Episode 40: STEVE JONES part 1

Jay discusses the early life of Steve Jones. From being molested by his step father to shoplifting anything he can. As a teenager he becomes the guitarist for the punk rock band THE SEX PISTOLS…using musical equipment he stole from David Bowie! Listen and find out more about a wild life Steve Jones had. 

Contact the show: jaysrockandrollstories@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hello, baby. Hello. Hello, hello, hello, rock and roll. Welcome back to Jay's Rock and Roll Stories. I'm your host, Jay. Hey there. Um, I got something for you today. Let me explain. Uh, you know, if you if you had listened to the New York Dolls episode, and if you had listened to the Sid Vicious episode, yes, we talked a lot about the sex pistols. And uh, you know, I explained in the episode about death metal how I like to jump around the you know the buffet table, but I'm sticking around the same. I'm I'm about might be piggybacking a little bit, but what the hell, you know, rock and roll. Today's episode is Steve Jones, the lead guitarist, the guitarist of the Sex Pistols. And uh my initial um idea, because I was always curious about this. I I know Steve Jones, the Sex Pistols, I know that I know that story. Um, but I I know I've always known that after the Sex Pistols, he went on to do um like he was very big in that like like 80s like hair metal scene, like in LA, and like he was like partying with like guns and roses and shit, and I always thought, like, what the hell is that all about? So my episode was was gonna be focused on that, but after reading this book, it's called uh Lonely Boy, Tales from a Sex Pistol, the autobiography of Steve Jones. I just wanted to give the whole shebang, and um, there's some interesting stuff about his life, and um, so we're just gonna start from the beginning. I'm just gonna give uh a story about him, and we're just gonna brush over sex pistol stuff, and then we're gonna move over to his his post post uh you know musical world because we know a lot about sex pistol already, if you've been listening to the New York Dolls episodes and the Sid Vicious ones. Anyway, uh Steve Jones. Uh Steve Jones was uh was born in England in 1955, and he explains in his book that um you know his his mom and his dad split up early when he was a baby, and he was with his mom, and his his dad his dad left. His dad he explains in his book that his dad was a teddy boy, and rock and roll was always like involved in his life. What is a teddy boy? Um a teddy boy is uh uh it's this is this is not something that that happened in the States. This is this is very English. So let me um let me give you a good quote that I found when I was reading the uh The Beetle Who Vanished by Jim Birkenstadt because he was talking about how when um uh um Jimmy Nichol was uh Jimmy Nickel was a teddy boy. So here's a good definition. This this gives you an idea uh of what his what his father was, what Steve Jones' father was, and uh musically where where he he kind of came from in this period. So Steve Jones, born in 1955. So take listen to this real quick. What is a teddy boy? Post-World War II, Great Britain faced a complex series of problems that lasted well into the 50s. There was uh there was the task of rebuilding homes, businesses, factories, schools, hospitals that had been bombed by Nazi Germany. Additionally, Britain faced high unemployment, rationing, long-term debt, and the related the related problems of inflation. Much of Britain's infrastructure that had survived the war needed updating. Factors such as high unemployment, the national debt, the collapse of the British Empire in the post-war years left a new generation of young people unemployed and directionless. Typically, many of these young men would have been conscripted into the army or employed in factories, but now they are seemingly adrift. Left to find their own direction to adulthood, what lay ahead was a rebellious and creative course. This new social order gave rise to a unique identity created by these youths labeled teddy boys or teds. They gained infamy by forming game uh gangs and a sort of mantra of this new working class was uh live fast, die young. So uh going back to uh young Steve, born in 55, just uh raised by a single mom. Uh the mom has a couple boyfriends here and there, and he has a stepdad. When Steve, young Steve is 10 years old, the the mother is uh in the hospital recovering from a miscarriage. So uh Steve's home alone with his stepdad, and uh his stepfather ordered Steve. Okay, hold on. Disclaimer Show is for adults only, please. No grandparents, no kids. Kick them out. If they're around, press pause. Alright, that's your final warning. Alright, so he's home alone with his stepdad. Stepdad orders him to jerk him off. Steve's 10. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Uh so the stepdad's barking orders at him what to do, the guy's dick, and he finally does it. Terrible scene, but it's Steve explained that it never happened ever again. And Steve equates it to sort of like um like prison power, you know, like there was a lot of who's in charge, you know, with the stepdad, the mom, and Steve. So he kind of equates it to like uh in prison, like I did this to you, I made my mark on you, I'm the boss, and that kind of thing. Even before this abuse with the stepdad, there was this um like pedophile guy in the neighborhood, and uh he was uh he would just kind of lurk around and and try to get kids to do shit, and there was this one time when this pedophile creature character in the neighborhood would was like sort of like leaving how you would leave a uh a trail of cheese for a mouse. He was leaving a trail of ripped-out pages from a lingerie magazine for Steve to follow, right? Follow him, follow him, get in the get in the pages, and finally, then Steve realized, wow, I'm it's like I'm you're trying to get me to go to your lair, your your little hideout, and you figured you figured it out, and he and he ran off. So, um after this abuse by his stepfather, uh he had another run-in with the this pedophile guy in the neighborhood, and he eventually uh l let the guy suck him off, and even though he was too young to ejaculate, like it it's it still happened. And Steve at this point, Steve was so beyond care, you know, is abused so much, he was like, I don't give a shit. Go ahead. If you want to put do that, fine, I don't even know what you're doing. It's horrific. Um, but Steve explains that music was what really saved him. He talks about this one time, he recalls when a neighbor, um a neighbor right next to him, uh had a little record player and was playing Purple Haze, and he could hear it through the window, and like he would stop what he was doing and just put his air and turn to the window and listen. Purple Haze, and when the song was over, he would like yell out, play it again, play it again. So mute music is what he uh got into. Um another thing he really liked was shoplifting. Uh by age 12, his uh his fevery uh had graduated from you know stealing model trains to now stealing bicycles, mopeds. He had uh in his um basement, he had like a collection a collection of bicycles. Uh and he's also a good dresser, like the the kid like likes to uh sneak in and steal some good clothes from shops and stuff, and he refers to this ability to to thieve as his cloak, you know, like you put the cloak on, you can't see me. And this this goes on all the time. Uh he discovers masturbation, which is something that for him exists about five times a day. And uh he also enjoys becoming a peeping tom. Uh the little neighborhood that he lives in, there is like in his backyard, there's like a fence, and there's like an area, I guess in the States we call it Lover's Lane, where you know you would drive in and make out with your chick or whatever, and he would uh you know lean over the fence and watch and have a little wink. I think I think Steve's a funny guy though. Looking in this book, he's saying he's never told anybody any of this shit, you know. And uh in the book he talks about how he says um he said he says there's not a shelf in the library high enough for this shit, is there? This this is the good stuff. You just don't get that from the guy from Nickelback. At least not so far as I know. Oh, this this book came out in nine this book, this autobiography came out in 1920, 2017. That's when uh I think that's around the time when Nickelback was like uh the funny joke. Poor Nickelback. Anyway, uh an uh I like another quote he gives about his teenage years when he became obsessed with Rod Stewart. Alright, if you're a Rod Stewart slash faces fan, you'll know exactly what he's talking about. Um if you don't know, just fast forward 10 to 15 seconds. Okay, so he says, I was already convinced Rod was a star because Gasoline Alley was so fucking good. I loved First Step and Long Player, the two faces albums that came at either side of it, too. The great thing about the whole arrangement from my point of view was that you got twice as many albums to listen to if you count the third faces LP and a nod as as good as a wink uh to a blind horse, and Rod Rod's next album, A Never Dull Moment, which I certainly did, as they were just as good. That's five brilliant albums Rod released in the space about two years. I agree with you, Steve. Amen. Let me buy you a beer. That's yes, absolutely. Alright, the non-Rod Stewart fans, faces fans. Alright, well, let's keep going, okay? You don't know what the hell I was talking about. Also, around this time of Steve's teenage years, 1972, New York dolls come to play to open for the faces. We talked about this for the New York Dolls episode, and um Steve Jones was there. And Steve Jones is like, you know, wearing all this cool, cool clothes. He's able to sneak in, sneak backstage, hanging out with Ron Wood, guitarist from Faces, and they're drinking champagne together. Security comes in, and then you know, you know, Steve's thinking, oh fuck, they're gonna kick me out. And no, they just look at him and keep going. Like he looks like he's one of the one like in one of the bands. Alright. Anyway, Steve starts a band with some friends, and they find out, they find out where Ron Wood lives. They go there, they see him, they wave, he waves back, you know. Uh one day he goes back to the Ron Woods house, he sneaks in, he steals a portable TV and a jacket, which turned out to belong to uh Keith Richards, who later would admit uh to hearing such thievery, would say, Hey, that was mine. Um Steve's like, you know, fuck it, whatever. He he equates it as like the same thing with Beatlemania. You know, fans would try to rip your hair out, rip your clothes off. I was just stealing your stuff. Like this. He's a master thief, you're not safe. Like, put away your guitar. Don't fucking walk away if the guy's in the same room as you. Alright, Steve's also a car thief. He's a car thief as well. One time he's talking about when he was chased by the cops, and uh the cops were trying to overtake his uh he was in a stolen Austin Healy. Um he was with with uh an unnamed friend, and he explains that he was able to escape the car, get out, run for it, and get away. And he says that was like the best feeling ever to get away from old Bill. Old Bill is the in the what'd you say, call the cops in in England. So he said that um if they had caught us, they would have beaten the shit out of us, but not for ramming them, but for having a better car than them. Alright. He is also a very uh sexual young man. He's constantly constantly letting older men, coworkers, strangers, give him blowjobs, and he explains that his thoughts are that um he he says that there's people who can just sniff out this hypersexuality, and uh he also likes sticking his dick into a vacuum cleaner. He's very obsessed with this kind of thing, it's like a hobby. Stevo. Alright, he does uh he gets caught sometimes though. He he likes to steal, but you know, he's under 18, but he does get caught and he does some time here and there. He does every once in a while he'll get caught and they'll they'll throw him in. Uh let's see. So he uh he has his his bedroom is like full of like cool stereos, it's full of clothes. Um he's like living a great life. Like, you know, uh either getting caught or not getting caught, he's he's able to walk away and and keep loading up. So I've always wondered about this one. So um the he talks about how because like it if you're a Sex Pistols fan, they all they covered the substitute by the Who and What You Gonna Do About It by the Small Faces. And I always wondered, like, why, like, how did they why do they want to do those songs? And it turns out that Steve Jones and Paul Cook, who will be who will be known as Cookie, that's how he calls them in the book, uh, were were into uh like a mod phase at one point. And it was they were too late to become original mods and too early to be do to do the uh the mod revival, like the 78, 77, 78, 79 mod revival. Okay. This is 1974, 1975. Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood have their clothes shop uh called Let It Rock, and then they change the name to Sex. Uh Steve Jones um works there, and um he really sort of like has sort of like a brother relationship with Malcolm McLaren and sort of like a mother-son relationship with Vivian Westwood. They really take him under their wing, they take they like you know buy him uh a healthy toothpaste, they take him to vegetarian restaurants, things like that. He's really become really good pals with Malcolm McLaren. Uh he looks up to him and Steve's funny. He talks about how he's owning his uh his own car. It's uh he called it like a shag wagon. It's it's a it's a van that he put a mattress in the back of, you know. You know, first first things first, right? All right, but he says um he talks about how getting his license in England, Paul Cook, cookie, was saying how you're dude, you're gonna have to study like a lot. And he's like, fuck it, I'm not gonna study, I'm just gonna drive without it. And he talks about his quote says, I wouldn't ever be legal on roads until more than 10 years later, after I moved to California. The driving test in America is a piece of cake. You just have to answer a few questions, get around the block without killing anyone. Basically, a chimpanzee could pass it. In fact, I think it was specifically designed by the American automobile industry to ensure that morons would still be able to buy drive cars. Alright, so let me go to 1974. Uh this is the farewell tour of Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie. Um Steve Jones is a huge Bowie fan. What better way to express your love to your hero? What better way but to steal his shit? Like he God, this fucking guy. He gets that van, right, and he backs it up towards the venue. Um he I think he says it was like the last night or like the night before the the last night of the show. I think he says it was the last night before the show because the recording was I mean, the live recording was on the last show, and it was bad uh bad recording because it was shitty equipment that they had to replace with the stuff that he stole. Anyway, he backs up his van, he just strolls in there, he says he's using the cloak, he strolls there, uh acting like a roadie, and he steals the guitars, the microphones, the amps, and this is what uh this is the Sex Pistols gear. That's how the Sex Pistols got their fucking gears stolen from David Bowie, poor guy. Anyway, um he he thieves here and there, he turns 18, but he gets caught and he gets put away. Alright, he gets put away in in um in an adult prison. And this is this is not a kitty prison. This is like some with some fucking you know scary adult like murderers and rapist shit like that. Lucky for him, Malcolm McLaren uh sweet talk the judge saying, like, oh, you don't understand this young guy, he's at the beginning of a fruitful artistic creative life. Let him out. I'll be his mentor. So yeah, the judge let him out. All right, Malcolm McLaren. Uh Malcolm McLaren puts together a band called this is 75, 76, puts together a band called Cutie and the Sex Pistols. Drop you eventually dropping the the little cutie part, just Sex Pistols. So Glenn Matlock is the bass player. He was a guy that was working at the shop Sex on Saturday, so they knew him. He goes on to play bass, he's gonna be the bass player. Um he's he eventually gets kicked out of the band because he's not really like the other guys. He's kind of like an up more of like an upper class uh upbringing, and they don't they never really get along with the guy. He's alright, but they're like, eh, there wasn't really one of us. Um John Leiden is uh the lead singer who would be known as Johnny Rotten. Uh Steve Jones on on the case of his rotten teeth, they called him Rotten. Okay, I'm not gonna do too much sexual stuff because we already know it. Alright, so eventually eventually they put out a uh a want ad in Music Magazine Melody Maker, because they they they Steve Jones isn't cutting it, you know, as much on a guitar. He's practicing and everything, but it's just it's just not doing it. So they put out a um a want ad that they want to get like a whiz kid guitar player. They have a couple of additions, you know, nothing really, nothing really hits. But I just want to share this quote. I thought it was kind of funny. So it uh Steve says Um with one of the auditions, he says, there was also a kind of hippie rock guy who could play his ass off. The only downside with him was he was so obviously high on smack while while he was playing. I wish I could find out he who he was and whether he went on to do anything else afterwards because he was an excellent guitarist, even though it felt like a massive waste of time while it was going on. I don't know, I thought that was funny. I think I think. Wastes of time are funny sometimes. Anyway, um, so what they realized was uh they played a gig and they had the monit they finally had some monitors so they could actually hear the lead singer Johnny Rotten, and uh they realized like this guy can't fucking sing, and so great, fuck it. Uh uh, you know, Steve Jones can't fucking play guitar. This this works fucking well. So they moved on. That was the fucking band, rock and roll, sex pistols, let's fucking do it. Um, I want to point out, I think I said this before, that all the sex pistols were stolen. I mean, Sex Pistols equipment was stolen, the guitars, the amps, and everything. So you don't wait to become you don't want to become enemies with Steve either. So he's talking about how one time the Sex Pistols played a gig with the band called the Doctors of Madness. So they're playing a gig up in Northern Ireland. This is uh 76, and uh Doctors of Madness wouldn't let the Sex Pistols use their monitors. Steve Jones got kind of pissed off about that, so he went backstage and stole all of their wallets. Um that is what Steve does. He likes to fuck your girlfriend, and he'll steal your girlfriend and fuck her. He's also a peeping Tom, so if if he uh didn't steal your girlfriend, he'd be spying on you while you're fucking your own girlfriend. That's fucking Steve, man. Steve O! Alright, 1976. Sex Epistles are doing little tours all over England. 1976. See, I'm gonna stop at 77. You know the story. Um, they cover songs No Fun by the Stooges, Substitute by the Who. Uh, they also do, you know, their original songs, Anarchy in the UK, blah blah blah. Malcolm McLaren has them play at these like uh Union Workers' Hall buildings, you know, where like guys that just got off work with mustaches and bell bottoms and working. They what these guys really want to hear, like, you know, taking care of business, you know. That's what they want to hear. They don't want to hear the sex pistol. So Malcolm McLaren he's an artist and his paint, his his his chalk, his paints are the sex pistol. So, you know, these worker guys are throwing bottles at them, spitting at them. Fuck you. Um Steve O Stevo. Steve is a sad case though. Um, he talks about how during this musical uh time, 1976, um he started hooking up with this German girl who was supposedly was uh Jimi Hendrix's uh girlfriend from uh from at one point, and she's really into Steve and buys him a flying a flying V guitar, like buys him stuff, like I like you, that kind of thing. And this pisses off Malcolm McLaren because he was like, I don't want any external influence, no, you gotta go. And it's kind of sad because uh Steve explains how this is his quote I can't be intimate with anyone because I'm just looking, I I'm always just looking for more. I only get attracted to strangers. Uh that's my thing about making about making love. It's about fucking someone in the alley or paying a hooker. That's what turns me on. When there's uh okay, when there's fucking, but when feelings are involved, fuck it, I'm done. So it's it's too bad, right? It's kind of like this um I need to rob from you before you can have an attempt to rob anything from me. That that's that's I think that's what it goes back to with his original the the stepfather thing. Um he does uh he does have an ego though. He he really he thinks highly of himself. He's like this sort of um punk rock lead guitar um master Rod Stewart kind of guy strutting around. But yeah, he he has it. He has the you know the moves. I'm gonna wrap this up now with where uh Steve himself explains where the Sex Pistols really ended. So um it all ended uh with with the Bill Grundy show. So the Sex Pistols had a um interview on sort of like a morning talk show called the Bill Grundy Show. Uh in uh it was someday in January, the beginning of 1976. And um Steve explains that up until this interview, no one really knew who they were. They, you know, they were gaining a following, like uh let's see, um other uh other like people like would come to see them like what the fucking Joe Strummer Joe Strummer saw the Sex Pistols okay. I'm talking about before the January of 1976 Bill Grundy. Joe Strummer from The Clash saw them as like I gotta do a band. Paul Weller from the jam saw Sex Pistols, Sex Pistols Live and says, Fuck it, I gotta do a band too. It was it was a thing, and then this Bill Grundy TV show uh where it's just like a talk show in the morning, and uh the Sex Pistols throw a couple cuss words here and there. It's it's it's silly. You you can see it on YouTube. I I'm 100% positive I mentioned it with the New York Dolls episode, Bill Grundy uh Sex Pistols. But anyway, he says after the Bill Grundy show, it just that was it. They like they're blacklisted, they were just like it was it was nothing was the same ever again. So I'm gonna wrap it up. So the Sex Pistols, okay, so uh after the Bill Grundy, they um they kick out uh Glenn Matlock, right? Because he he's kind of lame. John Lyden doesn't like him, he's like a square, he's a mama's boy, and Malcolm McLaren uh brings in uh Sid Vicious, who was he was around, he was a he was a good-looking guy who was always at the uh at the sex, the store, you know. And they put him in on bass, right? So Steve Jones's job was to teach Sid how to play bass, and he says, This is so this is the most painful thing you've ever had to do. This guy knows nothing about playing music. But to Malcolm McLaren, it's not about fucking playing music, it's about the look, you know. So they went through that, um, yeah it just kind of imploded. Uh after that, the the whole concept of this like this whole the the term punk rock, no one even liked that term. That came from some that came from some journalist called like Carolyn Cook or something like that, and she she referred to Johnny Rodden as the king of the punks. That's where it came from. And Johnny Rodden's like, what the fuck? I'm like talking shit about monarchy, don't call me a king. Um anyway, the the band imploded, blah blah blah, you know the story. So anyway, I'm gonna stop it here because I want to tell the story what Steve Jones' life after the Sex Pistols. What happens after that? I just want to make a comment where uh because like Sid Vicious was always wearing like the the biker leather jacket. And so six uh Sid Um Steve Jones was talking about how uh after that Bill Grundy and with the Sid Vicious edition, it was like all these dipshits started wearing the like the leather jacket and like people he would say that when he would go to the the the sex when I say sex shop it means the name of this this shop is sex. He would go to the sex shop, it used to be cool. He used to talk to interesting people. Now the people that come they're fucking dipshits, like sounds like morons and shit. Anyway, so it just kind of died, and I was listening to a um I was I was doing some homework and I was listening to Steve Jones's podcast called Jonesy's Jukebox, where he was interviewing Chrissy Hind from The Pretenders. They were friends back in the day. Chrissy Hind was a friend of the Sex Pistols, and uh they were just talking about how it just it only la like it only lasted for like six months. Six months of like this like pure energy rock and roll shit that they deemed punk rock. That that's it, six months. That was it. It was it was over, it was a flash in the pan, really. Anyway, that's where I'm gonna end it. Uh that's Steve Jones part one. And uh we're gonna come back for what is the post the post Sex Pistols Life of Steve Jones. He's a good guy. I I like him. He's a funny guy. He is at uh Jonesy's jukebox. Anyway, uh if you like this podcast, if you like this episode, uh give me five stars, give me a comment, give me something like that, and uh eventually I'm gonna have some website where I say, hey, go to jaysrock and rollstories.com. Anyway, glad you're listening. Uh I'm gonna come back when as long as you keep coming back. All right, have one on me, alright? You guys take care of Satan.