Issue 05
30Yrs Of Bollocks
By Caroline RyderPhotos By Piper Ferguson
Illustration By Shepard Fairey
Put Steve Jones and Billy Idol in the same room, and a beautiful big brother-little brother thing happens. Never mind that they were born less than three months apart in 1955 in the suburbs of London. And never mind that Idol is the more recognizable star by far. Idol’s admiration for Jones, the former Sex Pistols guitarist, shines through every word and gesture.
Idol was part of the so-called Bromley Contingent, a group of fans, including Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin, who followed the Pistols around. Many of the Contingent went on to form bands of their own. Jones recalls Idol’s band, Generation X, had trouble being taken seriously in the punk world. Idol auditioned in front of Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Pistols, only to be told he’d never make it. “I think he said that to motivate me,”says Idol.
Either way, he proved Mc Laren wrong.
After the Pistols fell apart, Jones and Idol found their paths cross ed again. Both were in New York, junkies. As Jones struggled with addiction, Idol shot to fame on MTV, with tracks like “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell” making him a household name across the globe.
In the early ‘80s, both drifted to Los Angeles, rode motorcycles and had enough sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll experiences to last a lifetime. Now sober, both are enjoying simultaneous career revivals, Jones as a deejay on L.A.’s Indie 103.1 radio station and Idol with his new album, Devil’s Playground, his first release in 12 years. They reflect on how their lives have overlapped over the years, and reminisce about the good old days.
SWINDLE: When did the two of you become friends?
IDOL: We met because he was in the Sex Pistols and I loved that scene. Seeing the Sex Pistols just showed you you could do it. And they made it look fun, too. We were watching prog-rock groups, everybody was going on and on, but nobody was saying anything. Then we finally saw the Sex Pistols and it was like a wave, not only of relief, but you just went, ‘This is it! Fuckin’ hell! This is the ring, like The Lord of the Rings!’ It’s like they were at the top of Mount Everest, hanging on with no fuckin’ oxygen. We were standing next to these people,saying, ‘Shit. How the fuck am I ever going to be anything after that?’ It was wild, but they gave you the balls —
JONES: And there was this weird thing called the Bromley Contingent—
I: As Caroline Coon called it. It was Steve Severin, Debbie Juvenile, Siouxsie, Sue Catwoman, me and the two twins, all these little groups of people who would come together and meet at Malcolm McLaren’s shop, SEX. We got dubbed the Bromley Contingent by Caroline after we were seen following the Sex Pistols.
S: Do you remember the moment you two actually met?
J: No.
I: It was April or May, you were playing every Tuesday at the 100 Club. Then there was this strip club. It was all Malcolm’s people, the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, me, and all these other people in one room.
S: Malcolm rented it, didn’t he? He always said you guys couldn’t find anywhere to play, so you had to pay to play in a strip club. But that was a myth he wanted to perpetuate, right?
J: He was smart. He was good like that. Give him his credit. He had a lot of good ideas.. . but he took them too far.
J: What was the best Pistols show you saw?
I: Well my mates Steve Barker and Steve Severin saw the one at Bromley Tech and that’s when they wrote me a postcard.
It said, ‘Everything we’ve dreamed about is happening. You’ve gotta get back up here.’ I had a couple of groups in my bedroom, a little group down at university and we used to do Animals songs. People didn’t know about Iggy Pop or punk, and the only way you could get through to them was to take the early ‘60s songs and make them more punky. There was no focal point. No idea that this was going to become a multinational thing. You never dreamt of that. We wanted something that equaled what the hippies had done in the 1960s.
J: Was you ever a fan of Bowie? That’s what I was into, walking down the King’ Road. That was the start of it for me, even though I wasn’t in a band.
S: You wanted to be in a band, but did you ever think that it would go further than being big in London?
J: How does anyone know what is going to happen to them? Did Led Zeppelin know they were going to be a big band? You don’t know.
I: Malcolm would say things to challenge you. He told me, ‘You’ll never be a lead singer, no matter what you do.’ Of course it made you go and want to do it. I went for an audition with him with my band from university. I knew we were going to get a tough look at what we did but I wasn’t expecting someone to tell me ‘you’ll never make it, this guy on the bass is going to make it.’ It was like, ‘YOU’LL NEVER EVER IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE!’ I know he said it on purpose. It motivated me.
S: So how did the album title Never Mind the Bollocks come about?
J: This guy used to say it who was part of the Bromley Contingent. He had a hot-dog stand in Piccadilly so we used to call him Hot Dog. He was always saying, ‘aahhh never mind the bollocks,’ and I just picked up on it and it turned into the title.
I: Hot Dog was shagging this bird on the floor in this place. I remember him saying, ‘Open your piss flaps, Love.’ He had a way with words. Him and his brother were twins and they looked exactly the same, wore the same clothes.
J: You know that ‘Pretty Vacant’ poster, that TV screen with the still: that’s him, or his brother.
I: I saw one of the first Pistols gigs at that place on Oxford Street with Glen (Matlock) playing. .. he was really great. He wouldn’t jump around; he just stood there, concentrating. They were fucking great. We were worried after Glen, ‘cause Glen could really play.
J: He knew what chords were. Sid couldn’t play at all, and I didn’t want to teach him. He used to do the old trick. Put gaffer tape showing where to put your fingers. Screen on the Green was a good show. He was really focused. He wasn’t giving it the large. He was just hanging in there. But then that didn’t last long. I think when that bird came around that’s when it all went to pieces.
S: You play all the bass lines except for a couple on Never Mind the Bollocks, right?
J: Yeah. Well, ‘Anarchy’ was Glen. He was still in the band when that was a single.
S: Let’s hear the story about when Billy recorded ‘Dancing with Myself’ and Steve played on it and then sued you.
J: Really? I did?
I: Your manager did a brilliant job. Jones put this amazing wall of sound on our album. He put one guitar down, and then another that went slightly against it. Then, when all four of them came together, it was just this gigantic GRRRRR. Like a great fuck or something.
J: What happened about me suing you?
I: You played on about six of those songs. One day we were in the park, we had nearly finished the album, and I said, ‘Here, Steve, we never paid you. Don’t you want anything for playing on the album?’ He said, ‘Just give me a tenner. Buy the drinks for the night.’ So the next day, our manager is going haywire because we had a high court injunction stopping the album coming out,saying that you’d written the six songs that you’d played on. I begged the record label, ‘Please don’t chop this album.’ Funny part was, I was kind of angry, but when I saw you I laughed. I was like, ‘Aahhhh. .. ‘course they would do that.’ I don’t think it was really you. You didn’t really know what was happening. It was fucking funny. We tried to salvage the album anyway. I think it all got quashed in the end somehow. I don’t think you backed it up for a start. You didn’t back it up,so your manager just. .. it was one of those things.
S: So Steve, you didn’t even know you were suing him?
J: I had no idea. This is the first I’ve heard of it.
S: When did the two of you relocate to America?
J: Well, Billy moved to New York, and I was already there. I didn’t plan to move. I was in The Professionals, this band, with Cookie (former Pistols drummer Paul Cook) and we kinda went across America doing clubs and we ended up in New York, and I stayed. There was this guy on tour with us who wanted to beat me up. He was coked out of his brain. For some reason, if he didn’t get laid with the bird I was fucking from the show after me, he’d get resentment. He was a monster. He looked like Bluto from Popeye. And some of the birds didn’t want to sleep with him after they’d been with me. And I didn’t want them to sleep with him because I was still having fun. At the end, he was so coked up, psycho. ‘Where’s Jonesy, I’ll fuckin’ kill him.’ So I stayed in New York, they all fucked off back to London and I hooked up with this hooker and I started living with her in Chelsea. Then I run into this girl Nina and I kinda wangled to stay with her. Go there to do heroin. And that was around 1982, I think.
S: You were a junkie at that point?
I: That’s when we were all hanging around the punk-rock scene.
Some of the English punk scene got transplanted to New York, especially the fashion-y side. Suddenly, the London thing was New York.
J: Yeah, it was the Peppermint Lounge. Danceteria. I was so fucked up. All I cared about was going twosome club, nicking some bird’s handbag to get $2 0 to get a bag of dope. That was all that was on my mind. That was one of the worst, down times of my life. I was so desperate at that time. Bands that were coming in, I’d nick guitars. It’s terrible. Fucking terrible. Other than that, it was all right.
S: So were you (Billy) using drugs at that point too? Were you guys fraternizing?
I: We were taking junk in England first. ‘Dancing with Myself,’ it only went to number 6 0 or something in England. It really was the death knell. And the national press, they don’t give you a second chance for a while. They expect you to prop up a bar for a while. In the end, the record company said to me, ‘You’ve done it here, why don’t you go to New York? ’ They gave me a thousand quid. I spent 200 of it on a suitcase and the rest on smack. I turned up in New York with all these things all over on my face. And they said, ‘What have you done?’ The stuff I was taking was so strong it brought out all these pockmarks. We had this weird time when Generation X was breaking up. We got sued by our own manager,so we weren’t doing nothing, but we had enough money for smack. Life was fucking great for about a year.
S: You had a lot of high hopes for ‘Dancing with Myself,’ and it’s a great track. You ended up releasing it on your solo record but you had no idea it was going to blow up the way it did. How instantaneous was the success once you started?
I: I was at that place on 82nd Street, Hurrah’s. It had a dance floor and everyone was around the bar and then suddenly ‘Dancing with Myself’ comes on and I’m the only one standing at the bar. Everyone else is jumping over the chairs to the dance floor. .. and I’m like, ‘Fuckin’ hell! So I don’t have to change who I am!’ I watched that happen and I was like, ‘Okay, that’s where I start.’ There was this alternative music chart that was going around. Suddenly quite a lot of people had dance remixes, and it seemed New York really got into it. That’s what really started things like ‘White Wedding’ and ‘Dancing with Myself,’ and made me start writing more things that fitted that vein. ‘Hot in the City’ was one of the songs that was a hit without being on MTV. But it took ‘White Wedding’ and ‘Dancing with Myself’ as videos. That’s what did it.
S: It seemed like the UK was pretty harsh, as if they decided that when punk was hot you were too much into traditional rock ‘n’ roll. But when it came to the U .S ., that was okay.
J: Even before when punk was going, people didn’t accept Gen X a lot, they thought you were pretty boys, didn’t they? A lot of people didn’t accept Gen X as a bona fide punk band.
S: But then when you came to the U.S., with the dance culture and hip-hop, it was like the shackles were removed?
I: They thought punk didn’t sell advertising dollars. I couldn’t get my records played on the radio because I had spiky hair. They took one look at the cover of ‘Mony Mony’ or ‘Dancing with Myself’ and they wouldn’t play it. They took my picture off ‘Hot in the City’ and it got to number 18. When they put my picture back on ‘White Wedding,’ they wouldn’t play it. But by that time, the college stations had started playing it, then MTV came out and it was like a snowball effect. You couldn’t stop it.
S: Steve, what was your analysis of Billy’s success on MTV? Because you were also in New York at the time.
J: I actually had a band that opened for them when they were on tour, I think when they had ‘Rebel Yell’ out. Do you remember Chequered Past? I wasn’t sober at this point. The people weren’t really interested in Chequered Past.
S: So no hard feelings?
J: No! What, like I’m resentful ‘cause he was doing well? Is that what you mean?
S: Well, considering that his career was partially inspired by you, yet you’re over in New York and struggling while he’s blowing up—
J: I was a mess, man. The last thing I was worried about was being successful. I just wanted a bag of dope. That’s all I cared about. I wasn’t happy, but that’s where I was.
S: You collaborated with Joan Jett, didn’t you?
J: The Pistols were still together when I did the demo to ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.’ I actually shagged her as well. I don’t think there’s too many geezers that can say that.
I: I came to L.A. In 1978 to do stuff for promotion for Generation X, and Joan Jett took me to her place and she had all these 17-year old girls there, and next minute they are all naked. I was the only bloke there. It was really great fun.
S: So did you shag her too, Billy?
I: No, no. She’s lovely. We were more friends. And she had all those pretty girlfriends—
J: Cookie shagged the drummer from the Runaways. There was this well dodgy manager. He had a boat on the river in Chelsea and they all went and stayed there and old Cookie got hold of the drummer. Was it the drummer? I can’t remember.
S: When did you talk about leaving New York?
J: I didn’t get clean until I drifted out here to L.A. I got together with Nigel Harrison, who was the bass player in Blondie, and Nigel said, ‘Do you want to do this band one-off show?’ I said, ‘Yeah, alright.’ Horrible heroin addict at the time, but I just saw dollars. They were based in L.A.,so I drifted out there and stayed on Nigel Harrison’s couch and I told them I had a habit. I went to this dodgy methadone doctor in Century City. You have to go in every day and take this methadone. This was1982, 1983. I got off the methadone, but I was still drinking and doing a ton of coke. But it took me a while. 1987 was the first solo record, that’s when I first got sober.
S: Ian from The Cult was a friend of yours. Didn’t he do some production on that?
J: No, that was the second album, 1989. Axl Rose guested on that. That was the era of long hair and motorbikes and hanging outside the Rainbow Room. That was a fucking great time. So much fun. I got laid every fuckin’ night, three times. No AIDS. You could just put it in anybody and no one cared. Birds would just walk up and down and sex was in the air. I was6 0 pounds lighter than I am now. Yeah, that was a great time.
S: So Billy, how did you move out here?
I: I was in New York for about seven years from 1981 to ’87, and then I moved out here in September ‘87. I think ‘Mony Mony’ went to number one in November,so I bought myself a Harley Davidson motorcycle. I went down there and said, ‘You got one in black?’
S: So what was your favorite Billy Idol song, Steve?
J: I always liked ‘Cradle of Love.’
I: That was like the second biggest single. ‘Mony Mony’ was number one. The only thing that would stop ‘Cradle of Love’ getting to number one was MC Hammer. That ‘U Cant Touch This’ was there for so long. We were there for about five weeks at number two.
S: How did the 1 0 3. 1 radio gig come about, Steve?
J: I was listening to the station for a couple weeks and they were playing all this old stuff. It was exciting. Then this bloke called me up out of the blue. And he said, ‘The boss here wants to meet you,see if you want to do something with the station.’ And I said, ‘I wanna be a DJ.’ Never thought about it in my life before. I’d been doing fuck-all. Basically just hangin’ around, waiting for John or the boys to do a Pistols tour or something. Miserable. I said, ‘Let me do what I wanna do and play what I wanna play.’ And that was it. People started liking it. The program director has never once said, ‘I think you should tone it down.’ If you just let people get on with things normally, it’s a lot better than when you let some idiot poke their nose in and ruin it. There’s a good less on there.
I: The one thing they don’t let DJ shave today is personality. They are letting you be you, and that’s perfect. It’s fantastic, because Steve digs up these songs that are somewhere in the ether of many year sago. All these obscure songs that were in the Top 20 in England when we were kids.
J: I have to track them down myself. I like to play the whole spectrum. But when I started it, I came in with five fuckin’ CDs in my CD case. I wasn’t interested in music. Now I’ve got thousands of CDs. Plus you get loads of CDs from people wanting to get their stuff on the radio. And it’s just craaaap. You just look at the cover and you know. That saves you time.
I: We played acoustic on the show. Then we played live, and Steve showed up and plugged in – didn’t have his own guitar, or his own amp, and it still sounded fucking great. It isn’t the guitar, it’s not the strings; it’s what’s behind it. Fantastic.
S: Steve, are you going to do a TV show?
J: That’s what I want to do. Turn it all into a visual jukebox. We’ve had chats with Sirius and XM, but they don’t know what to do with it. It’s not like anything else. It’s not a regular format. There’s something about being in the town where you live, and it’s on live. It has a certain charm to it, more than Sirius and all that stuff. But I’d be up for doing it, of course. It’s gonna take time. It’s like Howard Stern. He was doing his thing three, four years before it took off. And I’ve only been doing it 18 months. Just show up,see what happens.
S: So Billy, you took a break for 12 years before putting your new record out. What was your reason for not playing music for so long?
I: I was looking after my son, one week on, one week off. I was such a dad for one of the weeks that I couldn’t do rock ‘n’ roll full-time, and rock ‘n’ roll was always full-time to me. When Steve Stevens moved out in 1995 we tried to make records then, but it took a lot longer to find the right record company and a long time to find a great band. Now I’ve got a killer band.
S: Steve, have you found it hard to find the same chemistry that you had with Glen,someone that you were feeding off of?
J: Yeah, but I’m not looking for anyone. I think the radio show, that’s my niche. I wake up in the morning, get me fucking CDs. I am whistling away. I enjoy it, it’s not a drag. To me, being in a band is a fucking drag. It’s four blokes traveling around. And I don’t like traveling, in this day and age, on planes and all the rest of it. This is perfect for me right now. I still like getting up and having a play every now and again. That’s fun, but the whole going on the road thing just ain’t me anymore. It’s hard work. It’s a whole different ballgame as well, trying to sell records. Billy is a front guy, he’s different.
S: You don’t see yourself as a front man?
J: Hate it. Everyone in the back of their mind thinks they can get away with it, but it takes a certain kind of person. It’s like Jimmy Page going out being a singer. It don’t work; Keith Richards, whoever. I did them solo albums because I didn’t know what else to do at the time.
S: Do you think there are any bands out there that maybe compare to what the Sex Pistols achieved?
I: There are lots of people playing punk-rock style. The thing that is missing is that it’s just not new like it was then. The first time you heard them, it was like a massive thing. It was Malcolm and it was Steve and Johnny Rotten who gave us the balls to do it. They made us grow bigger balls.