Original subtitles

(ROCK BAND REHEARSING)

Blaine, can I get your guitar?

(CREW MEMBER) Check, yeah. One, two, one, two, AD.

(SINGS) # Well, blue jean baby... #

In life, one thing leads to another thing.

You know, it's all part of an exploration of gathering ideas. Hello.

Hello, (BLEEP) listen.

I see my art as being a songwriter, really.

It's Glen Matlock, formally with the Sex Pistols.

Glen, you've already got a very good catalogue of songs,

having written which of the Sex Pistols hits?

We have an old English folk song we're going to play for you that I think you might know.

# 'God Save The Queen'

People like to paint me as the guy from the Sex Pistols

that nobody knows. But that ain't quite true.

# God save the Queen

# The fascist regime... #

They put on a brash, crude display of music.

(JANET STREET-PORTER) When the Sex Pistols, with lead singer Johnny Rotten,

suddenly made Punk music front page news, they outraged pretty well everyone.

Come play apathetic old (BLEEP)

People couldn't believe what they were seeing,

because no-one had seen anything like this. One of the most reviewed,

and most reviled rock phenomena.... (U.S. NEWSCASTER) Their records are among the most popular

in England. The Pistols were something completely different.

The classic rejection of the status quo,

into a new, more aggressive,

more heartfelt, more passionate expression.

It was fresh. It was naughty.

Dirty fucker.

(BILL GRUNDY) What a - What a fucking rotter.

Well, that's it for tonight. We didn't realise

how much we were going to shake things up.

People would say, "They can't play'" you know.

And the Pistol songs are largely three-chord songs,

but it's three chords and the truth.

They made one goddamn album!

It's one of the most classic records of all time.

I could tell he understood

the power of the instrument he was playing.

I think he is the unsung hero of the band.

A lot of people didn't quite realise what he brought to the group.

We were kind of fed a Sid Vicious story,

that Sid Vicious was Punk Rock and Sid Vicious is the Sex Pistols.

When we found out that Sid Vicious could not play bass,

did not play bass, and there's some other guy named Glen Matlock. we're like, who's he?

There were so many people involved

that they've all got their own take on things.

So this is my side of the story.

You are jogging my memory, I must say.

Amazing how much you do remember.

Everyone knows the story.

I mean, we're fucking sick of talking about it.

It's the same old shit. We've told the story a million times.

OK, quiet on the set. Action, OK.

('GOD SAVE THE QUEEN' ENDS)

We gotta kind of set the scene a little bit.

(ROCK MUSIC)

(HUMS)

Here we are walking up Ravensworth Road,

northwest London. It was where I was brought up

till I was about 16. I used to live up there with my mom and dad.

I wouldn't mind having a look round, if the new inhabitants let us in.

Wow! Lead the way around.

So this was my mum and dad's room.

This was my bedroom.

From about here to there

And we didn't have a bathroom then. Really? And that was it.

Oh, hang on, hang on. (LAUGHTER)

The Pistols were my favourite ever band.

It was a bit short of the plumbing.

We had like a tin bath we had to get out once a week.

We used to run a hose out from the scullery,

which is a tiny little kitchen, into the tin bath

in front of the telly. My dad was a sort of semi-skilled worker,

had a few different jobs.

He worked for Rolls-Royce as a coachbuilder.

My mum worked part-time at the powder puff factory

with my nan, making powder puffs for compacts and things.

Then the next street, all my mates I went to school with,

you know, we was always out playing football.

It's got very high-tech, there's a goalmouth painted,

but we just used to put our jackets down.

And then there was one of the guys, who was a latter member of the Skatellites.

He was older than us and he used to come and play football in the street.

# Skinheads a mashup London Town Skinhead to me #

There was a lot of second-generation West Indian kids

around here, and it was my introduction to bluebeat and ska.

And their moms and dads were all hip to King Tubby and the Skatellites

and things like that. In the summer, all the windows open,

and you'd hear 'Madness' blasting out by Laurel Aitken.

But that was cool. And all the kids had a little transistor radio

underneath your pillow at night. We didn't have a proper radio station

that played pop music, but there was all these pirate radio stations sprung up.

It was just really an exciting time.

And then this TV show come out, 'Ready, Steady, Go.' # 'Wipeout'

Bands like the Kinks and the Yardbirds and Stones

and the Beatles, Smokey Robinson,

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, the Supremes,

and the Small Faces.

The Small Faces were these kind of little herberts

from the East End of London, but they were the height of cool. # I just sit here every day #

Some kids like me picked up on that,

all in this kind of mixture of stuff that was going on.

And that sowed the seeds of my musical awakening.

You know, I didn't have any brothers or sisters,

and getting a guitar for Christmas when I was 10 or 11,

you know, when everybody goes home after playing football in the street

at eight, nine o'clock at night, you've got your guitar,

and you got your transistor radio,

and you start hearing songs that you can relate to.

When I was getting 15, 16, we all got jobs

in this department store called Whiteleys.

A crowd of us worked there, and one Friday night

we went out to the Lyceum.

There was a band called Ace. # How long

# Has this been going on? #

And we watched them and stayed up all night.

That's when I started thinking,

ooh, there must be a little bit more in life

than working in a department store. Around about the same time,

my uncle, who was a bit of a ducker and diver with things,

appeared round my nan's once with this big, long flat case.

I said, "What's that?" And he opened it up. It was this Fender Precision bass,

and it was beautiful. Sunburst with all the chrome bits.

I said, "Where'd you get it?" And he said, "Don't ask."

When you get a bass and you get it home,

right, it sounds like that. (STRINGS VIBRATING)

And you can't hear the fucking thing.

And then what you do,

you can kind of jam it against the wardrobe.

(STRINGS VIBRATE LOUDER)

You can hear it a bit more, so you do that.

The thing is, is playing bass by yourself

is a bit like having a wank.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, and it's a bit boring really.

You need someone to play with.

# Yes, it's alright, all or nothing #

So I started to be on the lookout.

I'd left school by then. I was waiting to start art college,

and I wanted a job. And I'd heard about the shop down at King's Road,

Let It Rock. And it had big sign outside,

it said too fast 'Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die.'

And I walked in and it was like my gran's front room from the '50s.

They had a radiogram, all these drape jackets hanging up,

and some Brothel Creeper shoes. Brothel Creeper is generally

a suede shoe with a thick crepe sole,

which supposedly makes no noise when you're creeping around a brothel.

What Teddy Boys wore.

Well, a Teddy Boy is from the name Edward.

In the '20s and '30s, the upper-class people of England

sort of dressed in this Edwardian look,

because we had King Edward at the time, you know,

with longer coats and velvet collars.

All the rock and rollers, when Bill Haley came over,

they kind of adopted this kind of look,

and they were Teddy Boys.

We're Teddy Boys. We like rock and roll

because we think there's never been a better music.

We like our style of dress, because we think it's the best. Let It Rock, it was basically

a sort of a Teddy Boy shop, and there was a guy in there and he said, "Can I help you?"

I said, "You don't need anybody to work here, do you?"

And he said, "Well, as it happens, I'm leaving this week."

And he wrote a number down. He said, "Why don't you call this guy up?" Malcolm.

I then started working for Malcolm McLaren

and Vivienne Westwood.

It was like a clubhouse. You know, we just rolled in.

Vivienne and Malcolm would lark around

and Glen was the Saturday boy.

So we all got on like a house on fire.

We'd look after the customers. They all came in just to talk to us.

Every now and again we'd sell something.

I still don't remember putting money in the till.

I used to say to Vivienne, I think more stuff got stolen

than actually got paid for. But because it was so expensive

anyway, she always made money.

Friday there'd be a delivery. Word would get out.

Saturday morning there was a queue of Teddy Boys

down the street, waiting to get their Brothel Creepers when they'd come in.

And some of them would order a drape jacket suit,

and I'd measure them up for it.

Early '75, they were getting a bit fed up

with all these Teddy Boys coming in.

Malcolm and Vivienne decided to change the shop,

and he come up with this idea, SEX.

A similar kind of effrontery that Teddy Boy clothes had,

except it would be new.

So he wanted to get rid of the Teddy Boys,

move on, do this kind of more kind of bondage-looking gear.

And I helped make the big sign outside.

and they started to get a younger crowd coming in.

I never went there when it was Let It Rock,

but I went when it was SEX. In fact, Malcolm even measured me up

for a pair of peg pants.

The whole idea of SEX was to put off the ordinary person.

It was like to frighten you into not going into it.

And they even had a bit of an attitude,

the people who worked there. We did get a lot of sort of people who, obviously,

mistook the establishment for another kind of place.

In fairness for them, it did say SEX outside, right?

So you would get a few oddballs and weirdos come in,

and there was one guy came in head to toe in rubber

and he'd just come and ask the prices of things,

never bought anything.

He's obviously playing with himself, right?

Then he'd say, "How much is that?" And I'd say. "Oh, how much is that?

Well, that's... oh." Then he'd go, "Ten pounds, ten pounds, whoa."

And then he'd rush out and then you'd have to get the mop out. We'd always roll our eyes

and say, "Oh well, clean up in dressing room three."

It pissed off the Teddy Boys, which was kind of the idea.

When the Teddy Boys suddenly realised

that Malcolm had changed the shop of being new age sex clothes,

they got really upset and throw things through the window.

The windows were smashed every Saturday. We wore Brothel Creepers. They didn't like

that we were taking their look and destroying it.

I don't like them. They probably don't like me.

The Teddy Boys would come along, we'd have to lock the door,

but they'd smash the window. We were always terrified of Saturday

cos of getting beaten up.

But that's when things really started beginning to change.

It became the hippest place in London on a Saturday afternoon.

And that's where Steve and Paul started coming in with a couple of their mates.

Yeah, well Steve and myself were really close.

We grew up together. Like brothers, if you like.

I met him when I was about 10 years old,

and we were just unseparatable for many years.

We went to the same schools. Hung out at the same places,

getting into trouble.

And he stayed around my house a lot, because his home life

wasn't a happy place for him.

At school, there was a gang of us. There was me, Steve

and a couple of other guys and Wally Nightingale.

And we used to skive off school and go round to Wally's house.

Sit in his bedroom and listen to songs and play Faces.

# Baby used to stay out #

I was crazy about the Faces and Rod Stewart.

I was kind of a bit obsessed.

We were definitely keen on getting a band together.

It became everything, for me anyway.

# Oh no love, you're not alone #

Glam Rock was really massive in the UK.

Bowie, Roxy Music, Queen,

T Rex, Mott the Hoople, and we would go down Kings Road

all doled up like we were in a band, platform boots,

flares, all stuff I had to nick, cos no-one could afford it.

We used to go into the shop a lot and hang out there.

We just felt comfortable. Vivienne was great.

Her and Malcolm were a great team. They were interested in us as well.

Malcolm was always asking, where do you come from?

What'd you get up to? Hey! I've been nicked.

I've gotta go outside. He's nicked me.

I always had to watch 'em when they came in,

I thought they'd nick something, and Malcolm would humour them

a little bit. "How's 'the band' going?"

Like that, looking at me like that. And Paul said, "Well, I don't know.

We're trying to take it seriously.

But our bass player," he said, "he never turns up."

I went, "Well, I got a bass."

And the next thing we were sort of chatting away.

Like, "What music do you like? Who's your favourite band?"

I said, The Faces. He said, "That's our favourite band and all."

I thought he was a cool guy.

I was impressed that he worked at the shop.

So a few days later I'm going around Wally's house,

and they're like, "What you got?"

And I went, "Uh, I've got this one," which is a Faces song, actually,

off their first album.

So I played it, and they're like, "Whoa, you're in."

Well, I was impressed. He could actually play, you know. I basically just knew power chords

at that point,

and I always thought I was a better musician,

which I let him think. But I was only about a week ahead of Steve,

you know. But don't tell him that.

Initially, Steve was gonna be the singer.

I went onto the drums and Wally was playing guitar at the time.

Wally confided in me, "Steve..." He'd go and nick fur coats

and ladies' handbags and things like that.

He said, "It was my idea,

if he'd nick guitars, we could start a band."

Wally's dad had the keys to a BBC studio.

We used to have the run of this place,

and we had a big load of equipment there

procured from various places, mainly by Steve.

We started rehearsing a bit more seriously

and people would come down and be a bit of a party night

on a Saturday night after the shop had shut.

Somebody who was in there a lot of the time

and who was friends with Malcolm and Vivienne

was this guy, Bernard Rhodes. He'd done some screen printing

with Malcolm, and they had sort of an odd couple relationship.

Mates one minute and then they'd have a ruck about something. He was a prick. (CHUCKLES)

That said, you know,

I was a sort of working-class lad

from the sticks, whereas Bernie was much more art-based.

He would always talk to you and he'd make you kind of qualify

what you're thinking and why. "Who do you like?"

'Well, I really like Faces." "But why do you like 'em?" # In the mornin'

# Don't say you love me #

"Well, I like them cos they're alright."

"No, that's not good enough. Why? What are they doing?"

That specific, and it really made you narrow down

the way you go about things.

Steve had come in and he thought a cool thing to say was,

"Where's the action?" It kind of annoyed Bernie,

he'd say something like, "Would I be sitting here if I knew where the action was?"

And it transpired, the action was actually

where we were sitting, because that was the beginning. (PROG ROCK)

Rock was in a terrible state in the '70s.

It was grandiose, and 25-minute guitar solos,

and 30-minute drum solos.

It all became prog rock, progressive rock,

and I think mainly they progressed by growing their hair a bit longer

and their trousers got a bit more flared.

People that would potentially be in bands

were really put off by the fact that you had to have

this 20 years' experience of playing and you had to be really good

as a technical guitarist before anybody'd take you serious.

This kind of became a bit indulgent.

(Dr FEELGOOD)

There was this other music scene called pub rock,

where bands were playing local pubs. Pub rock at the time was a reaction,

I think, against the big stadium rock bands

and kind of slightly hippie music that was going on at the time.

Every pub had a stage and bands were playing all the time.

You know, you'd get bands like Ducks Deluxe

and Brinsley Schwarz and Dr Feelgood.

We used to go, and never paid to get in anywhere,

just went around the back and bunked in.

They really were the return to the roots of rock and roll,

you know, the Feelgoods covering a lot of R&B.

And they all had kinda strange names.

Like the drummer was called The Big Figure.

You didn't know if they were real-life criminals or not.

They were kind of dodgy. We all loved the Feelgoods.

They were very influential to all of us

on the New York music scene. They had short hair and suits,

and they looked mean, and they were menacing. This jangly rockabilly sound.

Kind of rough around the edges, but not too heavy.

# The people cry for more #

Pub rock was sort of quite a vital part of change,

really. Collectively, we'd all kind of go out to check out

some of these things that were going on.

# 'Delilah'

By that time, the Alex Harvey Band had a big hit

with a cover of a Tom Jones song called 'Delilah.'

# I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window #

Going from playing little pubs on the pub rock scene, they were playing Hammersmith Odeon.

So I went and took Malcolm, and while we're sitting there,

he said, "Um, how much does it cost to get in?"

Back then it was like 75 pence, which is not even a pound.

He went, "Oh." He said, "How many people does this hold?"

I said, "I don't know, two and a half, 3,000?"

He went, "Let's have a meeting about the band tomorrow."

Cos he could smell that there was a money involved.

When I started a playing with Wally and Steve and Paul,

they weren't the Sex Pistols, and they'd thrown around a couple of names.

One was the Swankers,

and also they were toying with the name the Strand,

which was named after a Roxy Music song.

* Do the strand, love #

Malcolm came up with some ideas. Creme De La Creme. Kid Gladlove.

Oof, don't know where he got that one from.

The Damned. And QT Jones And His Sex Pistols.

But me and Wally didn't wanna be in a band

that was something and something. So we sort of conspired in the pub

and said, "Let's just drop the QT Jones thing,

just be the Sex Pistols." Which made sense,

cos we were the pistols from a shop called SEX.

It was pretty straight in the UK around that time,

and calling a band the Sex Pistols was pretty outrageous.

In fact, very outrageous, actually.

to try and buy '50s-style clothes for his shop

and met the guys from the New York Dolls.

# 'Jet Boy'

They played for me this tape of theirs.

I thought it was the worst record I'd ever heard.

But they were so funny, it didn't matter.

I realised it didn't matter that the music was bad.

What mattered more was the fact that they were so good at being bad,

and that gave me a whole other attitude towards music

and it locked in my own thoughts about what was important.

And that was the presentation of it all

and the attitude behind it.

But because he'd been on the scene a little bit in New York,

he was hip to a few other people, the fledgling Ramones,

and Richard Hell, and Television, the Heartbreakers,

and it's all kind of interconnected. Malcolm would come back to England

and he said, "If you want me to be involved,

you gotta get rid of Wally." He didn't look right, I suppose. He had big glasses and funky hair.

It was quite ruthless, really. But that's the way it was,

and we had a bit of an attitude problem with Wally. You know, I liked Wally,

and I would fight his corner. Then one day when we were sitting in the pub,

Paul turned around to me, he said, "I don't know why you defend Wally,

he's always trying to get rid of you."

So I went, alright, that's that then. So Wally's gone,

Steve's moving to the guitar, and then he got Malcolm and Bernard

involved with us a bit more. That's the when we started

to be on the lookout for a singer.

And on Bernard Rhodes' suggestion, lookout for this guy called John.

And this guy John came in the shop, and it was John Lydon.

They asked me cos they thought I was a nutcase,

and they had no idea what the hell they were doing.

I went to a kind of a mock rehearsal to see if I could sing or not

in front of a jukebox, and I was completely awful, and they liked it,

and that was that.

Singing didn't matter at the time. Could we play? We couldn't really play at the time.

Could John sing? Who cared? We wanted to be in a band. It was just the attitude,

and just clicked straight away. The planets were aligned. There was the Sex Pistols.

But then a couple of days later, Bernard Rhodes came in and we said,

"Oh, we found a singer, John." He said, "Oh great. You got the guy I wanted."

And a couple of days after that, he saw John and he said, "Well, that's not John."

He said, "No, the other John." And there was another John, and he'd seen... John Beverley,

aka Sid Vicious.

They were all mates, and there four of them.

There was John Lydon, who became Johnny Rotten.

There was his mate called John Gray.

There was another guy called John Wardle,

who became Jah Wobble. John Beverley became Sid Vicious.

But Johnny Rotten was the leader of the pack,

so he was always John.

But there was something about him that was like,

hmm, trouble, with me, Steve and Paul and John.

But I think John never saw it that way,

he thought it was three against one.

But when he joined, we started rehearsing regularly

and trying to work out ideas. And back then we had four music papers that came out weekly.

Well, I was flicking through the ads and it was this lease for sale of a rehearsal place

in Denmark Street in London. I showed it to Malcolm. He said,

"Wow!" He said, "Call the guy up and offer him £1,000

without seeing it." I said, "You're mad." He said, "Call him." So me and Steve moved in

and we had our own rehearsal place. Hello. Uh, fancy seeing you here.

Here we are. We are in Denmark Street.

This where we used to rehearse downstairs. But come upstairs.

The HQ, the centre of operations. Has changed a bit,

cos it's gonna be part of some swanky complex

for the 21st century.

But what they've done is, they've preserved all these drawings

on the walls that, I think, Johnny Rotten did.

There's Malcolm, Malcolm Muggerage.

Fatty Jones.

Supposed to be Nancy there and Sid. There was a little bed there.

Steve had a bed there and I had a bed here.

And we'd hang out and have a go at writing songs.

It was a bit of a dump back then, but it was home.

Well, the recorder was upstairs,

but we played down,

that's where we used to rehearse, downstairs.

That's where every song was written, downstairs.

Before that, I was just staying round Cookie's house

or various couches, Malcolm's and Vivienne's place.

So when we got Denmark Street, like, this is my place now.

It was rats there and the toilet was outside.

I loved it, though. It was quiet.

And then you'd go down to Denmark Street

and it was like, you are right there.

You could go to the clubs

and then end up just staggering back

to Denmark Street, get up the next day and rehearse.

I was working at the time, so I had to get up, go to work

and then come back. I was tentative about, do I really wanna be in a band?

I was brought up in this world where you left school

and you got a job, it was a very straight world where I came from.

And so it was a dilemma for me. It was.

That's when we then really started applying ourselves.

John always turned up and he always had like a little carrier bag

with scraps of paper in it with ideas for lyrics.

And Malcolm had always been going on that we should write a manifesto,

and it goes back to his sort of '60s agitprop days.

Now, one day I'd been having a go at Steve saying, "I've been coming up with a few ideas,

why don't you come up with something?"

And he sort of played a couple of things, they weren't that good.

And he went, "Oh, you're so clever, what you got then?" I just played...

And he went, "Yeah?"

And I went.

And he went, "Yeah?"

(ONE STRING TWANGS)

"Yeah?" (ANOTHER STRING VIBRATES)

He went, "Oh, I like that." He said, "What comes next?"

(STRINGS RIFFING)

# Now # (LAUGHS)

That's when John said, "Finally, you've got something

to go with these lyrics."

# I am an antichrist

# I am an anarchist #

When I got in the studio, I wrote the words to that

in 20 minutes, straight off the top of my head.

# ..passerby, cos I

# Wanna be

# Anarchy

# No dogsbody! #

This used to be Saint Martin's School of Art.

My foundation year, studio was the one on the left,

and the gig we did was right up the top.

And that is where the Sex Pistols did their first show.

We'd been rehearsing for a couple of months by then,

feeling we was getting something together. Come on Malcolm, get us some gigs. Nothing.

No, no, no, you're not ready.

Reading between the lines,

I thought Malcolm has got no idea how to get us a gig.

I approached the social secretary at Saint Martin's,

and said, can we play? And they had this other band on

and there was supposed to be a support band who wasn't gonna do it,

so we got the gig. And that band was a band called Bazooka Joe.

We had been playing for several years in pubs around London.

We'd been hiring vans. We'd bought our own equipment.

We bought a PA system on installments.

We knew there was gonna be a support band.

We didn't know quite who they were.

Before then, I booked another gig at Central School of Art,

and that's where I met a guy called Alexander McDowell.

I was social secretary,

and I was booking rockabilly bands or whatever,

and this young man walked in off the street

and said, "Do you want a band to play for free tomorrow night?" I went, "Sure." And then he said,

"Come to Saint Martin's and see us play."

We had to go and get our stuff in the pissing rain.

Wheeling it down Charing Cross Road.

And then the lift was broken, carry it all the way up the stairs and set it up.

Bazooka Joe sort of had a little bit of an attitude,

but they let us use their PA. There was no stage.

We were just set up on a flat thing. There wasn't a lot of people.

We plugged in and made an awful racket.

I mean I only picked the guitar up three months before.

I was so nervous, I took a Mandrax and a couple of pints,

then it all kicked in, and then we started.

# I am the antichrist

# I am an anarchist #

The lead singer was starting to smash the equipment up,

and he started kicking the speakers. They weren't even my speakers.

I was still paying for them. So, enraged, I leapt into the fray.

And there was a bit of a fight, scuffle on stage.

It just all descended into chaos.

And they pulled the plug on us after about 15 minutes.

That is not true. We did not pull the plugs on the Sex Pistols.

No, they did. I was there.

They took 'em off.

They pulled the fucking plug.

We only had a few songs,

and so they didn't cut us short by that much.

I remember thinking that they weren't that good,

but you know, they had the last laugh,

cos they went on to become legends, and quite rightly so.

It was something magical that happened for me.

Like this is we're finally doing something. This is it.

This is what I've been wanting to do for many years, be in a band.

And John was great. I loved it.

Even though it was for 15 minutes.

Just seeing them at all was just such a radical shift in thinking.

The attitude that was coming off the stage

was something we'd never seen.

And it was completely captivating,

and almost immediately we were cutting our hair

and trying to copy John.

And it was an immediate shift into a visible expression of discontent.

(REPORTER) All are aware that Britain was in its worst economic crisis

for more than 40 years.

Politically, it was very suppressive.

Thatcher was extremely right-wing,

and you were dealing with bombs going off with the IRA,

and real unrest.

There are problems which have been pushed underground for too long. Today they have to be brought up.

People ain't got time to think about the cosmos

and the universe when they ain't got any money to live off.

Yeah. There was like a hung Parliament. Everybody's on strike.

In London particularly, a pervading air of hopelessness.

And now I just got this sort of vacant kind of idea,

and then the 'Pretty Vacant' thing came to me.

(SINGS) # We're so pretty, oh, so pretty

# Vacant # But it needed something. A riff.

And this is the Cambridge Pub, where we used to hang out.

And I'm sitting there having a pint one lunchtime

and a record came on the jukebox and it was 'SOS' by ABBA.

That riff isn't in the song,

but it was something that the bass player does,

he plays his octave thing. # When you're gone

# How can I even try to go on? #

And it gave me the idea for the riff.

And I just finished off my pint, went back and went...

Ooh! # 'Pretty Vacant' Hello, (BLEEP)

I gave John the set of lyrics,

which he seemed to like and sing.

He said, "This is fantastic." He said, "If we get it on the radio,

you give me a way to say 'cunt' on the radio."

And I'd never even thought of that. I was just thinking of 'vacant,' with an A.

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty

# Vacant #

It summed up the angst and the chaos

that he felt in his community.

I mean, that's part of our job as artists

is to report on the news of what's going on all around me.

It reconfirms for us that we're not alone.

I saw a number of the early shows, and going from doing covers

to like starting to do their own songs,

and they were these classic anthems. I mean the first song I heard,

I really realised was their own song was 'Pretty Vacant.'

(STREET-PORTER) When you stood up and started singing the first time,

what happened? I mean... (MAN) Come on, John. Go on.

It was wonderful. No, come on. People loved me.

They threw flowers. And what sort of people came to see you in the beginning?

Well, no-one knew us, the beginning.

We were just a regular band. Turned up. Cos we used to turn up with our equipment crash in,

do the gigs. Nobody knew we was playing until we got there.

We didn't even know, actually. Yeah, there used to be this magazine called Time Out,

and I'm pretty sure Malcolm would just go through it,

see what's coming up, and see a gig

and say, "Oh, you're playing there." He never spoke to them. We just used to turn up and say,

we're the support band. People would go, "Oh. Oh, really?"

We'd go, "Yeah." "Well, come on." But we needed other places to play.

And Malcolm come up with this place El Paradise.

It was a proper old-school, seedy strip club.

Malcolm had hired this strip club from the Maltese mafia

and, honestly, it was an absolute dump. We actually went and bought a bucket

and a mop and some disinfectant. There was like a few punters who'd just come in off the street,

thinking actually there was a strip show going on.

Malcolm was just taking all the money, and we literally had to run from the place

cos the Maltese mafia suddenly turned up. But those first early gigs were amazing.

They were so exciting to be at.

They were learning to play their instruments.

(LAUGHS) You could tell. But that's what was exciting to us,

cos, like, oh man, these guys don't care.

That's the idea. Get up there and learn to play.

Rotten had this great sense of humour.

They'd finish a song and he'd be, "Uh! Now clap."

Before the audience had a chance to respond,

he'd be straight on their case, and very entertaining.

And started building up a following. It was mainly people

who would come in the shop on Saturday afternoon, Steve Severin and Siouxsie,

became Siouxsie Sioux from the Banshees. Sid, Billy Idol.

The scene was very small. We were friends who used to hang out

and go and see all the music. Caroline Coon of Sounds called us the Bromley Contingent,

cos we were all from Bromley. It's just the same as when it was before,

when they had the Stones and the Who and they came along,

and they thought they were great because they destroyed everything that went before them.

But now they can't take it, cos we're destroying everything before us.

I loved the Nashville gigs especially,

cos you never knew what was actually gonna happen.

Vivienne would sort of like scream and shout and be rude to a person who was next to her.

Massive fist fights. Chairs would be flying.

It was a great night. A fight broke out in the audience,

and this guy took a photograph of us fighting with this guy.

But we was actually trying to stop him.

But it became the cover of the Melody Maker.

Looking back, it was all part of the plan

to get them sort of noticed.

Doctors of Madness were one of those bands

that were around the pub rock scene at the time, and everyone thought

they were gonna be the next big thing.

# ..nights now # And Richard Strange on guitar with the weird make-up,

very glam rock.

It's early '76, we're doing great.

We're playing to 800 people a night wherever we go,

and I got a call from our agent, "I need a favour from you.

I've got this guy driving me crazy in London. He's got this band. I can't think of anyone

who'd have him on the bill apart from you." The day of the gig came.

We showed up there, got out for a sound check,

and they wouldn't let us use any monitors,

and they were a bit like, oh, brushed us off.

The doors open and the audience comes in.

I said, "This is weird, because the 800 kids

who've come to see us at the minute,

they normally go straight to the bar." And I'm watching them

and half come straight in to see the support band. Quite a few of the audience

are wearing badges, or they've got ripped clothes or something.

The lights go down, ladies, gentlemen, the Sex Pistols.

# ..to attend Cos we ain't all there

# Don't pretend, yeah, we don't care #

And I knew someone had just moved the fucking goalposts.

That generational change, that baton,

had just been handed over.

Then the Doctors of Madness went on.

But while they was on stage, Steve went in the dressing room

and spat in their stack-heels and rifled their pockets.

By the time you get into the dressing room,

the Pistols have gone,

and so has 12 quid from my back pocket.

Other stuff has been... just been nicked, just gone.

So it was a really bad day.

Me career had gone and 12 quid. (LAUGHS)

I'm sure they were most upset with us,

cos they thought they were gonna be the next big thing,

and it just kind of fizzled out. But I paid him back.

(STREET-PORTER) Things really started to move

for the Sex Pistols when they were spotted by promoter Ron Watts,

who gave them a booking at the 100 Club in Oxford Street.

I saw them at High Wycombe.

It was interesting, because they really managed to upset the crowd,

most of the crowd. It was the only thing that didn't come from the industry,

it came from the kids. Something had to come from the kids.

First gig, there was hardly anybody there.

John was a bit out of it, and he was singing all the words to the songs perfectly,

but not the song we was playing at the time. He said to me, "Do you wanna fight?"

And I said, "Yeah, I'll fight you, but maybe not while we're on stage."

And he got off the stage, and Malcolm followed him,

and he comes skulking back on the stage,

and he looked daggers at me.

I spoke to Malcolm afterwards and I said, "What happened?"

And he said, "Well, do you know what?

He was outside at the bus stop waiting for the number 73 bus

to go back home to Finsbury Park." And I said, "What'd you say to him?" "If you don't get back on stage,

mate, you're out of the band."

Tuesday night usually was a jazz night at the 100 Club.

So people kind of came in and their sort of mouths'd be...

They couldn't believe what they were seeing,

cos no-one had seen anything like this.

And they was so anarchic, cos they weren't really talking to the audience.

Johnny would be talking to Malcolm off-stage. He'd go, "Malcolm,

why don't you get me a beer?"

Then he'd see someone in the... there'd be like someone coming off Oxford Street,

all in denim, with flares, long hair,

he'd go, "Oh, look at you with your flares and your long hair.

Why don't you go back to your Melanie records?"

(HECKLER YELLS) You fucking....

Sit down! Yeah! (MIC FEEDBACK)

Fucking old hippies all over again.

Rotten's attitude was off the charts.

But then Glen's kind of adding a musicality to it,

which felt, this is part of what makes groups great

is the individual characteristics of the people in the band.

And then watching them week by week progress

was really exciting.

People say they can't play,

and the Pistol songs are largely three-chord songs,

but, boy they can really play, and it absolutely rocks.

The hardest thing to have is to have a sound that's your own.

The Sex Pistols certainly had that.

I can tell in eight bars if it's Steve or Glen or Paul.

When John sings, of course you know it's him.

He's got a very unique sound. We sound like that as we'd actually learned to play

together at the same time. I don't know where our sound came from, to be honest.

It was an amalgamation of lots of different things.

It's just a natural primal scream, I guess.

They never really played too fast.

They weren't trying to emulate the Ramones in that way.

There was more of a groove. Da da da and da and da.

There was none of that. And we loved beats that went bush, bash, buhbuhbash.

I liked hard, fast, simple chords.

# 'I Wanna Be Me'

Steve used to break into Ronnie Wood's house in Richmond

and have a go in his guitar and leave a little note saying, 'Steve was here.'

And Steve, I think, was kind of going for that kind of sound.

But one of the best things I've ever read in this article somewhere it said,

Steve's guitar sound is the sound of him paying his stepfather back.

Which is kind of quite heavy, but probably true.

# This is brainwash and this is... #

What we was was just us together.

That's the way it turned out. No-one was telling us

we have to play a certain way or anything.

Malcolm didn't even do that.

I mean, it... you just knew it's Glen's bassline,

and you knew it starts the song off.

It made you wanna write songs too, that's so good.

# Kiss me deadly tonight #

Early summer of '76, the word was out.

People wanted something different.

And once we came along,

it kind of opened the doors of possibility.

You don't have to be a fantastic musician.

You don't have to be old.

You don't have to been in the music business years. You can just get a guitar,

play for a few weeks and go on the stage and do it.

Well, there's no question that the Pistols came first.

They were the trigger for all of it.

I mean, it was happening really fast.

There was this small group of us

that were looking different and voicing our opinion.

Nobody that wanted a successful career

in the music business would turn around and criticise the music industry, the government,

the police, the Queen. That wasn't how you got successful.

And so we had nothing to lose. You know, what are they gonna do?

Except put us back on the dole and take the clothes off our back.

It was a great leveller, cos it wasn't about musical virtuosity.

It was about keeping it real, and still being creative with maybe limited skills.

I remember rehearsing at Denmark Street once

and the door opened, and Bernard Rhodes come in

with this bunch of guys. Then he met me. Then he met you. We met him.

Hand in hand with the Sex Pistols was the Clash.

It was Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes

in constant competition to see who could up the other one.

Him and Malcolm had this idea

that if you had one band, it was an oddity,

if you had two bands that was kind of curious.

But if you had three bands, it was a movement. # 'Police And Thieves'

The Clash were more political.

That was kind of their thing. I loved the Clash, by the way.

We saw the flyer. It was a midnight special

that was happening. Got the Sex Pistols playing,

supported by a band that hadn't played before

called the Clash. And a new band from Manchester

called the Buzzcocks. The Pistols was something completely different.

There was real anarchy when they came on.

I mean, Johnny smashed his mouth on the mic

and had to run into the toilet, cos he'd knocked his tooth out.

It changed my life, that show.

We went back to school

and we started to form what became Spandau Ballet.

(INTERVIEWER) What about the word 'punk?' It means worthless, nasty.

Johnny Rotten, are you happy with this word?

No. The press gave us it.

It's their problem, not ours.

We never called ourselves Punk.

Hang on a second, this word 'punk,'

it didn't exist as a word when we formed.

They did big articles on us

and they come up with this word 'punk.'

And if you look up what it means, it's not particularly savoury.

And who wants to be called a punk?

Punk has always been a term of maximum derision.

I'd read stories of this new music movement emerging,

Punk Rock, and they'd all say, yeah, we listened to the MC5,

and I'd rip the magazines up and flush them down the toilet, cos I didn't want anyone

to associate me with this Punk music movement.

When Punk came out, I didn't really like it.

But I loved the excitement it generated,

and the enthusiasm that's behind it. But the music I felt was not for me.

I don't believe in swearing and spitting and gobbing everywhere.

Punk rock's really taken off

both in London and in New York.

And although anyone thinks punk is that great a name for it, it seems to have stuck.

There was a huge, strong music press

that thrived on exposing all of this energy,

this change, this fashion.

It was very prevalent and spread around the country

really quickly. It's actually music born out of a frustration

to get something across that is of their own.

You're also trying to shock everyone.

Your clothes are bizarre. They ain't bizarre to young kids. Possibly.

I don't have a safety pin through my nose.

McLaren borrowed the label 'punk' from New York,

where it described a very particular trend

in outrageous clothes.

But London Punk was very different.

Raw, working-class and deliberately anti-Establishment.

We tapped into a feeling of unrest in the country,

without a doubt, with all the kids. They were all cutting their hair,

tearing up their T-shirts.

I wanted to do something for me.

Cos look at me now, I'm nothing.

Vivienne created something extreme.

Something they could feel that they were actually doing something in. You can be cynical about the Pistols

and say they were a boy band that was sort of dressed by McLaren and Westwood.

But boy, were we jealous that they had access to those clothes,

cos those clothes were magnificently heroic.

I mean, I was really annoyed with the Clash.

Cos when we had a rehearsal place in Denmark Street,

I decided to paint the ceiling white.

But I only had one pair of trousers and I got paint on them, and I couldn't get it off.

I thought, I'll just put more paint on it,

and then it became this Jackson Pollock thing. When the Clash played the 100 Club,

they had a full-on Jackson Pollock look, and they'd sort of nicked my idea.

Some of these bands had started doing a few tiny little gigs,

and we assembled them all for this Punk festival.

And there were all these other bands playing

and the Clash played there.

Siouxsie did her first gig.

Had you sung before? Not on stage, no.

Did you think that was important?

Um... no.

And who was backing you up? Sid Vicious on drums,

Steve Severin on bass...

It was two nights. One night was headlined by the Sex Pistols,

and the second night was headlined by me.

# Motorbikin'

# Motorbikin' #

None of those bands had had any records out.

If Malcolm wanted to promote a festival,

he had to have a bankable name. Cos I'd had my 'Motorbikin'' record the year before,

Malcolm said, "Well you gotta come and play."

And then one day I got a call from a friend of mine,

Chrissie Hynde, she used to work in Malcolm's shop.

She said, "You gotta come and see this band."

And it was the Sex Pistols.

I was quite impressed with Steve Jones,

who was attacking his guitar and kept breaking strings,

and yet never went out of tune and still sounded great.

I said to Malcolm, "I know what a record company would want

to sign you. They would want a three-song demo. I can do that."

And we went in the studio called Majestic in South London.

And so we set up and ran a few run-throughs.

And I told the engineer, take it. And he said, "Come in and listen."

And we said, "No, no, no, no, no, we haven't recorded it yet."

He said, "No, we have." And we said, "No, we can't have done.

You didn't put the red light on." And of course, it sounded great. He said he didn't put the red on

because it was our first time in the studio and he didn't want us to get red light fever,

he called it, where you get uptight and you start making mistakes. By five o'clock in the afternoon,

we had three songs down. # Too many problems, why am I here?

# Need to be cos you're all too clear

# And I can see there's something wrong with you #

Shortly after that, they did more recordings with Dave Goodman.

Dave suggested that we use the rehearsal place

in Denmark Street, and he had a four-track Revox reel-to-reel tape recorder

and recorded the band live in there.

It was good with Dave, because there was no time pressure.

So we was experimenting a lot more. Doing bubble sounds

on a teapot for 'Submission' and overdubbing a bit more.

And then he suggested to Malcolm, a bit more money, we could get a proper studio

and record the vocals there, and mix it,

and that became what is the 'Spunk album.

# Submission

# I'm going down, down, down #

It wasn't sonically the best,

but there was some great ideas.

Alright, what should we do? Should we just sing with...

Every time we was having a go at recording 'Anarchy,'

and when there was a break, I'd be on the piano going, dun, dundadun.

I had this thing, dunda.

And they're going, "Glen, for fuck sake, shut up."

"No, I've got something." I went home, picked up my guitar and found the riff.

So I had the beginnings of the riff for 'God Save The Queen.'

# 'God Save The Queen'

When I came up with the riff,

I could always imagine Steve doing it with a bit more, (IMITATES ELECTRIC GUITAR))

It was like a beneficial kind of partnership.

And then John had some lyrics for it

and then we kind of argued over how to arrange it.

# God save the Queen

# The fascist regime

# They made you a moron # We argued morning, noon and night.

But you have to, because that's what being in a band is all about, diversity.

I never liked anything he ever did, and he thought the same about me.

And we'd meet in the middle, and it would make for good records.

We argue so much that the frustration comes up

when we actually play it. To me, if you listen to the Spunk stuff,

the bass-playing, that's where the little bits of melody

and counterpoint come in.

The bass playing is by far superior to the bass playing that wound up on the album,

which was kind of much more methodical

and just kind of eighth notes.

I don't think the rest of the band appreciated him.

You needed somebody with a bit of musical know-how,

and a bit of confidence nd Glen had that.

Hang on. Dave Dew speaking. This is Chris Parry. Doug D'Arcy, Chrysalis Records.

They were a particularly ugly band. That's dreadful.

I was the one that picked up the phone

when Malcolm McLaren called.

And so I went down and saw them at the 100 Club.

This band was doing something interesting

and they were making great noises. They had something to say

and I talked my boss into signing them.

the rest was troubled history.

When we got the record deal with EMI, it was, for me,

you'RE gonna go with this or you're not.

It was a big thing to leave an apprenticeship at the time

in a good job. And everyone said, "You're mad.

You'll never do anything with this band.

They're rubbish, they can't play," et cetera.

But I knew there was something good going on there. Prior to us

being presented with a recording contract,

we got presented with a management contract,

and I kind of read through it,

and Malcolm wanted to take 25% off the top.

And Steve and Paul were like, "Oh."

John wasn't there and I mentioned it to John,

and he said he was gonna sign it anyway.

But he actually said to me when we were signing it, he said, "Glen, you've read it and I haven't.

If there's anything wrong with it, it's your fault."

Me and Steve, we was just happy to be in a band.

We didn't worry about contracts and stuff like that. They were trying.

Malcolm definitely saw an opportunity and milked it.

The first time we played with the Pistols, I think we got aid five pounds,

and Malcolm wanted 25 quid to use the PA.

You know, he could be such a cunt.

But I quite always liked Malcolm, cos he was a hustler.

He was the fifth member of the band, if you like.

The Svengali, the manipulator,

and all those other terms people level at him.

Look, most of them true, by the way.

After we signed to EMI, we're straight in the studio,

and because we'd done the demos with Dave Goodman,

we thought we'd give Dave a shot producing,

and Dave wasn't a proper, fully-fledged producer.

# I am an antichrist #

And we would, literally, do 'Anarchy' in the studio

a thousand times. We wanted to get it right.

I wanted to make the heaviest song that had ever been in the universe. He was fucking stoned with weed.

And we're like, this is a joke. So effectively, we went on strike,

and Paul Cook suggested Chris Thomas,

who produced Roxy Music,

and Chris Spedding had taken Chris Thomas down

to see us at the 100 Club. So he was up for it.

Maybe a week later, we're in Wessex Studios.

Queen were there, and we walked in,

and Freddie's in full tilt and like, "Woooh, I'm sorry," you know.

But they were cool, Queen. They let us have some of their time

to record the single quickly. # 'Anarchy In The UK'

And we did 'Anarchy' in two takes.

That was it. He said he got us. Cos Chris knew

when enough was enough, and that it was good enough.

And it's funny, it finishes how it finishes

because the tape run out. That's why it goes, blemm.

I think that was one of the best times,

my whole time in the Sex Pistols, was recording.

That's the only song Glen plays bass on

on 'Never Mind the Bollocks.'

When we were in the studio together, it was just a question of getting the music down,

and getting it down well. They were professional.

It was definitely not the image that was publicised.

Only a couple of days later, as I opened the door,

Freddie Mercury is like bending over by the door,

and he was listening. Queen, they were quite big in the Sex Pistols career.

The whole reason we did the Bill Grundy Show,

Queen was supposed to do it,

but Freddie Mercur had a bad toothache that day

and pulled out. The famous Bill Grundy interview.

Yes, I do remember it.

We was in Kilburn rehearsing.

All of a sudden a phone call comes through,

"We're sending the car for you." Malcolm says, "If you don't do it,

you don't get your wages this week." Then we're in the studio behind the cameras,

there's Siouxsie and half the Bromley Contingent,

and it's like, hmm. And then this guy comes on set, Bill Grundy.

Punk rockers, the new craze they tell me.

Now, Bill Grundy was a really big deal guy.

He was Walter Cronkite kind of territory.

And he had a real attitude with us.

Not the nice, clean rolling Stones.

You see, they're as drunk as I am. They're clean by comparison.

They're a group called the Sex Pistols.

And the shit hit the fan.

I am told that that group have received £40,000

from a record company.

Doesn't that seem to be slightly opposed

to their anti-materialistic view of life?

No, the more the merrier. Really? Oh yeah.

Well, tell me more then. We've fuckin' spent it, ain't we?

I don't know. Have you? Yeah, it's all gone.

Steve had found a bottle of wine,

and he's drunk pretty much all of it to himself

and it's starting kicking in. And it just went from bad to worse.

John swore accidentally, he said 'shit,'

and he pushed him on it. It's what? Nothing. A rude word.

Next question. No, no. What was the rude word?

Shit. Was it really?

Good heavens, you frighten me to death. Oh alrighty.

What about you girls behind? Always wanted to meet you. Did you really? Yeah.

We'll meet afterwards, shall we?

You dirty sod!

Go on, you've got another five seconds.

Say something outrageous. You dirty bastard.

Go on, again. You dirty fucker.

What a clever boy. What a fucking rotter.

Well, that's it for tonight.

While the show's going on, I could see Malcolm just behind the camera.

Malcolm would go, "Oh, no." As we went off, he was white.

He said, "You've done it now." Dragged me out.

We got in the car, and as we're just pulling away

a Black Maria turned up, a police van.

There were these police, they're rushing into the TV studio

with their truncheons out and we're sort of like waving to them. What a (BLEEP) rotter.

Well, that's it for tonight.

It was going out live on prime-time TV,

just after the news when millions of people watched it.

And I didn't know my dad had called around the family saying,

"Glen's gonna be on the TV." (BLEEP) And we didn't speak

for a year.

It all got crazy very quickly

once the publicity machine started rolling.

The greatest technique

involved in managing the Sex Pistols

was always to create the right explosion

and then know that it was gonna happen.

And as a manager, run into the toilet

and come out after the explosion and say, "God, what's happened?"

Really? I didn't notice that. Although later on he said

he had made all that happen, I think he was terrified that he'd blown it for them.

(INTERVIEWER) Why all the infamous language?

Infamous language? You're joking.

They were famous in England before they even had a record out.

I don't think that ever happened before in the music industry. Punk was all about revolution.

It was an attitude. Then they became a figurehead for that attitude.

And willingly or not, they became the visible leaders of a movement.

(REPORTER) Unseen dangers awaited punks in the dark.

There was ramifications.

John got attacked by more right-wing people

who thought we were decrying the nation.

It was a very dangerous time for us after the Grundy Show,

and we were public enemies number one, for sure.

They're trying to put it across the country,

starting in Britain, but we're not having it.

That is why we've given them a good hiding every time we meet them.

I got attacked walking down on Shepherd's Bush.

I just came out of the station

with my girlfriend at the time,

and these four rockabillies, Teds, whatever you call them,

didn't like the fact that I was wearing Brothel Creepers.

I said, "What? It's just a shoe. Why, what's the problem?"

Anyway, bang, and I got attacked. Yeah, ended up in hospital.

We had to watch our backs. It was a pretty dangerous time.

(SIREN WAILS)

You started taking your life in your hands a little bit,

wearing your punk threads. It was almost like war was declared.

On Charing Cross Station, I was kind of just looking off at,

I don't know, when the train's coming. Next minute, (LAUGHS)...

..got punched in the side of the face,

and then I saw a pair of black Brothel Creepers

walking away, so I knew was... I got ambushed, you know.

(PHONE RINGING) I mean, the national press

had exploited Punk for its sensation value,

and the violence really stems from their coverage

and the fact that they've only really given coverage

to the more violent aspects, not to any of the ideals,

and certainly not very much to the music at all.

We had a tour planned, the Anarchy Tour.

Malcolm, he had that kind of idea

that we'd have some kind of Punk Rock review.

So we had the Clash, the Damned,

and he brought over from the States the Heartbreakers.

We were going around in this coach from place to place.

As we're turning up to a show, and then it was cancelled.

We were supposed to have like 23 gigs or something

around the country, and we're starting being banned.

..one of the most reviewed and reviled rock phenomena of recent weeks...

Do you really think Punk Rockers are such a threat to society

that you're justified in banning their concerts? We are responsible

for public safety.

There was such a storm around them.

You couldn't do anything. Even we couldn't do anything. I remember one specific,

and they just came up and threw us out immediately

just because we were a band on tour with the Sex Pistols. (REPORTER) Mr Stabler,

you can't watch punk concerts in Newcastle either. The decision was made

when we discovered it was mere children watching the performance.

Now, out of all those dates,

how many dates would you say are there, look?

I think we only did five or six dates,

and we're lucky we got them.

We had to go to show that we wasn't gonna accept their censorship.

It was very frustrating.

We had a fair amount of journalists following us round

and finding out where we were staying.

And I went and got a cup of tea, came back,

got on the coach first, I had the window open slightly,

and I heard one saying to other, "Oh, Fred, how'd you get on?

Did you get a quote from anybody?" He said, "Yeah." He said,

"I got two fucks and a shit from Johnny Rotten."

Just sells their papers putting us in it now.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Put us on the front,

just sells their papers, and it's bit stupid, really.

Because we weren't allowed to play

and we was cooped up in this bus all the time,

it started creating kind of problems within the band.

Became kind of quite factional.

Steve and Paul were always a bit of a double act,

which I felt they were always a bit stand-offish,

they didn't kind of let you in.

Maybe John felt a bit threatened by it or Glen did,

I don't know. But yeah, we were close.

I know what I think, and that's all that counts to me.

I don't try and impress anybody but myself.

It'd been a simmering thing between me and John.

I think, personally, cos... and I'm not the only person who's said this,

but, you know, once he got his face in the papers,

he became a bit more arrogant and everything had to be his way all the time,

and I thought we was in a band, you know.

It is be hard living up to your image sometimes?

What image? I never thought I had one.

Well, what do you think - I change from day to day.

There was always animosity between John and Glen anyway,

even back to the very early days

when I was just standing on the side of the stage

watching them, and John would always give Glen shit.

(INTERVIEWER) Do you feel the publicity

following the Thames Television interview has been damaging, or do you think it's helped you?

I don't think it's been damaging, far from it.

Whether it's helping us is another matter.

Later on, there was a frustration

that I found out that we could play in certain places.

Went to see the Ramones when they finally come over,

and some promoter asked me, he said, "Hey, Glen, you can't play?"

And I said, "No." He said, "I'll put you on. Tell Malcolm." So I tell Malcolm. He goes,

"No, no, you're banned." Hang on, I wanna be in a band

because I wanna be a musician and I wanna play.

I started to think there was a bit of dishonesty involved.

We ended up in London just before Christmas,

penniless, without a real sense of achievement.

And then the record company,

while we was away on tour and had got a load of shit,

backlash from the TV show, and they pulled the record.

The ground floor was very unhappy about that firing.

It was just the big bosses. The way I read it was that EMI

was very close to the British Establishment.

You know, they had friends in Parliament and all that. And the head guy of EMI,

when not running the record company, would have dinner with the Queen!

(REPORTER) The anti-Establishment Sex Pistols called in the Establishment press

to protest what had happened to them. (INTERVIEWER) OK, you want to get your music across,

but do you feel maybe the fact that you can't do that commercially

is because of the way you've behaved? Oh no,

I'm not gonna come down to their level.

The next thing, we're on a plane to Amsterdam.

We did a TV show there.

And then we played at the Paradiso,

and then we went to Rotterdam and played, and flew home.

But you know, things were getting bad. Then John was on my case,

and I was just beginning to get fed up with the whole thing.

And I had a meeting with Steve and Paul and Malcolm

in this restaurant we used to go to in Covent Garden.

I'd found out they'd tried to have a rehearsal with Sid,

and I wasn't supposed to know, but I did know,

and I thought, well, that's out of order. There's this big hoo-ha,

and Malcolm says, it's all a big secret, man.

Come down to this pub at such and such, you know.

And I thought they were gonna do me over,

cos I didn't turn up to one of Rotten's parties

or something. John sort of manipulated the situation with Malcolm

to get rid of Glen,

and whether he'd done it because he wanted his mate Sid

in the band so he could feel more comfortable

up against me and Steve, I don't know.

At this meeting Paul says,

"Look, we know you're not getting on with John.

Can't you just pretend that you like him?"

And I thought, I'm coming up with these ideas.

You guys don't really realise what side your bread's buttered.

Why can't you guys back me up a little bit?

And I said, "Then you want me to pretend I like John?"

I said, "No, I can't really do that."

At the end of the day, John said he wasn't gonna... couldn't go on

with Glen in the band. And so it was either the band broke up

or Glen left. It was one of the only times

that John and Malcolm were in sync with each other.

# Or is this the UDA? #

And by that time, the vast majority of the songs

on 'Never Mind The Bollocks' had been written,

and that was kind of that, really. # Or just

# Another... # I liked Glen.

We liked the same music. I got along with him great.

I think it just got too weird for him.

I know Glen said he left. Malcolm says he got fired.

It was weird, and then Sid.

And we just carried on, like, oh, alright, OK.

We kind of just cowardly went along with it,

I guess, to just keep everyone happy.

And in retrospect, we should've maybe stuck up for Glen

and kept him in the band. Who knows what would've happened?

As far as I'm concerned, I quit, and that was that.

I'd shaken hands with Steve and Paul and Malcolm

before he sent the telegram to the NME.

I thought it was the stupidest fucking move

they ever made. They say they threw him out

because he liked the Beatles. Fuck you if you don't like the Beatles.

I never bought into Malcolm's sort of PR

that you know, oh, we've kicked him out

cos he likes the Beatles. But I think what Malcolm was really saying is,

we kicked him out cos he's too musical. It proved to me then at that point

that this was not a band that Malcolm had any interest in having longevity,

musical development of any kind, or even staying together.

He wanted to destroy, and he'd destroy you

by putting this crazy guy in on bass who couldn't even play bass.

It felt to me that the musical heart had been torn out the band.

Steve and myself were very concerned when Glen left the band.

But we was pushed into a corner, really, and we had no option.

I was left to write 'Holidays' and a few others, 'No Feelings.'

It definitely changed the dynamics, major.

I was the mug who had to try and teach Sid

where to put his fingers on the bass.

That's the last thing I wanted to be doing.

Sid couldn't play bass. But I mean, who gives a shit?

(MAN) You'd turn him down in the mix.

Sometimes we used to turn him off, actually.

We'd Elastoplast all the dials on the M. He says, "What you doing, Malcolm?"

"Don't worry, Sid. You don't need to worry.

You just keep talking to the girls."

John really wanted him in the band. Me and Steve were, oh, OK,

let's see how this goes. He looked great, don't get me wrong. He looked fantastic.

Yeah, he was a face around town, and when he first joined the band, it was great.

He was really willing to learn and learn the numbers

and play and learn the bass.

The only thing missing with Sid was fucking notes on the neck.

You know, pieces of tape, this is a C.

This is a G, you know? (LAUGHS)

This poor schmuck fucking got thrown into the fucking circus.

He never contributed to any of the songwriting

or any of the recording.

What more can I say?

Even Sid himself would've said, "I'm not really a musician." We all knew why he was there.

He was the poster boy for the punk movement.

Went and picked up my equipment from our Denmark Street place,

and then a couple of days later I'm down at the Roxy Club,

and then somebody said, "John's here." And I thought, oh, alright. And I went out,

and I was going to the loo, and he was there with Sid,

and John's going like that to Sid, egging him on,

and Sid follows me into the loo,

and he said, "I'm the bass player in the Sex Pistols now." I said, "Yeah, I know. Good for you."

He said, "What do you mean?" He wanted to fight,

and John's sort of egging him on, right?

But he's outside in the hallway and me and Sid are in there. I said, "I'll tell you what, Sid,

I'll give you some bass lessons if you like." "Really?" "Yeah." He said, "Aren't you annoyed?"

"No, if they want you in, that's the way it'll be." And John's outside,

waiting for the sound of fisticuffs. And me and Sid sort of come out,

practically arm in arm, laughing. And John was like...

(BURPS) Pardon me.

(INTERVIEWER) So what do you do, now that you've lost your record contract?

You're still recording though, aren't you? Yeah.

What's your next single?

Uh... # And there's no reason why

# EMI # (INTERVIEWER) And you were signed up then with A&M?

Yeah, for a week. For a week! We walked into A&M Records.

Sid collapsed in the marketing director's chair.

He was completely gone. He'd drunk two bottles of vodka from 10 a.m. to three.

It was like, this wasn't a group that had entered this building.

What had entered was this fabulous disaster.

A couple of weeks later on, Malcolm called me up and he said,

"Look, you know, I thought about it. It's not working out with Sid.

I want you to come back and kick down the doors

and be the Sex Pistol bass player again."

I said, "Well, I could do that, Malcolm,

but you sent that telegram to NME

saying I was sacked for liking the Beatles, I think it's pretty shitty, really.

So fuck you." (CROWD CHEERING)

(MAJESTIC MUSIC PLAYING)

(STREET-PORTER) The summer of '77, the summer of the Jubilee,

a time when the nation united

in spontaneous gestures of patriotism.

A time when the then top 20 record charts were dominated

by this original version of the national anthem

by the Sex Pistols.

# God save the Queen

# The fascist regime

# They made you a moron

# A potential H-bomb

# God save the Queen # We didn't write the song

to coincide with the Jubilee at all.

We wrote that song, I think, a year before, near enough,

it just came out at that time. (REPORTER) ..Majesty and Prince Philip,

to the thunderous cheers of hundreds of thousands of her subjects lining the route.

You can't play on the land, and you can't hear them in the air.

So let's put them on a bloody boat!

This is insane, he whole thing.

And let's follow the Queen's flotilla.

# We mean it, man #

When the six Pistols went after the Queen,

It just wasn't done.

'God Save The Queen, and played it at the Queen's Jubilee?

No, no-one has ever done anything that ballsy.

That actually came out after I'd left the band.

The song was written and we were playing it, but originally

it was called 'No Future.' And to me,

although the first line of the song is "God save the Queen,"

the main thing to me is, no future. There's no future. Not that that's a good thing,

but there's no future unless you try and do something about it for yourself,

which is what we were trying to do.

We didn't realise how much we were gonna shake things up.

Questions in the Houses of the Parliament

and stuff like that going on. You know, it was crazy.

But we had a lot of support throughout the country. (U.S. REPORTER) The current record,

'God Save The Queen,' is at number one today.

But the IBA, which administers the Broadcasting Act,

has advised us that, particularly at this time,

this record is likely to cause offence

to a number of our listeners and have asked us not to play it in our normal programming.

Not only would they not play it on the BBC,

but they wouldn't even print the name in the chart. Going into Woolworths,

they had the Top 10 on a pegboard, and then the number one was blank.

When you're that passionate about what you're doing

that you're willing to step over the edge

and confront the world around you,

you will generate an equally strong reaction

in the opposite direction.

(INTERVIEWER) Are you anti-royalist?

We are.

I've never met the Queen in me life,

so why should I wanna know her?

Where's that beer gone?

I mean, do you think, well, let's -

We don't bother about her. We don't bother about her.

We just don't care about the Queen. She don't give a fuck about us, does she?

It was great that we knew we were doing something

culturally significant and fantastic,

but it was also very scary that we knew people were out to harm us.

We had to get out the country at one time.

# No future for you

# No future Well, then they went to the States.

# For you #

(MAN IN AUDIENCE) Hey, Johnny!

And in the meantime, I'd already started taking some steps

to talk to other musicians, like Steve New.

And I met this guy Rusty Egan, he was a drummer,

and I'd already been writing a couple of song ideas.

As soon as we heard that Glen had quit the band,

we were on the phone.

And he said, "As a friend and a representative of EMI,

we see you as the main tunesmith in the band.

We'd be more than interested in anything you come up with." I thought, fucking handy.

And when I was on the lookout for a singer,

everybody wanted to sound like Rotten, last thing I wanted.

..Rich Kids. There's Glen Matlock, formerly with the Sex Pistols,

and Midge Ure, who was with a Scottish teenybop group called Slik.

# Now you can see, now you can feel

# Now you can tell that it was you #

This is a kid had played in the ultimate teenybopper group, boyband, Slik.

To get him as the frontman was another clever stance from Glen.

OK, this is called 'Rich Kids.'

# 'Rich Kids'

What I did want to do with the Rich Kids

was not be a second division Sex Pistol.

And that's why it kind of came out a bit different.

# I'm talkin' about rich kids

# The guys too much for you #

This is the band that were the missing link between Punk

and what we were about to do in the '80s with New Romanticism.

They bridged that gap,

and that was a massive inspiration.

(INTERVIEWER) Do you think it will be sort of a New Wave kind of words

and angry songs?

No, I mean I'm not that kind of angry person.

That's one of the reasons I'm no longer in the Pistols. # Oh, it's too much

# To stop the rich, so true #

(INTERVIEWER) Is there a particular reason why you're not playing Los Angeles

or New York or... (LYDON) There's a very definite reason,

and all those places that says you're obvious sellouts. But like, who plays down South?

# 'God Save The Queen'

Playing in the South, that was a great idea.

Down there they had this guy cutting himself on stage,

with spiky hair and not giving a fuck.

That was a spectacle. It really was a spectacle.

(SOUTHERN ACCENT) The Pistols are just outta sight.

I think they got a lotta balls. (INTERVIEWER) Is it what they sing? It isn't what they sing.

Get outta here! What do they sing? They sing. Get outta here.

It was just getting crazy.

We had lunatics following us around all over the place.

The police were on the side of the stage,

and the record company were worried. We had security all around us.

It was getting horrible.

I thought someone was gonna die on that tour.

They nearly did, with Sid just causing chaos everywhere,

and the drug-taking and all that thing. The band,

it went quickly downhill.

(LYDON) This is no fun.

No fun at all. No fun.

I said to the audience, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

And I meant it, and I still do to this day.

The whole thing went sour.

So we split.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Goodnight.

It was getting dark and horrible, and, to be honest,

I was glad when it was over at the end of that American tour.

I was relieved too.

You know, I'd had enough. That's the way it was.

That was the way it was meant to be.

Sid was in the hospital. It was a blizzard,

and I went down to CGBGs that night and there's Joe Stevens

with Johnny Rotten. He asked me if I had a cigarette.

I said, "Here, man, take it." And he goes, "Oh."

He goes, "Is this a token of your respect?"

And I said, "Well, no. I actually feel bad for you, cos you're outta work." (LAUGHS)

It was an icebreaker right there, you know.

Do you keep in touch with any of the people

that you've played with before? Anybody in the band? No.

They never bothered to ring me, so I won't ring them.

It was really heavy at the time. And yeah, I was glad.

I thought we were just gonna split up for a few months,

maybe, then get back together.

But it never worked out like that.

Then Sid came back to London with his tail between his legs.

Then he had a big drug problem.

But he moved into Maida Vale, in London,

and he was friends with some of the same people,

and then Nancy'd be around, and I saw him quite a lot.

I've been with Sid ever since the first day I got to England,

and we're partners in crime. (SID SPEAKS UNDECIPHERABLY)

We have good fun. We wipe the shit off,

and we help each other out.

I do remember once,

there was Nancy holding her hand over a bowl.

She cut her wrist, sort of cut her wrist,

eating an ice cream. I go, "Oh, Nancy, what you doing?"

She's going, "Well, Sid don't love me anymore."

I said, "Oh, well, never mind. Do you want a cuppa tea?"

She'd be like, "No, it's alright.

I'll just eat the ice cream." And it was all like play-acting kind of stuff. I liked Nancy.

She was like one of the handful of women

that were on the scene at CBGB.

You know, we were all kids.

I got to know Nancy and she sort of explained to me

that she had had a rough life, a rough home life.

I don't know if you saw any of the gigs, but Sid was like really shining out,

and John was being like nothing.

(INTERVIEWER) What was it that you thought

the Pistols were trying to do?

Was it just like kick the Establishment up the arse?

(SNORES)

Sid?

And we were sitting in the pub one night together,

and he's going, "The thing is, Glen,

people seem to think we're enemies,

but here we are sitting having a drink together."

And I said, "Yeah, it's kind of funny that."

He said, "Can't we do something about it?

You know, to prove that we're not enemies."

I said, "Well I'll tell you what,

maybe we could do a little gig for a laugh."

He went, "Oh, really? Who would we get?"

I said, "Well, I'll tell you what, why don't we get Steve New,

who was my guitarist in the Rich Kids then,

and maybe Rat Scabies?"

He said, "Who's gonna play bass?" I said, "Well, I'll play bass. You sing." "Oh, oh, alright."

This was like on a Monday,

and we was playing the Electric Ballroom

the following Friday or Saturday.

Sid Vicious, I was in the Rich Kids,

and Rat was in the White Cats.

Vicious, White, Kids,

boom, and it sold out. (VICIOUS, LIVE) This one's dedicated to my honey, Nancy.

# 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'

There was loads of people at the gig.

I remember Thin Lizzy came down,

and I think that's where I met Blondie for the first time. Joan Jett and I went together,

and Marc Bolan was there.

# So messed up, I want you here #

They had no material

and they did 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' three times. Kept getting encores,

and we didn't have any more songs. So we did the same set of about 10 songs three times.

I mean, what happened after that gig,

Sid was gonna go to America,

and we didn't do too bad after the gig,

and then in a kind of drunken moment of largesse,

I said, "Let's just give Sid the money for the gig." A couple of days later he went to America.

The thing was, I didn't realise that he was always skint.

He didn't have any money, and I didn't realise how bad he'd become,

and Malcolm wasn't giving him any money.

So him and Nancy's on their own.

I didn't know that.

I've given him several grand of money to go to America.

He turns up in New York, loaded.

Sid, damn you!

Fuck.

So I don't know if I didn't help somehow, in some small way,

help him with his demise, undeliberately.

(REPORTER) Tonight Vicious is in real trouble,

charged with the murder of his girlfriend

at Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel. Vicious,

whose real name is John Ritchie, had lived at the Chelsea with 20-year-old Nancy Spungen

for about three weeks.

This morning, Vicious called an ambulance to the West 23rd Street hotel.

When it arrived, Ms Spungen was already dead

of a stab wound in the stomach.

Really sweet enough guy. I mean, I didn't really get to know him

until after fucking Nancy was dead. He just got outta jail.

He was actually sober, and you could talk to him,

and he was a very sad character.

I mean, he was, you know, I asked him flat-out one time,

"Did you do it?" And he goes, "I don't know."

(INTERVIEWER) And what do you think made it happen?

It was meant to happen.

Nancy always said she'D die before she was 21.

Sid Vicious will not have to stand trial

for the murder of a girlfriend at the Chelsea Hotel.

Sid is no longer vicious. He's dead,

his nude body found in a Greenwich Village apartment,

spoon and syringe nearby. (REPORTER) The ex-Sex Pistol was described as happy

about prospects for a bright future when he came here to 63 Bank last night.

You just have to accept it.

I could no more save him than I could've killed him.

(INTERVIEWER) Were you close to him at that time?

He was my best mate.

All I can say is that we really tried,

everybody tried to talk to him, Steve and Paul. (INTERVIEWER) Do you feel

if he'd never met you, he might be alive today?

I don't know.

First person I see up here is Joe Strummer,

who was a friend of mine. I remember Joe wearing this.

Generation X, there's Tony James there,

who used to knock around with Mick Jones.

Scabies there, up there.

Very good drummer, but he's a bit impulsive.

About a few years ago I was having a jam with him

and was playing away and he did this fantastic big drum fill

that ended like one and a half beats into the next bar,

which it shouldn't have done. It just all fell apart. We was only rehearsing,

and it all broke down, and I went, "Rat." And he said, "Glen, I hate it

when you can't follow me when I go wrong like that." (CREW LAUGHTER)

So there's kind of quite a lot of connections

in this room for me.

But the only thing is, they got pictures of Pistols

without me in it. So I'm gonna have to address that issue.

It's funny how the media gave us that illusion about the Pistols,

that it was all Sid, when it wasn't, it was Glen Matlock.

It's kind of funny, I don't get up in the morning

thinking I used to be in the Sex Pistols.

But everything I've done over my life,

I've never been allowed to forget about the Sex Pistols.

But all I've ever really wanted to do,

and maybe that was one of the reasons I fell out with the other guys,

you know Malcolm, was being a working musician.

And d'you know what?

I'm 67 now, and I've managed that.

# 'Lust For Life'

After the Pistols, I got a gig with Iggy Pop.

I'm on tour with Iggy Pop around Europe and America

and I played on his 'Soldier' album.

With the Rich Kids, it was fantastic.

I got to work with Mick Ronson,

he produced the album, and I became mates with him

and he asked me to do other projects.

There's people that influenced me I got to work with.

Johnny Thunders, I actually did a tour of Japan

and Australia with Johnny.

Look at the stuff he's done since. He's played with the fucking Faces.

The band that I used to stand in front of the mirror

at 14 pretending I was in them.

We headlined the Fuji Festival in Japan. You know Ronnie Wood,

and Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan.

If someone said to me, I can see into the future

and later on down the line you're gonna get one of the Sex Pistols playing with me,

I would go, "Go away. Don't be silly."

But sure enough, he did. (CROWD CHEERING)

Then I got a phone call a year and a half ago

from Clem Burke, Blondie was short of a bass player,

would I go and help him out? And I said, "When, late in the summer or something?"

He said, "No, on Tuesday." I was like, oh...

I knew Glen would be perfect for it.

And we did this arena tour with Glen and it's just carried on since then. It's been great.

Oh my god. (LAUGHS)

Yeah, you know Glen is great.

Yes, he's a sweetheart.

# 'Call Me'

# Call me, I'll arrive

# Call me, call me any day or night

# Call me, call me in my life

# When you're ready for your sweet design #

In my experience, there's some people

that were born to be in rock, and that's it.

It's just, you know, who you are,

and I think that applies to him.

# ..designer sheets

# I'll never get enough #

That's one of the things I like about Glen,

that it's not past glories.

I think his current work is his strongest ever.

Really with his finger on the pulse

of what's going on politically in the country and the world,

and he's writing about it.

# Until there's someone, oh yeah #

People always say the Pistols was like a sea-change.

Maybe it was in a way, but I dispute that.

I think music's like a baton race.

You know, the people from before you that you dig,

you take the baton off of them, and you do your bit,

and then you pass the baton on for the next lot of people.

You know, here's this man Glen Matlock, who changed my life.

Yeah, I put seeing the Sex Pistols in the same bracket

as Paul meeting John.

# 'God Save The Queen'

Glen leaving sadly did take away

that marvellous accidental synergy

that they had, and they couldn't really seriously recover from it.

What a damn good band we were, to be quite frank,

and how right it was that we ended when we did.

You know, I'm proud of the songs, and every time you hear a Sex Pistols record on the radio,

especially the first three singles,

you might be listening to Johnny Rotten and Steve Jones

and Paul Cook, but you're also listening to Glen Matlock.

He is a writer and an idea-maker.

I don't think we would have the Sex Pistols

the same way we knew them without him being a main ingredient.

It takes a a lot of people to make something great,

and different opinions and when they align,

that's when it's something special.

And in the end of the Pistols, they were very special.

And there's not a lot of bands that can say that they have

one record that impacted everything.

It's amazing with that one album, how they're spoken about in the same breath as the Who,

or even the Stones or the Beatles,

or all great rock and roll bands, which they were one of.

They only had to make one, really. It's so good.

No-one sounds anywhere near that powerful.

'Never Mind' raised the bar for everyone.

It's one of the most classic records of all time.

Amazing, I mean I played that to death when it came out.

That's their one statement to the world.

And imagine getting it so right once.

I made 10 albums, and in my own mind,

they don't match up to that. And I'm an arrogant bastard.

# We mean it, man

# Whichever queen, oh yeah,

# God saves #

We have got something in common that only four people in the whole world have,

and it's like when we get in the room, if we ever did again,

we start playing, we're the Sex Pistols.

It wouldn't have happened without all the elements,

which is mainly the band,

but it wouldn't have happened without Malcolm, without Vivienne, without Jamie Reid's artwork.

It wouldn't have happened without Little Helen,

Helen of Troy, who was mates with Malcolm.

There's a power to the music of the Pistols.

# No future for you

# No future, no future #

Yeah, maybe we could've made another album or two.

But, you know, bands tend to do a ballad or so,

something like the Rolling Stones' (SINGS) # Angie, Angie #

Can't imagine Johnny Rotten singing something like that.

# Angie... #

Alright, that's Glen Matlock on bass.

(CROWD CHEERING)

That's a good place to end then.

# There's no point in asking, you'll get no reply

# Just remember I don't decide

# I got no reason and you'll get no reply

# I got no reason, yeah

# That's just fine

# We're so pretty, oh so pretty

# We're vacant

# We're so pretty, oh so pretty

# Vacant

# Don't ask us to attend, cos we're not all there

# Don't pretend, cos we don't care

# Got no reason, it's all too much

# Always find us

# Out to lunch, out to lunch

# We're so pretty, oh so pretty

# Vacant

# We're so pretty, oh so pretty

# Vacant

# We're so pretty, oh so pretty

# Vacant, yeah

# And we don't care

# Pretty, pretty vacant

# We don't care #