Former Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon has condemned his bandmates for touring without him.
“They’re trying to trivialize the whole show to get away with karaoke but in the long term I think you’ll see who has the value and who doesn’t,” Lydon, 69, told The I Paper in an interview published on Friday, February 13.
Sex Pistols members Paul Cook, Steve Jones and Glen Matlock recruited vocalist Frank Carter for a 29-date tour of the U.K., Europe, South America and Australia running through 2025, with U.S. dates expected to be added later in the year. Carter, 40, first joined the remaining Pistols for two fundraising concerts in England in 2024, leading to a full-scale tour being announced.
The always-outspoken Lydon, a.k.a Johnny Rotten, continued to blast the new Sex Pistols in his latest interview, in which he admitted to feeling “annoyed” by their decision to reunite without him.
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“I just thought, ‘They’re absolutely going to kill all that was good with the Pistols by eliminating the point and the purpose of it all.’ I didn’t write those words [lyrics] lightly,” he argued.
The singer added: “I’ve never sold my soul to make a dollar. It’s the Catholic in me — that guilt I don’t want to trip. Like Nancy Reagan, I’ve always found it easy to just say ‘no.’ If something challenges your heart and your soul and your mind and your sense of purity of what is right and wrong in the world, then just say no. Which, according to the corporate thinking which riddles the music business earns me the title of ‘difficult to work with’ — a title of which I’m very proud.”
When the reunion project — billed as “Frank Carter and Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols” — was announced last year, guitarist Jones, 69, insisted that Pistols fans have been clamoring to see them together on stage again.
“There was an overwhelming response on social media from fans asking to play different parts of the country. So guess what? It will be done,” he said in August 2024. “We will be tighter than a rat’s arse by the time we get to Kentish Town.”
Jones later admitted on the “Rockonteurs Podcast” in November 2024 that he was unwilling to work with Lydon after disagreements on their previous reunion tours in 1996 and 2008.
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“It started to become a drag again, in the end, like it always does,” he confessed. “I couldn’t do that again, at this time… It’s got to be chill vibes. I can’t play a part of being ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ just to keep the ball rolling, you know?”
Music impresario Malcolm McLaren personally selected vocalist Lydon, guitarist Jones, drummer Cook and bassist Matlock as his “band of sexy young assassins” in 1975, with Sid Vicious replacing Matlock at the height of the group’s commercial success in 1977.
Amidst tensions between McLaren and the group, Lydon announced on stage in 1978 that the Sex Pistols would be splitting, though his bandmates continued to record new material without him into the following year. In February 1979, Vicious died of a heroin overdose at age 21 after being arrested in connection with the alleged murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.
Lydon formed groundbreaking post-Pistols group Public Image Ltd in 1978, but shocked fans when he agreed to reunite with his former bandmates for the cynically-titled Filthy Lucre Tour in 1996. He last performed with the group for their Combine Harvester Tour in 2008.
