Latest / DISGRACELAND / The Sex Pistols (Pt. 2): Crashing the Queen’s Jubilee, Shocking America, and Leaving a Trail of Blood, Spit, and Junk

Transcript

The Sex Pistols (Pt. 2): Crashing the Queen’s Jubilee, Shocking America, and Leaving a Trail of Blood, Spit, and Junk · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis, the story of
0:19
Speaker 1: the sex Pistols, their beginnings as marginalized, frustrated and angry
0:24
Speaker 1: working class teens in London, their unlikely rise to worldwide fame,
0:29
Speaker 1: and their anarchic attempt to completely destroy rock and roll
0:33
Speaker 1: as we know. It is so complex that we needed
0:37
Speaker 1: two episodes to properly tell this story. If you're just
0:41
Speaker 1: getting hip to this now, I suggest you hit pause
0:44
Speaker 1: and go back to the last episode of Disgraceland, part
0:48
Speaker 1: one of the sex Pistols story. In this episode, we
0:52
Speaker 1: get into the band's continued feud with the corporate music world,
0:55
Speaker 1: the English monarchy, and a horrified public, a struggle made
1:00
Speaker 1: all the more difficult by the introduction of the group's
1:02
Speaker 1: most volatile member, a junkie who was barely clean or
1:07
Speaker 1: competent enough to find his way around four strings. We
1:10
Speaker 1: also get into the band's attempt to conquer America, which,
1:15
Speaker 1: like most of their grand plans, royally backfired and ultimately
1:19
Speaker 1: led to their explosive downfall. To paraphrase Neil Young, this
1:24
Speaker 1: is the story of the Johnny Rotten, but it's also
1:27
Speaker 1: a story about how great music can shock scandalize and
1:32
Speaker 1: galvanize the world. Unlike that music I played for you
1:36
Speaker 1: at the top of the show that wasn't great music.
1:40
Speaker 1: That was a preset loop for my melotron called Flamenco
1:44
Speaker 1: Conspirator MK two. I played you that loop because I
1:49
Speaker 1: can't afford the rights to Baby Come Back by a player.
1:53
Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
1:56
Speaker 1: Bedtime Magic Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was
2:01
Speaker 1: the number one song in America on January fourteenth, nineteen
2:05
Speaker 1: seventy eight, And that was the day that the Sex
2:08
Speaker 1: Pistols played Winterland in San Francisco, a show that would
2:12
Speaker 1: bring the career of the most notorious band in the
2:15
Speaker 1: world to a screeching halt. On this episode, a volatile junkie,
2:21
Speaker 1: a royal backfire, an explosive downfall in the Sex Pistols.
2:26
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Pete Townsend, lead
2:58
Speaker 1: songwriter and guitarist who one of the biggest, loudest bands
3:02
Speaker 1: in the world, stumbled into the Speakeasy club in London.
3:06
Speaker 1: He had one goal to get good and drunk. He'd
3:10
Speaker 1: spent the day trying to figure out why his songwriting
3:12
Speaker 1: royalties were tied up in a bank account that wasn't his.
3:16
Speaker 1: And furthermore, why Alan Klein, the ruthless snake who had
3:20
Speaker 1: screwed the Stones and was busy screwing the Beatles, had
3:24
Speaker 1: the authority to not only keep Pete's money tied up,
3:27
Speaker 1: but pocket his own cut in the process. The math
3:30
Speaker 1: was confusing. Pete Townsend didn't do math. He did maximum
3:35
Speaker 1: rock and roll to complicate matters. Punk Rocket arrived in England.
3:40
Speaker 1: Punk was vital, It was relevant. It spoke to the
3:43
Speaker 1: dissatisfied and disaffected youth who struggled at the bottom of
3:47
Speaker 1: the class hierarchy. The who had once been that band
3:51
Speaker 1: Pete like to think, but that was then nineteen seventy
3:54
Speaker 1: seven was now shit. Quadrophenia was four years old, an
3:59
Speaker 1: eternity in rock and roll years. The kids may have
4:02
Speaker 1: been all right, but Pete Townsend sure as shit was not.
4:06
Speaker 1: Steve Jones and Paul Cook, guitarist and drummer for the
4:10
Speaker 1: Sex Pistols, sat on their stools and the speakeas he
4:13
Speaker 1: had watched as Peete get started with pint number one.
4:16
Speaker 1: Jonesy was starstruck. His bandmate John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten
4:22
Speaker 1: talked a big game about how the rock and roll
4:24
Speaker 1: establishment was overrun with dinosaurs who desperately needed to come
4:28
Speaker 1: in contact with a giant asteroid of Pete Townsend. Awre
4:32
Speaker 1: you fucking kidding? There would be no punk rock without
4:35
Speaker 1: the Who. Jonesy would not do what he did, and
4:38
Speaker 1: his band would not have nearly the amount of ferocity
4:40
Speaker 1: and rage and sheer volume if it weren't for Pete's
4:43
Speaker 1: windmillon guitaris smashing antics. The songs weren't half that either,
4:48
Speaker 1: like substitute a Who cover that the pistols have been
4:51
Speaker 1: known to perform, and so loaded with his own liquid courage,
4:55
Speaker 1: Jonesy made his way over to the maud Icon and
4:58
Speaker 1: introduced himself from Paul he may have talked too much,
5:01
Speaker 1: called nerves of the booze and speed coursing through his bloodstream.
5:06
Speaker 1: He figured he jogged the geezer's memory with the story
5:08
Speaker 1: about the Bill Grundy Show and how the pistols were
5:11
Speaker 1: unceremoniously dropped from me and I after only a few
5:14
Speaker 1: months in one single, or about how just a few
5:17
Speaker 1: months after that, in February of nineteen seventy seven, they
5:21
Speaker 1: finally gave their basis, Glenn Mattlock the boot. Glenn played
5:25
Speaker 1: well enough, probably a little too well, if Jonesy was
5:28
Speaker 1: being honest. Glenn wanted to be in a proper rock
5:31
Speaker 1: and roll band. In the Pistols, well, there was just
5:33
Speaker 1: nothing proper about them, now, was there? Always taking the
5:37
Speaker 1: piss And the only reason Glenn laughed his way through
5:40
Speaker 1: that grundy bit was because he was just as wankeard
5:42
Speaker 1: as the rest of them. And then there was the
5:44
Speaker 1: whole God Saved the Queen business. Glenn just about lost
5:48
Speaker 1: his mind when he heard John's lyrics to that one.
5:51
Speaker 1: He called John a fascist, said the song we made
5:54
Speaker 1: them all look like fascists, which obviously did not. The
5:58
Speaker 1: Queen was the one in charge of the fascist in
6:00
Speaker 1: her loyal subjects, the ones drowning in poverty who still
6:04
Speaker 1: managed to hang on every word she said and every
6:06
Speaker 1: breast she took. Well, they deserve what was coming to them.
6:10
Speaker 1: And that's probably what really scared Glen, and he just
6:13
Speaker 1: didn't want to admit it. It made John happy, though,
6:16
Speaker 1: because it gave him a reason to finally send Glenn packing.
6:19
Speaker 1: John already had his replacement waiting in the wings, John
6:23
Speaker 1: Simon Richie aka John Beverley aka Sid Vicious. That was
6:30
Speaker 1: a selfish move on John's part. He wanted someone on
6:33
Speaker 1: his side, like how Jonesy had Cook, someone that could
6:37
Speaker 1: stand up to Malcolm McLaren alongside of him. But Sid
6:41
Speaker 1: the guy was a bleeding idiot. John knew it. Jonesy
6:45
Speaker 1: definitely knew it. Sid thrived on chaos, subsisted on junk.
6:50
Speaker 1: Sure he had the look down pat but the bass
6:52
Speaker 1: guitar was just another accessory to him, a safety pin,
6:56
Speaker 1: a rip swastik, a T shirt, something to wheeld on stage.
7:00
Speaker 1: He couldn't play the damn thing. Jonesy had to teach him.
7:03
Speaker 1: It was like trying to teach a fucking dog to
7:05
Speaker 1: swing a cricket bat, and not just any dog, but
7:08
Speaker 1: like the dumbest of dogs, which would explain why it
7:12
Speaker 1: was just easier for Jonesy to play the bass parts
7:14
Speaker 1: on the Pistol's debut album, the album they were in
7:17
Speaker 1: the middle of recording at the moment Wessex Sounds Studios.
7:21
Speaker 1: Jonesy stopped to ask Pete you ever record there? Pete
7:25
Speaker 1: Townsend drained the rest of his pipe, narrowed his eyes
7:28
Speaker 1: and gave Jonesy a look of utter confusion. Wait, Pete said,
7:34
Speaker 1: who are you shit? Jonesy thought Townsend must be off
7:39
Speaker 1: as fucking tits, Jonesy went on. After the Pistols were
7:43
Speaker 1: dropped by EMI, they set their sights on another label,
7:47
Speaker 1: A and M. And that was in March, shortly after
7:50
Speaker 1: Sid joined. What a disaster. They set up this photo
7:53
Speaker 1: op at Buckingham Palace where the band would quote unquote
7:56
Speaker 1: sign their contract. Did all been drinking Voda since the
7:59
Speaker 1: moment when the sun came up that day? Jonesy, for one,
8:03
Speaker 1: was hitting the bottle especially hard. Pea could relate to
8:06
Speaker 1: this right, get a little of this peak. The whole
8:09
Speaker 1: thing was starting to feel stale, stale? Can you believe it?
8:11
Speaker 1: The record isn't even finished yet and it already feels
8:14
Speaker 1: like it's over. The Grundy Show was the turning point.
8:17
Speaker 1: If it was ever about the music, as sure as
8:18
Speaker 1: hell wasn't anymore. Now people are dressing the way the
8:22
Speaker 1: Pistols dress. Someone saw someone else split it a punk
8:25
Speaker 1: show once, and now everyone's gobbling in everyone's face because
8:28
Speaker 1: they think they're supposed to. And Joe Strummer, that poor
8:31
Speaker 1: Saga conjunctivitis from some bloke saliva in his eye. Nothing
8:35
Speaker 1: was shocking anymore. It was a routine and the sex
8:38
Speaker 1: pistols are supposed to be outside the system, but they
8:40
Speaker 1: could already feel themselves getting sucked into the system, just
8:45
Speaker 1: another name in the marquis. So they get all good
8:48
Speaker 1: and pissed on the day they signed with A and M,
8:49
Speaker 1: and the whole way to Buckingham Palace in the limo,
8:52
Speaker 1: they argue and fight. John wants to be provocative, Sid
8:55
Speaker 1: wants to fix Jonesy's tired of taking a back seat
8:58
Speaker 1: to the drama of his bandmates. They go through the charade,
9:01
Speaker 1: the bulbs flash, and then A and M breaks out
9:04
Speaker 1: the champagne. Just what they all need, right more alcohol,
9:08
Speaker 1: and they get back in the limo and fight all
9:10
Speaker 1: the way back to the A and M offices. Black
9:12
Speaker 1: eyes and blood. Sid so fucking drunk that he kicks
9:16
Speaker 1: a urinal right off the wall in the bathroom. He
9:18
Speaker 1: was probably the one who threw up in the rubber
9:20
Speaker 1: plant pop in that executive's office. But incredibly none of
9:25
Speaker 1: this behavior put them in the doghouse with A and M.
9:28
Speaker 1: It was actually something that happened right here in the speakeasye.
9:32
Speaker 1: The end of that particular relationship. It was a relationship
9:37
Speaker 1: the band was celebrating with lots of pints, some mandies,
9:40
Speaker 1: some speed. Sid went for the harder stuff, of course,
9:44
Speaker 1: and in walks Bob Harris, the guy from the old
9:47
Speaker 1: Gray Whistle Test the BBC Live Music show where bands
9:51
Speaker 1: who hadn't quite made it to the top of the
9:52
Speaker 1: pops got a little exposure. But Bob Harris wasn't giving
9:56
Speaker 1: any love to the Pistols. Why not? When would that
10:00
Speaker 1: oversight be addressed? And the band asked these questions to
10:03
Speaker 1: Bob Harris's face, and Bob Harris probably didn't appreciate how
10:07
Speaker 1: close they all stood. Someone shoved someone and pretty soon
10:11
Speaker 1: fists are flying, and then the pint glasses are flying
10:14
Speaker 1: and Bob Harris doesn't get hurt, but his recording engineer
10:17
Speaker 1: gets hit in the head with the pint glass. Then
10:19
Speaker 1: after that engineer got his head sewn up with fourteen stitches,
10:23
Speaker 1: Bob Harris's lawyer got on the phone to A and M.
10:26
Speaker 1: And that was that. The Pistols spent a whopping one
10:29
Speaker 1: week as A and M recording artists, and the label's
10:32
Speaker 1: record plant was pressing singles of God Save the Queen
10:35
Speaker 1: when the acts came down and to pour AsSalt on
10:37
Speaker 1: the wound. Thousands of copies were destroyed, probably melted down
10:41
Speaker 1: to make Bloody Supertramp Records. And now well the band
10:45
Speaker 1: was still recording the album and hopes that someone would
10:47
Speaker 1: pick it up. Word had it Virgin Records was interested.
10:51
Speaker 1: Pete Townsend finished another pint. Jonesy couldn't tell if he
10:55
Speaker 1: was still confused or if he was just drunk. Now,
10:57
Speaker 1: Pete narrowed his eyes again, like he was sot his
11:00
Speaker 1: mind for the right name, and said, who are you? Bullocks?
11:05
Speaker 1: Johnsy thought, never meet your idols, right. Pete then turned
11:09
Speaker 1: his attention to Paul Cook and suddenly a look of
11:11
Speaker 1: recognition came over his face. Ah, Yes, that's right, you're
11:16
Speaker 1: Johnny Rotten. Pete Townsend's knight only got more confusing. Before
11:23
Speaker 1: long he woke up in the Soho doorway, where a
11:25
Speaker 1: policeman knew his name and all that, and he turned
11:28
Speaker 1: the events of the night into the Who's Next single
11:30
Speaker 1: who Are You, which the band singer Roger Daltrey famously
11:34
Speaker 1: snuck the word fuck into his vocal tape twice, which
11:37
Speaker 1: was played and continues to be played uncensored. On commercial
11:41
Speaker 1: radio stations in the UK and the US. It was
11:44
Speaker 1: a self consciously punk moment for one of the great
11:47
Speaker 1: dinosaurs of rock. The song kicked against the pricks that summer,
11:51
Speaker 1: ubiquitous disco cheese like Andy Gibb, John Travolta and the Commodores,
11:56
Speaker 1: even the Rolling Stones cap Boogie Fever with Miss You.
12:00
Speaker 1: It was just like John had predicted, sellouts, slaves to
12:03
Speaker 1: the machine trend, hungry, fuck withits all of them, and
12:06
Speaker 1: he tried to destroy it all, rewrite the narrative, but
12:10
Speaker 1: the narrative didn't want to be rewritten. They wanted to
12:13
Speaker 1: write John out. And by the time that Who took
12:16
Speaker 1: their punk influence song to the masses in the summer
12:18
Speaker 1: of seventy eight, rock and roll did just that. The
12:21
Speaker 1: sex pistols were over and what they left behind it
12:25
Speaker 1: was a screaming, fucking, bloody mess. It had been a
12:52
Speaker 1: few days since he carved the words into his chest,
12:55
Speaker 1: but the scar was still legible. Give me a fix
12:58
Speaker 1: it read sid Vicius had done it with a shout
13:02
Speaker 1: of glass while staring into a bathroom mirror. It was
13:05
Speaker 1: the truth he needed to score, but it was way
13:08
Speaker 1: out of his element. It was the first time he'd
13:11
Speaker 1: been to America. He knew there was heroin here in
13:14
Speaker 1: the land of the Free, he just didn't know where
13:16
Speaker 1: to find it. So he turned himself into a walking
13:19
Speaker 1: advert for a fix. A fix as big as the
13:22
Speaker 1: place the sex pistols found themselves and now Dallas, Texas,
13:28
Speaker 1: and the hats were definitely bigger in Dallas, so Sid
13:31
Speaker 1: hoped that the junk would follow suit. He wasn't wearing
13:34
Speaker 1: a shirt, so the mutilated junkie scrawl on his pasty
13:37
Speaker 1: skin was there for all to see as he fumbled
13:40
Speaker 1: his way around the frets of his Fender Pea Bass
13:42
Speaker 1: on stage. They hung low, looked like it weighed a ton,
13:47
Speaker 1: and the longhorned ballroom was packed and the pistols were
13:50
Speaker 1: frightenly loud. Sid pogoed up and down and the kids followed.
13:54
Speaker 1: He spat and they spat back. He knew the message
13:58
Speaker 1: on his chest was provocative, both the legal requests for
14:01
Speaker 1: drugs and the disturbing way in which he'd written it.
14:04
Speaker 1: But it wasn't enough. Sid craved chaos. He was the
14:08
Speaker 1: one who started that fight with Bob Harris at the
14:10
Speaker 1: Speakeasy in London. He threw bottles at other bands while
14:14
Speaker 1: they played. He smashed bottles on top of people's heads
14:17
Speaker 1: in the crowd. A fix, a fight, some junks and blood.
14:20
Speaker 1: It was all the same to Sid. It was all
14:22
Speaker 1: a flirtation with the other side. The end, not just
14:26
Speaker 1: the end of the decade, the end of the century,
14:28
Speaker 1: but everything, the end lights out. One more needle in
14:34
Speaker 1: his vein, one more fist in his face, and it
14:37
Speaker 1: could all be over. He did it for the rush,
14:40
Speaker 1: to stand on the edge and stare into the abyss.
14:43
Speaker 1: Sid looked into that knight's abyss, the teeming mass of
14:46
Speaker 1: texted youth, all pressing up to the long horned stage,
14:49
Speaker 1: and he knew exactly what he could do to ensure
14:51
Speaker 1: maximum chaos. He shouted out, had no one in particular,
14:55
Speaker 1: right there in the middle of Texas that quote cowboys
14:58
Speaker 1: are queers. Suddenly his nose hurt like hell, someone's fists,
15:04
Speaker 1: someone's head. He wasn't sure exactly what happened. It came
15:07
Speaker 1: at him fast. His face was vibrating, and he felt
15:10
Speaker 1: the blood start to run good. He wiggled his nose
15:13
Speaker 1: to make the blood run faster. He coaxed it out,
15:16
Speaker 1: let it gush. He took his hand in white blood
15:19
Speaker 1: all over his face. He looked out at the crowd,
15:21
Speaker 1: tried to figure out who had made him bleed. Where
15:23
Speaker 1: are you, you, little redneck fucker? Do it again, cocksucker?
15:27
Speaker 1: He smiled that trademark evil Elvis sneer, and the blood
15:32
Speaker 1: kept running. He could taste it in his mouth now,
15:34
Speaker 1: and he worked up a big gob in the back
15:36
Speaker 1: of his throat and then spat it back out at
15:38
Speaker 1: the audience, and it hit someone in the face, a
15:41
Speaker 1: thick red blob. He smiled again, and he could see
15:44
Speaker 1: the blood all between his teeth. And when the blood
15:47
Speaker 1: dried up, when it stopped dripping from his nose, and
15:50
Speaker 1: he'd spat every last bit back out towards the crowd.
15:53
Speaker 1: Sid grabbed a bottle and busted it on top of
15:55
Speaker 1: his amplifier. It shattered with ease. He held a jagged
15:59
Speaker 1: peace in his hand. His bare chest was a blank canvas.
16:03
Speaker 1: All he had to do was start carving. But by
16:06
Speaker 1: smashing that bottle, his amp had gone dead. Gave it
16:09
Speaker 1: a quick look. Was it the cord the power button?
16:12
Speaker 1: Sid didn't know, He didn't care. He had no clue
16:15
Speaker 1: how the whole fucking thing worked. Anyway to solid state whatever.
16:19
Speaker 1: Jonesy was probably over the fucking moon, to be honest,
16:21
Speaker 1: not having to listen to Sid fart his way around
16:23
Speaker 1: the frets on his base a tosser plus Sid Vicious
16:27
Speaker 1: wasn't here to make music. Sid Vicious was here to
16:31
Speaker 1: make a scene. The sex Pistols were five days into
16:35
Speaker 1: their January nineteen seventy eight tour of the United States,
16:38
Speaker 1: and so far the whole thing had been one big scene.
16:42
Speaker 1: John walking around in his plaid bondage suit or wearing
16:45
Speaker 1: that one T shirt with a picture of two cowboys
16:48
Speaker 1: facing each other with their big dick swinging. Sid saw
16:51
Speaker 1: how that shirt cut people up in arms, and so
16:53
Speaker 1: he wore it too. John couldn't stand these backwards American hillbillies.
16:58
Speaker 1: Ditto for Malcolm McLain. There was a reason why Malcolm
17:01
Speaker 1: had booked dates in cities like Atlanta, Memphis, San Antonio,
17:05
Speaker 1: Bad Rouge in Dallas instead of punk rock sanctuaries like
17:08
Speaker 1: New York City and Los Angeles, not to impress, not
17:12
Speaker 1: to unite the clan, to shock, to horrify, to emasculate
17:16
Speaker 1: the macho fuckos, and to cause all those Southern bells
17:19
Speaker 1: to clutch their pearls like the Queen had clutched for
17:23
Speaker 1: the Crown jewels. Just months before. June nineteen seventy seven,
17:31
Speaker 1: celebrations were well underway for the Silver Jubilee, the twenty
17:35
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth, the second ascension to the
17:38
Speaker 1: throne in the United Kingdom, large lavish parties elegant parades.
17:43
Speaker 1: On June seventh, crowds followed the procession of Saint Paul's Cathedral,
17:47
Speaker 1: where the royal family was met by the United States
17:50
Speaker 1: President Jimmy Carter, as well as current former Prime Ministers
17:53
Speaker 1: of the UK. After lunch, the procession continued on to
17:58
Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace. One million humble servants watched as the Queen
18:02
Speaker 1: waved from afar, each and every one of them. Five
18:05
Speaker 1: hundred million edition of people watched it live on television.
18:09
Speaker 1: Two days later, the Queen would make a royal progress
18:12
Speaker 1: on aboat up the River Thames from Greenwich to Lambeth,
18:16
Speaker 1: the reenactment of a journey taken by Queen Elizabeth the
18:19
Speaker 1: first hundreds of years before. But first another voyage was
18:23
Speaker 1: planned on the Thames, a voyage that preempted the Queen's
18:27
Speaker 1: own trip by two days. A voyage that took place
18:30
Speaker 1: on the evening of June seventh, while the memories of
18:32
Speaker 1: that day's elaborate procession were still fresh in the minds
18:35
Speaker 1: of millions. A voyage that would sail from Westminster to
18:39
Speaker 1: tower Bridge, A voyage that would pass directly by the
18:42
Speaker 1: House of Parliament, A voyage that was definitely not part
18:46
Speaker 1: of any Silver Jubilee celebration. You could hear the pleasure
18:51
Speaker 1: Cruiser making its way up to Thames before you could
18:53
Speaker 1: see it. The rude squelt of guitar feedback, the nasally
18:57
Speaker 1: whines and profane taunts. Problem, problem, they kunt, they kunt,
19:05
Speaker 1: they kunt, over and over and over again. And then
19:10
Speaker 1: you saw it. A shock of orange hair on top
19:13
Speaker 1: of a cheap white suit, studded leather, bracelets procured from
19:16
Speaker 1: a kink shot, Guys banging their heads to the plotting
19:19
Speaker 1: beat like automatons, Girls bent over the side of the boat,
19:23
Speaker 1: dry heaving into the river. Malcolm McLaren rented the boat
19:25
Speaker 1: as a publicity stunt, but it wasn't lost on anyone
19:28
Speaker 1: of the sex Pistols. Mini set of Mutinous songs was
19:31
Speaker 1: name directly at that week's celebration. Of the monarchy. It
19:35
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't lost on London police, who shut it down
19:38
Speaker 1: after just four songs. Malcolm had obtained the proper license,
19:42
Speaker 1: but the bobbies didn't care. The whole thing was vile.
19:45
Speaker 1: What did they think? This was the fucking rooftop of
19:48
Speaker 1: Apple Records. The Sex Pistols weren't the Beatles. The cops
19:51
Speaker 1: weren't just going to politely ask them to shut it down.
19:54
Speaker 1: They were gonna make an example of them. Ten cops
19:57
Speaker 1: that surrounded Malcolm fu He screamed. He tried to make
20:02
Speaker 1: a run for it, but two of them grabbed him
20:03
Speaker 1: by the coat sleeves. They spun him around, twisted his
20:06
Speaker 1: arm behind his back. They're arresting Malcolm, someone yelled, and
20:10
Speaker 1: then they beat him in front of the crowd of
20:12
Speaker 1: one hundreds until he stopped whimpering, until he had no feelings.
20:18
Speaker 1: Malcolm had launched the River TAM's stunt shortly after the
20:21
Speaker 1: Sex Pistols signed their third record contract in the span
20:24
Speaker 1: of five months. After being dropped by both em I
20:27
Speaker 1: and A and M, the van found a new home
20:29
Speaker 1: on Richard Branson's Virgin Records in May of nineteen seventy seven,
20:34
Speaker 1: Virgin hustled to get God Save the Queen, the controversial
20:37
Speaker 1: single previously pressed and then destroyed by A and M
20:40
Speaker 1: out on the record store shelves, and it's sold something
20:44
Speaker 1: like one hundred and fifty thousand copies a day, partially
20:47
Speaker 1: because it was a notorious tune, it was offensive, slanderous,
20:51
Speaker 1: it ruffled all those reserved British sensibilities, but also because
20:55
Speaker 1: it was a killer song, four on the floor in
20:57
Speaker 1: a powder keke of angry energy, lution packed into a
21:01
Speaker 1: little over three minutes. Nevertheless, the BBC refused to play it,
21:06
Speaker 1: retailers refused to sell it. Even the House of Parliament
21:09
Speaker 1: attempted to ban anyone from playing or selling it, and
21:12
Speaker 1: no doubt that was part of its term. It sold
21:15
Speaker 1: enough copies that it climbed the charts all the way
21:18
Speaker 1: to number one in the UK. Well not exactly. Technically,
21:23
Speaker 1: God Saved the Queen peaked at number two on the
21:25
Speaker 1: UK charts, but also technically it should have gone all
21:28
Speaker 1: the way to number one that week. The British Phonographic
21:32
Speaker 1: Institute quietly informed those who compiled charts that they should
21:36
Speaker 1: discount returns from all stores associated with record labels. Stores
21:40
Speaker 1: like Virgin Records, which meant that if someone returned a
21:44
Speaker 1: copy of God Saved the Queen that they'd previously bought,
21:47
Speaker 1: it would be subtracted from that week's total sales. For
21:50
Speaker 1: that one week only. The band was able to savor
21:54
Speaker 1: that number one spot, however, when their debut album was
21:57
Speaker 1: finally released in the fall of nineteen seventy, never Mind
22:01
Speaker 1: the Bullocks, Here's the Sex Pistols remains what are the
22:05
Speaker 1: greatest rock and roll debuts of all time? And that's
22:08
Speaker 1: the thing. It's a rock and roll record. Sure, Johnny
22:11
Speaker 1: Rotten's sneering punk attitude is there, and Holidays in the
22:14
Speaker 1: Sun and Bodies and emi the Glorious kiss off to
22:18
Speaker 1: their first label. But the music is, perhaps, to Johnny Chagrin,
22:22
Speaker 1: rock and roll to the bone, like the Stooges playing
22:25
Speaker 1: Chuck Berry. And while the sound of never Mind the
22:28
Speaker 1: Bullocks echoes the past, John's caustic vocals predict the future,
22:32
Speaker 1: paving the way for rock and roll stars like Axel
22:35
Speaker 1: Rose and Liam Gallagher. Just like the God Save the
22:38
Speaker 1: Queen single, the album's success wasn't entirely due to its
22:42
Speaker 1: exhilarating content. The name alone was controversial enough that once again,
22:47
Speaker 1: stores refused to sell it. According to John never Mind,
22:51
Speaker 1: the ballocks was a working class expression to stop talking rubbish.
22:55
Speaker 1: What authorities imprudes alike obsessed over the word bullocks English
23:00
Speaker 1: for testicles. London police visited Virgin record stores to inform
23:04
Speaker 1: them they could either take down the posters advertising the
23:07
Speaker 1: album or face prosecution for indecency. Not all stories did
23:11
Speaker 1: as they were told. Then, on the eve of the
23:14
Speaker 1: album's US release, a Virgin store owner in Nottingham was
23:17
Speaker 1: arrested and put on trial for obscenity. Richard Branson paid
23:22
Speaker 1: for the legal defense, which employed the testimony of Professor
23:25
Speaker 1: James Kinsley, head of the English department at Nottingham University,
23:29
Speaker 1: who also happened to be an Anglican priest. He told
23:33
Speaker 1: the court the origins of the word bollocks, how it
23:36
Speaker 1: could refer to a ball, an orchard, or a clergyman.
23:39
Speaker 1: Clergymen are known to talk a good deal of rubbish,
23:42
Speaker 1: Kinsley scent, and so the word later developed the meaning
23:45
Speaker 1: of nonsense. In the eyes of Professor Kinsley, not only
23:49
Speaker 1: a learned man, but a godly man, That's what the
23:52
Speaker 1: word meant now. In nineteen seventy seven nonsense. On November
23:57
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, after taking Kinsley's testimony into account, the chairman
24:01
Speaker 1: of the hearing but grudually let the store owner off
24:03
Speaker 1: the hook. And the chairman said, much as my colleagues
24:06
Speaker 1: and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst
24:09
Speaker 1: instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits
24:12
Speaker 1: by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find
24:15
Speaker 1: you not guilty. Who would have thought God not only
24:20
Speaker 1: saved the queen, but God saved the sex pistols too,
24:24
Speaker 1: if only they could save themselves. We'll be right back
24:33
Speaker 1: after this. We're We're, We're. John Leyden had twenty dollars
24:44
Speaker 1: to his name, the shirt on his back, no room
24:47
Speaker 1: of his own. Key and Sid crashed with the road
24:50
Speaker 1: crew in San Jose, fifty miles away from the gig,
24:53
Speaker 1: while Jonesy, Cook and Malcolm lived it up at the
24:56
Speaker 1: hotel back in San Francisco. Even with the band there
25:01
Speaker 1: was a cast system. It was like Finsbury Park all
25:04
Speaker 1: over again, Like there were sixteen year old delinquents with
25:07
Speaker 1: a criminal record, not twenty one year olds with the
25:10
Speaker 1: number one record. John and Sid still squatting after all
25:15
Speaker 1: these years, only this time things were different. Sid was
25:19
Speaker 1: a fucking full blown junkie. John felt a responsibility to
25:23
Speaker 1: be his brother's keeper, or the very least minimized Sid's
25:27
Speaker 1: proximity to smack, which is why he and Sid rode
25:30
Speaker 1: the bus together with the road crew while the rest
25:32
Speaker 1: of the band flew, so John could keep an eye
25:35
Speaker 1: on him, keep him out of trouble. But Sid always
25:39
Speaker 1: found a way to score, and scoring always led to
25:42
Speaker 1: something disastrous. The night before January fourteenth, nineteen seventy eight,
25:48
Speaker 1: the seventh stop on their US tour, Sid shot up
25:52
Speaker 1: as the band prepared to take the stage at Winterland.
25:55
Speaker 1: Taped his arm up from his wrist to his bicep,
25:58
Speaker 1: blood seeping out through the white band, both to hide
26:01
Speaker 1: what he'd done and to draw attention to it. They
26:04
Speaker 1: all knew what was at stake here. Winter Land's capacity
26:08
Speaker 1: was five thousand, the biggest venue they'd ever played. In fact,
26:12
Speaker 1: the size of the crowd was bigger than all the
26:14
Speaker 1: crowds put together over the last nine days of the tour,
26:18
Speaker 1: and the show was hyped all throughout the Bay Area.
26:20
Speaker 1: It was simulcast live on KSA and FM local TV
26:24
Speaker 1: crews were rowing tape, but the show was shit. The
26:30
Speaker 1: strings on Jonesy's guitar kept snapping and he struggled to
26:33
Speaker 1: stay in tune, and the south system was atrocious and
26:36
Speaker 1: the mix was uneven. The band couldn't even hear themselves.
26:40
Speaker 1: None of it bothered Sid. As long as he was stoned,
26:43
Speaker 1: he was good. And John looked over it Sid and
26:45
Speaker 1: under frustration. If you can put up with that, you
26:48
Speaker 1: can put up with anything right right. It was a sham,
26:52
Speaker 1: a farce, the whole thing it were caricatures. Maybe it
26:56
Speaker 1: wasn't England that was dreaming. Maybe Johnny was wanted to
27:00
Speaker 1: be the fly in the ointment, the shock to the system.
27:03
Speaker 1: Rock and roll took itself so seriously with its orchestrations
27:07
Speaker 1: and multi part suites and overproduction progressive rock more like
27:12
Speaker 1: regressive rock. It wanted to be classical music. It was
27:16
Speaker 1: easy to shock, used that build Grundy types and old
27:19
Speaker 1: English grandmothers. But some just saw the pistols not as
27:22
Speaker 1: a reckoning or a shift in the culture, but as
27:25
Speaker 1: a spectacle, a circus, some artful dodger role play, and
27:29
Speaker 1: Johnny Rotten was just the gester, a joke, not the
27:33
Speaker 1: insurgent that he saw himself ass and the whole bloody
27:37
Speaker 1: thing about a joke since back when they first started
27:39
Speaker 1: with John's treason, his lyrics and attitude clashing with Glenn
27:42
Speaker 1: Matlock's beetle chords. But that's what made them so great,
27:46
Speaker 1: that tension. Now there was no tension, just blood and mucus.
27:51
Speaker 1: Naked girls in Jonesy's room. Track marks up and down
27:55
Speaker 1: sids are rock and roll cliches. John was still angry.
28:01
Speaker 1: He'd always be angry. That was his lot in life.
28:05
Speaker 1: He was working class, a rat gnawing at the corrodied
28:08
Speaker 1: sewer pipe. But couldn't he be all those things and
28:11
Speaker 1: maybe have more than like twenty dollars to his name?
28:15
Speaker 1: That would be nice, But it wasn't going to happen.
28:18
Speaker 1: He was dreaming. It was, as the prophet Iggy Pop
28:21
Speaker 1: once so astutely noted, no fun at all. It was
28:27
Speaker 1: fitting then that the Sexpists closed the January fourteenth Winterland
28:31
Speaker 1: Show with their cover of that particular Stuges song, with
28:34
Speaker 1: John hunched over in his most grotesque Quasimodo contortion, just
28:39
Speaker 1: repeating the title over and over and over again until
28:42
Speaker 1: his voice was ragged and torn no fun, no fun,
28:45
Speaker 1: no fun, no fun, no fun. And then he crouched
28:49
Speaker 1: down lower in the band, thrashing that one cord till
28:53
Speaker 1: it was bloody and lifeless. And John stared out at
28:56
Speaker 1: the pogoing crowd, But not with his trademark psychotical, the
29:00
Speaker 1: one he opened the show with an hour earlier, the
29:03
Speaker 1: one that looked like he was about to devour the
29:04
Speaker 1: first living thing that got close to him. No, this time,
29:09
Speaker 1: John stare was one of disappointment. He didn't move, He
29:13
Speaker 1: stayed crouched below. The band hit the chord one last
29:16
Speaker 1: final time, and John laughed into the microphone. He knew
29:20
Speaker 1: something the rest of the room didn't know, not the
29:23
Speaker 1: audience and not the other pistols. John knew it was over,
29:28
Speaker 1: not just that night's show, not just their brief us tour,
29:32
Speaker 1: the whole thing. He was never going to step onto
29:35
Speaker 1: a stage with these three blokes again, Jones. He may
29:38
Speaker 1: have Nick Bowie's gear from the last Spiders show, but
29:41
Speaker 1: Johnny was about to nick Bowie's stunt, and he'd do
29:44
Speaker 1: it his own way. He looked out at the winter
29:47
Speaker 1: Land crowd and said, I ever get the feeling you've
29:51
Speaker 1: been cheated John Leaden earned what he had coming to him,
30:15
Speaker 1: or so the guards thought. They stripped him naked, shoved
30:19
Speaker 1: him into the middle of the yard and hosed him down.
30:22
Speaker 1: The whole prison watched murderers, thieves, psychopaths, and the guards
30:27
Speaker 1: got off on the whole thing. The man previously known
30:30
Speaker 1: as Johnny Rotten, shivering in his birthday suit, deprived of
30:34
Speaker 1: the fashion, statement, said to find him. But that wasn't enough.
30:38
Speaker 1: It was the middle of the night when the two
30:40
Speaker 1: guards appeared standing above him, truncheons in their clenched fists.
30:45
Speaker 1: They made sure he knew that they were going to
30:47
Speaker 1: thoroughly enjoy beating the piss out of him, and not
30:50
Speaker 1: because he was a former sex pistol because he assaulted
30:53
Speaker 1: some cops. An assault on one of them was an
30:56
Speaker 1: assault on all of them. Eighty Dublin. They called Mountjoy
31:03
Speaker 1: Prison the Joy, but there was nothing joyful about it,
31:07
Speaker 1: even if you were just a short timer, and especially
31:11
Speaker 1: if you were one of the more notorious inmates, says
31:13
Speaker 1: John Lydon wouldn't discover. He had flown to Ireland to
31:17
Speaker 1: visit his brother, and when the plane landed he went
31:20
Speaker 1: straight down to the pub where he got in an
31:22
Speaker 1: argument with a couple of tossers, only to find out
31:25
Speaker 1: after he threw a punch that the tossers were actually
31:28
Speaker 1: off duty police officers. Now he was the one being assaulted.
31:33
Speaker 1: He was used to it, and used to much worse.
31:36
Speaker 1: They assaulted him back when he was a pistol, back
31:38
Speaker 1: when the band was recording. Never mind the bullocks, and
31:41
Speaker 1: they weren't cops or prison guards, just you're run of
31:44
Speaker 1: the mill geezers. Ted's maybe who didn't like how John
31:47
Speaker 1: looked or what he represented, the things he sang about.
31:51
Speaker 1: They came at him with knives and razors. He outran
31:54
Speaker 1: them and made it to his producer's car, where he
31:55
Speaker 1: locked the door. But they broke the window and stuck
31:58
Speaker 1: their blades blindly inside like savages, and they stabbed him
32:02
Speaker 1: in his knee. A knife went through his hand, straight
32:05
Speaker 1: in next to his thumb, and straight out all the
32:07
Speaker 1: way on the other side by his pinky finger. He'd
32:10
Speaker 1: never seen so much blood in his life. He thought
32:13
Speaker 1: maybe that was the end of the line, but he
32:15
Speaker 1: pulled the blade out and pulled through. He struggled. He survived.
32:19
Speaker 1: He always did, whether it was a pack of knife
32:22
Speaker 1: wielding Ted's in London, or a couple of sidistic guards
32:24
Speaker 1: in prison and now at Mountjoy Prison. Well, at least
32:30
Speaker 1: he was alive, right, that's what people said. Anyway, He
32:34
Speaker 1: wasn't so sure. Maybe Sid had the right idea. He
32:39
Speaker 1: rode one last hot shot to an early grave, stupid kit.
32:43
Speaker 1: That was February nineteen seventy nine, less than twenty four
32:47
Speaker 1: hours after he'd been released on bail charged with murdering
32:50
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, Nancy Spongeon. He was just twenty one, and
32:54
Speaker 1: they all knew what would happen, but it was hard
32:56
Speaker 1: enough to be cynical about it. When the press asked
32:59
Speaker 1: Steve Jones for he just said, well, at least he'll
33:02
Speaker 1: sell some records now. Sid's death came one year after
33:06
Speaker 1: the Pistols called it quits following the Winterland Show. At
33:10
Speaker 1: least John called it quits. The rest of the band
33:13
Speaker 1: followed Malcolm down to Rio to make a movie with
33:15
Speaker 1: Ronnie Biggs, a real life outlaw known for his role
33:18
Speaker 1: in the Great Train Robbery of nineteen sixty three. John
33:22
Speaker 1: didn't see what the point was the Great Train Robbery.
33:25
Speaker 1: Ronnie Biggs. Ronnie Biggs wasn't Robin Hood. He stole some
33:28
Speaker 1: poor fucker's payroll from the mail train, working class money.
33:32
Speaker 1: It was absolutely horror aligning yourself with that. It wasn't
33:36
Speaker 1: what they had set up to do from the start,
33:38
Speaker 1: any of them. John Lyden was truly shocked, but not
33:43
Speaker 1: as shocked as when he looked up at the television
33:45
Speaker 1: set in the prisons common room. The set was small
33:49
Speaker 1: and the reception was shoddy and still loud as bombs.
33:54
Speaker 1: The Sex Pistols performing God Save the Queen on a
33:58
Speaker 1: rerun with The Punk Rock Movie, a documentary that Don
34:01
Speaker 1: Leuts had made two years earlier about the nascent days
34:04
Speaker 1: of punk. John Lydon got that same feeling he felt
34:08
Speaker 1: on stage at the Winterline, the feeling once again that
34:11
Speaker 1: he'd been cheated. Once upon a time, the Sex Pistols
34:15
Speaker 1: were outsiders, rabble rousers, the ones throwing the cherry bomb
34:19
Speaker 1: in the dirty toilet of rock and roll, and now
34:23
Speaker 1: there were just another rock band, absorbed into the system,
34:27
Speaker 1: coming soon to a radio or television set near you,
34:30
Speaker 1: even in the fucking prison. This was his public image.
34:35
Speaker 1: It made John Lyden sick. He stood there, his spying
34:39
Speaker 1: curved in, his dead eye stare intensifying, and then he
34:44
Speaker 1: hung his head. The Disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this
34:53
Speaker 1: is Disgrace Sland. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and
35:21
Speaker 1: is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this
35:24
Speaker 1: episode can be found on the show notes page at
35:26
Speaker 1: disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All
35:30
Speaker 1: Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really
35:33
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and if not, you can become a member
35:36
Speaker 1: right now by going to disgracelampod dot com slash Membership.
35:41
Speaker 1: Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free,
35:44
Speaker 1: Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month,
35:48
Speaker 1: weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access
35:53
Speaker 1: to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod dot com slash membership
35:58
Speaker 1: for details, rate and review the show, and follow us
36:00
Speaker 1: on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at disgracelampod and on
36:04
Speaker 1: YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at Disgrace Lampod Rock
36:09
Speaker 1: a Roller. He's a bad down man.