Steve Jones may have joined his old-guard bandmates – bassist Glen Matlock and drummer Paul Cook – on tour with the repackaged Sex Pistols alongside Frank Carter, the vocalist of Gallows and Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes. However, he reveals that he has nothing but love for original frontman John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, who recently stated that he will never return to the band that spearheaded punk in the UK.
“For the first time in a long time, I’m really enjoying doing Pistols songs again,” Jones tells Guitar World, explaining that this wasn't the case when the Pistols reunited with Lydon in 1996, and in the aughts.
“I was just done. I was looking at my watch after two songs, thinking, ‘I’m so fucking miserable doing this.’ That was the last time we did anything with the original lineup. I was quite happy with not doing it again, but this came about with Frank.”
Explaining how Carter has given the band a new lease on life, Jones says, “Frank’s a lot younger, so he’s got a lot more energy. He’s literally the best; I call him the ringmaster. He loves getting the crowd going; he goes crowd-surfing and just takes the heat off of me, Cookie and Glen. I’m 70, so I’m definitely not jumping into the crowd.
"He’s great – and he’s definitely not trying to be Johnny Rotten. He’s really something else, and he’s made it a lot of fun.”
“I’ve got nothing but love for John,” he says of the band’s original singer. “He was brilliant back in the day, and I never would take that away from him. I would never deny it; he was fantastic. But I think we’ve just grown apart. He’s going somewhere else, and we’re going somewhere else.
“It’s just the way it is. But you never know. I'll never shut the door, but I don’t think he'd have the energy like Frank does, to be honest with you.”
As for Matlock, he confirms that the Sex Pistols in the 2020s is definitely a new animal.
“What we’re making now is a glorious racket. We’re not trying to relive those songs, but we’re playing those songs in the spirit that they were kind of written musically.”
As Matlock sums it up, “Frank brings his own thing to the band, which is joyous. He respects the songs and the sentiments behind them, and he sings them in his own way.”
For more from Steve Jones and Glen Matlock, plus new interviews with Carlos Santana and the Smashing Pumpkins, pick up issue 595 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.
