Original subtitles

[dramatic upbeat music]

[metallic clanging]

[rock music]

[no audio]

-[dramatic triumphant music] -[wings flapping]

[traffic noise droning]

[upbeat rock music]

[Glen] Blaine, can I get your guitar?

[upbeat rock music]

[Crew] Check yeah, one, two, AD.

One, two. One, two.

♪ Well, blue jean, baby ♪

In life, one thing leads to another thing

and that's all part of an exploration of gathering ideas.

Hello? Oh, [beep].

I say my art has been a songwriter, really.

[crowd cheering]

Rock and roll!

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

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

having written which of The Sex Pistols' hits?

We got an old English folksong we gonna play for you.

I think you might know it.

[Drummer] One, two, three, four.

["God Save the Queen"]

[Glen] People like to paint me

as the guy from the Six Pistols

that nobody knows, but that ain't quite true.

♪ God save the Queen ♪

♪ The fascist regime ♪

♪ They made you ♪

Pistols, they put on a brash crude display of music.

[Reporter] When the Sex Pistols,

with lead singer Johnny Rotten,

suddenly made punk music front page news,

they outraged pretty well everyone

Complacent, apathetic old [beep].

People couldn't believe what they were seeing

'cause it was no one had seen anything like this.

One of the most reviewed

and most reviled rock phenomenon of recent weeks.

[Reporter] 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] What a clever boy.

[Steve] What a fuckin' rotter.

[Bill] Well, that's it for tonight.

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

People say they can't play.

You know, 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.

♪ Oh, Lord God, have mercy ♪

Glen, I could tell if 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 realize

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.

And we found out Sid Vicious could not play bass,

did not play bass and there's some other guy

named Glen Matlock and we're like, who's he?

There was so many kind of 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.

It's amazing how much you do remember and what.

Everyone knows the story.

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

It's the same old shit.

Told the story a million times.

Okay, quiet on the set.

Action. Okay.

[rock music swells]

[static crackling]

Let's, yeah, we gotta kinda set the scene a little bit.

[upbeat music]

[humming] Here we are walking up

Ravensworth Road in 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 set of new inhabitants let us in.

Wow. Lead the way around.

[Glen] So this was my mom 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.

[all laughing]

[Resident] The Pistol's were my favorite ever band.

[camera shutter clicking]

It was a bit short of the plumbing.

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

And 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 semiskilled worker,

had a few different jobs.

He worked for Rolls Royce as a coach builder.

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

and it is got very high tech,

there's a goal-mount painted,

but we just used to put our jackets down.

And then there was one of the guys,

who was a Latin 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 there

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, now 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.

And 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 a 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 & 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 everyday ♪

Some kids like me picked up on that,

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

And that's 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.

[upbeat music]

But 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 Scene.

There was a band called Ace.

♪ How long has this been going on ♪

♪ Has this been going on ♪

And we watched them and stayed up all night.

That's when I started thinking,

oh, there must be a little bit more in life

than working in the 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 on it.

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.

[guitar strings vibrating]

And you can't hear the fucking thing.

And then what do you do,

you can kind of jam it against the wardrobe.

[strings vibrating]

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 all right ♪

♪ 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 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.

And that's what all the Teddy Boys wore.

[upbeat music]

Well a Teddy Boy is from the name Edward.

In the '20s and '30s,

all the upper-class people of England

sort of dressed in this Edwardian look

because we had the King Edward at the time,

you know with longer coats and velvet collars.

And then all the rock and rollers,

when Bill Haley came over,

they kind of adopted this kind of look

and they were Teddy Boys.

Well, we're Teddy Boys.

We like rock and roll

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

And 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 look 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,

on 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.

As similar kind of effrontery that Teddy Boy clothes had,

except it would be new.

[Glen] So he wanted to get rid of the Teddy Boys,

move on, do this kind of more bondage kind of 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 odd balls 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 sort of like roll our eyes

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

[Glen] But it pissed off the Teddy Boys,

which was kind of the idea.

When the Teddy Boys suddenly realized that Malcolm

had changed the shop of being new-age sex clothes,

they got really upset

and they'd 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, oh,

we'd have to lock the door, but they'd smash the window.

We were always terrified of Saturday

'cause of getting beaten up.

[Glen] 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 unseparable 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.

[Steve] 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 that I had to nick

'cause no one could afford it.

We used to go into the shop a lot and hang out in 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? And

Hey, I've been nicked.

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

I always had to watch him when they came in

'cause I thought they were gonna nick something

and Malcolm would humor them a little bit.

How's the band going?

You know, 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 said he never turned 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 favorite band?"

I said, "The Faces."

He said, "That's our favorite band at all."

I thought he was a cool guy.

You know I was impressed that he worked at the shop.

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

and the neighbor's like, "What you got?"

And I went, "Uh, I've got this one,

which is a Faces song actually off their first album."

[mellow guitar music]

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 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.

[Paul] Initially, Steve was gonna be the singer.

I went onto the drums

and Wally was playing guitar at the time.

Wally confided in me and he said,

"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.

They was mates one minute

and then they'd have a ruck about something and.

He was a prick. [chuckles]

That said, 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 them?"

♪ In the mornin' ♪

♪ Don't say you love me ♪

"Well, I like them 'cause they're all right."

"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.

[upbeat rock music]

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

It was grandiose and 25 minute guitar solos

and 30 minute drum solos.

[rhythmic drums pounding]

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.

[dramatic guitar music]

This kind of became a bit indulgent.

[upbeat rock music]

There was this other music scene called Pub Rock

where bands were play in 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, as we say.

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 kind of 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 kind of rockabilly sound.

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

♪ The people cry for more ♪

The pub rock was sort of

quite a vital part of change really.

And 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, 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 place hold?"

I said, "I don't know, turn it off, 3,000."

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

'Cause he could smell that there was a money involved.

[lively upbeat music]

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 the 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,

'cause 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.

[airplane engine roaring]

By that stage, Malcolm had been going backwards

and forwards to America to try and buy

'50s style clothes for his shop

and met the guys from the New York Dolls.

[upbeat rock music]

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.

And I realized 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

that little bit in New York,

he was hip to a few other people;

the fledgling Ramones and Richard Hell

and Television and The Heartbreakers

and it's all kind of interconnected.

But Malcolm would come back to England

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

you gotta get rid of Wally."

He just 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.

And then one day when we were sitting in the pub,

Paul turned around to me, he said,

"I don't know why you're defending Wally,

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

So I went, all right, 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 'cause 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."

And we said, "Well, that's John."

And 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 and 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 pounds 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 we are in Denmark Street.

This where we used to rehearse downstairs.

But come upstairs.

The HQ, the center of operations has changed a bit

'cause 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 we got 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.

But 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.

How attentative about do I really wanna be in a band?

You know I was brought up in this world

where you left school and you got a job

and 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 Castore 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 hedging prop days.

Now one day I'd been having a go,

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

and they weren't that good.

And he went, "Oh, you're so clever what you got then?"

So I just played.

[gentle guitar music]

And he went, "Yeah?"

And I went.

[gentle guitar music]

And he went, "Yeah?"

[one string twangs]

"Yeah?" [guitar string vibrates]

He went, "Oh, I like that."

He said, "What comes next?"

[guitar strings riffing]

♪ Now ♪

[singer laughing]

That's when John said,

"Finally, you've got something to with these lyrics."

♪ I'm an antichrist ♪

♪ I am an anarchist ♪

[Johnny] When I got in the studio,

I wrote the word to that in 20 minutes

straight off the top of my head.

♪ Passerby 'cause I wanna be anarchy ♪

♪ No dogs body ♪

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 just 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.

[faint upbeat rock music]

We had been playing

for several years in pubs around London.

We'd been hiring vans. We 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?"

And I went, "Sure."

And then he said,

"Well, come to Saint Martin's and see us play."

[Glen] We had to go and get all our stuff

in the rush hour 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.

[upbeat rock music]

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 a 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 lept into the fray.

[Paul] 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 them 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

'cause 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.

[Alex] 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.

Which, oh today, you know 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. -And got a hung Parliament.

Everybody's on strike.

In London particularly,

there's a real 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.

["Pretty Vacant"]

♪ We're so pretty, oh, so pretty ♪

♪ Vacant ♪

But it needed something. It needed 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.

[guitar strings riffing]

Ooh. Oh, [beep].

[Glen] I gave John the set of lyrics

which he seemed to like and sing.

He said, "This is fantastic."

He said, "If we get this 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 those 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 realized was their own song was "Pretty Vacant".

[Interviewer] When you stood up

and started singing the first time, what happened?

I mean. -Come on, John.

Go on. -It was wonderful.

-No come on. -People loved me.

They threw flowers.

[Interviewer] And what sort of people

came to see you in the beginning?

[Johnny] Well, no one knew it the beginning.

We were just a regular band. Turned up.

'Cause we used to turn up with our equipment

and just like crashing and doing the gigs.

Nobody knew we was playing until we got there.

We didn't even know, actually.

Yeah, there used to be in 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?"

"Yeah." We'd go, "Yeah, yeah."

"Well, come on."

But we needed other places to play.

And Malcolm come up with his 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.

And we actually went and bought

a bucket and a mop and some disinfectant. [chuckles]

There was like a few punters

who'd just come in off the street

thinking actually there was a strip show going on

and Malcolm was just taking all the money

and we literally had to run from the place

'cause 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,

'cause 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 humor.

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

Before the audience had, had a chance to respond

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

[people chattering]

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,

'cause we're 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

because we're destroying everything that's

gone before us.

[upbeat music]

I loved the Nashville gigs especially,

'cause 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".

[Alan] 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 ♪

[Paul] And Steve Strange on guitar with the weird makeup,

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 favor 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, we had 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 like half of them coming straight in

to see the support band.

And 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 'cause we're not all there ♪

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

And I knew someone had just moved the fucking goal posts.

That generational change,

that baton, had just been handed over.

And then the Doctors of Madness went on.

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

and spat in their stack up.

Boosted 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

and 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

'cause they thought they were gonna be the next big thing

and it just kind of fizzled out.

But I paid him back.

[Reporter] 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 or most of the crowd.

It was the only thing that didn't come from the industry,

it came from the kids themselves.

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 that 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?"

I said, "If you don't get back on that 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

'cause it was no one had seen anything like this.

And they was so anarchic,

'cause 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?"

One, two, three, four.

[heckler yelling]

[Johnny] Sit down! Yeah!

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 it just 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 because 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, buh-buh, bash.

I liked hard, fast, simple chords.

[upbeat rock music]

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

and have a would 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 a ♪

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.

Well it's really, the songwriting is fantastic.

And that's down to the band.

I mean when I first heard "Anarchy",

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.

[Band Member] One, two, three, four.

[upbeat rock music]

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.

You know nobody that wanted

a successful career in the music business would turn around

and criticized 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 leveler,

'cause 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.

When he met me.

Then he met you. We met him.

[group speaking faintly]

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.

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

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

'cause he 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 savory

and who wants to be called a punk?

[upbeat rock music]

Punk has always been a term of maximum derision.

And 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

'cause I didn't want anyone to associate me

with this punk music movement. [laughs]

[lively rock music]

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 rocks 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.

[Interviewer] Possibly,

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

[Reporter] 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.

And they were all cutting their hair,

tearing up their T-shirts.

I wanted to do something for me.

'Cause look at me now, I'm nothing.

Vivienne created something extreme.

Something they could feel

that they were actually doing something in.

Man 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

'cause those clothes were magnificently heroic.

I mean I was really annoyed with The Clash.

'Cause 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 sort of became

this Jackson Pollock kind of thing.

When The Clash played the 100 Club,

they had a full on Jackson Pollock kind of look

and they'd sort of nicked my idea.

I was a bit miffed about that.

[upbeat rock music]

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.

[Interviewer] Had you sung before?

Not on stage, no.

[Interviewer] Did you think that is important?

Um, no.

[Interviewer] 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.

'Cause I'd had my "Motorbikin" records 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

and 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.

[Chris] 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."

[Chris] And of course, it sounded great.

He said we 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 'cause you're all too clear ♪

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

[Chris] 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" [bubbles popping]

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 ♪

It wasn't sonically the best,

but there was some great ideas.

[Johnny] All right, what should we do?

Should we just sing with, oh!

Every time we were having a go at recording "Anarchy"

and when there was a break,

I'd be on the piano going, dun, dun-da-dun.

I had this thing, dun-da.

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

I'd go, " No, I've got something."

I went home, picked up my guitar and I found the riff.

[gentle guitar riffing]

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 guitar strings twanging].

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 and Glen had that.

Hang on. Dave Dew speaking. This is Chris Parry.

[Doug] Hello Doug D'Arcy, Chrysalis Records.

They were a particularly ugly band.

That's dreadful.

[upbeat rock music]

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.

[upbeat rock music]

The rest was troubled history.

When we got the record deal with EMI it was,

for me, you 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'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 paid five pounds

and Malcolm wanted 25 quid to use the PA.

You know he could be such a cunt.

But I always liked Malcolm, 'cause 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.

You know we wanted to get it right.

I wanted to make the heaviest song

that had ever been in the universe.

And 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 we're 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"]

And we did "Anarchy" in two takes.

That was it. He said he got us.

'Cause 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 done well.

They were professional.

It was definitely not the image that was publicized.

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"

'cause Queen was supposed to do it,

but Freddie Mercury had a bad toothache that day

and pulled out,

Oh, 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 Bromley Contingent are there

and it's like, hmm.

And then this guy comes on set, Bill Grundy.

Are 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 pounds 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.

[Bill] Well, tell me more then.

[Johnny] We've fuckin' spent it, ain't we?

[Bill] 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.

[Bill] It's what?

Nothing. A rude word.

Next question.

[Bill] No, no. What was the rude word?

-Shit -Was it really?

Good heavens, you frighten me to death.

Oh all right, Siegfried

[Bill] What about you girls behind?

Always wanted to meet you.

-Did you really? -Yeah.

[Bill] We'll meet afterwards, shall we?

-Yeah. -You dirty sod.

[Bill] Go on, you've got another five seconds.

Say something outrageous.

You dirty bastard.

[Bill] Go on, again.

You dirty fucker.

[Bill] 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? [beeps] Rotter.

[Bill] 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,

"Hey, Glen's gonna be on the TV."

[beeps]. 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 he sat back later on and said he had sort of made all that happen.

I think he was terrified that he'd blown it for them.

[Interviewer] Why all the infamous language.

[Johnny] Infamous language. You're joking.

They were famous in England

before they even had a record out

and I don't think that's 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.

[Glen] 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 enemy 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 hyding 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 rockabillys, 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 wailing]

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

wearing your punk threads.

It was almost like war was declared.

On Charing Cross Station

and I was kind of just looking off at,

I don't know, when the train's coming.

The next minute, doo, got punched in the side of the face

and then I saw a pair of black Brothel Creepers

walking away so I knew 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.

[upbeat music]

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 his coach from place to place.

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

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 most reviled rock phenomenon of recent weeks.

[Reporter] Do you really think that 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 banned 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 that would be 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.

[Paul] We had fair amount of rude journalists

following us round and finding out where we were staying.

And I went and got a cup of tea in a bar room, 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 go?

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 standoffish,

though, they'd 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 'cause,

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.

[Interviewer] 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 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 to England

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's goes, "No, no, you're banned."

Hang on, I wanna be in a band

because I wanna be a musician and I wanna play.

And I started to think

there was a bit of dishonesty involved.

[upbeat music] [rain spraying]

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 guy, who was 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.

[Press] Okay, 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?

[Johnny] 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 that 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

'cause 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 sit 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 his ideas.

You guys don't really realize

what side of 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.

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.

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 there's Sid.

And we just carried on, like, oh, all right, okay.

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.

[tense music]

I thought it was the stupidest fucking move

they ever made.

They say they threw him out because he liked The Beatles.

Well, 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

'cause he likes The Beatles.

But I think what Malcolm was really saying

is we kicked him out 'cause 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 it

and he destroyed it 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.

I mean, well who gives a shit.

[Friend] We should turn him down in takes.

Sometimes you should turn him off actually.

I think we'd [indistinct] all the dials on the M.

Should we do that for a pound?

Don't worry, Sid.

You don't need to worry about fucking pounds.

You just keep talking to the girls.

John really wanted him in the band.

Me and Steve were, oh okay, 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 is 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, all right.

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." I said, "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."

And he went, "Really?"

I said, "Yeah."

He said, "Aren't you annoyed?"

I said, "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.

[Sid burps] Pardon me.

[Interviewer] So what did you do

now that you've lost your record contract?

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

-Yeah. -What's your next single?

[Steve] Uh.

♪ And there is no reason why ♪

♪ EMI ♪

[Interviewer] And you were signed up then with A&M?

Yeah for the week.

We walked into A&M Records.

Sid collapsed in the marketing director's chair.

He was completely gone.

He drunk two bottles of vodka from 10:00 AM 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 really 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.

And I think it's pretty shitty, really. So fuck you."

[crowd cheering] [majestic music]

[Reporter] 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 ♪

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] Her Majesty and Prince Philip

to the thunderous cheers of hundreds of thousands

of her subjects lining the route.

[crowd cheering] [crowd whistling]

They can't play on the land

and you can't hear them in the air.

So let's put on a bloody boat.

[Johnny] It's insane,

the whole thing. -And let's follow

the Queen's flotilla.

♪ We mean it, man ♪

When the Sex Pistols went after the Queen,

I mean 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'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 realize 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.

[Broadcaster] The Sex Pistols current record,

"God Save the Queen", is at number one

in the Capital headline today.

But the IBA, which administers the Broadcasting Act,

has advised us this that, particularly at this time,

this record is likely to cause offense 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 my life,

so why should I wanna know her? [speaking faintly]

[Interviewer] I mean do you think well, let's go

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

We just don't care about the Queen.

I mean 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.

So we had to get out the country at one time.

♪ No future for you ♪

♪ No future ♪

[Glen] Well, then they went to the States.

♪ For you ♪

[music swells]

[Audience] Hey, Johnny!

[crowd cheering]

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 a main tune-smith in the band.

We'd be more than interested in anything you come up with."

And I thought, well, fucking handy.

And when I was on the lookout for a singer,

like everybody wanted to sound like Johnny Rotten,

which was the last thing I wanted.

Rich Kids.

There's Glen Matlock, formerly with the Sex Pistols

and Midge Ure, who's with a Scottish

teeny-bop 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, boy band Slik.

To get him as the front

was another clever stance from Glen.

Okay, this is called "Rich Kids".

[upbeat rock music]

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] What 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 anymore.

♪ Oh, it's too much ♪

♪ To stop the rich ♪

♪ So true ♪

[Interviewer] Is there a particular reason

why you're not playing some of the larger,

you're not playing Los Angeles or New York or?

[Glen] There's a very definite reason

and all those places that says you'll be sellouts,

but like who plays down south?

[upbeat rock music] [crowd cheering]

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.

The Pistols are just out of sight.

I think they got a lot of balls.

Poo-poo, it isn't what they sing. Get outta here!

[Interviewer] What do they sing? They sing.

[spits] 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 a 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.

[Johnny] 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. Good night.

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 'cause you're out of 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 tail between his legs.

Then he had a big drug problem.

But he moved into Maida Vale a borough 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.

[Nancy] I've been with Sid

ever since the first day I got to England

and we're partners in crime.

[Sid speaking faintly]

We have good fun.

We wipe the shit off and we help each other out.

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.

And 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 cup of tea?"

And she'd be like, "No, it's all right.

I was just eat the ice cream."

And it was all like playacting 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 showing him 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 ass?

[Sid snoring] Sid?

And we were sitting in the pub one night together

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

he said, "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?

Well, 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's my guitarist in the Rich Kids band

and maybe Rat Scabies."

He said, "Who's gonna play bass?"

I said, "Well, I'll play bass. You sing."

"Oh, oh, all right."

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.

[Sid] This one's dedicated to my honey, Nancy.

[upbeat rock music]

[Glen] 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.

♪ But the mystic just brought me tears ♪

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 largess,

I said, "Let's just give Sid the money for the gig."

And a couple of days later he went to America.

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

He didn't have any money

and I didn't realize how bad he'd become

and Malcolm wasn't giving him any money.

So him and Nancy's in 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 the stab wound in the stomach.

[somber music]

Really sweet enough guy.

I mean I didn't really get to know him

until after fucking Nancy was dead.

He just got out of 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 die before she was 21.

[somber music]

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.

[somber music]

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?

[somber music]

I don't know.

[somber music continues]

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 thing, all that,

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 wrap.

And he said, "Glen, I hate it

when you can't follow me when I go wrong like that."

[crew laughing]

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

when I go back to England.

It's funny how the media

gave us that illusion about the Sex Pistols,

that it was all Sid when it wasn't all Sid,

it was Glen Matlock.

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

I used to be on a 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 for the other guys,

you know Malcolm, was be a working musician.

And you know what?

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

[upbeat rock music]

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

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

and I played in 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 have influenced me

I got to work with.

Johnny Thunders, I actually did a tour of Japan

and Australia with Johnny.

[energetic rock music]

Look at the stuff he's done since.

He played with the fucking Faces.

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

when I was 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, [stammering].

[crowd cheering]

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.

[crowd cheering]

[Debby] Oh, my god. [laughs]

Yeah, you know Glen is great.

Yes, he's a sweetheart.

["Call Me"]

♪ Call me, call me, on the line ♪

♪ Call me, call me any day or night ♪

♪ Call me, I'll arrive ♪

♪ 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.

[upbeat rock music]

Glen leaving sadly did take away

that marvelous accidental synergy that they had

and they couldn't really seriously recover from it.

[Paul] 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 that that we knew them

without him being one of the main ingredients.

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 the 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 the Bollocks 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.

♪ I mean it, man ♪

♪ We love our Queen, oh yeah ♪

♪ God saves ♪

We have got something in common

that only four people in the wide world have

and it's like when we get in the room, if we ever did again,

and 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.

It wouldn't have happened without Vivienne.

It wouldn't have happened without Jamie Reid's artwork.

It wouldn't have happened without Little Helen,

Helen of Troy whose mates were Malcolm.

There's a power to the music of the Pistols.

♪ No future for you ♪

♪ No future, no future ♪

[crowd cheering] [music swells]

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',

♪ Angie, Angie ♪

Can't Imagine Johnny Rotten singing something like that.

[he chuckles] ♪ Angie... ♪

All right, 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 ♪

♪ Oh just remember I don't decide ♪

♪ I got no reason and you'll get no reply ♪

♪ Sigh of friction, 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, 'cause we're not all there ♪

♪ Oh don't pretend 'cause 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 ♪

♪ We're so pretty, pretty vacant ♪

♪ We don't care♪

[song ends]