The Filth and the Fury, website
August 2003

"Sex Pistol Will Play!"

Do you think the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame will bite the bullet and try nominate the Pistols again next year?

No, I don't want to know. I never did, but I do wanna know when they deliberately avoid history, you can't do that. I find it amusing, but I think let them now eat shit and die. They're not gonna get me in that building, you never would anyway. I'm no one's lap dog, you can't put me on a leash, and that was the attitude of it, fuck off. Anyway, thank Christ they didn't nominate us ‘cos it seems death comes to the lead singer at alarming rates these days!

I can see why the Clash got in and not the Pistols, the Clash are part of that whole Rock n Roll thing anyway.

They are, they're very much that way. That's always been their sensibility, to slime about and be happy to be everyone's friends. Look, Joe Strummer, it would have been a real dilemma to him, if he was alive, whether to go or not, it would have been a real problem. But he would have gone. That's the kind of class war socialist Joe Strummer is, and always was. It's just about the slogans. You know, if you don't come from it, don't fuck about with it.

I said at the time that your average REM, or Queen or Who fan likes the Clash anyway, but not the Sex Pistols...

Yeah exactly. They're the nice punks, ‘they're souperrr'.

The Pistols are too punk for them, too real.

Too punk! (laughs) What an outrage, that is an outrage isn't it (laughs)! That's a repressive society where you can't be horrible, I'm not horrible, they made me horrible, I'm just honest.

I know I always say this, but to be honest I'm surprised you're playing with the Pistols again!

Your surprised we are playing again? So am I. I sort of didn't want to do this tour at first, then I heard Paul Cook didn't... Frankly, it was falling apart, and I thought it was stupid, once our name has been committed to a thing we have to do it, that's just the way I am.

Why didn't Paul want to do it?

I'd have to go into discussing the money and I don't want to do that, but believe me the original budget was ridiculous, we'd have been seriously out of pocket. So I stepped in and corrected it. Then again, I don't want to say that either, you know what I mean? Because every time I tell the truth of the thing it's seen as I'm being fucking arrogant, I've worked my arse off on this tour.

Yeah, I know that, and I know the work you put in last year, I don't think people realise just how hands on you are, and how much work goes into it all. It's always absolute chaos, but you get there!

Yeah, I do, but you know what, I'm fucking annoyed that people are being led to believe that Anita Camarata is the Sex Pistols manager, it's really not on. She manages three of them, she doesn't manage the band, and she certainly doesn't manage me.

How did the US tour come about anyway?

After Crystal Palace and the Inland Invasion show's last year there was gossip hovering around that we would play more shows, but it didn't happen. Then news pieces began slipping out in the States that we were playing here there and everywhere, and I just stepped in and corrected it, and made definite dates...

Certain venues attracted my attention as being hilarious! The Greek Theatre in LA for instance, I mean this really is 'Barbarians at the gate' now! Atlantic City and Los Vegas are hysterical by anyone's language, it's hysterical. Toronto's a weird one but that's kind of fun, and it fell in like that. It just made sense. And there's a lot of people in America that really do ‘get' us. And now they're gonna get us proper.

Do you think there is more interest in the Sex Pistols than there used to be?

Well, there's no real competition to us. Not that we ever asked for any. I don't see anyone out there really telling it like it is, or showing it like it is. It's quite an outstanding feat for a band that's been around 25 plus years not to have a record label, but that's how ostracised and outside of the industry we are. But hello, fuck it, I'm the living proof if we can put a tour together like this without any record company money, and without any need for product. Well, it's self explanatory, hello, young girls and boys, you too can do this. Fucking ignore the system, use it when it suits you.

What is punk? It's do it yourself isn't it? And guess what? We're still doing it ourselves. If there's any flags to wave, I honestly don't see anyone out there doing it. They're all so super-starred and structured, and video orientated, it's really negative. They're all sucked up into the shitsdom. And frankly, after 25 years I'm bored seeing all my different hairdos dotted around the universe, I should have been a hairdresser (laughs)! I would have got royalties on anyone in the Top 30!

Have Virgin ignored the tour?

We're not technically aligned to them any more. It's only back catalogue, and even that they're no good at, you know that!

Well, as you just said, it proves that bands can still put things together themselves, without record companies. It proves it can be done.

Yes, it can be, easily. Band's are just all constantly lied to that without ‘the video' and 'the record deal' you don't stand a chance. Well, that's MTV perpetrating nonsenses like that. It's the same nonsenses with the ‘What's the point, there's nothing new to be done anymore, it's all been done before' attitude. That's just lackadaisical, I think these days it comes with the flip flops and baggy jeans.

It seems bands have just gave up, they say the industry is dead, and it's not worth the hassle anymore.

The only thing that's dead when you have that attitude is your own head, and your own lack of information, and that's laziness.

They are plenty of underground scenes out there, it doesn't matter if you like dance, or rock or whatever, there is stuff out there. You just have to find it yourself. That's what I've always done...

And that's what I've always done. What makes this generation think that it should all be handed to them on a platter? Where's your effort? where's your input?

Do you see the Pistols as an on going thing? Do you think they will keep playing?

No. No... oh, I don't know. I can't say, people ask ‘Will we make a record', well, only if we want to. I do not bow to any outside pressure. It's how I feel in my own head, and it's the same with the other three, I hope! I can't speak for them and I wouldn't want to. If we did new songs it would feel gimmicky to me. I'm writing very well on my own right now, and I don't want to clutter all that in with it.

You can't win anyway, if you just play old stuff, people want new stuff, and if you play new stuff they'd only moan for the old stuff.

I never pander to an audience. I do what I do ‘cos I love doing it, and ‘yipee' if anyone else likes it. You have to be above all that, and oddly, the way the Pistols first started, we were written off as no hopers, and that freedom gave us an immense chance to just do what we wanted. It's always been that way ever since. I don't have to explain why ‘I don't want to' to anybody...

A lot of people think you aren't serious about taking the Sex Pistols to Iraq! I know you are.

Very, very serious. It's ridiculous, I don't need to convince anybody. If you don't believe me by now when I say a thing, well you haven't been listening. My big question is, tell me one reason why not? And that's where I stump them, ‘cos there is no reason not to...

Have you made any official approaches yet?

No, we're going through the Police networks, we've got tie ins! It's very difficult to tell you (laughs)! but we're contacting the Iraq Police force, discreetly!

So you are going through official channels?

Yes, unofficially official!

The only problem I could see would be insurance for the band and crew.

Don't you worry I have a crew! (laughs). Half of North London will wanna be in on that one!

That will be some away game!

That's right! That's the approach. We come bearing gifts not bombs! No look, just on a curiosity level, it would be ‘Oh you can do that there'. You can actually rage against the machine properly, and not just shout into an empty box.

What do the rest of the band think about it?

You'll have to ask them, but I bet you they are denying any knowledge of it! (laughs). I'm getting the stone wall treatment (laughs). But if I can prove it can be done then they'll do it. The thing is to prove to them it's safe, and that's where I'm being deadly serious. I am looking at that, and I'm not getting told anything like it would be dangerous for us, what I'm getting from the people of this country is nobody has ever given them nothing, ‘That would be nice, thank you'. We're giving something for nothing to the people, we're not playing to the troops, to the people. Just like us they're human beings. I'm not charging. we wouldn't charge money, or do this for money, its a freebie.

I don't know that much about it, but do you think they know anything about rock n roll? Do you think they've had any exposure to it?

No, they don't know anything about rock n roll. Well, they do actually, Iran is very modern, which is right next door and cassettes and things do get in. When I first did Estonia years ago with PiL I didn't know they'd heard of us at all in the Russian Eastern Block, but they bloody well did. They'd pick it up off the TV's from across the borders from Finland, and they were very, very up on it. It doesn't matter how strict or cruel a regime is there are ways of finding things out. Just think BBC Radio during occupied France in World War Two. Nowadays there's the BBC World Service etc, so they will be aware. And I want them to be aware there's a point here, they're being told democracy is a good thing for them. Well, I think understand there is a bad side to democracy also, and hello, that's what the Pistols do is point that out...

Do you have a time scale on it? It's obviously gonna take some time to set up.

Realistically I would say next year. Honestly, if I have to go there with a tambourine myself, or any way shape or form I will. I think I owe it to them as human beings.

Well, I hope it comes off.

It will. I know all the negatives straight away, and honestly there aren't enough negatives to match up with the positive, there just isn't. It's an assumption that it would be an excuse for them to murder what, four bods from Blighty, why would they bother? I think they've got bigger things to worry about like food and water. They're not the target, we're not the oppressors, in fact, if anything we're the oppressed (laughs).

I don't see anyone else offering to play, the Stones won't even go to China let alone Iraq.

Yeah, they've been pulling out of all of that because of the SARS thing, I mean wankers, really wankers. That's why I hopped onto that plane to Toronto recently for the NXNE thing. I believed what Canadians were telling me, rather than American news reports, and there was nothing there, nothing. It was all contained in one hospital, and it never left it.

You wouldn't have know that from the press reports.

No you wouldn't. I'm very against the press anyway, because of their constant fucking about with the truth. They just don't tell it as it is. I think SARS was just a scapegoat to get out of the Iraqi situation. The new red herring. Anywhere that went against American policy was a target, and Canada was very against that war.

Going back to last year, how did you enjoy the Crystal Palace show?

Fantastic. Fantastic, very lovely. There's your so called lowest common dominator, well, we didn't all kill each other at the bottom of the hill in the Valley. Far from it. I felt a great sense of unity from that crowd, which I really liked.

It was a great day out, but as always the press just wrote it off.

Yeah, well that's the shitsdom, and they will always be against us. They wrote their negative reviews before we even got there, but that gig, just getting that venue was a nightmare. Every red tape and excuse not to play anywhere in Britain was pulled on us, everywhere... ‘Silver Machine' was a great start, if people didn't get that, well, they're ignoring punk. That's the beginning of rave! And we're giving a nod and a wink to it. People have got to get off this snobbery, they've got to get away from it. If anyone makes a record, then it's done for your entertainment, it's not a threat to your lifestyle, unless your lifestyle is fake.

It was a good day, it was a good set, there was a good atmosphere.

Exactly, it was a brilliant atmosphere, with a crowd that had the capacity for some serious bleeding threatening behaviour! But we don't hurt ourselves, and this is something that the ‘powers that be' haven't noticed (laughs). If you leave us alone we're fine! I liked the way the Police backed way off right from the very beginning, they kept an incredibly low profile. They were way, way away in small groups, hidden. Of course they had their little special squads, because they were expecting hell on earth, but they were seriously not ready for it, but it isn't like that. I'm sorry but what I think we are is retaliation, if they came into stop that or wreck that gig it would have been chaos.

It was amazing, we couldn't get anyone to film it for any kind of decent money, nothing, no interest from the industry. No one wanted to back it. We had a seriously dead against media, and filled the place. That's an enormous venue, an unused Olympic fucking running track! That field is twice as big as Wembley.

They pushed us into the back end of the Universe with no possible easy way of getting to or from, right. And they can scallywag all they want, and bitch about ‘only 20,000 there'. Hello, excuse me, ONLY 20,000! And that's their lowest figure, and I know damn well it was more like fucking 30. The lowest figure they can estimate is 20,000, for fuck's sake, piss off!! That's huge by anyone's standards!

You're not gonna sit down and watch the Pistols are you? The stands were always gonna be empty, nobody wants to sit in the stand.

Who does? Excuse me, Sex Pistols gig what are seats there for? That's a half mile away...

Do you think there will be more UK gigs in the future?

I've no idea. I see no reason why we should cease to exist, I really fucking enjoy being on stage with this band, right, but I really enjoy my solo stuff too. I see no reason why the two should be in opposite directions. They are just different things. Look, without the Pistols nothing that I do now would be possible, so that's my homage, that's where I learned my trade. Do what I want, be honest to myself and then it would do good for others, that's all, full on.

The other day MTV asked me ‘What young kid can afford to pay $35 to come see the Sex Pistols?' I said, well, the same kid and his mate that would not have to pay $75-100 to see any other band going out this year. It's like get it right, that's the lowest fee you can possibly charge. We run it on such a hairline.

For the press money is the easiest thing to beat the Pistols with, and they always go that same route, it's always money, money...

Fine. Let them go it, but they'll walk into their own trap because we're going out at exactly half what anyone else does, even on their own, and we've got three bands.

Who are the support bands for the tour?

One of them is Reverend Horton Heat. Fucking crazy! He's turned religion into rockabily in a ferociously insulting grotesque way (laughs)! Full on hilarious, and very, very volatile. Hardcore. Texas style. You'll like them, they're a fucking challenge! Totally original in their way, you can't say ‘Oh I've seen 20 of that' because you really wouldn't want to!

Are they well known, or are they just breaking through?

No, they've been around a while. The Dropdead Murphys want to be in too and that's alright, they're happy chappies. I find them hilarious. They're really liked by audiences, they create a really happy vibe to a crowd, so that's where I like them.

As you mentioned earlier, you went to Canada recently and did a talk at the NXNE music industry convention, how did that go?

I really enjoyed it. It was a really nice friendly talk with 600 people. And reading that nonsense on the internet of how some nasty arsed journalist bastard could have interpreted it into me being a racist. Fucking shit. It's like any chance to have a dig. It always comes from this kind of left wing absurdists point of view. Where they don't care if they lie through their teeth they just want to destroy what gets in the way of their vision. Their vision of the world is a corrupt one.

I've no idea how it can be turned like that. Basically it's a lie. I know there was a TV cameraman there and he kept trying to butt in. He was butting in on people and I couldn't be bothered to deal with him. I was talking to people who were genuinely interested in how things were, not some old bloke with an attitude. So I just said ‘Shut up fatty', because I couldn't be bothered to deal with that, but maybe it was him, I don't know.

When that shit is thrown at me I'm fully loaded! I'm armed to the teeth to go out and get them, and I want this fucker, if he's gonna shout that shit I'll catch him out with it. I've been called everything you care to mention in this world to try and stop me, and it's all been wrong. I don't mind if somebody knows something about me and they're right, I agree, but not things like that, because that's disgusting and particularly if you bear in mind where I come from, and what I come from... Look, if I'm a racist fuck's sake what a wacky way I've turned to be one.

I couldn't believe ‘The Independent' when I did the Democratic Convention with ‘Rotten TV' a few years ago, I spoke to a couple in Wisconsin, just talking to them, but there was a journalist ringing from ‘The Independent', and he presumed, or assumed, that everyone in Wisconsin was racist, and me talking to them proved me to be a racist! You're just supposed to dismiss an entire populations on a whim? On a assumption? And even if they were racist why would I not talk to them? How do you change this world if you don't communicate? This ferocity to create barriers and trouble and build walls between us is the problem.

Someone has always got to get in there and be an arsehole. Now that's bitter, it's political and there's a motivation in it because, it's like, if they just don't like me then don't fucking bother. But they do need to write about me, they do need to hate me. In a weird way I'm supplying a service...

It now seems to be the trend to slag you off, even the fans are doing it now.

Because I've done it. At least I've done something, I've given them something to talk about. Trainspotter's can really be aggravating, ‘cos if they've got the time to be picky about little details of my life that are of no importance to me, well... I've led a full life matey, I can't be expected to remember every single day (laughs)!

The way I see it you were the one who helped to teach them to stand up and slag things off, and now they're turning it on you!

Right, and they've turned it on the one who fucking helped them. I've given them the gun and they've turned it on the wrong one! (laughs). It's because they're cowards to take the next step, cowards.

One of the things I think people don't like about you is that you do things with a smile on your face, and you have a laugh. People expect you to be dour and super serious. That's the kind of mentality we have nowadays...

Yeah, who are they to say what I should or shouldn't be doing? Where did they get it in their head they have the right to tell me what I should or shouldn't be doing, I don't do that to no one.

I think people want you to be sat in a bedsit reading philosophy being depressed.

How fashionable! That's a nice image isn't it! Who created that image, that genre, that I'm presumed to wallow in?

That's where bands like Nirvana, who took up this so called ‘punk rock ethic' got it so seriously wrong.

We do this to get out our problems, not stick in them right? When you play it that way, and you wallow in that self pity and dour misery. You are the problem mate! I don't need to fake those emotions. They are there and I deal with them, but I'm not going to see them as fashionable, because that is just self-pity, that's blaming someone else for your problem. The problem is you. Don't let the bastards grind you down. Smile in the face of adversity. Just ‘cos your paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. They're all cliches, but there good ones.

They've got that bedsit mentality we were just talking about.

Very much so, and it's very difficult to make people get out that self pity lifestyle because it answers all their laziness, ‘Nobody likes me, woe is me'. Well, nobody likes me, so what? Why should I bother about that? If they're gonna waste their whole life slagging me off, they've just given me fuel for a new song. There's a definite thing out there against me, they think I'm doing this just to be nasty and take the piss. Fucking hell, I wish I was that complicated! That would be some survival treat that would be! Whatever thing in nature created me to be ME. I'm DNA led! And therefore I am natural!

You have to say, through no fault of your own you've been consistently hated for 25 years, you've done well!

Yeah. Like it or lump it. I never asked them for anything, fuck ‘em. I do not need them, and frankly, there's their problem.

It's like you've said before, the press reaction to ‘Filthy Lucre' didn't matter, because the real Pistols audience doesn't listen to the media anyway.

No they don't. And that really kills the press. Mojo or whatever, all these magazines, they presume their reviewers are responsible for the tastes of an entire culture. And they do, they inflict their opinions on their readers. They absorb this attitude and this stance as being the correct and clever one. When you're journalist led, you're a fucking twot, because it means nothing to me the opinion of anyone in a single's or album review, I need to fucking hear it.

Yeah, exactly, you get whole reviews that don't even mention how the record sounds. It's just an opinion about the band, or what the journalist was doing while they were listening to it or whatever.

Yeah, it's all about them, and how it doesn't blend into their lifestyle, or does. Or they directly relate it to a train of thought, eg situationism or whatever. An ‘ism', it's put into an ‘ism'. I don't care how some posh cunt feels, I want to know how the record sounds, tell me, explain it to me. Is the drum sound ferocious? Is it brittle guitars, what is it? That's what I want, that's what I want to hear.

I've had records reviewed where there's not one word about the song in it. It's all been a personal attack. ‘NME' have led that kind of attitude for a long time, ‘Who does this cunt think he is, it's obvious he's taking the piss'. I remember ‘Psycho's Path' reviews going on about ‘How dare he talk about using toilet rolls, and Accordion's falling down stairs, and boxes for drums'. Like that's a negative thing. Well, it's like yes ok, but what does it sound like? And there's not one mention of it anywhere.

I think me growing up, reading those reviews, taught me how NOT to do it. I'm not a fucking journalist, I never wanted to be. I taught myself anything I do now.

Yeah me too, and it's good isn't it. Led by bad example. When a reviewer doesn't like you, and lets that interrupt, then it becomes just an ignorant bias. It upsets their idea of life, it doesn't fit into what they like. Well I don't care. I don't make my records to fit in a cozy collection of posing, ‘Oh cor, look you've got all the best records, you must have read blah blah's Top 100 hundred album reviews maann'. They rush out and buy everyone of them.

A lot of people only like certain bands or albums because they think they have to, ‘The White Album' or whatever, people think they have to have them and that's what's happening with the Pistols and ‘Never Mind the Bollocks' some people are only buying it because they think it's one of those albums, and I don't want that. Buy it because you like it, it's not hard...

Yeah I know. And I know damn well if they buy it that way they're gonna be bloody upset, they're not going to understand it. Well they shouldn't anyway, it's not for you.

I think over the years certain types of journalist's just picked a stance against you. Back in the early PiL days it was the self-styled ‘champions of punk rock' versus the ‘Avant Garde intellectuals!' Neither of them ever had a clue!

Oh God, I've had that slung at me. I've had I'm an intellectual and a poet slung at me (laughs). Those are insults, they are. And I have to say at the time when I said I take those terms as insults that shocked people, because that's what everyone wanted to think of themselves as. And it's like why? You're posing. Here's a compliment to me, instinct. What's wrong with that? What do they want? I should wear a dickie bow, and horned rimed glasses and pontificate, well no sorry, it ain't like that. There's no pose in me.

It's back to that thing of you doing things with a smile on your face, intellectuals can't do that they have to be serious, and that's the way they actually think.

Well, they misunderstand principle one any Gaelic person. Humour. Humour, you'll tell the best truth and honesty in humour, and you'll catch the point and purpose of life in humour, but you won't in self indulgent misery and intellectual mind twaddling. The longer and longer you think something over in your head the further and further you will twist it until it becomes so self absorbed. Any thought you have, if it's not shared with another person isn't worth it, it's worthless. If it doesn't relate to another human being it's pointless, and that's what intellectualism is. It's another ‘ism'. Deep thought pah!

Tragedy, death, those are deep thoughts, but that's when someone near you suffers, that's deep thought. These people don't seem to have a life, they judge things in such a superficial, childish, self-absorbed, coffee shop, wine bar way, you know, they'd create a bigger stink if the Quiche is off, rather than a family or friend dying. It's insane. And they have this need to hurt people verbally, well, I can do that very well but it's always in retaliation. My weapons are well fucking armed.

You've had plenty of practise!

Well, I've had to. This is the truth, I wouldn't know how to deal with a compliment, I'd die of shock! What?!