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

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

In 1977, the world’s most controversial band didn’t stop when they were dropped by their major label only months after they were signed. John Lydon, Steve Jones, and the Sex Pistols continued their feud with the corporate music world, the English monarchy, and a horrified public. It was a struggle made all the more difficult by the introduction of the group’s most volatile member, a junkie who was barely clean–or competent enough–to find his way around four strings. The band’s grand plan to conquer America royally backfired and ultimately led to an explosive and bloody downfall. To paraphrase Neil Young, "this is the story of a Johnny Rotten," but it’s also a story about how great music can shock, scandalize, and galvanize the world.  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 NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTokSee 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 Moderato from Stranger Things, Tanna Mongeau, 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. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history,

including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.

The story of the sex pistols, their beginnings as marginalized, frustrated, and angry working-class teens in London, their unlikely rise to worldwide fame, and their anarchic attempt to completely destroy rock and roll as we know it, is so complex that we needed two episodes to properly tell this story. If you're just getting hip to this now, I suggest you hit pause and go back to the last episode of Disgraceland, part one of the Sex Pistol story. In this episode, we get into the band's continued few. feud with the corporate music world, the English monarchy, and a horrified public,

a struggle made all the more difficult by the introduction of the group's most volatile member, a junkie who was barely clean or competent enough to find his way around four strings. We also get into the band's attempt to conquer America, which, like most of their grand plans, royally backfired and ultimately led to their explosive downfall. To paraphrase Neil Young, this is the story of the Johnny Rotten, but it's also a story about how great music can shock, scandalize, and galvanize the world. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Flamingo Conspirator MK2.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to baby come back. by a player. And why would I play you that specific slice of bedtime magic cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on January 14, 1978. And that was the day that the sex pistols played Winterland in San Francisco, a show that would bring the career of the most notorious band in the world to a screeching halt. On this episode, a volatile junkie, a royal. backfire, an explosive downfall, and the sex pistols. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Townsend, lead songwriter and guitarist for The Who, one of the biggest loudest bands in the world, stumbled into the speakeasy club in London. He had one goal, to get good and drunk. He'd spent

the day trying to figure out why his songwriting royalties were tied up in a bank account that wasn't his. And furthermore, why Alan Klein, the ruthless snake who had screwed the stones and was busy screwing the Beatles, had the authority to not only keep Pete's money tied up, but pocket his own cut in the process. The math was confusing. Pete Townsend didn't do math. He did maximum rock and roll. To complicate matters, punk rock had arrived in England. Punk was vital. It was relevant. It spoke to the dissatisfied and disaffected youth who struggled at the bottom of the class hierarchy. The Who had once been that band, Pete liked to think, but that was then. 1977 was now.

Shit Quadrophenia was four years old, an eternity in rock and roll years. The kids may have been all right, but Pete Townsend sure his shit was not. Steve Jones and Paul Cook, guitarist and drummer for the Sex Pistols, sat on their stools in the speak-easy and watched as Pete got started with Pint No. 1. Jonesy was Starstruck. His bandmate, John Liden, aka Johnny Rotten, talked a big game about how the rock and roll establishment was overrun with dinosaurs who desperately needed to come in contact with a giant asteroid. But Pete Townsend? Are you fucking kidding? There would be no punk rock without the who. Jonesy would not do what he did and his band would not have nearly the amount of ferocity and rage

and sheer volume if it weren't for Pete's windmill and guitar smashing antics. The songs weren't half bad either, like Substitute, a who cover that the pistols have been known to perform. And so, loaded with his own liquid courage, Jonesy made his way over to the mod icon and introduced himself and Paul. He may have talked too much, called it nerves or the booze and speed coursing through his bloodstream. He figured he'd jogged the geezer's memory with the story

about the Bill Grundy show and how the pistols were. unceremoniously dropped from EMI after only a few months in one single. Or about how just a few months after that, in February of 1977, they finally gave their bassist Glenn Matlock, the boot. Glenn played well enough, probably a little too well if Jonesy was being honest. Glenn wanted to be in a proper rock and roll band in the pistols well. There was just nothing proper about them now, was there? Always taking the piss.

And the only reason Glenn laughed his way through that grundy bit was because he was just as wankered as the rest of them. And then there was the whole God Save the Queen business. Glenn just about lost his mind when he heard John's lyrics to that one. He called John a fascist, said the song we had them all look like fascists, which obviously it did not. The Queen was the one in charge of the fascist regime. And her loyal subjects, the ones drowning in poverty

who still managed to hang on every word she said and every breath she took, well, they deserve what was coming to them. That's probably what really scared Glenn, and he just didn't want to admit it. It made John happy, though, because it gave him a reason to finally send Glenn packing. John already had his replacement waiting in the wings. John Simon Ritchie, aka John Beverly, aka Sid Vicious. That was a selfish move on John's part. He wanted someone on his side, like how Jones he had cook,

someone that could stand up to Malcolm McLaren alongside. of him. But Sid, the guy was a bleeding idiot. John knew it. Jonesy definitely knew it. Sid thrived on chaos, subsisted on junk. Sure, he had the look down pat. But the bass guitar was just another accessory to him. A safety pin, a rip-swastick, a t-shirt, something to wield on stage. He couldn't play the damn thing. Jonesy had to teach him. It was like trying to teach a fucking dog to swing a cricket bat. And not just any dog, but like the dumbest of dogs, which would explain why it was just easier for Jonesy to play the bass parts on the Pistols' debut album. The album there were in the middle of recording at the moment. Wessex Sound Studios. Jonesy stopped to ask Pete, you ever

record there? Pete Townsend drained the rest of his pint, narrowed his eyes and gave Jonesy a look of utter confusion. Wait, Pete said, who are you? Hansen must be a lot of utter confusion. He said, Who are you? Aounza must be off his fucking tits. Jonesy went on. After the pistols were dropped by EMI, they set their sights on another label, A&M. And that was in March,

shortly after Sid joined. What a disaster. They set up this photo op at Buckingham Palace where the band would quote-unquote sign their contract. They'd all been drinking vodka since the moment the sun came up that day. Jonesy, for one, was hitting the bottle especially hard. Pika related to the.

this, right? Get a little to this, Pete. The whole thing was starting to feel stale, stale, can you believe it? The record isn't even finished yet, and it already feels like it's over. The Grundy show was the turning point, if it was ever about the music as sure as hell wasn't anymore. Now people are dressing the way the pistols dress. Someone saw someone else spit at a punk show once, and now everyone's gobbing in everyone's face because they think they're supposed to. And Joe Strummer, that poor saw got conjunctiveitis from some bloke's saliva in his eye. Nothing was shocking anymore. It was routine. And the sex pistols were supposed to be outside the system,

but they could already feel themselves, getting sucked into the system. Just another name on the marquee. So they get all good and pissed on the day they sign with A&M and the whole way to Buckingham Palace in the limo they argue and fight. John wants to be provocative. Sid wants a fix. Jonesy's tired of taking a back seat to the drama of his bandmates.

They go through the charade, the bulbs flash, and then A&M breaks out the champagne. Just what they all need, right? more alcohol. And they get back in the limo and fight all the way back to the A&M offices. Black eyes and blood. Sid so fucking drunk that he kicks a urinal right off the wall in the bathroom. He was probably the one who threw up in the rubber plant pop in that executive's office.

But incredibly, none of this behavior put them in the doghouse with A&M. It was actually something that happened right here in the speakeasy, the end of that particular relationship. It was a relationship the band was celebrating. with lots of pints, some Andes, some speed. Sid went for the harder stuff, of course. And in-walks Bob Harris, the guy from the old gray whistle test,

the BBC live music show where bands who hadn't quite made it to the top of the pops got a little exposure. But Bob Harris wasn't giving any love to the pistols. Why not? When would that oversight be addressed? And the band asked these questions to Bob Harris' face, and Bob Harris probably didn't appreciate

how close they all started. someone shoves someone and pretty soon fists are flying and then the pint glasses are flying. Bob Harris doesn't get hurt but his recording engineer gets hit in the head with a pint glass. And after that engineer got his head sewn up with 14 stitches, Bob Harris's lawyer got on the phone to A&M. And that was that. The pistol spent a whopping one week as A&M recording artists. The label's record plant was pressing singles of God Save the Queen when the axe came down.

and to pour salt on the wound, thousands of copies were destroyed, probably melted down to make bloody super tramp records. And now, well, the band was still recording the album in hopes that someone would pick it up. Word had it, Virgin Records was interested. Pete Townsend finished another pint. Jonesy couldn't tell if he was still confused or if he was just drunk now. Pete narrowed his eyes again like he was searching his mind for the right name and said, Who are you? said, Jonesy thought, never meet your idols. right. Pete then turned his attention to Paul Cook, and suddenly a look of recognition came over his face. Ah, yes, that's right. You're Johnny Rotten. Pete Townsend's night only got more confusing. Before long,

you woke up in a Soho doorway where a policeman knew his name and all that, and he turned the events of the night into the who's next single, Who Are You, on which the band's singer, Roger Dalcher, he famously snuck the word fuck into his vocal take twice, which was played and continues to be played. uncensored on commercial radio stations in the UK and the US. It was a self-consciously punk moment for one of the great dinosaurs of rock. The song kicked against the pricks that summer, ubiquitous disco cheese like Andy Gibb, John Travolta and the Commodores. Even the Rolling Stones caught boogie fever with Miss You.

It was just like John had predicted. Sellouts, slaves to the machine, trend hungry fuckwits, all of them. And he tried to destroy it all. rewrite the narrative, but the narrative didn't want to be rewritten. It wanted to write John out. And by the time the Who took their punk influence song to the masses in the summer of 78, rock and roll did just that. The sex pistols were over.

And what they left behind, it was a screaming, fucking bloody mess. 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 games. prizes. And Rule 2, 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 the 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 sleepwalking. David O'Yellow-O.

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 Kimman broke up with Keith Urban. 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, Mongeau. Camilla Morone. Kenny Silver and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us.

I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, great by God, too. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore.

It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen face. favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It had been a few days since he carved the words into his chest, but the scar was still legible. Give me a fix, it read. Sid Vicious had done it with a shard of glass while staring into a bathroom mirror. It was the truth he needed to score, but it was way out of his element. It was the first time he'd been to America. He knew there was heroin here in the land of the free. He just didn't know where to find it. So he turned himself into a walking advert for a fix. A fix as big as the place the sex pistols found themselves in now. Dallas, Texas. And the hats were definitely bigger in Dallas, so Sid hoped that the junk would follow suit. He wasn't wearing a shirt. So the mutilated junkie scrawl on his pasty skin was there for all to see as he fumbled his way around the frets of

Fender P-base on its stage. They hung low, looked like it weighed a ton. The Longhorn Ballroom was packed, and the pistols were frighteningly loud. Sid pogoed up and down and the kids followed. He spat and they spat back. He knew the message on his chest was provocative, both the illegal request for drugs and the disturbing way in which he'd written it. But it wasn't enough.

Sid craved chaos. He was the one who started that fight with Bob Harris of the speakeasy. in London. He threw bottles at other bands while they played. He smashed bottles on top of people's heads in the crowd. A fix, a fight, some junk, some blood. It was all the same to sit. It was all a flirtation with the other side. The end. Not just the end of the decade, the end of the century, but everything. The... One more needle in his vein, one more fist in his face, and it could all be over. He did it for the rush, to stand on the edge and stare into the abyss. Sid looked into that night's abyss, the teeming mass of Texan youth all pressing up to the longhorn stage,

and he knew exactly what he could do to ensure maximum chaos. He shouted out at no one in particular right there in the middle of Texas that, quote, cowboys are queers, unquote. Suddenly his nose hurt like hell. Someone's fist, someone's head, he wasn't sure exactly what happened. It came at him fast. His face was vibrating, and he felt the blood start to run. Good. He wiggled his nose. to make the blood run faster. It coaxed it out. Let it gush. He took his hand and wiped blood all over his face.

He looked out at the crowd, tried to figure out who had made him bleed. Where are you, you little redneck fucker? Do it again, cock sucker. He smiled. That trademark evil Elvis sneer. The blood kept running. He could taste it in his mouth now.

He worked a big gob in the back of his throat and then spat it back out at the audience. It hit someone in the face. A thick red blob. He smiled again. and he could see the blood all in between his teeth. And when the blood dried up, when it stopped dripping from his nose

and he'd spat every last bit back out towards the crowd, Sid grabbed the bottle and busted it on top of his amplifier. It shattered with ease. He held a jagged piece in his hand. His bare chest was a blank canvas. All he had to do was start carving. But by smashing that bottle, his amp had gone dead. Gave it a quick look.

Was it the cord, the power button? Sid didn't know. He didn't care. He had no clue how the whole fucking thing worked anyway. Tube, solid state, whatever. Jonesy was probably over the fucking moon, to be honest, not having to listen to Sid fart his way around the frets on his bass, a tosser. Plus, Sid Vicious wasn't here to make music.

Sid Vicious was here to make a scene. The Sex Pistols were five days into their January 1978 tour of the United States, and so far the whole thing had been one big scene. John walking around in his plaid bondage suit or wearing that one t-shirt with a picture of two cowboys facing each other with their big dick swinging. Sid saw how that shirt cut people up in arms and so he wore it too. John couldn't stand these backwards American hillbillies. Ditto for Malcolm McLaren.

There was a reason why Malcolm had booked dates in cities like Atlanta, Memphis, San Antonio, Bad Rouge, and Dallas, instead of punk rock sanctuaries like New York City and Los Angeles. not to impress, not to unite the clan, to shock, to horrify, to emasculate the macho fuckos and to cause all those southern bells to clutch their pearls. Like the queen had clutched for the crown jewels just months before. 1977. Celebrations were well underway for the silver jubilee. The 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's ascension to the throne in the United Kingdom.

Large, lavish parties, elegant parades. On June 7th, crowds followed a procession of St. Paul's Cathedral, where the royal family was met by the United States President Jimmy Carter, as well as current former prime ministers of the UK. After lunch, the procession continued on to Buckingham Palace, where one million humble servants watched as the queen waved from afar to each and every one of them. 500 million edition of people watched it live on television. Two days later, the queen would make a royal progress on a boat up a boat up

the River Thames, from Greenwich to Lambeth, a reenactment of a journey taken by Queen Elizabeth the first hundreds of years before. But first, another voyage was planned on the Thames, a voyage that preempted the Queen's own trip by two days. A voyage that took place on the evening of June 7th, while the memories of that day's elaborate procession were still fresh in the minds of millions. A voyage that would sail from Westminster to Tower Bridge, a voyage that would passed directly by the House of Parliament, a voyage that was definitely not part of any silver Jubilee celebration. You could hear the pleasure cruiser making its way up to Thames before you could see it, the rude squelch of guitar feedback, the nasally winds and profane taunts. Problem, problem, problem,

they cunt, they cunt, they cunt, over and over and over again. And then you saw it, A shock of orange hair on top of a cheap white suit. Studded leather bracelets procured from a kink shop. Guys banging their heads to the plotting beat like automaton's. Girls bent over the side of the boat dryheaving into the river. Malcolm McLaren rented the boat as a publicity stunt, but it wasn't lost on anyone that the Sex Pistols' mini set of mutinous songs was aimed directly at that week's celebration of the monarchy.

It certainly wasn't lost on London police who shut it down after just four songs. Malcolm had obtained the proper license, but the bobbies didn't care. The whole thing was vile. What did they think this was? The fucking rooftop of Apple Records? The sex pistols weren't the Beatles. The cops weren't just going to politely ask them to shut it down. They were going to make an example of them.

Ten cops and surrounded Malcolm. Fucking fascist, he screamed. He tried to make a run for it, but two of them grabbed him by the coat sleeves. They spun him around, twisted his arm behind his back. They're arresting Malcolm, someone. yelled, and then they beat him in front of the crowd of hundreds until he stopped whimpering, until he had no feelings. Malcolm had launched the River Tim's stunt shortly after the sex pistols signed their third

record contract in the span of five months. After being dropped by both EMI and A&M, the band found a new home on Richard Branson's Virgin Records in May of 1977. Virgin hustled to get God Save the Queen, the controversial single previously pressed and then destroyed by A&M out on the record store shelves. And it's sold, something like 150,000 copies a day, partially because it was a notorious tune. It was offensive, slanderous. It ruffled all those reserved British sensibilities, but also because it was a killer song. Four on the floor and a powder kick of angry energy. Revolution packed into a little over three minutes. Nevertheless,

the BBC refused to play it. Retailers refused to sell it. Even the house of Parliament attempted to ban anyone from playing or selling it, and no doubt that was part of its term. It sold enough copies that it climbed the charts all the way to number one in the UK. Well, not exactly. Technically, God save the Queen peaked at number two on the UK charts, but also technically it should have gone all the way to number one. That week, the British Phonographic Institute quietly informed those who compiled charts

that they should discount returns from all stores associated with record labels, stores like Virgin Records, which meant that if someone returned a copy of God Save the Queen that they'd previously bought, it would be subtracted from that week's total sales, for that one week only. The band was able to savor that number one spot, however, when their debut album was finally released in the fall of 1977.

Never mind the bullocks, here's the Sex Pistols. Remains, one of the greatest. rock and roll debuts of all time. And that's the thing. It's a rock and roll record. Sure, Johnny Rotten's sneering punk attitude is there in holidays in the sun and bodies and EMI, the glorious kiss-off to their first label. But the music is perhaps to Johnny Chagrin, rock and roll to the bone, like the stooges playing Chuck Berry. And while the sound of Nevermind the Bullocks echoes the past, John's caustic vocals predict the future, paving the way for rock and roll stars like Axel Rose and Liam Gallagher.

But just like the God Save the Queen single, the album's success wasn't entirely due to its exhilarating content. The name alone was controversial enough that once again stores refused to sell it. According to John, never mind the bollocks was a working class expression to stop talking rubbish, but authorities and prudes alike obsessed over the word bollocks, English slang for testicles. London police visited Virgin record stores to inform the

that could either take down the posters advertising the album or face prosecution for indecency. Not all stores did as they were told, and on the eve of the album's U.S. release, a virgin store owner in Nottingham was arrested and put on trial for obscenity. Richard Branson paid for the legal defense, which employed the testimony of Professor James Kinsley, head of the English department at Nottingham University, who also happened to be an Anglican priest. He told the court the origins of the word bollocks, how it could refer to a ball, an orchard, or a clergyman. Clergymen are known to talk a good deal of rubbish, Kinsley said.

And so, the word later developed the meaning of nonsense. In the eyes of Professor Kinsley, not only a learned man, but a godly man. That's what the word meant now in 1977. Nonsense. On November 24th, after taking Kinsley's testimony into account, The chairman of the hearing but gradually let the store owner off the hook.

And the chairman said, much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty. Who would have thought? God not only saved the queen, but God saved the sex pistols too.

If only, they could save themselves. We'll be right back after this world, 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. Making karate noises.

And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the airman. 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 Branum.

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? Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Marone, 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.

Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast. podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra P and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tate is. him was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites.

New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. John Liden had $20 to his name, the shirt on his back, no room of his own. He and Sid crashed with the road crew in San Jose 50 miles away from the gig, while Jonesy Cook and Malcolm lived it up at the hotel back in San Francisco. Even within the band, there was a cast system. It was like Finsbury Park all over again.

Like there were 16-year-old delinquents with a criminal record, not 21-year-olds with the number one record. John and Sid still squatting after all these years. Only this time, things were different. Sid was a fucking full-blown junkie. John felt a responsibility to be his brother's keeper or at the very least minimize Sid's proximity to smack, which is why he and Sid rode the bus together with the road crew while the rest of the band flew.

So John could keep an eye on him, keep him out of trouble. But Sid always found a way to score, and scoring always led to something disastrous. The night before, January 14, 1978, the seventh stop on their U.S. tour. Sid shot up as the band prepared to take the stage at Winterland. Taped his arm up from his wrist to his bicep, blood seeping out through the white bandage, both to hide what he'd done and to draw attention to it. They all knew what was at stake here. Winterland's capacity was 5,000, the biggest venue they'd ever played.

In fact, the size of the crowd was bigger than all the crowds put together over the last nine days of the tour. And the show was hyped all throughout the Bay Area. It was simulcast live on KSA and FM. local TV crews were rolling tape, but the show was shit. The strings on Jonesy's guitar kept snapping, and he struggled to stay in tune. The sound system was atrocious, and the mix was uneven. The band couldn't even hear themselves. None of it bothered Sid.

As long as he was stoned, he was good. John looked over at Sid and utter frustration. If you can put up with that, you can put up with anything, right? Right. It was a sham, a farce, the whole thing. It were caricatures. Maybe it wasn't England that was dreaming. Maybe Johnny was.

He wanted to be the fly in the ointment. The shock to the system. Rock and roll took itself so seriously, with its orchestrations and multi-part suites and overproduction, progressive rock, more like regressive rock. It wanted to be classical music. It was easy to shock bruised up Bill Grundy types

and old English grandmothers. But some just saw the pistols not as a reckoning or a shift in the culture, but as a spectacle, a circus, some artful Dodger role play. And Johnny Rotten was just the jester, a joke, not the insurgent that he saw himself as. And the whole bloody thing had been a joke

since back when they first started with John's treasonous lyrics and attitude clashing with Glenn Matlock's beetle chords. But that's what made them so great, that tension. Now there was no tension, just blood and mucus, naked girls in Jonesy's room, track marks up and down Sid's arm, rock and roll cliches.

John was still angry. He'd always be angry. That was his lot in life. He was working class, a rat gnawing at the corroded sewer pipe. But couldn't he be all those things and maybe have more than like $20 to his name? That would be nice. But it wasn't going to happen. He was dreaming. It was as the prophet Iggy Pop once so astutely noted, no fun at all. It was fitting then that the sex pistols closed the January 14th Winterland Show with their cover of that particular Stoge's song, with John hunched over in his most grotesque Quasimodo contortion,

just repeating the title over and over and over again until his voice was ragged and torn. No fun, no fun, no fun, no fun, no fun. And then he crouched down lower, and the band thrashing that one corret till it was bloody and lifeless. And John stared out at the Pogoan crowd. But not with his trademark psychotic leer, the one he opened the show with an hour earlier, the one that looked like he was about to devour the first living thing that got close to him. No, this time, John's stare was one of disappointment.

He didn't move. He stayed, crouched low. The band hit the chord one last final time. And John laughed into the microphone. He knew something the rest of the room didn't know. Not the audience and not the other pistols. John knew it was over. Not just that night's show, not just their brief U.S. tour.

The whole thing. He was never going to step onto a stage with these three blokes again. Jonesy may have Nick Bowie's gear from the last spider show, but Johnny was about to Nick Bowie's stunt, and he'd do it his own way. He looked out at the Winterland crowd. and said, Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? John Leiden earned what he had coming to him.

Or so the guards thought. They stripped him naked, shoved him into the middle of the yard, and hosed him down. The whole prison watched. Murderers, thieves, psychopaths. The guards got off on the whole thing. The man previously known as Johnny Rotten, shivering in his birthday suit,

deprived of the fashion statements that defined him. but that wasn't enough. It was the middle of the night when the two guards appeared, standing above him, trunches in their clenched fists. They made sure he knew that they were going to thoroughly enjoy beating the piss out of him. And not because he was a former sex pistol, because he assaulted some cops. An assault on one of them was an assault on all of them. 1980, Dublin.

They called Mountjoy Prison, the Joy. But there was nothing joyful about it. even if you were just a short-timer, and especially if you were one of the more notorious inmates as John Leiden would discover. He had flown to Ireland to visit his brother. And when the plane landed, he went straight down to the pub where he got into an argument with a couple of tossers, only to find out after he threw a punch that the tossers were actually off-duty police officers. Now he was the one being assaulted. He was used to it, and used to much worse.

They assaulted him back when he was a pistol, back when the band was recording, never mind the bullocks. And they weren't cops or prison guards, just your run-of-the-mill geysers, Ted's maybe, who didn't like how John looked or what he represented, the things he sang about. They came at him with knives and razors. He outran them and made it to his producer's car where he locked the door. But they broke the window and stuck their blades blindly inside like savages. They stabbed him in his knee. A knife went through his hand, straight.

in next to his thumb and straight out all the way on the other side by his pinky finger. He'd never seen so much blood in his life. He thought maybe that was the end of the line, but he pulled the blade out and pulled through. He struggled. He survived. He always did. Whether it was a pack of knife wielding Ted's in London or a couple of sadistic guards in prison. And now, at Mountjoy Prison, well, at least he was alive, right?

That's what people said anyway. He wasn't so sure. Maybe Sid had the right idea. He rode one last hot shot to an early grave. Stupid get. That was February 1979. Less than 24 hours after he'd been released on bail, charged with murdering his girlfriend Nancy Spungeon.

He was just 21. They all knew it would happen. But it was hard not to be cynical about it. When the press asked Steve Jones for a quote, he just said, well, at least we'll sell some records now. Sid's death came one year after the pistols called it quits following the Winterland show. At least, John called it quits. The rest of the band followed Malcolm down to Rio to make a movie with Ronnie Biggs,

a real-life outlaw known for his role in the Great Train robbery of 1963. John didn't see what the point was. The Great Train robbery, Ronnie Biggs, Ronnie Biggs was in Robin Hood. He stole some poor fucker's payroll from the mail train, working class money. It was absolutely a horror, aligning yourself with that. It wasn't what they had set out to do from the start. Any of them, John Lydon was truly shocked. But not as shocked as when he looked up at the television set in the prison's common room.

The set was small and the reception was shoddy and still loud as bombs. The Sex Pistols, performing God Save the Queen on a rerun with the punk rock movie. A documentary that Don Lutz had made two years earlier. about the nascent days of punk. John Leiden got that same feeling he felt on stage at the winterland. The feeling, once again, that he'd been cheated. Once upon a time, the sex pistols were outsiders, rabble-rousers, the ones throwing the cherry bomb in the dirty toilet of rock and roll.

And now, there were just another rock band, absorbed into the system, coming soon to a radio or television set near you, even in fucking prison. This was his public image. It made John Liden sick. He stood there. His spine curved and his dead-eye stare intensifying. And then he hung his head in disgrace.

I'm Jake Brennan. And this is Disgraceland. 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. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for

details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at Disgracelam Pod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgraceland Pod. Rock a roll. 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 girlfriend. 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'Yellow. 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, Gait and Moderato 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.