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And Finally Artist News
Steve Jones says he’d consider Sex Pistols reunion if he was “absolutely broke”
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 13 June 2022
With all the renewed interest in the Sex Pistols – thanks to that new Disney+ series ‘Pistol’ and the Queen’s platinum jubilee – talk has understandably returned to whether or not the band will ever perform together again. Not likely, you’d probably quite correctly say, but what if they did it Abba-style and didn’t actually have to get in the same room together?
Asked on Rolling Stone’s Music New podcast about the possibility of another Sex Pistols reunion – the last having been in 2008 – guitarist Steve Jones references Abba’s new ‘Abba Voyage’ show in London, which sees the band members represented by digital avatars.
“Seeing that Abba can do it without being there, I’d be down for doing that thing – they’re there but they’re not really there”, he says. I’m down for that, all day long”.
As for actual shows where they did all get on stage together, he says: “You never know. [We’re all alive] and we all have our hair too. I don’t know, if I was absolutely broke I’d probably consider it”.
Having said that, he added that he hasn’t actually spoken to Lydon since they fell out on that 2008 tour – and last year’s very public legal battle over whether or not ‘Pistol’ should be allowed to use the band’s music did little to improve intra-band relations.
And despite never saying never, Jones confirms that, as it currently stands, “no money is worth it” to reunite with Lydon and perform Sex Pistols songs again. Although, maybe one day he’ll get to a point where doing so wouldn’t seem quite so tedious. Maybe.
“When I go on the road and play Sex Pistols songs – like the last time – I’m just literally looking on my watch thinking ‘when is this over?’ and I shouldn’t be doing it”, he explains. “That’s where my head’s at. [But] you just never know. It’s not like I’m closing the door, you just never know”.
Later this decade there will be several opportunities to mark the band’s 50th anniversary. So we’ll see what happens then. Assuming a proper reunion isn’t desirable or practical, then some sort of disappointing virtual celebration instead doesn’t seem entirely impossible.
After all, Universal Music has been churning out all sorts of Sex Pistols shit recently – jubilee coins, NFTs, that sort of thing. Why not go the whole hog and build a set of holograms?
One other recent Sex Pistols cash in, of course, was the re-issue of the band’s 1977 single ‘God Save The Queen’ to coincide with the Queen’s platinum jubilee.
With that being a limited edition vinyl release it didn’t seem likely that the track would bother the charts too much – despite the re-release partly marking the controversy that occurred when the record originally charted during the Queen’s silver jubilee celebrations in 1977.
However, with the various different Sex Pistols ventures happening at the moment and a new compilation album featuring the track available to download and stream, for a brief moment it looked like the song might go top five again in the week following the Queen’s latest big bash.
But no. When the Official Charts Company eventually published the final chart on Friday, ‘God Save The Queen’ was sitting at number 57 – pre-orders of the vinyl likely having inflated its position earlier in the chart week.
