According to The Associated Press (via ABC News), guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook want the songs to appear in “Pistol,” a limited FX series based on a 2017 memoir by Jones entitled “Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol”, while Rotten (John Lydon) is refusing to grant permission for the songs to be included.
The surviving members of the band squared off in a London High Court this week in a legal battle over the issue, despite the terms of a 1998 agreement stating that decisions regarding licensing requests could be determined on a “majority rules basis.”
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Cook and Jones said both the band’s original bassist, Glen Matlock, and the estate of Matlock’s replacement, Sid Vicious (who died in 1979), supported their position.
Lydon, has slammed the series as “disrespectful”; the court case is due to continue into next week.
Directed by Danny Boyle - the Academy Award-winning director of “Trainspotting” and “Slumdog Millionaire” – the FX series “Pistol” is planned for broadcast next year.
The project will star Toby Wallace as Steve Jones, Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten, Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, Jacob Slater as Paul Cook, and Christian Lees as Glen Matlock, with Thomas Brodie-Sangster (The Queen’s Gambit) portraying manager Malcolm McLaren and Talulah Riley (Westworld) playing punk design icon Vivienne Westwood.
Inspired by New York bands the Ramones and the New York Dolls, among others, the Sex Pistols formed in London in 1975 and helped to propel the UK punk scene through a series of four singles and one studio album, 1977’s “Never Mind The Bollocks…Here’s The Sex Pistols”, before disbanding just three months after its release.
See also:
Sex Pistols to release 40th anniversary edition of album debut
Sex Pistols to publish 1977 The Bollocks Diaries
VIDEO: Motorhead preview Under Cover collection with Sex Pistols classic
Sex Pistols to issue 4-disc 1976 live box set
Search The Sex Pistols at hennemusic
