FX Orders Series Based on Sex Pistols Guitarist Steve Jones

[Nitro Express]

So this thing popped up on Hulu this past week. Apparently it's not airing on the FX cable channel, though that was the original plan. Probably wouldn't cut language and one or two sexual scenes that might be a bit much for cable.

My impressions so far....

The Steve Jones character looks nothing like Steve Jones. He actually looks more like the kid with the speech impediment on "Stranger Things" (which I'm also watching this week)
The Johnny Rotten character sings nothing like the real Johnny. Seriously, they should have asked me to dub the voice. I could pull it off.

Musically.... well, let's just say they're treating the timeline of the band's music about as accurately as Queen's music was treated in Bohemian Rhapsody. For example, they have the band writing "Bodies" just shortly after "Anarchy" in early 1976... which is a total crock of shit. "Bodies" was literally the last song they wrote for "Never Mind The Bollocks" and they definitely never played it with Glenn Matlock until the 1996 reunion tour.

Biggest surprise for me so far is the Chrissie Hynde character. I was aware that she knew the Pistols back in the day, and even that she attempted to teach Rotten how to play guitar at one point (unsuccessfully) but I wasn't aware that she had worked in McLaren's shop, that she had a "friends with benefits" thing going with Jones, and that they almost got a "green card" marriage so she could stay in England, but Steve chickened out at the last minute. (Rotten then "proposed" to her, but she didn't marry him either, but instead went with the douchebag "journalist" and Keef- wannabe, Nick Kent)

The way the musical process has been inaccurately portrayed.... I'm guessing this is the root of John Lydon's opposition to the entire process. He described the series as "disrespectful".

McLaren was a piece of work. Basically a thief. At least he didn’t become a minister or a politician. He just ripped off young punks.

[Nitro Express]

This soundcheck from the Pistols Winterland show in SF (last of the 78 US tour) is more proof that Sid could actually play when he wasn't riding the "horse". Even when Rotten yells at the soundman to "turn Sid down", he was referring to the backing vocals being too loud in the mix. At one point Sid even leads off a Ramones song. Jones & Cook join in.... Rotten is not pleased - he never liked the Ramones!

Compare this with Sid's wasted sloppy playing at the actual gig later that night.

The Ramones were one of the first punk bands. Never got the credit for it. But punk wasn’t popular here until it became big in the UK and they brought their version of it here.

[Terry]

Sid might have been less of a prick if they had managed to get him away from Nancy & heroin. Hell, he could actually play the bass when he wasn't smacked up.....

One impression Lydon has consistently proffered since the 1980s was that Sid wasn't unintelligent at all, but once Sid hooked up with Nancy and started doing heroin [Sid] became, in Lydon's words, "the worst kind of rock and roll idiot anybody could have a nightmare about." Essentially, Sid began believing the bullshit rock star myths the press were printing about him...Vicious began buying into his own bullshit hype. By the time Spungen died, apparently Vicious was so out of it he couldn't even say for sure if he had stabbed her or exactly WHAT had happened.

But Vicious COULD play the bass. In a very rudimentary way, but nonetheless he could play it...you still get people saying "oh, they always unplugged Sid's bass when they played live...he couldn't play a note"...neither of which were true. Or that Vicious was 100% this clueless, illiterate goon, which wasn't true, either.

[FORD]

There actually were some occasions on stage where Steve would unplug Sid's bass or turn down his amp because he was playing especially bad that night. Eventually Sid started retaliating and unplugging Steve's guitar. Some of this can be heard in the Winterland concert from January 1978, though McLaren probably encouraged all this bullshit, so he could keep the "chaos" going.

But without Nancy & Heroin... and probably without McLaren, The Pistols probably would have made at least a few more records & Sid might have survived.

[Terry]

There actually were some occasions on stage where Steve would unplug Sid's bass or turn down his amp because he was playing especially bad that night. Eventually Sid started retaliating and unplugging Steve's guitar. Some of this can be heard in the Winterland concert from January 1978, though McLaren probably encouraged all this bullshit, so he could keep the "chaos" going.

But without Nancy & Heroin... and probably without McLaren, The Pistols probably would have made at least a few more records & Sid might have survived.

I don't doubt there were some occasions that Steve had Sid's bass unplugged or turned down/off.

What that morphed into for some via the myth-making surrounding the legend of the Pistols is a belief that Sid couldn't play a note and was always unplugged or turned off.

As to the "what if's" and what might have happened had x,y and z not happened, one will never know.

[FORD]

[Nitro Express]

There actually were some occasions on stage where Steve would unplug Sid's bass or turn down his amp because he was playing especially bad that night. Eventually Sid started retaliating and unplugging Steve's guitar. Some of this can be heard in the Winterland concert from January 1978, though McLaren probably encouraged all this bullshit, so he could keep the "chaos" going.

But without Nancy & Heroin... and probably without McLaren, The Pistols probably would have made at least a few more records & Sid might have survived.

People either want to see exceptional talent or a freak show. The Sex Pistols were a freak show. So the trick is to stick stuff up the cat’s ass without killing the cat.

[Nickdfresh]

[FORD]

They definitely shouldn't have harassed Johnny at home. His wife Nora isn't doing too well, she's got Alzheimers, if I remember correctly, so it had to be frightening as Hell for her to have a mob hanging around her house.

Mr. & Mrs Rotten have been together since about the same time he started PiL, so that's a pretty good run for a "celebrity" marriage. And she was well into her 30s when she met Johnny, who was barely out of his teens at the time. Doubt if anybody at the time thought the relationship would last long term.

[Nitro Express]

A 70’s shock gimmick that people amazingly talk about in 2022. To me they were just a bunch of punks brought to the public by a slimeball who ended up with all the money the gimmick generated.

[FORD]