After the Sx Pistols implosion in 1978 during a tour across America,
it seemed highly unlikely the band would ever reunite. specially considering bassist Sid
Vicious would pass away not too long after the band broke up. Their tour across America was a
complete disaster. Rather than playing the major metropolitan hubs of the east and west coast,
manager Malcolm McLaren booked dates across the south because he knew the crowds would
be hostile. Couple that with Infighting, fights with crowds and photographers,
Sid Vicious' drug addiction it was a powder keg that was ready to explode. And surely enough
it came to a head during a January 1978 show in San Francisco with Johnny Rotten famously
telling the crowd Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?” Soon enough the band was done,
the following year Sid Vicious would pass away with the remaining members founding new musical
projects. In fact I've done a whole video on the ghost of Sid Vicious at the Chelsea Hotel,
the link is down below. Following the breakup, John Lydon would go on to found Public Image Ltd,
while drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones starting the band the Professionals. But almost
2 decades later after the band's implosion, the remaining members of Sex Pistols announced
their reunion. So how did this happen? That’s what were gonna talk about in today’s video.
On March 16, 1996 a press conference was held in London at the 100 club where the Sex Pistols
announced their reunion. While a lot of bands don’t like to say money was a motivating factor
in them reuniting, the Sex Pistols were pretty blunt about it. John Lydon would tell reporters
We’ve found a common cause, and that’s your money,”“Not much has changed,” “Through the years,
we’ve all gone off and done different things. Left it up to others to go make waves. Nobody out there
has done bollocks all to change this world. So, hello, here it is, part two. And quite frankly
the Sex Pistols never really finished properly. And that’s what this is all about" he'd say.
Replacing Sid Vicious was original bassist Glen Matlock. During the press conference bassist
Glen Matlock revealed how the members still and i quote “hated each other with a vengeance.” while
Lydon claimed he vacuumed sid vicious ashes. Things did get a bit tense during the press
conference when one reporter questioned the band about their reunion claiming it was a
stark reversal for the punk rock group as Lydon in the past claimed no reunion would be possible
without Sid icious. Lydon responded to this reporter saying “We invented punk. We write
the rules, and you follow. Not the other way around.” “These are the original members,
Sid was nothing more than an empty coathanger to fill an empty spot onstage" he'd say.
Dubbed the Filthy Lucre tour the band played 78 dates across europe, north america and
south america and it would turn out to be a huge success raking in over $20 million.
The band did their best to avoid any complications or infighting that could derail the lucrative tour
going as far to travel in separate buses, stay in different hotels and even take different planes.
The Filthy Lucre Tour was a stark contrast to their past.Following their final show in San
Francisco in 1978, the band was supposed to travel overseas to do a tour of Scandinavia,
but members of the public in Finland started to panic and lobbied the government to ban
the musicians from entering the country declaring them "unwanted visitors," which
is something that's usually reserved for people who are terrorists or criminals.
But funny enough to kick off the Filthy Lucre tour the band's first shows would happen in Finland in
June of 1996.That's not to say the crowds were fans of them, because they were anything but.
They were playing the Miscella\ festival and booed and hit with rocks and bottles of urine but they
would eventually be convinced to come back on stage and finish their set. That wasn't the
only show where the Pistols had some trouble. They walked off stage after only five songs
during a performance at the Roskilde festival after fans started pelting them with objects.
Despite the tours success Jones would tell the New York Dialy News We've done reunions in the
past. We did a big one in 1996. We did a hundred shows, made a bit of dough, but we wanted to off
ourselves at the end. We really don't make enough to put up with each other. While John Lydon would
reveal to Billboard a year after the tour that the band members behaviour towards one another hadn’t
changed from the old days and he claimed after the band’s last show in Chile no one even said goodbye
to one another. In the same interview Lydon would claim that he needed teh extra cash to help finish
his solo debut record Psycho’s Path for Virgin Record. The band would put out a live record from
the tour titled Filthy Lucre live, but it failed to crack the album charts in america.There was
even talk about the band recording new music in 1996 with Bassist Glen Matlock telling NME
"Back in 1996, there was a bit of talk about it, Me, Steve Jones and Paul Cook[wanted to]
but John thought shy of it. I don’t know why, maybe he thought stuff that he’d written didn’t
match up to [the past] and that [the band’s legacy] might be diminished by it somehow.”
The band would reunite years later in 2002 and 2007, but whether we would see another
reunion remains unlikely or up in the air depending on who you ask from the band.
In 2012 Lydon didn’t completely close the door on a reunion, telling Rolling Stone in 2012 "I
love singing them old songs, because they’re very poignant and a very pertinent part of
history belongs to the Sex Pistols. If I write new songs, it’s PiL and that’s it. Occasionally,
a reenactment is a fine thing. I love Civil War reenactments" he'd say. While drummer
Paul Cook would tell NME as recently as last year "I can’t see it happening again for the Pistols,"
while guitarist Steve Jones would tell Rolling Stone in 2017 "Our marriage went wrong and we
got divorced," adding that he has not spoken to Lydon since 2008 and claimed the only way
the band would reunite is if they were making the same amount of money as the Rolling Stones.
Personally I doubt that's ever gonna happen. So let me know your guys thoughts in the comments
section below. Did you guys go see any of the 1996 reunion shows or 2002 or 2007 shows.
Let me know in the comments section below. As always if you have suggestions for future topics
use the google form below and let us know what you'd like to see on our channel. Take care.