DISGRACELAND - The Sex Pistols (Pt. 1): Anarchy, Thievery, and the Death of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Punk rock’s greatest debut record was penned by a singer who saw traditional rock ‘n roll as a disease that needed to be eradicated and a sex-addicted guitarist who stole wallets, bikes, cars, and more than a few pieces of musical equipment to outfit the band. They cut their teeth performing for hardened criminals at a maximum security prison. They destroyed other bands’ gear and slept with their girlfriends. They scammed the working class system that had scammed them for years, by convincing the biggest record label in the world to release their controversial music. And they did all of this before the most infamous Pistol of all ever strapped on a bass guitar and pretended he knew how to play.This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including self-harm and child sexual abuse.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the sex pistols. are insane. Their lead singer saw rock and roll as a disease that needed to be eradicated and was hell-bent on being the one to put it out of its misery, no matter what. And their guitarist was a sex addict and kleptomaniac who stole wallets, bikes, cars, and more than a few pieces of musical equipment who outfitted his band, including gear belonging to rock gods like Keith

Richards and David Bowie. They destroyed other band's gear and slept with their girlfriend. friends. They played a show in front of 500 hardened criminals at a maximum security prison, and they scammed the same system that had scammed them, the working class, for years, by convincing the biggest record label in the world to release their controversial music. And they did all of this, before the most infamous pistol of all, ever strapped on a bass guitar and pretended he knew how to play. and the Sex Pistols made great music, some of the most defiant and defining music of the punk era.

Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Forbidden Flute, MK One. I played you that clip, because I can't afford the rights to Tonight's the Night, gonna be all right by Rod Stewart. And why would I play you that specific slice of loosened French gown cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on November 26, 1976.

And that was the day that the sex pistols released their debut single, Anarchy in the UK. A single that would scandalize and galvanize opposing social classes in Great Britain and serve as a dramatic turning point in the history of rock and roll. On this, part one of a special two-part episode, rock and roll diseases, kleptomaniacs, maximum security prisons, and never mind the bollocks, it's the sex pistols. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land.

The sewer rats weren't just huge, they were angry. The rank smell of the underground, clung to their greasy, wet fur. They were kept down there by the things that intended to do them harm. Cats like to play the part of the oppressor, sharp-witted, quick-clod nemesis to the filthy vermin. But just because the cats were farther up the food chain, didn't mean the laws of the food chain weren't meant to be broken.

Vile and upheaval was inevitable. The sewer rats didn't want to stay underground forever. They wanted the good life, the cat's life. Post-World War II London was in a constant. constant state of falling apart. So it came as no surprise when rusted sewer pipes ruptured. And when sewer pipes ruptured, rats squeezed their bodies through the corrosion. They pushed towards the light up higher and higher until they shot out through a sink drain, gushing forth like dirty water from a backed-up toilet. They ran through the kitchen and found their way

through a crack in the wall where they scurried out onto the street. There they found a stray cat, and the rats were hungry. The cat stood its ground. and hissed with menace. Its hair stood on end, the rats could smell fear. They moved in closer. A low, guttural moan came from the cat's belly. The kind of demonic sound a cornered animal makes

when it knows its time is up. They whipped up the cat's matted fur with their teeth. They tore it the cat's flesh with their tiny claws. They painted the cracked asphalt with the cat's blood, slicing open its stomach and spilling the contents of its belly on the ground. And only after the rat's, Pats' bellies were full, did they stop? They left the carcasses behind.

They didn't clean up messes. They made them. Soon, they were everywhere. In the cupboards under the floorboards and the old abandoned air raid shelters, tenacious little fuckers, harbages of death and doom, bringers of dirt, and disease,

plague-written opportunists seeking to exploit a crumbling world. London had already been burned. Decades after the war, neighborhoods like Finsbury Park in North London, remained neglected shitholes by anyone's definition. The working class struggled simply to survive.

No fridge, no shower, no toilet. An upward mobility? You were lucky if you remained upward and or mobile. There was no incentive to strive for anything else because if you did, if you happened to escape the Dickensie Wasteland of the Soul, that place where your mom scoured you with toilet cleaner once a month just to kill out the bugs that thrived on the taste of your skin,

you'd never, ever hear the end of it. Escaping your fate meant you to turn your back on the downtrodden and the marginalized. Fucking middle-class cunt is what you were. And everyone else you left behind would unite with the same shared bond. Boredom, desperation, no future, the whole thing was fucking rotten. In the 1960s and 1970s, those feelings of hopelessness in London just festered. They bred hatred and contempt, just like the rats bred feral, armies in the sewers.

Resentment led to more hatred, and the poor punched down when they should have been aiming higher. All the while, the middle and upper classes continued to turn a blind eye, and the queen continued to sip her tea with hand firmly in glove. And it wasn't just feelings that festered in London. All that rat piss in the water was making people sick. John Leiden didn't know if it was the rat piss that caused the meningitis that nearly killed him at age seven in the early 60s.

He was too busy fighting for his life. All that fluid pushing on his brain made him hallucinate, and the headaches made him vomit. And he was in and out of a coma for months. A year later, he left the hospital permanently changed. All the needles it stuck inside him to drain fluid had caused his spine to curve. His vision had gone blurry, so he had to try extra hard to focus,

which meant he developed an intense, dead-eyed stare. All those hateful Londoners in his neighborhood, especially the English geysers who couldn't stand Irish bloke's like him. They saw him coming and all said the same. John Leiden looks fucking grotesque. Take a long, hard look, you fascist pigs. Dare you to look away. Especially, you genteel bastards.

The ones who survive and thrive on the status quo. The ones who are high up that ladder. The ones who stay up that ladder by keeping the rest of England down. For John Linen, Grotesque became him. It was his ammunition. It put all that working-class anger, that rock-bottomed malaise, right in the faces of those people who needed to see it the most.

The Prince of Wales seated comfortably in the House of Lords, the so-called street-fighting rock-and-roll men getting their medals from the bloody queen. Grotesque was necessary. Long hair in peace and love. That was someone else's trip. This was hacked-up hair, dyed a putrid shade of green. Visible cigarette burns on your arms. mutilated your head, you cut yourself, burned yourself, fucking right you did, you bled, you

hurt, you were bored, shitless, your fashion reflected it, ripped up shirts, fetish wear, safety pins, it wasn't style, fuck style, this was chaos. The stuff you buttoned down English way of life, it was over, on deck, hate, and war. Iddle hands weren't the deafness playthings that belonged to the Antichrist now. It was time for anarchy. And not just in the streets. schools. They weren't teaching. They were indoctrinating. Brainwashing. Home wasn't any better. The adults all peddled the same fantasy. The 1960s, fantasy. The 1950s, bloody escapism,

Elvis Presley, Buddy Hawley, what the fuck did they have to do with your life right now in the 1970s? Elvis was a plague. Rock and roll was a disease. It was vile. It was airport music. It was over. Someone needed to kill it. trotted through town, flogging its corpse for all to see. These were the kinds of plans John Leiden hatched when, after his father tossed him from the house at 16 because of the way he looked, he found himself squatting in London flats. He lived alongside artists and musicians and pimps and junkies, and his friend, another John, John Beverly, aka John Simon Ritchie.

But they didn't call him John or Simon. They called them Sid after John Lydon's vicious hamster. England's economic system, its social hierarchy, it didn't have room for kids like John and Sid. They were too poor, they were too ugly. They put their lives in their hands simply walking down the street looking the way they looked. They didn't look like the hippies or the Teds or the skinheads or the football hooligans. They looked like aliens. Everyone else took one look at the likes of John lied and his spine curved, his caustic stare, practically psychotic. His green hair chopped the pieces and they just wanted to murder him. He looked so different that he was treated as a threat.

He didn't stay in his place with the rest of the working class. He wouldn't accept that fate. And he desired the right opportunity to expose the whole system for what it was. A fraud, a frame, a bloody disgrace. He wanted to scratch all the way to the top and blow the whole fucking thing up from the inside. It's only natural. When you're that bored, that desperate, that belittled, you have no choice but to swindle the system that's swindling you.

You either do that, but you start walking into forbidden places like you're supposed to be there and take what is rightfully. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of The Girlfriends,

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target.

He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me

and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do. You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up, and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance,

Like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gayton Matarazzo from Stranger Things.

Tena Monjou. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words Podcasts. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever.

Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. July, 1973, London. David Bowie was glad he had decided to wear it. a sheer mesh shirt that night. Not just because it complimented his glittery trousers,

but because the Hammersmith Odion was hot. 3,500 people packed inside. Bowie was sweating like a pig. Playing the role of his androgynous alter ego, Ziggy Star-Dust. He had just delivered one hell of a show, and now he was tired. He stopped to catch his breath. He looked out at the crowd and said, of all our shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest, because not only isn't the last show of the tour, but it's the last show we will ever do. A hush fell over the crowd, followed by sounds of confusion and panic. What was happening? The last show we'll ever do? The spiders from ours followed Bowie's words with a thunderous version of rock and roll suicide. And then, Ziggy Stardust was dead. The audience was distraught. They cried in the streets outside

the venue. Little did they know when they went out that night. they would witness David Bowie's last show with Ziggy Stardust, and little to David Bowie know, it was the last show he'd play with his gear. 17-year-old Steve Jones found the security guards snoring when he peaked in the back door of the Hammersmith Odian later that night. From his vantage point, he could see the band's equipment on stage. Mick Ronson's cream-colored Les Paul, Trevor Boulder's son, Bassam. It was all just sitting there.

He could reach out and touch it. Jones, he heard a noise inside. Was someone there? Didn't matter. This wasn't his first rodeo. He could play the part if needed, the part of a security guard or some daft rody, just like Bowie played the part of Ziggy.

Christ, Steve Jones loved David Bowie, almost as much as he loved Rod Stewart or Brian Ferry. But Jones wasn't at the Hammer Smith-Hoddy into reveling David Bowie's incredible live show. He was there to steal David Bowie's shit. Jones looked over at Wally and told him the follow his least, act like he's supposed to be there. Don't get rattled. Wally was Wally Nightingale, one of the members of the Strand. Jonesy's first band he formed in the early 70s along with drummer Paul

Cook. Jones and Wally quickly made their way inside. The security guard's snore echoed through the place, and they walked, not suspiciously, but confidently, to the audience stage. And then they started loading up their arms with as much as they could carry. They loaded the gear into Joneses' van outside. Some symbols from Mick Woodman's drum kit, a microphone that still had Bowie's lipstick smeared all over it, and that sweet bass amp. Jonesy could hardly believe he now possessed something that belonged to one of his idols. It was thrilling. Just as thrilling is the time he stole Ron Woods' coat. Well, he thought it was Ron Woods' coat.

Jonesy and the rest of the guys in the Strand idolized the faces. They used to take band pilgrimages up to Ron's posh house on Richmond Hill and just marvel at the enormity. of it. Sometimes Ronnie himself would even appear at the window and wave. But that wasn't enough for Jonesy. He wanted more than a wink and a nod. He went back to the house on his own, and he followed a small path to a wall around back. The wall wasn't that high, easy enough. He scaled it. It was delighted to find that the side door was unlocked. He let himself inside, and the room seemed pretty vacant. He spied a small portable TV set in a coat. He was chuffed to have Ron Woods coat. Later, when he learned it didn't actually belong to Ron Wood, he wasn't disappointed, because it really belonged to Keith Richards.

That's just as cool now. It wasn't just Pilford trophies that encouraged Steve Jones to compulsively steal. Part of the thrill of being a klepto was knowing that it was wrong, that he could get caught at any moment. The biggest thrill of all, though, that was hearing a news report the next morning about the theft that David Bowie's gear from the night before. He did that. He was the reason the man on the radio was telling that story. It was Jones's first brushed with fans. and it felt good. Before Steve Jones stole anything, he watched other people steal, working class people, just like him and his mom

and stepfather. Everyone in West London was struggling to get by, and they would never be anything but poor. And there were the haves and the have-nots and never the twain shall meet. So you really couldn't blame a poverty-stricken family with no hope and no future for sticking a few extra items up their jackets

at the grocery store. You saw it happen and you just looked away. Some days, thieving was literally the difference between life and death. As a child, Jonesy wasn't poor. He was fucking miserable. He could hardly read or write. He had to jockey with his stepfather for his mother's attention.

And that same stepfather sexually abused him when he was only 10 years old. He no longer had a safe place in his own home. He felt threatened by that man's presence, and it made him angry. He had to do something about it. He began to hang out anywhere but home. And he started to steal. And I'm not talking a few extra bags of Chris at the market. First, it was toys, parts for his train set.

Wallets lifted from pants left in gymnasium changing rooms. Then it was bikes, ones resting against their kickstands outside bicycle shops. Next, it was musical equipment so that his band actually had instruments to play. A twin reverb amp stolen from a band that was opening for Bob Marley and the Whalers. A sunbird special that belonged to Mott the hoopless guitarist. Eventually, it was even cars. And there was nothing like the feeling of popping some Mandy's, aka Mantric's sleeping pills, chasing them with a few pints of beer, and then letting that magical tingling feeling take over your

entire body as you slipped behind the wheel of someone else's Austin Healy. Well, maybe shagging birds, which next to stealing was an 8-plus non-stop addiction for Steve Jones. It was in 1960s and 70s, the golden age of car crime, as Jones himself put it, long before alarms and security cameras in the club. But that didn't mean he didn't get caught. He did. 12 times before the age of 18, He was sent to juvie. He was slapped on the hand. Honestly, he really didn't give a fuck. What he did care about was finding a place where he belonged.

It certainly wasn't at home. It wasn't at some halfway house either. And he couldn't crash at his mate Paul Cook's place all the time. The first time he walked through the door at 4.30 King's Road in early 1972, he thought perhaps he had found the place he was looking for. Let It Rock was a trendy shot. run by Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood. They sold modernized versions of 50s-era Teddy Boy clothes

that contradicted the hippie fashions that the rest of London seemed to be clinging to. Broth of creeper shoes, pegpants, draped jackets, but you didn't just buy something and let it rock and then leave like you did at other stores. There was a couch and a jukebox. You could hang out. Malcolm and Vivian were always up to chat.

If, like Steve Jones, you were playing around with your identity, a hippie who love purple haze, a skinhead enamored with a whole lot of love, a hooligan headbanging to rock and roll hucci-koo. You were welcome to do that without judgment. You were free to be yourself, whoever the hell you ended up being. The cops on the other hand weren't about to let Steve Jones off so easily. The summer of 1974 was a rude awakening. His 13th bust was different from the previous 12.

Jones was no longer an adolescent. He was now 18 years old. And this time wouldn't be another juvie lockup. This time would be prison. Talk about no future. The band would be over, that's for sure. And they were just getting started. Glenn Matlock had recently joined on base and he was quite good,

even if he was partial to Beatles' cords. But unlike the last dozen arrests, this time Steve Jones had something else on his side. He had Malcolm McLaren, an honest-to-god adult in his late 20s. He was willing to vouch for Jones and helped plead his case to the judge. Inside the Marleybone magistrate's court, Malcolm went on and on about Jones' bright future,

about how he was going to leave an indelible mark on British society and all that. And that stupid fucker in the robe and wig swallowed Malcolm's line of bullshit like it was a tea cake. It wasn't all bullshit, though. Malcolm McLaren was right. Steve Jones would leave an indelible mark. It just wouldn't be in the way the judge might have imagined. What the judge didn't know was that as soon as he was set free, Steve Jones wasn't going to change.

Leave the goody-to-shoes bit to those wankers in the Bay City Rollers. Jonesy was going to take all that anger and all that frustration which he still felt at his stepfather, had all the filthy rich tossers who never had to make nothing in order to survive. And he was going to funnel it into a guitar, one that belonged to someone else. Because just like David Bowie Ziggie Stardust once sang, the bitter does come out better on a stolen guitar. We'll be right back. It's world, word, word.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me

and they want to be an act or whatever my first thing is always can you think of anything else that you can do. Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head

with a water bomb and Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming.

I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalk. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened.

His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. you know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network.

Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. John Liden did his curved spine, dead-eyed stare move. The one where he leans forward from the front of the stage. The microphone stand propping him up and preventing him from falling straight into the audience. And for the first time, he was the one who felt nervous. Just look at this crowd. Rapists, murderers, hardened criminals, 500 fucking lunatics with eyes wider and crazier than his own.

And their teeth. Steve Jones had re-christened John Lydden, Johnny Rotten, because of his disgusting teeth, but John's pearly off whites were no match for this ocean of damaged smiles. The inmates had the Chelmsford maximum security presided. and looked rabid, frothing at the corners of their mouths, unshackled and uninhibited. You only want to be an anarchy until you're performing in front of a prison's worth of real anarchists who would gladly trample your lifeless body to get to the nearest exit.

And where the fuck was Malcolm McLaren, their so-called manager. He was safe and sound on the other side of the closed and locked door with all the prison guards. He wasn't crazy. He wasn't risking his life. But he'd risked the lives of his band members. Never mind the bollocks. One false move, and they were all dead. To John, Malcolm was no savior. Malcolm didn't rescue John from a fate worse than death like he had with Steve Jones. Malcolm was, to put it bluntly, a thief, just like Jonesy. Only instead of stealing cars and guitars,

Malcolm stole the essence of people far cooler than he could ever hope to be. People like John. Call him Malcolm's muse or whatever, but one thing was for sure. Whatever John did, Malcolm wanted to replicate it. When Malcolm changed the name of his store from Let It Rock to Sex and began to peddle all that bondage gear and skin-tight rubber shirts, the more provocative and outrageous the better. That wasn't an original idea. That was all from watching John come in and out of the store, dressed at his own provocative and outrageous way. John's look said defiance at reeked of nonconformity, the middle finger aimed at the status quo. But Malcolm McLaren, an agitator? Malcolm McLaren was an opportunist.

And Malcolm McLaren didn't create the sex pistols. What a load of shit. Malcolm did what he always did. Something happened and he reacted to it. The sex pistols existed. Malcolm just found a way to make money off of them. He was their manager, whatever that meant. Having come straight off that train wreck of attempting to manage the New York dolls,

Jones, he benefited from that little stint. He got Sylvain's white Les Paul, the one with stickers of pin-up girls on it. Malcolm brought that back from New York. It was a gift. John didn't get gifts. John got fuck all. Same for Glenn Matlock and Paul Cook, the Pistols' Rhythm Section.

Not that they were complaining. They just seemed happy to be in the band that played regular gigs and got noticed. Didn't matter to them if they were called the Strand or the Sex Pistols. Well, okay. Glenn was a bit of a mummy's boy, so being in a group called the Sex Pistols did rattle his cage quite a bit.

That amused John to no end. It was a better name than Cudy Jones and his Sex Pistols, which was what Malcolm had originally christened the band back when Jonesy sang lead for a hot minute. But they all knew that Jonesy couldn't be the lead singer. He needed to focus on what he did best. Playing is Les Paul like he wanted to snap its neck in two. Jonesy said it himself.

His guitar style was rooted in not knowing how to play. It was all anger and frustration. Just like Johnny Rotten's incredible voice. People write Johnny Rotten off as just some fuck-up punk. He's one of the greatest singers of all time. The legend goes that Vivian Westwood suggested John Liden as a lead singer because she'd seen him at the sex store a lot, and he had that rebellious image and attitude they were looking for. The legend further goes that when she said, check out this guy named John.

She actually wasn't talking about John Liden, but instead, his friend John Beverly, aka Sid Vicious, but we'll get to him later. One thing was for sure, though, when Malcolm and the band auditioned Johnny, the tension was ripe from the jump. Malcolm said, I'm going to play Alice Cooper's 18 on the jukebox. I want you to behave as if you're on stage and sing along to it. And if you don't, this bloke here next to me, Steve Jones,

he's going to beat the living daylights out of you. Sure, Jonesy was bigger, but John fancied himself smarter, smart enough to keep the lyrics he was writing hidden from the other band members. Glenn Matlock would have up and quit on the spot if he knew what he was getting himself into. No one was singing about the things Johnny Rotten was singing about, inciting Anna.

toppling the monarchy, abortions and bodies, and cheap holidays in other people's misery. John Leiden was the consummate vocalist, if not the greatest singer in the traditional sets. His diction and delivery were incredible. He sneered, he taunted, he rolled his ars like a proper Englishman but did it with his tongue firmly in his cheek. He took the piss out of the whole charade. Rock and roll, bloated, pretentious rubbish. Rock and roll was a problem, and John was going to do something about it.

it. Don't tell that to Jonzi and the rest of the band. Even though Jonesy pop speed like they were tick-tacks, the band didn't play fast like the Ramones. Their tempos were slower like the faces, with thick, easy-to-follow riffs blasted from a hundred-watt martial amp that blistered your years. People listened. They didn't have a choice. Like those inmates at the Chelmsford Maximum Security Prison. Who else but the sex pistols would go full Johnny Cash and play a gig in prison? The Clash? No way. The Clash fought the law. and the law won, man. According to John Leiden, the clash weren't punk.

The clash were a couple of trendy Karl Marx slogans in a slick image. And maybe they were punk, at least in the early days, but they weren't like the pistols. Nobody was. This was the reputation that the sex pistols gained early on. They were loud. They were dangerous. They didn't know what they wanted, but they knew how to get it. Other bands invited them to open their shows because they brought that element of bad-shick,

crazy drama that you just couldn't buy. Like Eddie and the Hot Rods. The pub rock band playing a label showcase at the Marquis Club. They got more than they bargained for. John put his microphone stand right through one of the hot rods monitor speakers. And while John was busy destroying other band's equipment, Jonesy was busy fucking their girlfriends. No band was safe from the Pistols' antics.

Fights broke out regularly at their gigs, an extension of the anger on stage. Sometimes the brawls were between kids hopped up on cheap, amphetamine sulfate and even cheaper beer. Sometimes he was the band themselves. like John and Glenn, always at each other's throats. Glenn, that closet Abba fan, John couldn't fucking handle it, that tension. It made the band what it was, both the next evolution and the total destruction of rock and roll.

And they also just sounded incredible, like a jumbo jet landing in your living room to quote Jonesy. They were firing on all cylinders. And it wasn't just other bands and punk kids that noticed. In October of 1976, EMI came calling. Not only the most old-fashioned of all British record labels, but the largest label in the world. They signed the band for a two-year contract. Malcolm did his part. He got paid, negotiated a 40,000-pound signing bonus.

John could hardly believe the irony. How easy it was to accomplish that goal, to be that subversive. If only EMI knew what rotten business John had in store, Now that the pistols were part of the machine, the next step was simple. Light the fuse. Watch it burn. The Sex Pistols' debut single, Anarchy in the UK, was released by EMI Records on November 26, 1976.

But it was difficult to find Anarchy in the UK in record stores throughout Great Britain. And not because it was flying off. the shelves. Some employees at EMI record pressing plants actually refused to touch copies of the record. The name alone was scandalous. The sex pistols? It was obscene, unforgivably profane. And then add to that the content of the music, its lyrics, and the mayhem the group is inspiring throughout the country. Ork is on the EMI line shuttered to think. The reluctance to come in physical contact with little slabs of vinyl with that name on the label led to delays in production and distribution. But not even a week after the singles release.

On December 1st, the Pistols got the opportunity to do a bit of promotion on today. A regional television program on London's Thames Television. It was Kismet. Queen were originally booked to appear on the show. I had to pull out last minute so that Freddie Mercury could undergo emergency dental surgery. And their appearance on the show may have gone well if not for a few important factors. For one, the band was drunk. Jonesy alone chugged two or three bottles of blue none backstage in the green room.

The second factor was today's host. Bill Grundy was a good 30 years older than the Pistols and was a walking, talking representation of the old guard. Tweed, suits and ties, thick sideburn, scotch, knee, upper lip, stiff. He was upper class, a fat cat. He looked down on the Pistols generation's lazy sods. All of them filthy, vacant vermin with no future. They were the bottom feeder, sewer dwellers. Grundy hated them before he even asked his first question.

He hated John, his spiky orange hair like a thorny briar patch. He hated Jonesy, brazenly sitting there wearing that t-shirt, the one that simply had a full-sized photo of a naked pair of women's breasts, and he hated the circus they brought with them. Four additional punks standing behind where the band was seated. One of them wore a Nazi swastik on his arm and another, a girl named Susie, looked like she'd been plucked right out of a clockwork orange.

The whole thing was perverse. Grundy had to knock back a few drinks of his own just to deal with it. There wouldn't be enough drinks to drown out what happened next. No one, not the pistols, not Bill Grundy, and certainly not the good people of England, would ever forget it. They are punk rockers, the new craze, they tell me. They're heroes, not the nice, clean, rolling stones. They are a group called the Sex Pistols.

I'm told that that group have received £40,000 from a record company. Doesn't that seem slightly opposed to their anti-materialistic view of life? No, the more than. Really? Oh yeah. Well, tell me more, then. We've fucking spent it, ain't we? I don't know, have you?

Yeah, it's all gone. Really? Good Lord. Now, I want to know one thing. What? Are you serious, or are you just trying to make me laugh? No, it's gone. Gone. No, I mean about what you're doing. Oh yeah?

Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Brahms and those are. Really? What? What are you saying, sir? They're wonderful people. Are they? Oh yes. They really turn us on. Suppose they turn other people on. Well, that's just their tough shit. It's what?

Nothing. A rude word. Next question. No, no. What was the rude word? Shit. Was it really? Good heavens! You frighten me to death. Oh, all right. What about you girls behind? Are you worried or just enjoying yourselves?

Enjoying myself? Are you? Yeah. Ah, that's what I thought you were doing. I've always wanted to meet you. Did you really? Yeah. Well, we'll meet afterwards, shall we? You dirty sod. You dirty your man.

Well, keep going, Chief, keep going. Go on, you've got another five seconds. Say something outrageous. You dirty bastard. Go on again. You dirty fucker. What a clever boy. What a fucking rotter. Well, that's it for tonight. I'll be seeing you soon. I hope I'll not be seeing the likes of you again.

From me, though, good night. Malcolm McLaren nearly shit his pants, and for good reason. Sure, Bill Grundy was a close-minded asshole and it egged the guys on, but they had taken it too far, cursing on live television. You have to understand, in 1976, that was a huge deal. Absolute scandal. Overnight, the sex pistols were the subject of conversation in every household in Great Britain. They were instantly famous, and this is important. They became famous not for their music,

but for what they said live on the air. Thanks to their appearance on Grundy's show, most of the band's December tour dates were cancelled. City and town councils held emergency meetings and voted to ban the pistols from any further appearances. And those weren't the only meetings being held. EMI's chairman, Sir John Reed, a man who, rumor had it, dined with the queen herself, sat down with the label stakeholders to discuss the future of their newest act. Bottom line, there was no future. The band's actions were inexcusable, and the punks were done.

Sir John Reed cut them loose with a stroke of a pen. The pistols took it all in stride. Fuck, E. Am I? The only thing that the label was good for was fodder for a new song. John Leiden and the band had successfully disrupted the system, and they walked away with a 40,000-pound signing bonus. That was a win as far as far as far as,

far as they were concerned. But it wasn't over. Far from it, there were more labels to infiltrate, more idols to destroy, a monarchy to overturn, an unlimited supply of chaos and anarchy. The sex pistols wouldn't be truly happy until they left the whole fucking world in disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in this episode of Disgraceland is to be condemned. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

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