Background and announcement The Sex Pistols achieved widespread notoriety after appearing on
Bill Grundy's
Today programme in December 1976. At the time, the band comprised
Johnny Rotten,
Steve Jones,
Paul Cook, and
Glen Matlock, with the band's manager Malcolm McLaren replacing Matlock with
Sid Vicious in February 1977. With the latter lineup, the band had a UK number one album with ''
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols'' and a controversial UK top two single with "
God Save the Queen". The band split up in January 1978 after a concert at
Winterland Ballroom, with Rotten changing his name back to
John Lydon and declining to perform any Sex Pistols songs for several years afterward. After finding he had time on his hands while in
Los Angeles, Matlock decided to meet Jones, with whom he decided to meet Lydon, The band began making arrangements to reunite in summer 1995. The four original Sex Pistols announced their reunion at a testy press conference on 18 March 1996, at which Rotten described Vicious as "nothing more than an empty coathanger to fill an empty spot onstage". The band made no attempt to hide the fact that they still hated each other and had reunited solely for financial reasons, with Rotten stating that the band's "common cause" was "your money". They named their tour "Filthy Lucre" after a tabloid headline in the
Daily Express ("Punk? Call It Filthy Lucre") shortly after their
Today appearance.
Performances No new material was written for the tour, with the band augmenting their discography with covers of "
Substitute" by
the Who, "
No Fun" by
the Stooges and "
(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" by
the Monkees, Rehearsals took place at Lydon's home in
Los Angeles. Their first gig took place in
Finland, Their Finsbury Park performance was released as
Filthy Lucre Live shortly after it was recorded and reached number 26 on the
UK Albums Chart; around this time,
Bollocks was reissued and peaked at number 45. Many of the tour's venues were significantly larger than during their 1970s run as the band had broken up before they could play any large venues and replaced by a performance at
Shepherd's Bush Empire. however the journalist was sufficiently disgruntled to drug the festivalgoers responsible. Skunk Anansie were thrown off the tour after their
Thebarton Theatre date after their frontwoman Skin stood up to a racist pulling her hat off and throwing beer at her; in a January 2019
NME interview, she stated that she had not enjoyed touring with the Sex Pistols due to the racism administered by audiences, and criticising Rotten for his failure to address the matter.
Reception and aftermath Early reviews were not positive. Sinclair criticised their
Finsbury Park performance for its "arthritic rhythm section" and its set list for "lacking depth and variety", wrote that it was "hard to ignore the element of pantomime in the performance", and described Lydon as looking "more like a postcard-punk caricature than he ever did in his original incarnation". Robert Hilburn of the
Los Angeles Times wrote of a
Red Rocks Amphitheatre performance in July 1996 that the band was not the Sex Pistols but the "Cap Pistols", mocking the "decidedly overweight and apparently out of shape" Rotten's "god-awful red, black and chartreuse outfit that makes him look either like an usher at a midnight screening of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show or the next loony villain in a
Batman movie". Jon Pareles of
The New York Times wrote that during their August 1996 Roseland Ballroom concert, Rotten "sang as if every bitter, defiant, sarcastic word was exactly what he wanted to say", though wrote that the Pistols played "more slowly than current punks". however Andy Greene of
Rolling Stone was more positive in January 2013, describing the shows as "absolutely explosive". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of
AllMusic wrote that the band sounded "much heavier and less revolutionary than expected" and wrote that it was "fun to hear a live performance by the Pistols that doesn't degenerate into chaos and is recorded in clean audio". In March 2014, Matlock released a book about the tour, and in August 2024, Barbara Ellen of
The Guardian compared the controversy surrounding the forthcoming
Oasis Live '25 Tour to that of Filthy Lucre. == Tour dates ==