July 30, 1996
Never mind the money ...Here's the Sex Pistols on tour again
Toronto Sun Or at least the sneering and disillusioned lead singer did. Johnny Rotten quit after that night's performance at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom with the final words: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" The remaining Pistols -- bassist/heroin addict Sid Vicious, thuggish-looking guitarist Steve Jones, and drummer Paul Cook -- continued for a while without their fearless leader, making The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle film and album in 1979. But the band might as well have stopped when their charismatic frontman did. Now, almost 20 years later, the recently-reunited Sex Pistols return to America tomorrow night to play the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver for the first North American date of their Filthy Lucre tour. Original bassist Glen Matlock has braved the wrath of Rotten, who never liked him, and rejoined the band, replacing his 1977 replacement, Sid Vicious. (Vicious died of a heroin overdose in 1979 after being accused of stabbing his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death.) And while few apparently thought these feuding punk pioneers would ever reunite, the lure of the Lucre -- each Sex Pistol may be pocketing as much as $1.5 million -- was obviously too much to resist. So they have a new tour, which hits Molson Amphitheatre on Aug. 12, marking the first time the Pistols have played in Toronto -- so far 6,000 of 16,000 tickets have been sold. They also have a new album, Filthy Lucre Live, which hits record stores today (look for a full review in this Sunday's Flipside) a mere five weeks after it was recorded June 23 at Finsbury Park in London. Granted, it hasn't been all smooth sailing on the Lucre tour. Last month in Copenhagen, the band walked off stage after 15 minutes when fans threw bottles at them. Their Madrid show was cancelled outright due to concerns about violence -- or poor ticket sales, depending on whom you believe. Chaos is clearly the Sex Pistols' middle name. The band was brought together in 1975 by impresario Malcolm McLaren, owner of the notorious Sex boutique on Kings Rd. in London where Matlock (already playing with Jones and Cook) worked. They recruited the green-haired Rotten, who liked to hang out at the store's jukebox. Nineteen years old and with no singing experience, the hygiene-challenged Johnny Lydon was christened Johnny Rotten, and more than made up for his inexperience with an angry, outrageous attitude. "I'm a spiteful bastard. I always have been," Lydon wrote in his 1994 biography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. They were only together for two years and only released one studio album. That was 1977's Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols, which "unquestionably ranks as one of the most important rock & roll records ever," according to Rolling Stone. The Pistols were also dumped by their first two record companies. First, EMI, when they used the f-word in a nationally televised interview, and then A&M, who signed them and fired them all in one week. Virgin managed to hold on to them. Matlock, who wrote a lot of the original songs, left the band, reportedly offended at Rotten's God Save The Queen lyrics. "He had a softening effect," wrote Rotten. "Glen wanted to turn the whole thing into a sort of Bay City Rollers scene and for us to look like some Soho poofs." Now they look like middle-aged punkers. And that doesn't seem to bother them a bit. July 26, 1996 Pistols whippedJam! Executive Producer
Monday, July 8, 1996 Tickets for Sex Pistols going on sale
TORONTO (CP) -- Twenty years after anarchy first ruled the music world,
tickets are going on sale this week for the Sex Pistols' Toronto show.
Saturday, June 29, 1996
Sex Pistols can't take it anymore, abandon stage in hail of bottlesCOPENHAGEN (AP) -- Even as old-timers, the Sex Pistols can still drive an audience into a frenzy -- but they're not happy about it.The pioneering punk band, on a comeback tour 18 years after they broke up, stopped their concert after only 15 minutes Friday night because some of the fans heaved bottles at them. "You continue to throw broken bottles at us, and we'll go home," singer Johnny Rotten warned a crowd of 50,000 at the outdoor Roskilde Festival. Then, he made good on his threat. "In the old days, they would have returned the bottles," one fan told Denmark's TV2. "They are getting old." No one was injured by the bottle-throwing. The Sex Pistols began their Filthy Lucre comeback tour June 21 in Finland. In all, they plan 20 concerts in 14 countries. June 22, 1996 Pistols start with a bangSomething's Johnny Rotten in Finland as band kicks off new world tour
Sun Columnist at Large MESSILA, Finland -- Hickeys, vodka, vomit and vulgarity. No talent. Deafening noise. The Sex Pistols are back and 15,000 pie-eyed Finns, most of whom weren't even born when the band last played together, loved them! After a 7,000 day break, the lads who perpetrated the Great Rock And Roll Swindle and inspired a generation of body-piercing and exotically coiffed punkers have not forgotten how to spew abuse. Nor have they learned how to sing or play their guitars. The only Sex Pistol missing from this around-the-clock festival in the Land of the Midnight Sun was Sid Vicious, who died of a heroin overdose 17 years ago while awaiting trial in New York for murdering Nancy Spungen, a sometime prostitute who was his girlfriend. The Pistols' most notorious survivor, Johnny Rotten, opened what is being billed as the Filthy Lucre Tour by mincing onto the stage in a tasteless, dark grey plastic suit. Having put on a few pounds since he last appeared with the group in California in January, 1978, the lead singer could have passed for Moby Dick. That is, if Rotten's hair had not been spiked up into a golden crown. Blessed with a VIP card and a photo pass, my vantage point for this historic reunion was between the stage and the crowd. This wasn't a very good place to be as Rotten likes to spit at his fans and they like to spit back even more. But the real problem wasn't spittle or even the band members celebrated hatred for each other. It was flying bottles. So many projectiles were hurled at the Sex Pistols that the band left the stage for about 10 minutes at one point during their only set after Rotten bellowed: "Get some f------ Finn up here to tell them I'm not a f-------- target." Although the only other rockers I've ever seen live were the relatively sudued David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen, the Sex Pistols and I actually had something in common. Except for the chief of police, we were the only people at the concert in our 40s. Johnny Rotten, who styles himself the world's most foul-mouthed and contrary musician, opened the show with his personal favorite, Bodies, but not before the king of punk contemptuously surveyed the drunken masses for several minutes while working up the kind of raw anger the menacing ditty requires. The next tune was Lazy Sods. This was appropriate as the band has apparently not bothered to create one new song for the tour, which moves on to Munich today and to London's Finsbury Park for what will inevitably be a rowdy homecoming tomorrow. One of the reasons for opening the reunion tour on an obscure ski hill in a forest in out-of-the way Finland is that the Sex Pistols required an out-of-the-way dress rehearsal before appearing in Britain. Another reason is that the group was banned from playing here in the late 70s. Mind you, the Pistols were also banned at one time from Scotland and more than half the clubs in England because of such antics as making `sperm sandwiches' by ejaculating into bread and composing such offensive rants as Belsen Was A Gas and God Save the Queen, which sold 150,000 copies in a day in spite of -- or because of --the fact it was not allowed to be played on the BBC. It was the Pistols' kind of crowd. Almost everyone was blitzed, although on vodka-based moonshine known as `table booze,' rather than narcotics, although some of this stuff was being consumed under the pine trees to the right of the stage. Nose studs and earrings were de rigueur, as was flaming purple and yellow hair, the more frazzled the better. "They're crap, but I love them because they were the first. That's why I'm here," said Gary Feeney, a 24-year-old Scotsman with a Star of David in his nose, neck studs, red spiked hair with black spots and a penchant for the kind of words newspapers don't print. "Sure, they only came here to make money, but that was always their gimmick. You have to respect them for it." One of the oldest fans was Ahto Hoern, a 32-year-old Estonian who once served in the Soviet army, who had come to Finland by ship to see Johnny Rotten. "The Sex Pistols music was so real, but Soviet police didn't see it that way," Hoern said. "We rioted in 1980 because we weren't allowed to listen to punk." Raisa Latto, an 18-year-old Finn, shouted over the din that she thought the Pistols had made a mistake getting back together because they were "messing with their own legend, but there is one thing that they have and that is ATTITUDE!" Johnny Rotten probably would have liked that. Before jetting off to Germany for tonight's concert, the 40-year-old punk legend screamed: "There are worse things on this f------- planet than me. "Be grateful I'm here." June 21, 1996
This punk sucksJam! Executive Producer
No shootouts among Pistols
LOS ANGELES -- Punk rock legends the Sex Pistols have been getting
together in Los Angeles
to prepare for their summer comeback tour -- and the surprising news is that
they are still speaking
to each other.
Monday, March 18, 1996 Will Pistols play Canada? - it's up to you!JAM! Executive Producer Will the most notorious punk band of all time play Canada? If they don't, says the band's local tour promoter, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. "If people want to see the Sex Pistols, they should start bombarding me NOW," MCA Concerts' Elliott Lefko said today in Toronto. "To be honest, we're really kind of in the dark about the level of interest in this band." Lefko says the reunited Pistols - who announced Monday in London that they'll embark on a strictly-for-the-money 20th anniversary tour of Europe, the U.S., and the Far East, and record the proceedings for a live album - will almost definitely play two Canadian dates - one in Toronto, the other in Vancouver - this June or July, but that he has no idea whether they can sell 3,000 tickets or 30,000. In the Toronto area, for example, he's trying to figure out whether to book the band into the dinky Varsity Arena or the sprawling Molson Park in Barrie, Ont., traditional home to Lollapalooza. So, if you want to see John Lydon, Glen Matlock, Steve Cook and Paul Jones in the flesh, don't just sit there. Pester Lefko NOW, in one (or all) of the following ways: And, promises Lefko, if you leave a name and return address, you'll also get first crack at tickets. So don't put it off. When was the last time YOU had the power to decide whether a band of this stature will visit Canada? And how long will you have to wait to get that power again? January 25, 1996 Sex Pistols reunion rumors shot downHOLLYWOOD -- British media make it sound as if a Sex Pistols 20th
anniversary reunion is a sure
thing, but John Lydon's manager is scoffing. |