Formation The Sex Pistols evolved from the Strand (sometimes known as the Swankers), formed in London in 1972 by teenagers
Steve Jones on vocals,
Paul Cook on drums and
Wally Nightingale on guitar. According to Jones, both he and Cook played on instruments he had stolen. The band regularly hung out at two clothing shops on the
King's Road in
Chelsea, London: John Krivine and Steph Raynor's
Acme Attractions and
Malcolm McLaren and
Vivienne Westwood's Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die. McLaren's and Westwood's shop had opened in 1971 as Let It Rock, with a 1950s revival
Teddy Boy theme. It had been renamed in 1972 to focus on another revival trend, the 1950s
rocker look. The shop then became a focal point of the early London punk rock scene, bringing together participants such as the future
Sid Vicious,
Marco Pirroni,
Gene October, and
Mark Stewart.
Jordan, the wildly styled shop assistant, is credited with "pretty well single-handedly paving the punk look". In late 1974, Jones asked McLaren to take over the band's management.
Glen Matlock, an art student who occasionally worked at McLaren's and Westwood's shop, joined as bassist. McLaren and Westwood conceived a new identity for their shop: renamed
Sex, it changed its focus away from retro 1950s couture to
S&M-inspired "
anti-fashion". After managing and promoting the
New York Dolls, McLaren returned to London in May 1975 and began to take more of an interest in the Strand. The group had been rehearsing regularly, overseen by
Bernard Rhodes (who would later go on to manage
the Clash) and performing live. Soon after McLaren's return, Nightingale was dismissed and Jones, uncomfortable as frontman, took over guitar. McLaren had been talking with the New York Dolls'
Sylvain Sylvain about coming over to England to front the group. When those plans fell through, McLaren, Rhodes and the band began looking locally for a new member to assume the lead vocal duties. As described by Matlock, "Everyone had long hair back then, even the milkman, so what we used to do was if someone had short hair we would stop them in the street and ask them if they fancied themselves as a singer". For instance,
Midge Ure, the later front man of
Rich Kids (with Matlock) and
Ultravox, claims to have been approached, but refused the offer. With the search for a lead singer proving fruitless, McLaren made several calls to
Richard Hell, who also turned down the invitation.
Lydon joins Describing the social context in which the band formed,
John Lydon said that mid-seventies Britain was "a very depressing place... completely run-down, there was
trash on the streets, total unemployment, just about everybody was on strike... if you came from the wrong side of the tracks... then you had no hope in hell and no career prospects at all." In August 1975, Rhodes spotted Lydon, then 19 years old, wearing a
Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words 'I Hate' handwritten above the band's name and holes scratched through the Floyd members' eyes. Soon after, either Rhodes or McLaren asked Lydon to audition. During the session, Lydon improvised to
Alice Cooper's "
I'm Eighteen" on the
Sex jukebox. According to Jones, "he came in with green hair. I thought he had a really interesting face. I liked his look. He had the 'I Hate Pink Floyd' T-shirt on...held together with safety pins... he was a real arsehole—but smart." Jones renamed Lydon as "Johnny Rotten" as a joke, apparently because of his particularly bad teeth. Cook had a full-time job and was threatening to quit the band.
New Musical Express journalist
Nick Kent occasionally played second guitar with the band before Lydon joined. An advertisement was placed in
Melody Maker looking for a "whizz kid guitarist ... not older than 20 ... not worse looking than
Johnny Thunders." As
Steve New was the most talented guitarist to audition, he was asked to join. However, Jones' playing had greatly improved, and New left a month after joining the band. After considering band name options such as Le Bomb, Subterraneans, the Damned, Beyond, Teenage Novel, Kid Gladlove, and Crème de la Crème, they decided on Sex Pistols. Matlock said the band decided on the name while McLaren was in the United States before Rotten joined. Jon Savage says the name was not firmly settled on until just before their first show in November 1975. McLaren later said the name derived "from the idea of a pistol, a pin-up, a young thing, a better-looking assassin". Not given to modesty, false or otherwise, he added: "[I] launched the idea in the form of a band of kids who could be perceived as being bad." The group began writing original material: Rotten was the lyricist and Matlock the primary melody writer (though their first collaboration, "
Pretty Vacant", had all lyrics by Matlock, which Rotten tweaked a bit); official credit was shared equally among the four. Their first gig was arranged by Matlock, then studying at
Saint Martin's School of Art. The band played at the school in November 1975, supporting the
pub rock group
Bazooka Joe. They performed several covers including
the Who's "
Substitute", the
Small Faces' "
Whatcha Gonna Do About It", and
the Monkees' "
(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone".
Early following The Saint Martins gig was followed by performances at colleges around London. The band's core early followers—including
Siouxsie Sioux,
Steven Severin and
Billy Idol, Jordan, and
Soo Catwoman—came to be known as the
Bromley Contingent, after the
suburban south-east London borough that several of them were from. Their cutting-edge fashion, much of it supplied by
Sex, ignited a trend that was adopted by the new fans the band attracted. McLaren and Westwood saw the incipient
London punk movement as a vehicle for more than just couture. They were influenced by the
May 1968 radical uprising in Paris, particularly by the ideology and agitations of the
Situationists. These interests were shared with
Jamie Reid, a friend of McLaren who took over the design of the band's visual imagery in the spring of 1976. His cut-up lettering—based on notes left by kidnappers or terrorists—were used to create the classic Sex Pistols logo and many subsequent designs for the band, although they were actually introduced by McLaren's friend
Helen Wellington-Lloyd. Reid has said that he used "to talk to John [Lydon] a lot about the Situationists... the Sex Pistols seemed the perfect vehicle to communicate ideas directly to people who weren't getting the message from left-wing politics". McLaren was also arranging for the band's first photo sessions. According to the writer
Jon Savage, Lydon "with his green hair, hunched stance and ragged look...[Lydon] looked like a cross between
Uriah Heep and Richard Hell". Their first gig to attract attention was as a supporting act for
Eddie and the Hot Rods, a leading pub rock group, at the
Marquee in February 1976. The band's first review appeared in the
NME, accompanied by a brief interview in which Jones declared, "Actually we're not into music. We're into chaos." Among those who read the article were two students at the
Bolton Institute of Technology,
Howard Devoto and
Pete Shelley, who headed down to London in search of the Sex Pistols. After chatting with McLaren at
Sex, they saw the band at a couple of late February gigs. The two friends immediately began organising their own Pistols-style group,
Buzzcocks. As Devoto later put it, "My life changed the moment that I saw the Sex Pistols." The Pistols soon played other important venues, notably playing at
Oxford Street's
100 Club for the first time on 30 March. On 3 April, they played for the first time at the Nashville, supporting
the 101ers. The pub rock group's lead singer,
Joe Strummer, saw the Pistols for the first time that night—and recognised punk rock as the future. A return gig at the Nashville on 23 April highlighted the band's growing musical competence. However Westwood started a fight with another audience member which also dragged in McLaren and Rotten. Cook later said, the "fight at the Nashville: that's when all the publicity got hold of it and the violence started creeping in... I think everybody was ready to go and we were the catalyst." The leading New York punk band, the
Ramones, released their
debut album on 23 April 1976. Although regarded as seminal to the growth of English punk rock, with Cook and Jones being fans of the album, Lydon has repeatedly rejected that it influenced the Sex Pistols, claiming that they "were all long-haired and of no interest to me. I didn't like their image, what they stood for, or anything about them". Cook also denied being influenced by their music, stating, "the Ramones and the Pistols were different animals, with a different flavour. They were more basic, three-chord rock’n’roll", but added that the release of the album made the Pistols think, "We’d better crack on here.” Steve Jones reflected that Grundy was the big dividing line in the Sex Pistols' story. Before it, we were all about the music, but from then on it was all about the media. In some ways it was our finest moment, but in others it was the beginning of the end... In terms of the Sex Pistols having any kind of long-term future, this sudden acceleration was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. The interview made the band a household name overnight in Britain and brought punk into the mainstream. They launched the UK Anarchy Tour, supported by the Clash and Johnny Thunders' band
the Heartbreakers, over from New York. The Damned were briefly part of the tour, before McLaren kicked them off. Media coverage was intense, and many of the concerts were cancelled by organisers or local authorities; of approximately twenty scheduled gigs, only about seven actually took place. Following a campaign in the south Wales press, a crowd including
carol singers and a
Pentecostal preacher, protested against the group outside a show in
Caerphilly. Packers at the EMI plant refused to handle the band's single. London Conservative councillor Bernard Brook Partridge said, "Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death. The worst of the punk rock groups I suppose currently are the Sex Pistols. They are unbelievably nauseating... the antithesis of humankind. I would like to see somebody dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the whole bloody lot down it." Three concerts were arranged in the Netherlands for January 1977. The band, hungover, boarded a plane at
London Heathrow Airport early on 4 January; a few hours later, the
Evening News was reporting that the band had "vomited and spat their way" to the flight. Despite categorical denials by the EMI representative who accompanied the group, the label, which was under political pressure, released the band from their contract. In one journalist's later description, the Pistols had "stoked a
moral panic... precipitating the cancellation of gigs, the band's expulsion from their EMI record deal and lurid tabloid tales of punk's 'shock cult. As McLaren fielded offers from other labels, the band went into the studio for a round of recordings with Goodman, their last with either him or Matlock.
Sid Vicious replaces Matlock On 28 February 1977 McLaren announced Matlock was leaving the band because Matlock "went on too long about
Paul McCartney." Although Matlock says he left voluntarily, Jones claimed in a contemporary interview that he was sacked because he "liked the Beatles". In 2005, Jones admitted that although Matlock was a good songwriter, he "didn't look like a Sex Pistol". In 1990, Matlock described the reason as his bitter relationship with Rotten, exacerbated—in Matlock's account—by Rotten's attitude "once he'd had his name in the papers". Jon Savage suggests that Rotten pushed Matlock out to demonstrate his power and autonomy from McLaren. Matlock was replaced by Rotten's friend
Sid Vicious, previously the drummer of two inner circle punk bands,
Siouxsie and the Banshees and
the Flowers of Romance. According to Matlock, Rotten wanted Vicious in the band because of him against Steve and Paul, it would become him and Sid against Steve and Paul. He always thought of it in terms of opposing camps." According to Jones, "to Cookie [Paul Cook] and me, it just didn't make any sense to have someone who couldn't play a note trying to fill Glen's shoes, but it was never about the music for McLaren... from the minute Sid joined the band, nothing was ever normal again."
Julien Temple, then a film student McLaren had employed to create a comprehensive audiovisual record of the band, agrees: "Sid was John's protégé in the group, really. The other two just thought he was crazy." McLaren later stated that, much earlier in the band's career, Westwood had told him he should "get the guy called John [Sid Vicious] who came to the store a couple of times" to be the singer. When Lydon was recruited, Westwood said McLaren had recruited "the wrong John". , 1977 Vicious was arrested after hurling a glass that shattered and blinded a girl in one eye at a Damned gig at the 100 Club Punk Special. He served time in a remand centre and the incident contributed to the 100 Club banning punk bands. He assaulted
Nick Kent with a bicycle chain during a gig at the 100 Club. According to McLaren, "when Sid joined he couldn't play guitar but his craziness fitted into the structure of the band." "Everyone agreed he had the look," Lydon later recalled, but musical skill was another matter. "The first rehearsals... with Sid were hellish". In the music documentary, "Punk Attitude",
Chrissie Hynde remarked that Vicious learned to play bass by staying up for 3 nights on
speed playing along to the
Ramones first album
Ramones,Marco Pirroni, who had performed with Vicious in Siouxsie and the Banshees, has said, "After that, it was nothing to do with music anymore. It would just be for the
sensationalism and scandal of it all. Then it became the Malcolm McLaren story". Being in the Pistols had a progressively destructive effect on Vicious. As Lydon observed, "Up to that time, Sid was absolutely childlike. Everything was fun and giggly. Suddenly he was a big pop star. Pop star status meant press, a good chance to be spotted in all the right places, adoration." Early in 1977, he met
Nancy Spungen. Spungen introduced Vicious to heroin, and their emotional codependency alienated him from the other band members. Lydon later wrote, "we did everything to get rid of Nancy... She was killing him. I was absolutely convinced this girl was on a slow suicide mission... She wanted to take Sid with her."
A&M, Virgin, and Jubilee week The Pistols signed to
A&M Records at a March 1977 press ceremony held outside
Buckingham Palace. Afterwards, intoxicated, they went to the A&M offices where Vicious reportedly broke a toilet bowl and Rotten verbally abused members of the label's staff. A couple of days later, the Pistols got into a fight with another band at a club; one of Rotten's friends threatened a friend of A&M's English director; A&M broke their contract with the Pistols on 16 March. Although 25,000 copies of the "God Save the Queen" single had already been pressed, nearly all were destroyed. '' magazine. Vicious first performed with the Pistols at London's Notre Dame Hall on 28 March. That May, the Pistols signed with
Virgin Records, their third label in little more than half a year. During Virgin's release campaign for "God Save the Queen", workers at the pressing plant laid down tools in protest at the song's lyrics and Reid's cover art of
Queen Elizabeth II with her face obscured by cutout letters forming the song title and the band name. The single was eventually released on 27 May. Its lyrics–"God save the queen / the fascist regime..She ain't no human being / and there's no future / in England's dreaming"–lead to widespread outcry from the British
tabloids, leading to several major chains withdrawing it from sale. It was banned by
BBC radio and television and every independent radio station, making it, according to the music critic Alexis Petridis, the "most heavily censored record in British history". The song's social impact has been described by the musician and journalist
Sean O'Hagan as "punk's crowning glory". The single was timed to coincide with the height of
Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee celebrations. By Jubilee weekend, a week and a half after the record's release, it had sold more than 150,000 copies. On 7 June, McLaren chartered a boat to have the Sex Pistols perform while sailing the
River Thames, passing
Westminster Pier and the
Houses of Parliament. The event was conceived as a mockery of the Queen's river procession planned for two days later, but ended in chaos. Police launches forced the boat to dock, and constabulary surrounded the gangplanks at the pier. While the band members and their equipment were hustled down a side stairwell, McLaren, Westwood, and many of the band's entourage were arrested. "God Save the Queen" opened at number 2 on the official UK record chart for Jubilee week, behind
Rod Stewart's "
I Don't Want to Talk About It". McLaren claimed that
CBS Records, who distributed both singles, told him that the Pistols were outselling Stewart two to one. There is evidence that exceptional measures were taken by the
British Phonographic Institute, which oversaw the compilation of the UK chart, to exclude sales from Virgin's shops. Attacks on punk fans rose and in mid-June, Rotten was assaulted by a knife-wielding gang outside Islington's Pegasus pub, causing tendon damage to his left arm. Reid and Cook were beaten up in other incidents; three days after the Pegasus assault, Rotten was attacked again. According to Cook, after the "God Save the Queen" single and the Grundy incident, the Pistols were public enemy number one, and there was a rivalry between gangs of
rockabillies,
Teddy Boys and punks, which often led to violence. By that August the band were unable to publicise UK dates, forcing them to tour pseudonymously as the SPOTS (Sex Pistols on Tour Secretly) to avoid cancellation. McLaren had long wanted to make a movie featuring the Sex Pistols. Temple's first task was to assemble
Sex Pistols Number 1, a 25-minute mosaic of footage from various sources, much of it refilmed from television screens.
Number 1 was often screened at concert venues before the band took stage. Using media footage from the Thames incident, Temple created another short,
Jubilee Riverboat (aka
Sex Pistols Number 2).
Never Mind the Bollocks 's logo for
Never Mind the Bollocks Beginning in early 1977, Lydon, Jones and Cook began to record tracks for their debut album with producer Chris Thomas. Initially titled
God Save Sex Pistols, it became known during the summer as
Never Mind the Bollocks. Vicious's lack of musical ability became apparent soon after he joined the sessions; according to Jones they "tried as hard as possible not to let [Vicious] anywhere near the studio". Although Matlock was asked to return as a
session musician, Jones ultimately played most of the bass parts. Vicious's bass is reportedly present on "
Bodies": According to Jones, "we just let him do it. When he left I
dubbed another part on, leaving Sid's down low." Jones says that Vicious showed up for the "God Save the Queen" session, while Lydon remembers him being there during the recording of an unused version of "Submission". Two further singles were released from the Thomas sessions; "Pretty Vacant" on 1 July and "
Holidays in the Sun" on 14 October. Each was a top-ten hit. The album was released on 28 October 1977.
Rolling Stone described it as "the most exciting rock & roll record of the Seventies". Some critics were disappointed that the album contained all four previously released singles, and dismissed it as little more than a "greatest hits" compilation. Containing the track "Bodies"—in which Rotten says "fuck" six times—and "God Save the Queen", and featuring the word
bollocks in its title, the album was banned by
Boots,
WHSmith and
Woolworths. The Conservative shadow minister for education condemned it as "a symptom of the way society is declining", and both the
Independent Television Companies Association and Association of Independent Radio Contractors banned its advertisements. Nonetheless, advance sales were sufficient to make it number one on the album chart. The album title led to a high-profile legal case after a
Nottingham Virgin Records store was threatened with prosecution for displaying "indecent printed matter". The case was thrown out when defending
QC John Mortimer produced an expert witness who established that
bollocks was an
Old English term for a small ball, that the word appeared in place names without causing local communities erotic disturbance, and that in the nineteenth century
bollocks had been used as a nickname for clergymen: "Clergymen are known to talk a good deal of rubbish and so the word later developed the meaning of nonsense." In the context of the album title, the term does in fact primarily signify "nonsense". Steve Jones off-handedly came up with the title as the band debated what to call the album. An exasperated Jones said, "Oh, fuck it, never mind the bollocks of it all." After dates in the Netherlands, the band set out on a Never Mind the Bans tour of Britain in December 1977. Of eight scheduled dates, four were cancelled due to illness or political pressure. On Christmas Day, the Pistols played two shows at Ivanhoe's in
Huddersfield, the first show being for the children of striking firemen. These were the band's final UK performances for more than eighteen years. The Pistols January 1978 US tour was initially scheduled for nine dates, but due to Vicious's drug use and the breakdown in the relationship between Lydon and McLaren was cut short after seven shows. It was delayed due to American authorities' reluctance to issue a visa to Jones, given his criminal record, leading to the cancellation of several dates in the
Northeast. Although the tour had been highly anticipated in the US, it was plagued by in-fighting and poor planning, leading to frustrated and belligerent audiences. Suffering from heroin withdrawal during a show in
Dallas, he spat blood at a woman who climbed onstage and punched him in the face. He was admitted to hospital later that night to treat various injuries. Offstage he is said to have kicked a photographer, attacked a security guard, and challenged one of his own bodyguards to a fight. Rotten was suffering flu and coughing up blood, and he felt increasingly isolated from Cook and Jones and disgusted by Vicious. Jones later said that he and Cook "couldn't stand being around Johnny and Sid anymore. You couldn't turn round for a minute without Sid starting a fight... Then on top of that you had Rotten, who was on his own trip and basically thought he was God by that stage." On 14 January 1978, during the tour's final date at the
Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, a disillusioned Rotten introduced the band's encore saying, "You'll get one number and one number only 'cause I'm a lazy bastard." That one number was a
Stooges cover, "No Fun". At the end of the song, Rotten, kneeling on the stage, chanted an unambiguous declaration, "This is no fun. No fun. This is no fun—at all. No fun." As the final cymbal crash died away, Rotten addressed the audience directly—"Ah-ha-ha. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night"—before throwing down his microphone and walking offstage. He later observed, "I felt cheated, and I wasn't going on with it any longer; it was a ridiculous farce. Sid was completely out of his brains—just a waste of space. The whole thing was a joke at that point... [Malcolm] wouldn't speak to me... He would not discuss anything with me. But then he would turn around and tell Paul and Steve that the tension was all my fault because I wouldn't agree to anything." On 17 January the band travelled separately to Los Angeles. Vicious, in increasingly bad shape, was brought by a friend who then took him to New York; Vicious took a mixture of
valium and
methadone (later excused as "nervous exhaustion") and was hospitalised on arrival. Rotten flew to New York to visit Vicious, and announced the band's break-up on 18 January. Virtually broke, he telephoned the head of Virgin Records,
Richard Branson, who agreed to pay for his flight back to London.
Post-Lydon phase and initial breakup Cook, Jones and Vicious did not play live together again after Rotten's departure. Over the next several months, McLaren arranged for recordings in Brazil (with Jones and Cook), Paris (with Vicious) and London; they and others stepped in as lead vocalists on tracks. On 30 June, a single was released: on one side, notorious criminal
Ronnie Biggs sang "
No One Is Innocent" accompanied by Jones and Cook; on the other, Vicious sang the classic "
My Way", over both a Jones–Cook backing track and a string orchestra. The single charted at number seven. Vicious moved to New York, where he attempted to launch a career as a solo artist with Spungen as his manager. In September 1978, backed by members of the New York Dolls, Vicious recorded songs eventually released on his posthumous 1979 live album
Sid Sings. On 12 October 1978, Spungen was found dead aged 20 in the
Hotel Chelsea room she was sharing with Vicious, from a stab wound to her stomach. Police recovered drug paraphernalia from the scene and Vicious was arrested and charged with her murder. While on
bail, Vicious was arrested for smashing a beer mug in the face of
Patti Smith's brother Todd Smith. Vicious was taken into custody on 9 December 1978 and spent the next 54 days in
Rikers Island jail, where he underwent enforced
cold turkey detox. He was released on bail on 1 February 1979. Later that night, following a small party to celebrate his release, he died of a
heroin overdose, aged 21. Cook and Jones continued to work together, with two new tracks they'd recorded, "Black Leather" and "Here We Go Again", appearing on the Japanese compilation ''The Very Best Of Sex Pistols And We Don't Care
in December 1979, Other new songs appeared on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle'', a soundtrack album for a then-uncompleted film about the Sex Pistols. The album was released by Virgin Records in February 1979, and consisted mostly of cover songs and new tracks sung by Jones, Vicious, Cook, Biggs, McLaren and
Edward Tudor-Pole. Several tracks feature Rotten's vocals from early unissued sessions, in some cases with re-recorded music by Jones and Cook. There is one live cut, from the band's final concert in San Francisco. The album also contains tracks in which other artists cover Sex Pistols songs. Four songs from
Swindle became top ten singles, one more than from
Never Mind the Bollocks. The 1978 "No One Is Innocent"/"My Way" single was followed in 1979 by the Vicious-sung cover of
Eddie Cochran's "
Something Else" (number three, and the biggest-selling single under the Sex Pistols name); Jones singing an original, "Silly Thing" (number six); and Vicious's second Cochran cover, "
C'mon Everybody" (number three). Two more singles from the soundtrack were put out under the Sex Pistols name, with Tudor-Pole and others singing "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle", and "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone", which featured a Rotten vocal from 1976, ; both fell just shy of the Top Twenty. Meanwhile, Lydon initiated legal proceedings against McLaren and the Pistols' management company, Glitterbest, which McLaren controlled. Among the claims were non-payment of royalties, improper usage of the title "Johnny Rotten", unfair contractual obligations and damages for "all the criminal activities that took place". Hearings began on 7 February 1979, five days after Vicious's death. Cook and Jones allied with McLaren, but as evidence mounted that their manager had spent virtually all of the band's revenue on his film project, they switched sides. On 14 February, the court put the film and its soundtrack into
receivership—no longer under McLaren's control, they were now to be administered as exploitable assets for addressing the band members' financial claims. McLaren was left with substantial personal debts and legal fees.
Aftermath After leaving the Pistols, Rotten reverted to his birth name of Lydon and formed the influential post-punk band
Public Image Ltd with former Clash member
Keith Levene and school friend
Jah Wobble. The band scored a UK top-ten hit with their debut single, 1978's "
Public Image". Following their fall out with McLaren, Cook and Jones looked to work with new musicians. Simon Draper, the Managing Director of Virgin Records told
Melody Maker, "Whoever joins Cook and Jones will be part of the Sex Pistols", however they started a project with
Sham 69 singer
Jimmy Pursey, which became known as the
Sham Pistols. Following this, Cook and Jones formed
the Professionals, which lasted from 1979-1982. Jones went on to play with the bands Chequered Past and
Neurotic Outsiders. He also recorded two solo albums,
Mercy and
Fire and Gasoline. As of 2017, Jones lives in Los Angeles, where he has hosted a daily radio programme, ''
Jonesy's Jukebox'', since 2015. Since the Rich Kids' break-up in 1979, Matlock has played with various bands, including recording and touring with
Iggy Pop in 1980. McLaren went on to carry out a one-month consultancy for
Adam and the Ants and manage their offshoot
Bow Wow Wow. In the mid-1980s he released a series of successful and influential records as a solo artist. ''The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle'' film was eventually completed by Julien Temple, who received sole credit for the script after McLaren had his name taken off the production. Released in 1980, it heavily reflects McLaren's vision. It is a fictionalised and partially animated retelling of the band's history and aftermath with McLaren in the lead role, Jones as second lead, and contributions from Vicious (including his memorable performance of "My Way") and Cook. It incorporates promotional videos shot for "God Save the Queen" and "Pretty Vacant" and extensive documentary footage as well, much of it focusing on Rotten. In Temple's description, he and McLaren conceived it as a "very stylized... polemic". They were reacting to the fact that the Pistols had become the "poster on the bedroom wall of the day where you kneel down last thing at night and pray to your rock god. And that was never the point... The myth had to be dynamited in some way. We had to make this film in a way to enrage the fans." In the film, McLaren claims to have created the band from scratch and engineered its notorious reputation; much of what structure the loose narrative has is based on McLaren's teaching a series of "lessons" to be learned from "an invention of mine they called the punk rock". The 1979 court ruling left many issues between Lydon and McLaren unresolved. Five years later, Lydon filed another action. Finally, on 16 January 1986, Lydon, Jones, Cook and the estate of Sid Vicious were awarded control of the band's heritage, including the rights to ''The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle'' and all the footage shot for it—more than 250 hours. That same year, the fictionalised film of Vicious's relationship with Spungen was released:
Sid and Nancy, directed by
Alex Cox. In his autobiography, Lydon attacked the film, saying that it "celebrates heroin addiction", goes out of its way to "humiliate [Vicious's] life" and completely misrepresents the Sex Pistols' part in the London punk scene. In May 2022
FX released the miniseries
Pistol about the band.
Reunions The original band members reunited in 1996 for the six-month Filthy Lucre tour, which included dates in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Japan. Their access to the archives associated with ''The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle
facilitated the production of the 2000 documentary The Filth and the Fury''. The film was also directed by Temple and formulated as an attempt to tell the story from the band's point of view, in contrast to
Swindles focus on McLaren and the media. In 2002 the band reunited to play the
Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in London. They undertook a short tour of North America in 2003. In March 2006, the band sold the rights to their back catalogue to
Universal Music Group. In November 2006, the Sex Pistols were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the band rejected the honour. According to Jones, "once you want to be put into a museum, Rock & Roll's over; it's not voted by fans, it's voted by people who induct you ... people who are already in it." The Sex Pistols reunited for seven performances in the UK in November 2007. In 2008, they undertook a series of European festival appearances, titled the Combine Harvester Tour. That same year, they released the DVD ''
There'll Always Be An England, recorded at their Brixton Academy appearance on 10 November 2007. The band signed with Universal in 2012 to re-release Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols''. performing at the
Royal Albert Hall on 24 March 2025 On 3 June 2024, Cook, Jones, and Matlock announced two reunion shows at the Bush Hall in Shepherds Bush billed as "
Frank Carter and Sex Pistols". Carter, of
Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and
Gallows, provided lead vocals in the absence of Lydon. They played the sole Sex Pistols studio album ''
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols'' in its entirety. On 25 August they headlined along with
Editors, the 2024 AMA Music Festival. A UK tour was later announced for September 2024, which was officially billed as "Frank Carter and Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols do Never Mind the Bollocks". On 20 September they played the Rock City venue in Nottingham, the next day the Birmingham o2 Academy and on 26 September they played in London, Kentish Town. On 12 November 2024, they were announced as part of the 2025
Download Festival lineup. In January 2025, they announced their first Australian tour since 1996, which took place in April. The reunion is set to continue into 2026, beginning with a run of european summer festivals, followed by a North American and UK arena tour running from September to December. In October 2025, Matlock revealed that the band have had "ideas" regarding new music with Carter, but were apprehensive about the reception that new music would receive among contemporary audiences. ==Musical style==