Steve Jones, the guitarist who carried the Sex Pistols through the punk band’s ’70s heyday, has candidly revealed that he’s tired of the group’s music and no longer really listens to it.
The English musician and radio personality, now 66, added that he’d prefer to hear veteran jazz-fusion rockers Steely Dan instead.
That’s what Jones (pictured above in 1978) brutally offered in an interview surrounding the premiere of FX’s Pistol. The limited series, now streaming on Hulu, dramatizes the Sex Pistols’ rise, with Australian actor Toby Wallace (Babyteeth, INXS: Never Tear Us Apart) portraying Jones.
In preparing for the role, Wallace spent time with Jones, and the musician gave the actor tips on how to say things in his voice, as Jones explained to The Telegraph last week. But that doesn’t mean the musician dove headfirst back into his old band’s material.
“I never really listen to the Pistols’ music anymore,” Jones admitted to the British newspaper. “I’m f—ing tired of it, to be honest with you. I’d rather listen to Steely Dan.”
Still, he’s pleased with Wallace’s work in Pistol. On the show, the rest of the band is played by Anson Boon (1917, Shadowplay), Christian Lees (Sun Records), Jacob Slater and, as the late Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, Louis Partridge (Enola Holmes).
Of Wallace’s performance, Jones remarked, “I think he captured a sensitive side, and he got it spot on. You know, I was illiterate when I was that age. I didn’t have a clue how to act, and I had no self-esteem, barely, and I think he got that down.”
The Sex Pistols initial 1975–1978 run resulted in only one studio album. Still, that effort, 1977’s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, is considered one of the greatest LPs of all time, as shown in rankings from Rolling Stone and Time. Jones was the Pistols’ sole guitarist; he was also part of the band’s brief reunions in the ’90s and 2000s.
Pistol is based on Jones’ 2016 book,
Read Jones’ full interview with The Telegraph here. Watch the trailer for Pistol below.
Pistol, Official Trailer
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