guide for the tour. He went above and beyond by picking us up at our hotel and dropping us there also. During the tour Michael talked to us about the various spots of interest, and showed historical pictures of the Beatles in the same locations. He was a wealth of information, and also doubled as our photographer. That came in really handy as we attempted to duplicate the Abby Road street crossing. Thanks Michael for a great experience. Read more Written 10 May 2024
• Excursion319727 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Beatles and Abbey Road Walking Tour Fascinating historical insights from Spencer. My brother found a show on YouTube all about Spencer’s band Us and Them. That even added to our overall experience. Read more Written 22 April 2024
• 500philm 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Brian Nash Music Tour I booked this Liverpool Music Icons Tour with Nasher for my wife as a Christmas present. Brian carefully explained elements of recent Liverpool music combining interesting facts with humour. I have lived in Liverpool most of my life but was taken down different areas of the city centre that normally I wouldn'thave known about. Brian touched on certain history points of the city as well as pointing out various landmarks in the city centre that we never knew about. My wife and myself found this tour informative, interesting and hilarious. Brian is a credit to the city and we would recommend anybody to book this tour. Hope he enjoys doing it for many years to come. Read more Written 14 April 2024
• N9948FJroberts 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Beatles Fun with Spencer Tour Guide Spencer was absolutely terrific! His personal and historical knowledge of the Beatles made the tour extra special and fun. Highly recommend. Read more Written 10 April 2024
• HappylittleexpatCH 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Best Beatles tour in London! Great guide floored by how much knowledge he had! Really all around a fantastic tour! Really enjoyed the personal touches and the guide is just one of the best I have had! Read more Written 31 March 2024
• Trip08057411178 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Great tour, even on a windy day! My sister and I thoroughly enjoyed the walking tour. Our father was a huge Beatles fan so we enjoyed learning more about the reasons why he loved them so much. Simon was a great tour guide. He was knowledgeable and kept the tour fast paced and informative. The end little gift was an extra treat! Read more Written 27 March 2024
• phillmarley2017 0 contributions 4.0 of 5 bubbles Nice David Bowie walking tour Really interesting DB tour, nice to see where he was born, lived, key moments in his early career etc. Tim the guide was informative, funny and knowledgeable, a great way to spend a couple of hours around the City... Read more Written 26 March 2024
• deborahlD5864MX 0 contributions 4.0 of 5 bubbles George Michael Tour The tour was really good! Our tour guid Richard was lovely! And played abit of George whilst sight seeing in the cab! Was lovely to see where and how George grew up and lucky with the scout hut thanks to the two gents who kindly let us have a look inside where George first played! The whole trip was lovely met some other George fanatics too! Very emotional seeing his grave stone! He was a true legend but a humble man! Will never forget this trip thanks to all that made it special for my sister's 50th!! X Read more Written 24 March 2024
• E6440HEkatieb 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles A Beatles Fan Must-Do… As longtime Beatles fan, we just had to stop in for a day trip to Liverpool on our UK holiday. Not traditionally a fan of guided tours, as we like to explore on our own, but didn’t want to miss any gems so took a chance with Brit Music tours and the Beatles Liverpool City Center Walking Tour. Highlight of our trip! Allen our guide, was fantastic: funny, knowledgeable, never rushed, but kept us on track. Along with all the Beatles touchstones, which will thrill even a casual fan, there was some interesting local history and architecture dotted along the route, adding depth and context to seeing the city (especially as an American who didn’t know much about it). Wear comfy shoes and bring layers as it does get quite chilly down by the docks. A morning tour is perfect as the foot traffic is lighter and you can get some really great photos ops. Would *highly* recommend getting the add-on to walk through The Beatles Story Museum afterwards! Interactive exhibit with some amazing memorabilia. 10/10!! Read more Written 20 March 2024
• Jet45468413324 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles wonderful time spenser was very informative, engaging. me and my wife and daughter had a great time listening to the stories he told of not only the beatles but other stars as well. I would definitely recommend this tour. Read more Written 18 March 2024
• 639jeanluc 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles A very nice experience ! Very nice and interesting tour with Spencer ... He is a great orator !!! Funny facts, nice places, great walking tour !!! Read more Written 17 March 2024
• amandajJ5804YY 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Great fun Spencer was an amazing tour guide. He gave a very personalized tour and took time to get to know each member of the party. He gave great insight, was energetic and entertaining. Highly recommend! Read more Written 11 March 2024

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Sex Pistols and Punk Music Walking Tour provided by Brit Music Tours

Rock is Sick and Living in London

By Charles M. Young

Charles M. Young

Instead of perfume, there will be rottenness. —Isaiah 3:24

A little before midnight, my taxi arrives at a club called the Vortex. The weather is atypically dry, and the neighborhood, like the rest of London, is a shopping district with its eye on the tourist trade. Half a block away ten or twelve teenage boys dressed like horror-movie morticians jump up and down and hit each other. Their hair is short, either greased back or combed to stick straight out with a pomade of Vaseline and talcum powder. Periodically, one chases another out of the pack, grabs the other’s arm and twists it until he screams with pain. Then they rush back laughing and leap about some more. Sitting oblivious against a building, a man dressed in a burlap bag nods gently as a large puddle of urine forms between his legs.

Shouting epithets at themselves in a thick proletarian accent, the boys finally bob down the street as another cab pulls up to the entrance. A man with curly, moderately long, red hair, a pale face and an apelike black sweater gets out. It is Malcolm McLaren , manager of the Sex Pistols , the world’s most notorious punk band who I have flown from New York to meet and see perform. McLaren has been avoiding me for two days. I introduce myself and suggest we get together soon. He changes the subject by introducing me to Russ Meyer, the softcore porn king of Supervixens and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fame, who is directing the Sex Pistols ‘ movie. “You’re a journalist?” asks Meyer. “Do you know Roger Ebert? He won the Pulitzer Prize for film criticism and he’s writing the movie with me. You should talk to him. At the Chicago Sun-Times , he’s Dr. Jekyll. With me, he’s Mr. Hyde. He’s really into tits.”

McLaren seizes the opportunity to disappear into the Vortex and is lost to me for the rest of the evening. The dense crowd inside consists of a few curiosity seekers and 400 to 500 cadaverous teenagers dressed in black or gray. Often their hair is dyed shades of industrial pink, green and yellow. Several blacks, also drably dressed and with rainbow stripes dyed into their short Afros, speckle the audience. The music over the loudspeakers is about two-thirds shrieking New Wave singles and one-third reggae tunes, which the kids respond to with almost as much enthusiasm as the punk rock . The dancing is frantic as a band called the Slits sets up. The style is called pogo dancing – jumping up and down and flailing one’s arms around. It is as far as one can get from the Hustle, and it is the only way one can dance if one is wearing bondage pants tied together at the knees. Most are pogoing alone. Those with partners (usually of the same sex) grasp each other at the neck or shoulders and act like they are strangling each other. Every four or five minutes, someone gets an elbow in the nose and the ensuing punch-out lasts about thirty seconds amid a swirling mass of tripping bodies.

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500 Greatest Songs of All Time: “God Save the Queen”

Unlike in American punk clubs, which occasionally become as crowded but where most people still try to avoid jostling each other, no one here hesitates to violate another person’s physical space. Everyone is fair game for a push. The dance floor is phenomenally stuffed with sweating humans, and getting more stuffed with each new song. Roadies onstage and a few fans hurl beer glasses at each other.

The Slits turn out to be an all-female teenage aggregation whose efforts almost any current American rock audience would reward with a shower of bottles. The guitarist stops in the middle of the fourth song to announce, “Fuckin’ shit! Listen to this!” and plays an ungodly out-of-tune chord that no one else had even noticed in the cacophony. The singer, apparently the only one with pitch, has to tune the guitar for her. “Fuckin’ shit!” explains the singer, plucking the strings. “We never said we were musicians.” When the audience becomes restless, she calls them “wankers” (masturbators) and launches into a tune called, “You’re My Number One Enemy.”

The crowd loves it, dancing with even greater abandon – with the exception of one pogo stick who stops in midhop at the sight of my notebook and demands to know what paper I’m from. I say I’m American, not one of the wanking English press. “Well, maybe you’re all right,” he snorts in a barely understandable brogue. “At least you’re not takin’ fuckin’ pictures. The newspapers all sensationalize it. We aren’t fightin’. We’re ‘avin’ fun.”

So what about all the reports of teddy boys (1957-style greasers) fighting punks on King’s Road? “The scene has been going on long enough to attract the idiots who believe the papers,” he shouts in my ear. “They’re just tryin’ to live up to their image. Regular violence is a lie!” Perfectly on cue, the kid is slammed into my chest as another scuffle erupts on the dance floor. “‘ere it comes again,” he says, happily jumping back into the fray.

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The Slits draw an encore and invite their opening act, Prefix, a male group who shave their marble white bodies in emulation of Iggy Pop, to jam on “Louie Louie.” The audience likes it so much that several of them storm the stage and nearly succeed in toppling the eight-foot stacks of PA speakers before the security men beat them into submission.

Heading for the exit, I recognize the Sex Pistols’ drummer, Paul Cook, also weaving his way outside. Unaccompanied, he is wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, straight-legged blue jeans and dilapidated sneakers. The nose is wide, the skin pallid. Conditioned by six months of reports about the Sex Pistols’ proclivity for violence, I half expect him to assault me. But his hand is limp as we shake and his eyes do not meet mine when I introduce myself. He is, of all things, shy.

“It’s just a laugh, not really that violent,” he says when I ask about their dancing. “You can take it which way you want: some laugh, some get paranoid. They want to prove they aren’t posing.”

“A lot of people have missed the satire,” I say. “Some of the press are even trying to link you with the fascists.”

“I can’t be bothered with that shit,” he replies. “It’s just what they want to read into it. When we first started playing, before all the articles came out, people would come up and say they’d never seen anything so funny in their lives.”

T he next afternoon I spend reading clips in the Sex Pistols’ office – two dingy gray rooms on the top floor of a small office building a few blocks from Piccadilly Circus. McLaren’s assistants are also dingy and gray and do not introduce me to anyone. When they say hello, they do not shake hands or give a peck on the cheek; they choke each other. The three-foot clip file reflects a band so clouded in mythology that the truth is impossible to discern. This appears to be in everyone’s interest – the press prints anything they can think up, the people are titillated in the midst of excruciatingly dull economic stories by reports that the younger generation is renaming itself Johnny Rotten and throwing up on old ladies, and the Sex Pistols’ image as Forbidden Fruit is enhanced. This summer, however, the Pistols have been careening into overexposure in their homeland. The four major music weeklies – Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Record Mirror and Sounds – have mentioned them on the cover of almost every issue for months. Taking punk lyrics at their literal word, the dailies regularly proclaim the movement the end of Western Civilization. McLaren has since denounced them for “killing” the New Wave, which may have something to do with why he is letting me languish in my hotel room waiting for his phone calls rather than talk to the band.

All this for a group that has released three singles?

In the history of rock & roll, there is no stranger tale: in late 1971, Malcolm McLaren, then a 24-year-old art student, and his wife Vivian Westwood, who was either teaching or working for Social Security (she doesn’t remember which), opened a boutique for teddy boys called Let It Rock. They started with little money, but the shop proved an enormous success because of their shrewd buying of vintage rock records in discount bins and unused stocks of old clothes. The teds’ rigid conservatism proved boring, however, so McLaren and Westwood changed the name of their store to Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die and catered to the rockers, another cultural fragment that favored chains, black leather and motorcycles.

McLaren was not, he says, at all interested in contemporary rock music, but was greatly impressed by the swagger of the New York Dolls when they visited Too Fast one afternoon in 1974. He followed them to a Paris performance and, from November 1974 to June 1975, tried to manage them when their old management and record company were mired in feuds. Burying their old image as trendy transvestites, McLaren dressed them in red leather, draped their amplifiers with hammer and sickle flags and asked the question in their advertising, “What are the politics of boredom?” This proved less than a hit with both public and critics. The Dolls hung it up forever in the middle of a gig in Florida, and McLaren flew back to England a sadder but wiser rock & roll manager.

M eanwhile, Westwood had changed the name of the boutique to Sex and was selling bondage clothes and T-shirts decorated with large rips and grotesque pornography (the government actually prosecuted them for their pictures). It became a hangout for budding punks who listened to the jukebox and stole the clothes. Among them were four proletarian kids – Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock and another guitar player – who wanted to start a band. McLaren suggested the name Sex Pistols. Jones began as the singer (Cook played drums, Matlock bass) but didn’t know what to do with his hands, so they gave him a guitar, which he learned to play proficiently in two months. The other musician was given the boot, leaving an opening for a singer.

One of the regulars at Sex was a kid named John Lydon, who was distinguished on three counts: 1) his face had the pallor of death; 2) he went around spitting on poseurs he passed on the street; and 3) he was the first to understand the democratic implications of punk – rather than pay ten pounds for an ugly T-shirt with holes in it, he took a Pink Floyd T-shirt, scratched holes in the eyes and wrote I Hate over the logo. McLaren stood him in front of the jukebox, had him mouth Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” and declared him their new lead singer. Jones noticed the mung on Lydon’s never-brushed teeth, and christened him Johnny Rotten.

From the beginning, the Sex Pistols had trouble finding venues for their chaotic performances. But Rotten, blessed with demented anger heretofore unseen outside a war zone, proved to be the spark that set off the forest fire of punk bands now raging through Britain. EMI , the largest and most prestigious English record company, signed them and released the Pistols’ first single, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” in November 1976. In a tune similar to the Who’s “I Can See for Miles,” Johnny Rotten declared himself an anti-Christ who wanted to destroy everything. The BBC was not amused and gave it no airplay. “Anarchy” was not even in the charts by December 1st, when the Sex Pistols became household epithets in one night.

Appearing live on the British Today show at the supper hour, the Pistols responded to interviewer Bill Grundy’s command, “Say something outrageous,” by calling him a “dirty fucker” and a “fucking rotter.” The newspapers put them on the front page for a week with screaming headlines like “TV Fury Over Rock Cult Filth” and “Punk? Call It Filthy Lucre”. Members of Parliament denounced them. “Anarchy” entered the charts at Number 43, but record company workers refused to handle it and EMI was fast buckling under the public pressure. The Pistols added to the outrage by refusing to apologize and by doing long interviews in which they denounced the star system and sacred luminaries like Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart for being old and rich. They went on tour, traveling around the country in a bus, arriving at gigs only to discover that they had been banned in the township. Out of twenty-one scheduled dates, the Sex Pistols played three.

O n January 4th of this year, they flew to Amsterdam for a club date and got involved in an incident at Heathrow Airport. One witness claimed the Sex Pistols were doing something so disgusting that she could not repeat it for publication. Steve Jones claimed he had a simple case of indigestion, but the papers had a field day, and it became generally believed Jones had been vomiting on old ladies in the preflight lounge. EMI dropped them at a cost of 50,000 pounds and 5000 copies of “Anarchy” to break the contract.

Glen Matlock also left about this time, charging that the group was so manipulated by McLaren that they had become like the Monkees . The group charged Matlock with being into old farts like Paul McCartney . Sid Vicious , an old school chum of Rotten’s, inventor of pogo dancing, reputed mean hand with a bicycle chain and totally inexperienced hand with a bass guitar, was the replacement.

On March 10th, A&M signed the Sex Pistols, advancing them 50,000 pounds, and dropped them a week later for another 25,000 pounds. In between, the Pistols were apparently involved in incidents of vandalism at the company’s headquarters and in a pub fight with the head of programming for the BBC. It is also thought that A&M was the target of heavy pressure brought by disc jockeys, distributors and its own employees.

This summer they signed with Virgin for British distribution and released “God Save the Queen,” a raunchy denunciation of the monarchy, just in time for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. The song quickly went to Number One on the New Musical Express charts. They followed up with a two-sided hit, “Pretty Vacant,” an original about not caring for anything, and “No Fun,” an Iggy Pop cover that Rotten starts as a sociology lecture and ends as a sort of hymn to the general worthlessness of the universe. They have just completed a much anticipated album, Another Load of Bollocks from the Sex Pistols, due out in Britain between this writing and publication time. Though competition is thought to be hot, McLaren still has not signed an American deal.

In the meantime, the Sex Pistols are concentrating their efforts on a feature movie to take their message directly to their audience and bypass the journalists, record companies and disc jockeys. The boutique has been renamed Seditionaries to accommodate the new political mood and its line of T-shirts now includes swastikas. Both Rotten and Cook were assaulted this summer by “patriots” who sent them to the hospital briefly.

F uckin’ ell! They were unlucky, that was all,” says Steve Jones, who has arrived in the office to look at some pictures. Jones is by far the healthiest-looking Sex Pistol, with an I’m-a-stud-from-the-coal-mines look about him, though his handshake proves as limp as Cook’s. “It ain’t hard to suss it out if a geezer’s going to beat up on you.”

I mention the recent Swedish tour of small clubs and the gangs of “razors” – youthful thugs who drive big American cars and assault immigrants – who disrupted some concerts by ripping the safety pins out of the cheeks of some of the Sex Pistols’ fans.

“Yeah, they like the music, they just don’t like the safety pins – that’s wot a Swedish bloke told me. They’re just fuckin’ idiots,” says Jones. “I wanted to go outside and smack’em, but the bouncers wouldn’t let us. They think we’re the crown jewels.”

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The phone rings and it is McLaren. I fall on my knees before his assistant and write “ Please !!” on my notepad. She has mercy and lets me talk to him for a moment. To my great surprise, he invites me to his apartment late that evening. I express my heartfelt thanks and take off with Jones to the studio, where the Sex Pistols are doing the final overdubs on the album. At the curb, Jones pats a passing woman on the behind, much to the distress of the woman and a roadie who is worried what I’ll write. “I don’t care!” exclaims Jones. “I like slappin’ birds’ arses!” A Chinese man grabs the cab he’d been motioning and Jones shouts, “Fuckin’ little slit eye got it! Oy! Oy! You cunt!”

In the taxi, I ask his impression of Russ Meyer. “Seems like a nice bloke,” he says. “Very aware of everything. There’s going to be plenty of sex in this film, lots of birds with big tits.”

One of the things that strikes me about the punk movement, I say, is that it seems antisex – kids making themselves so ugly and mutilated that no physical attraction is possible. Sid Vicious described himself in one article as a “sexless monster,” totally bored with the whole subject.

“Sid said that?” says Jones. “‘e was puttin’ on.”

I felt like a sexless monster because at the time my head was shaved and I was wearing this vile tuxedo that was four sizes too big. I had no money to buy clothes, and people would run away when I walked down the street. It was a right laugh,” says Sid Vicious in the lounge of the recording studio. Queen is recording at the same time, and Freddie Mercury’s high-pitched howls waft through the not-quite-soundproofed door. “I didn’t like fuckin’ then, and I still don’t. It’s dull.”

Vicious’ voice has a tone of goofy absurdity, something like Ringo Starr’s (though he’d hate the analogy), that elevates almost everything he says to high humor. Pencil thin, he is dressed in a black leather jacket with no shirt underneath and enormous black combat boots. His teeth appear not to have been brushed in several years. His hair is about two inches long and sticks straight out at odd angles. Several bright red scars highlight his solar plexus.

“One night nobody was payin’ any attention to me, so I thought I’d commit suicide,” he explains, belching loudly. “So I went in the bathroom, broke a glass and slashed my chest with it. It’s a really good way to get attention. I’m going to do it again – particularly since it doesn’t work. They all said I didn’t cut myself enough to be realistic and ignored me.” Vicious laughs at the non sequitur, adding, “You better not make a fool of me in this article.”

Vicious went to college, the English equivalent of American high school, with Johnny Rotten. “We were right thick cunts, we were,” he says.” ‘e was the vilest geezer I ever met – all misshapen, no ‘air, ‘unchback, flat feet. Everybody ‘ated’im. Everybody ‘ated me. We ‘ated each other, too, but nobody else would talk to us, so we’d just get drunk and criticize each other. ‘e used to tell people ‘e had to cut his piles off with a razor blade because they were’anging out’is pants, and they’d believe ‘im. ‘e used to tell them that n—- ‘ad ‘air on the roofs of their mouths. They believed that too. “

Vicious dropped out of school after somehow finagling a scholarship (“I didn’t know about the dole yet”) which he used to start some sort of illicit business that he declined to specify. He first touched immortality when attending the early Sex Pistols’ concerts. “They were the only group I ever wanted to see,” he says. “I didn’t know how to dance, so I just jumped up and down and bashed people. Then everybody else started doin’ it, but they didn’t get it right, so I quit.”

“Did you really get into all those fights attributed to you?”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the press. If somebody starts with me, I try to mess them up, but I don’t look for trouble.”

“When did you first pick up the bass?”

“I never played seriously until I joined the group. Learned quite fast, I suppose. Before I started playing, I never really noticed the bass – couldn’t tell it from a piano. I heard records as just a wall of sound. I’d have to think before I could pick anything out.”

I say how surprised I was the other night to see teenage punks responding so enthusiastically to reggae music. “Yeah, I like reggae,” he says. “But I don’t know what it is. I never quite find out what things are.”

“It’s true you hate the traditional rock stars who’ve made big names for themselves?”

“I absolutely despise those turds. The Stones should have quit in 1965. You never see any of those cunts walkin’ down the street. If it gets so you can’t see us that way, I don’t want it.”

“But the entire American music industry is poised to turn you into the next big thing. They’ll suck out any integrity the band has.”

“But how can they? I only know one way to live. That’s like now. In Sweden, they wouldn’t let us out the door. Those fat cunts, they said the crowds would tear us apart, but nothin’ ‘appened. I won’t be filled with that shit.”

“Will you have anything to sing about when you’re rich?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever be millionaires. I don’t really think about the future. I ‘aven’t got a clue.”

Two groupies, dressed like That Cosmo Cadaver, interrupt. “Can we stay with you tonight?” they ask. “John wouldn’t let us.”

“Of course not,” says Vicious. “You’re not worth anythin’ to me. There’s nothin’ you ‘ave that I want. And I can’t stand the sound of your friend’s voice. I’m very mercenary about these things.”

“So I see.”

When she doesn’t respond in kind, Vicious immediately changes his tune. “No, it’s just that I don’t’ave a place to stay mesef. Every time I’ave a place, I get bored in a week. I sleep where I can.”

“With all the money you make, you’aven’t got your own flat?”

“I’aven’t seen any of it.”

Vicious pulls out his pockets. One coin falls to the floor. “Look, I don’t even get paid till Friday, and then it’s all gone by Monday. I’aven’t seen any of the money.”

M alcolm McLaren, who has a reputation for being two hours late to everything, is also two hours late to meet me at his apartment. Vivian Westwood ushers me into their bedroom, where I wait until she finishes cutting a half-inch or so of her two-inch hair, presumably to make it stick out better. The room is modestly furnished in black and white, a constantly recurring color theme that – along with the incessant rain, bad telephones, warm beer, incompetent hotel service, yellow journalism, cretinous newspapers, lack of time with the band, money that weighs more than it’s worth, cricket on television, geographically separate streets having the same name within London’s city limits, riots between Marxist and neo-Nazi splinter parties, and a hangover – is convincing me to change my name to Chuckie Suicide and go Sid Vicious one better. The only color in the room is a poster of the equally depressing Red Ballet. The bookshelf includes Orwell, Dickens, de Sade and Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism. First in a pile of albums on the dresser is The World of Billy Fury.

Westwood appears a few years older than her husband and wears no makeup over her sheet-white skin. She wears a white blouse and black bondage pants tied together at the knee and thigh. Finishing her hair, she sits on the black bedspread and gives a history of her boutique. They are, she says, still awaiting a decision on the government suit against their pornographic T-shirts. “We’ve always been about provoking,” she says. “If you want to find out how much freedom you have, make some kind of explicit sexual statement and wait for it all to crash down around you.”

She says Rotten was the first to rip his own shirt, but, contrary to some accounts, gives Vicious credit for first using safety pins: “A mate who owed him money ripped up his apartment one night – shredded the rug, the walls, his clothes, everything. He had to use the pins to hold his trousers together.”

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W hen McLaren finally arrives after midnight, he is stil wearing the mangy black sweater I saw several nights back. The long strings of matted wool keep reminding me of Johnny Rotten’s piles hanging out of his pants. I ask why he presented the New York Dolls as communists.

“It was just an idea that came out, like a can of new soup,” he says. “Rock & roll is not just music. You’re selling an attitude too. Take away the attitude and you’re just like anyone else, you’re like American rock groups. Of course, maybe there’s just too wide a market there for a good attitude. The Sex Pistols came about because on the streets of Britain they’re saying, ‘What is this 1960s crap, paying five pounds to see some guy the size of a sixpence when I’m the dole?’ The kids need a sense of adventure, and rock & roll needs to find a way to give it to them – wham out the hardest and cruelest lyrics as propaganda, speak the truth as clearly as possible.”

“What did the Dolls as communists have to do with the truth?”

“I don’t know,” McLaren admits. “I’m not a communist. I’m rather anarchistic. I was trying to make them more extreme, less accessible. Most bands won’t do that sort of thing, but they must find a means to provoke.”

“Aren’t there easier ways to break a band?”

“I love to go the hardest route. It keeps you up. It keeps the truth happening. Too many of the new groups are getting sucked up by the record companies too early. The movement will got diluted.”

Since his own problems with record companies are by now legendary, I ask about his negotiations for an American deal.

“Well, Clive Davis called the other day: bullshit artist number one, this guy,” he says. “I said, ‘Weren’t you the bloke who told the press not to identify itself too closely with the punk movement?’ He said he didn’t mean the Sex Pistols – you must look on groups as individuals, not as part of a movement. I said I believe in movements: ‘Get it straight. We’re not part of your talent roster. We’ll have none of your stars.’ He said Patti Smith was on Arista and she was a punk. ‘I don’t want your old hacks,’ I said. ‘You should have signed the Kinks in 1964 when they had something to say.’

(Reached in New York later, Davis commented, “This cannot be typical of what McLaren thinks because he’s told me that he’s heard many good things about Arista, and I or my representatives have had about 20 conversations with him. This sounds like a hatchet job, like an isolated and fragmentary quote, since it is from a man who is very interested in signing with me and my company. My reaction is amusement.”)

“These record company presidents, they’re all whores. Two months ago, their doormen would have thrown us out. We sell a few records and they phone and want their pictures taken with us. Mo Ostin [of Warner Bros.] is flying in with his lawyer tomorrow, and I couldn’t get past his secretary before. I’ve been in and out of CBS many times. Walter Yetnikoff [president of CBS Records Group] sang me ‘Anarchy in U.K.’ at breakfast at the Beverty Wilshire to prove he knew the group. He said he wasn’t offended by Johnny Rotten saying he was an anti-Christ. ‘I’m Jewish,’ he said.”

(Walter Yetnik off commented later: “I was saying it as a gag. I’m not looking to pick a fight with Christianity.”)

I ask why he places the press right down in the sewer along with record company presidents.

“Because the music press are basically Sixties culture freaks. They imply we’re not original, they try to maintain this facade of knowing every song, every riff, every lyric, as if they invented it. One recent headline had us as ‘John, Paul, Steve and Sid,’ like we were the Beatles! That’s fucking disgusting! They were trying to make us fun. It shows the vampire nature of the Sixties generation, the most narcissistic generation that has ever been!”

“So why are you putting up with me?”

“My man in America told me to. If we do Rolling Stone , we might not have to do another interview for two years. This band hates you. It hates your culture. Why can’t you lethargic, complacent hippies understand that? You need to be smashed . . . This is a very horrible country, England. We invented the mackintosh, you know.” McLaren gestures as if he is opening his coat for a lewd display. “We invented the flasher, the voyeur. That’s what the press is about.”

Seeing no need for elaboration, I change the subject to why he selected Russ Meyer, of all people, to direct the film.

“Right from the beginning, I knew he was the right guy. He was an action director, and he was an outcast from the regular studios. I liked his sense of color. We didn’t want a grainy, black and white, Polish, socialist, realist movie . . . “

The phone rings and McLaren answers. “What’s that? Elvis Presley died? . . . Makes you feel sad, doesn’t it? Like your grandfather died . . . Yeah, it’s just too bad it couldn’t have been Mick Jagger.”

R uss Meyer, a grandfatherly man with a small, well-manicured mustache, shows me into his nicely furnished apartment the next day and motions to a slightly pudgy young man on the other side of the room. “This is Roger Ebert,” he says. “He won the Pulitzer Prize for film criticism and he’s writing the movie with me. At the Chicago Sun-Times, he’s Dr. Jekyll. With me, he’s Mr. Hyde. He’s really into tits.”

Ebert laughs and says, “Remember, without me, there wouldn’t be any mention of Bambi in this movie.”

Meyer turns around and motions to the couch behind me. “This,” he says, “is John.”

Sid Vicious could not have described him more accurately: all misshapen, hunchbacked, translucently pale, short hair, bright orange – undoubtedly the vilest geezer I have ever met too. He is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Destroy and a swastika, black leather pants and these bizarre black shoes shaped like gunboats. His handshake is the limpest of all. “You, uh, prefer to be called John?” I ask.

“That’s right,” he says. “I despise the name Johnny Rotten. I don’t talk to anyone who calls me that.” His voice could turn the Lord’s Prayer into brutal sarcasm. Having learned, probably, that if you stare at anyone long enough he will think you know he’s a fraud (because everyone is a fraud), Rotten glares with demonic self-righteousness that threatens to reduce me to incoherence. The overall effect, though, stirs a maternal instinct I didn’t know I had. The idea of this sickly dwarf bringing the wrath of an entire nation down on his shoulders is, well, heart-warming. Maybe, just maybe, if someone this powerless could cause that much uproar, maybe words still mean something.

“You got any comment for the world on the death of Elvis?”

“Fuckin’ good riddance to bad rubbish,” he snarls. “I don’t give a fuckin’ shit, and nobody else does either. It’s just fun to fake sympathy, that’s all they’re doin’.”

“Is it true you used to tell people you had to cut off your piles with a razor blade?”

“Yeah, I didn’t go to school for about three weeks. The teachers sent me flowers. I’m an atrocious liar.”

“How did you get that way?” I regret the question by the time it’s out of my mouth, but there’s no taking it back.

“Through dating people who ask that kind of crap. Assholes who believe that sort of thing don’t deserve to be spit on.”

“You look like Mel Ferrer,” says Meyer to me. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No” I reply. “They usually compare me to Charlie Watts.”

“We’re lookin’ for a journalist who looks like Mel Ferrer for the movie,” says Rotten. “He gets murdered.” He glares at me again. This time I glare back, and we end up in an unstated contest for about ten seconds. He seems to withdraw more than lose concentration, not leaving me much of a victory. Meyer asks him about certain English slang words to give the script some authenticity. “A tosspot is even lower than a jerk-off,” Rotten answers. “A weed is a pansy. If you don’t know that, it’s just an indication of how fuckin’ stupid you Americans are.”

“Just a minute, boy,” laughs Meyer. “In ’44, we saved your ass.”

“Like fuck you did . . . ” Rotten trails off, suddenly realizing he’s put himself in the position of defending his country. “You can slag off England all you want. There’s no such thing as patriotism anymore. I don’t care if it blows up. There’s more tourists in London than Londoners. You never know what accent you’re going to get when you ask directions.”

“Hasn’t anyone defended you from the standpoint of freedom of speech?”

“Not a one,” he replies. “England was never free. It was always a load of bullshit. I’m surprised we aren’t in jail for treason. Where’s the bog?”

“Down the hall to the left,” says Meyer. “There’s ale in the refrigerator and on the counter, if you want it warm.”

“No, the bog, man,” says Rotten. “You know, the shithouse, the wankhole.”

“Oh! The bathroom !” says Meyer. “Straight down the hall.” Rotten trots off.

“Hmmm,” Meyer continues, “what do you think about ‘Bog’ for a movie title? ‘Bog,’ with an exclamation point.”

W hen Rotten returns from the bog, I ask if he shares Vicious’ views on love. “Love is two minutes and fifty seconds of squelching noises,” he says. “It shows your mind isn’t clicking right.”

Meyer suggests that we go have dinner and asks Rotten what kind of food he likes.

“I don’t like food.”

“Come on,” says Meyer.

“You have to eat something to survive.”

“Very little.”

“What do you eat when you eat very little?”

“Whatever is available. Food is a load of rubbish.”

Rotten finally agrees to a fish restaurant named Wheeler’s Alcove and the five of us – Meyer, Ebert, Rotten, me and this roadie who showed up halfway through the talk – stuff ourselves into a subcompact that would be cramped for two. “You can’t blame him for being difficult,” whispers the roadie. “Journalists ask the most unbelievably stupid questions. They’ve been calling all day asking how he felt about Elvis.”

On the way, we stop at a store so Rotten can pick up the following day’s groceries – two six-packs and a can of beans. At the restaurant, Ebert entertains me with a joke about an elephant having his testicles crushed by two bricks until the waiter arrives.

“I’ll have a filet with nothing around it and a green salad on the side, mush,” orders Rotten.

“Yes, sir, but don’t call me mush,” says the waiter who appears to have just gotten off the boat from Pakistan.

Rotten leans over the table and delivers his most enraged stare. “And I’ll have a Guiness on the side, mush !” The waiter tries to take the other orders, but Rotten insists: “Did you hear I want nothing around the filet, mush ?!” The waiter finally hustles off to the kitchen, much relieved to get away.

“What’s a mush?” asks Meyer.

“Someone whose face is all beaten in and looks like a cunt.”

“He didn’t like that. He’ll spit in your salad.”

“I know it. That’s why I said it. The mush couldn’t take a joke.”

As the food arrives, I ask Rotten about the close friendship of reggae and punk. The first single by whites ever carried in some of the record shops in Brixton, the Jamaican ghetto, was “Anarchy in the U.K.” But neither movement seems to have made much of an impact on American blacks, who still very much believe in the middle-class dream, at least according to a New York Times poll which showed that of any racial group, blacks have the most optimism about New York.

“Punks and n—–s are almost the same thing,” says Rotten, oddly echoing a theme of the last decade which substituted “students” for punks. “When I come to America, I’m going straight to the ghetto. And if I get bullshit from the blacks in New York, I’ll just be surprised at how dumb they are. I’m not going to hang out with the trendies at Max’s and the CBGB. I’m not asking the blacks to like us. That’s irrelevant. It’s just that we’re doing something they’d want to do if they had the chance.” Rotten seems to be at his most sincere of the evening. He leans forward, almost urgently. “Listen, this band started by nicking every piece of equipment. I still sing through David Bowie’s microphones. Punk fashions are a load of bollocks. Real punks nick all their gear from junk shops.”

I ask Meyer if, as a Hollywood outcast, he feels any kinship with the punks.

“Not really,” he says. “I don’t consider myself an outcast. I’m the only independent who can compete with the major studios. I thought this would be a good transitional thing to get out of the straight bosoms-and-brawn thing. They’re also paying me one percent of the U.S. gross.”

“You mean you don’t believe in what they’re saying at all?”

“Don’t you know that all directors are whores? John, wouldn’t you make yourself look like a cunt for a million dollars?”

“How could you make me look like a bigger cunt than I am?” says Rotten. “The joke’s on you.”

N ext morning I call McLaren at home and he promises me a ride to Wolver Hampton, a suburb of Birmingham, to see the first date of the Sex Pistols’ “guerrilla tour” of Britain. Since they are banned everywhere, they will be playing under assumed names. Tonight it is to be the Spots, an acronym for “Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly.” In the meantime, I make a phone call to Bernard Brooke-Partridge, Conservative member of the Greater London Council and chairman of the Arts Committee – the man primarilly responsible for banning the Pistols in London.

“I will do everything within the law to stop them from appearing here ever again,” he says. “I loathe and detest everything they stand for and look like. They are obnoxious, obscene and disgusting.”

“Doesn’t the question of who should decide what’s disgusting in a free society enter in here?”

“I am the person who decides,” he says. “The electorate put me here. My power is not in question. If the Sex Pistols want to change the system, they are free to stand for election from my district.”

“In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution says the government is not allowed to make such decisions.”

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“We have our own way of doing things here. The Sex Pistols are scum trying to make a fast buck, which they are entitled to do under the law. I am entitled to try and stop them. We’ll see who wins.

“Now, I’ve seen many of the groups play. I’ve nothing against Mick Jagger and his ilk. Some of his gestures appeared lewd, and they were probably meant that way, but the audience was not tearing up the seats. I will say this for the Sex Pistols: there’s one band that’s a damn sight worse: the Bay City Rollers.”

M cLaren does not phone me back with instructions on how to get my ride, so I end up taking the train at the last minute. Wolver Hampton turns out to be an industrial sumphole, resembling Cleveland if Cleveland had been built 200 years earlier. The Club Lafayette is in the middle of a tough, working-class neighborhood. Word has obviously gotten out, as a line five to eight wide extends around the block. Inside, it is already packed with people in their late teens and early 20s. Except for one kid who appears to have dyed his skin green (could it have been the dimlight?) and a few others in punk paraphernalia, the crowd is dressed normally. They pogo to the recorded music, however, with even greater intensity than their counterparts at the Vortex. The fights are both more frequent and more violent. One battle seems to swirl around the entire floor, bodies tripping like a line of dominoes until it stops at the foot of the stairs in back, directly below Malcolm McLaren. A half-smile on his lips, he is an island of serenity, magically untouched by the chaos.

“You’ve got to control yourselves a bit more,” pleads the DJ over the loudspeaker, “or the Spots will not perform. Please be cool!” The crowd responds with what I’m told is a soccer chant.

At midnight, the Sex Pistols finally emerge from the dressing room. The crush around the foot-high stage is literally unbelievable and skirmishes with the security men immediately erupt. The ten-foot stacks of PA speakers are rocking back and forth and are dangerously close to toppling over. The band cranks up and Rotten growls the demonic laugh at the beginning of “Anarchy in the U.K.”:

Rrrrright nowwwwww! Ahahahahhh! I am an anti-Christ I am an anarchist I don’t know what I want But I know how to get it I wanna destroy passers-by Cause I wanna beeee anarchyyyyy.

Some kid has put his fist through one of the speakers and a few more have escaped the security men to stop on wires and knock over electronic equipment. The song is barely intelligible over the explosions and spitting noises from shorts, just the way anarchy ought to sound. The crowd pogos frantically. Paul Cook is completely bidden from view, but sounds fine, limiting himself to a basic repertoire of rock licks. Steve Jones’ guitar work avoids frilla but gets the job done with taste. His expression is deadly earnest – like a high school basketball star stepping up for a crucial free throw – which he breaks only to spit on the audience every few minutes. Sid Vicious’ bass playing is highly energetic and completely without subtlety. He’s been up for two days prior to the gig and, hilariously, looks like he’s trying to cop some zzz’s between licks. Still clad in his swastika T-shirt, Rotten is perhaps the most captivating performer I’ve ever seen. He really doesn’t do that much besides snarl and be hunch-backed; it’s the eyes that kill you. They don’t pierce, they bludgeon.

“You’re bustin’ up the PA,” he says, more as a statement of fact than alarm, after the song is over. “Do you want us to continue?”

Several burly roadies join the security men to form a solid wall in front of the band. Rotten is completely hidden from view, so he climbs on top of a monitor and grabs the mike in one hand and the ceiling with the other for balanoe. Someone in the balcony pours beer on him.

The band manages to get through “I Wanna Be Me,” “I’m a Lazy Sod” and “No Feeling” with the sound system relatively intact. “Pretty Vacant,” their current hit single, draws an unholy reaction – the crowd shouting the chorus at the top of their lungs: “We’re so pretty/Oh so pretty/Va-cant/And we don’t care!” For the first time, I see Johnny Rotten crack a smile – only a brief one, but unmistakably a smile. Grasping a profusely bleeding nose, a kid collapses at my feet. Another pogos with his pants down. The “God Save the Queen” chorus – “No future, no future, no future for you” – sparks a similar explosion and closes the set. “No Fun” is the encore and, true to its title, blows out the entire PA.

I grab a poster advertising the Spots and head for the dressing room. Uncool fan that I have become, I ask for autographs. Cook complies; Jones complies; Rotten complies; Vicious asks, “Why shoud I?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just wish you would. That was the most amazing show I’ve ever seen.”

Vicious thinks a moment and signs it. “Usually I don’t do this,” he says. “For some reason, I’m glad you liked it.”

I’m glad I liked it, too. Sid Vicious is about as close as rock & roll is going to come to Huckleberry Finn in this decade. I hope he can light out for the territories before he turns into just another ego. I can’t dislike Malcolm McLaren for figuring out that reporters are vampires, lurking in the night, ready to suck out every last corpuscle of titillation, leaving the victim to spend eternity as a Media Zombie. If he were merely a manipulator, he wouldn’t have chosen such genuine fuckups for the band. If he were merely a greedhead, he could have found an easier way to run the Sex Pistols for number one group in the world. As it is, he chose not the politics of boredom, but the politics of division, Richard Nixon’s way: amputate the wanking Sixties liberals from their working-class support. Kids destroyed schools to the tune of $600 million in the U.S. last year. That’s a lot of anger that the Southern-California-Cocaine-And-Unrequited-Love Axis isn’t capable of tapping.

And Johnny Rotten, it seems to me, told the entire United Kingdom he had to cut his piles off with a razor, and the damn fools believed him. America’s get-well card is in the mail. It’ll be a right laugh. But I keep thinking about that brief smile during “Pretty Vacant” at the Club Lafayette. Did that mean, “Look how great I am!” or “Look at them have a good time!”? Those have always been divergent roads in rock & roll. The Sex Pistols took the latter, the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

This story is from the October 20th, 1977 issue of Rolling Stone.

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Pistol – FX drops a full trailer for its forthcoming Sex Pistols series

• Start dates

The Danny Boyle directed show lands at the end of May. 

Set at the birth of the UK punk scene, Pistol will chronicle the formation of the notorious band Sex Pistols.

Created and written by Craig Pearce, the show is based on Steve Jones‘ memoir ‘Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol’. The six-part series is directed by Danny Boyle and follows the Sex Pistols’ rise to fame during the birth of London’s punk scene.

We’ve been following the show’s development , including the teaser trailer which dropped last month. Now, FX have released a full trailer, running to a minute and a half, backed by the band’s music.

“With the right guidance you could change the world.”

The trailer deploys stock footage to root the drama in its drab 1970s setting, as we imagine the show itself will. The Pistols then explode into vibrant life, as we see the chaos that swirls around them.

We also get a proper look at the band’s manager Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), whose mission statement shapes the band. The trailer goes heavy on Maisie Williams too, who appears as punk icon Jordan (aka Pamela Rooke).

Pistol promises a bunch of relative newcomers as the band themselves; Toby Wallace plays Steve Jones, Jacob Slater is Paul Cook, Anson Boon is John Lydon and Christian Lees plays Glen Matlock. Joining them, Louis Partridge ( Enola Holmes , Medici ) plays Sid Vicious.

Surrounding them, in addition to Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Maisie Williams are Sydney Chandler as Chrissie Hynde, Talulah Riley as Vivienne Westwood and Emma Appleton ( The Witcher ) as Nancy Spungen.

On Hulu in the US,  Pistol come to Disney+ in the UK on the 31 st of May 2022.

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How to watch Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols biopic Pistol in the UK

Here is the best way to watch Danny Boyle’s take on the rise and fall of the iconic band, The Sex Pistols.

Celebrity biopics seem more popular than ever, and Pistol is no exception. The new miniseries from Danny Boyle focuses on The Sex Pistols, the punk band that found fame in the 1970s thanks to their bad behaviour and great music.

If you’re interested in Pistol, keep reading, as we’re going to be divulging the best way to watch the new show if you’re in the UK.

When can I stream Pistol?

There are six episodes in this new miniseries, with every episode becoming available to watch on 31 May, meaning that you can start binge-watching the series straight away rather than wait for them to be released on a weekly basis.

Where can I stream Pistol?

If you’re in the UK, the only place that you can find Pistol is on Disney+. It’s part of the brand’s Star section and is available on FX in the US.

At the time of writing, Disney+ does not have a free trial period, meaning that you will need to sign up for a subscription. You can set up a monthly membership, which will cost you £7.99 per month, but if you want to stick around and save some money, you can also sign up for a full year, which will cost you £79.90. You can sign up to Disney Plus below.

Sign up for Disney+

Disney+ offers access to loads of original shows like The Mandalorian and Hawkeye, classic films and content from big brands like Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar.

• From £4.99 a month

What is Pistol about?

The new show is based on the recent autobiography of Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones. Toby Wallace, Louis Partridge, Christan Lees, Jacbon Slater and Anson Boon star as the Sex Pistols themselves. You can see a trailer below.

The lead singer of the band, John Lydon, has actually been against the project and even attempted to ensure that the group’s music could not be used in the series in a court case.

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'Pistol' Trailer: Danny Boyle's Sex Pistols Series Brings Anarchy to the U.K.

Never mind the bollocks, here's the trailer.

Now that Pistol is fast approaching its release date on FX and Hulu, we can finally start looking forward to trailers and clips from the upcoming series that brings Academy Award winning director Danny Boyle back to his Trainspotting roots. The six-episode series will chronicle the story of legendary punk-rock band the Sex Pistols, one of the culture-changing groups that revolutionized music in London – and then the rest of the world.

The first teaser trailer for Pistol is thin on footage, running just a little under a minute long, but it already lets us get a sense of what the series will be like – and if you thought "youth in revolt, daring hairstyles, and guitars being smashed", that’s exactly what you’ll find. Should Boyle be able to reproduce what he did in one his most famous films, Pistol will simultaneously teach us about British culture during the late 70s and make us feel like we are living it.

In order to help bring the 70s British atmosphere back to life, the trailer for Pistol suggests that the series will go with an “aged” and slightly amateurish-looking cinematography, which represents the raw feel of the birth of punk-rock. The Sex Pistols are considered one of the most influential bands of the century, even though their career spanned only a couple of years. They pushed the boundaries when it came to the punk rock movement and inspired a legion of fans to question authority and the status quo.

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Pistol is adapted from the Sex Pistols' guitarist Steve Jones ' memoir, titled Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol , and it brings to life the rage-filled world that fans have come to associate with the band. Toby Wallace plays Jones, and the rest of the cast features Anson Boon as John Lydon , Christian Lees as Glen Matlock , Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious , and Jacob Slater as Paul Cook , as well as Maisie Williams as punk icon Jordan , Thomas Brodie-Sangster as the Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren , and Talulah Riley as McLaren's partner and world-famous fashion designer, Vivienne Westwood .

The series is created and written by BAFTA winner Craig Pearce , who’s having quite a run with rock stars: he also co-wrote the screenplay from the upcoming Elvis Presley biopic. On top of that, Pearce also created and wrote Will , the TNT series that chronicled the life and literary-defining works of William Shakespeare .

FX and Hulu premiere Pistol on May 31. You can watch the teaser trailer below:

Pistol: episodes, cast and everything we know about the Sex Pistols limited TV series

The Sex Pistols are getting a six-episode limited series from Danny Boyle.

Legends of the punk rock era, the English band Sex Pistols are getting their own limited TV series from Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle, simply titled Pistol . The series is now available across various broadcasters and streaming services, including Hulu and Disney Plus .

The Sex Pistols have been featured in TV shows and movies before, most notably in 1986’s Sid & Nancy , where Gary Oldman played the band’s bassist Sid Vicious. However, the movie was primarily focused on the titular couples relationship. The band also got the documentary treatment in 2000’s The Filth and the Fury . Pistol , however, will be based on one of the band member’s own telling of their journey, guitarist Steve Jones.

Here is everything you need to know about Pistol .

When is the Pistol release date?

Pistol is available as of May 31. For US audiences, the limited series will be available on Hulu, while it will stream on Disney Plus in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. All six episodes are available immediately.

Star Plus is slated to carry Pistol in Latin America and other Disney Plus territories, but a release date has not yet been set for those regions.

What is the plot of Pistol?

Based on Steve Jones’ 2017 memoir, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol , Pistol details the rock and roll revolution that the band was a part of in the 1970s.

The Sex Pistols caused a major stir when they broke out in the 1970s with songs like "Anarchy in the UK," "Holiday in the Sun," "Pretty Vacant" and "God Save the Queen." This series will look at the experience of the band and their impact from the perspective of one of its members.

Here is the official synopsis:

" Pistol is a six-episode limited series about a rock and roll revolution. The furious, raging storm at the center of this revolution are the Sex Pistols — and at the center of this series is Sex Pistols’ founding member and guitarist, Steve Jones. Jones’ hilarious, emotional and at times heart-breaking journey guides us through a kaleidoscopic telling of three of the most epic, chaotic and mucus-spattered years in the history of music. Based on Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol , this is the story of a band of spotty, noisy, working-class kids with ‘no future, who shook the boring, corrupt Establishment to its core, threatened to bring down the government and changed music and culture forever."

Pistol episodes

Here is the synopses for all episodes of the Pistol limited series:

Pistol episode 1, "Track 1: The Cloak of Invisibility" "Steve Jones convinces Malcolm McLaren to manage The Swankers, but he discovers that his 'Cloak of Invisibility' can't protect him from the gaze of the audience."

Pistol episode 2, "Track 2: Rotten" "As Steve tries to learn guitar in five days, Johnny Rotten arrives on the scene, leading to the birth of the Sex Pistols."

Pistol episode 3, "Track 3: Bodies" "Steve and Chrissie Hynde begin making more than just music, while the Pistols cause anarchy in the UK and Johnny Rotten finds inspiration in a grieving young woman."

Pistol episode 4, "Track 4: Pretty Vaaayc**t" "The band shock the nation out of its torpor. The media frenzy causes their egos to explode. Malcolm blackmails Steve into replacing Glen Matlock with Sid Vicious as bassist."

Pistol episode 5, "Track 5: Nancy and Sid" "Sid becomes increasingly lost to heroin and violence as his relationship with Nancy heats up. A plan to get rid of Nancy goes awry during a riverboat stunt at the Queen's Jubilee."

Pistol episode 6, "Track 6: Who Killed Bambi?" "Malcolm believes the Sex Pistols have become too much like a rock band. Johnny leaves the group and is replaced by Sid as lead singer. Sid is suspected of murdering Nancy in New York City."

Who is in the Pistol cast?

Taking center stage in Pistol are of course the actors playing the members of Sex Pistols. They are Toby Wallace ( Baby Teeth ) as Steve Jones, Anson Boon ( 1917 ) as John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, Christian Lees ( The Phantom of the Open ) as Glen Matlock, Louis Partridge ( Enola Holmes ) as Sid Vicious and Jacob Slater as Paul Cook.

Pistol is also going to feature some Game of Thrones veterans, as Maisie Williams is on board to play punk icon Jordan and Thomas Brodie-Sangster is playing Malcolm McLaren.

Other cast members include Emma Appleton ( The Witcher ) as Nancy Spungen, Sydney Chandler ( Don’t Worry Darling ) as Chrissie Hynde, Talulah Riley ( Westworld ) as Vivienne Westwood and Dylan Llewellyn ( Derry Girls ) as Wally Nightingale.

Who is the Pistol director?

As mentioned, Danny Boyle is directing all six episodes of Pistol . Boyle is best known for his Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire and his breakout movie Trainspotting . Some of his other credits include 28 Days Later , 127 Hours and Steve Jobs . He’s also dabbled in some big TV projects in recent years, including directing multiple episodes of the limited series Trust , the pilot episode of Babylon and the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics.

The rest of the creative team for Pistol includes Craig Pearce ( Moulin Rouge! , Elvis ), who created the series, as well as Frank Cottrell Bryce ( Goodbye Christopher Robin , Doctor Who ), who co-wrote the episodes.

Is there a Pistol trailer?

The first Pistols trailer has one thing in mind, "destroy." It's just a quick tease for what's in store, but check it right directly below:

Another Pistol teaser trailer is also now available. Give it look below:

Hulu also shared a teaser trailer as part of National Streaming Day:

Prepare to be shocked and outraged. Stream all episodes of #PistolFX on May 31. #StreamingDay #DisneyBundle pic.twitter.com/JfbXaysVQW May 20, 2022

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Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca , Moulin Rouge! , Silence of the Lambs , Children of Men , One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars . On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd .

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Pistol Cast: Where You’ve Seen The Actors From Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols Show

Never mind the bollocks...

For better or worse, Sex Pistols have long been considered one of the most consequential bands of all time and helped usher in one of the first waves of punk rock and took the genre and lifestyle to new heights. And while there have been several books, documentaries, and even a 1986 drama starring the incomparable Gary Oldman as the outfit’s one-time bassist Sid Vicious, the story of how the band formed and changed the world has largely gone untold in terms of mainstream exposure. Well, that will certainly change with Danny Boyle’s six-part FX series Pistol which is currently streaming on Hulu.

If you’ve watched the show already or at least saw a trailer or two in the lead-up to its release, you may be wondering where you’ve seen the actors before, including two familiar faces from the Game of Thrones cast . Well, never mind the bollocks, here’s the Pistol cast…

Toby Wallace (Steve Jones)

Let’s start off the raucous bunch with Toby Wallace, who portrays Sex Pistols guitarist and founding member Steven Jones whose memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol serve as the basis of the biographical drama series.

Before landing the role of the most influential figures of the punk rock movement, Wallace cut his teeth in movies like The Turning , Boys in the Trees , and Babyteeth , as well as shows like Romper Stomper and The Society . He’s next set to share the screen with Tommy Lee Jones , Ben Foster , and Jenna Ortega in the Paramount+ crime thriller Finestkind , per Deadline .

Jacob Slater (Paul Cook)

Next up is Jacob Slater who sits behind the kit as Sex Pistols drummer Paul “Cookie” Cook, who is also Steven Jones’ longtime friend and partner-in-crime on Pistol . Slater’s portrayal of the punk pioneer on Danny Boyle ’s new six-part limited series is the young actor’s first acting gig though he has long been a prominent figure in the South London music scene with bands like Dead Pretties and Wunderhorse.

Anson Boon (John Lydon)

Stepping in as the former Sex Pistols eccentric and controversial frontman John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, is Anson Boon, who has started to build up quite a resumé for himself in recent years.

Throughout his short career, which goes back to an appearance on All at Sea in 2014, Boon has popped up on shows like The Alienist , Living the Dream , and The Defeated , as well as movies like The Winter Lake and Crawl . Boon also had a brief appearance on the 1917 cast .

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Christian Lees (Glen Matlock)

Taking on the role of the Sex Pistols’ original bassist and songwriter Glen Matlock on Pistol is Christian Lees. 

Throughout his career, Lees has appeared on shows like Parents , The Bill , Little Crackers , and probably most notably Sun Records , on which he portrayed another musician, a little rock and roller named Jerry Lee Lewis. Lees also had a role in the 2021 British biographical sports drama The Phantom of the Open , which is opening stateside in June 2022.

Louis Partridge (Sid Vicious)

One of the most iconic figures in the history of punk music, Sid Vicious, the young and charismatic bassist who joined up with the Sex Pistols at the height of their fame, is portrayed by Louis Partridge on Pistol .

Throughout his career, Partridge has appeared in movies like Paddington 2 , Pan , and Enola Holmes , and will soon appear in the eagerly awaited sequel to the Netflix mystery drama starring Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill .

Sydney Chandler (Chrissie Hynde)

Sydney Chandler shows up on Pistol as Chrissie Hynde, founding member, guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter of American rock outfit The Pretenders, as well as someone who had a personal connection with the Sex Pistols before making a name for herself.

Since making her debut in 2016, Chandler has appeared in a a variety of short films like Jellyfish and Chemistry . She is next set to appear in Olivia Wilde ’s upcoming psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling alongside Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, and Chris Pine.

Talulah Riley (Vivienne Westwood)

Talulah Riley appears in Pistol as Vivienne Westwood, one of the founders of the legendary boutique SEX that became ground zero from London’s punk and fashion culture in the 1970s.

Over the years, Riley has landed prominent roles on shows like Nearly Famous and Westworld as well as smaller parts on everything from Poirot to Doctor Who . Her film work includes Inception (she was Eames’ disguise), The Dilemma , Bloodshot , and Pride & Prejudice .

Maisie Williams (Jordan)

Taking on the role of the late London fashion icon known as Jordan (real name Pamela Rooke) on Pistol is former Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams.

Obviously best known for her portrayal of Arya Stark on the long-running HBO fantasy drama series, Williams has been quite busy on the small screen since her days in Westeros came to an end. In the past couple of years, Williams has appeared on Two Weeks to Live and Gen:Lock . She has also popped up in movies like The Book of Love , Mary Shelley , The New Mutants , and The Owners .

Emma Appleton (Nancy Spungen)

Nancy Spungen, the second half of the infamously ill-fated couple Sid and Nancy, is portrayed by Emma Appleton on Pistol .

Appleton is no stranger when it comes to TV shows as she previously appeared on The End of the F***ing World , Genius , Traitors , and The Witcher . Outside of a few short films, Appleton’s other film credits include L.O.L.A. and The Last Letter from Your Lover .

Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Malcolm McLaren)

And rounding out the main portion of the Pistol cast is Thomas Brodie-Sangster who portrays Malcolm McLaren, who managed bands like Sex Pistols and New York Dolls throughout his life.

One of the most recognizable faces on the Pistol cast, Brodie-Sangster has appeared in movies like Love Actually , The Maze Runner franchise, Nowhere Boy , and was one of the many notable cameos in Star Wars: The Force Awakens . His TV work, which is just as impressive, includes Game of Thrones , Doctor Who , Godless , and The Queen’s Gambit .

This is just a portion of the Pistol cast and doesn’t include all of the other prominent figures of the punk rock movement who appear on the six-episode streaming series available to anyone with a Hulu subscription .

Philip grew up in Louisiana (not New Orleans) before moving to St. Louis after graduating from Louisiana State University-Shreveport. When he's not writing about movies or television, Philip can be found being chased by his three kids, telling his dogs to stop barking at the mailman, or chatting about professional wrestling to his wife. Writing gigs with school newspapers, multiple daily newspapers, and other varied job experiences led him to this point where he actually gets to write about movies, shows, wrestling, and documentaries (which is a huge win in his eyes). If the stars properly align, he will talk about For Love Of The Game being the best baseball movie of all time.

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