As far as making ends meet went in the early days at Denmark Street – from moving in there in September 1975, till our first proper gig a couple of months later – it was the same old story as far as I was concerned: i.e. I was still nicking stuff. Food, guitars … anything I could get my hands on, basically. I’ve seen things written about us being on the dole. Maybe some of the others were, but I certainly wasn’t. The idea of signing on to get it just seemed too complicated and official. It was like the driving test, except you got money at the end. And anyway, I was doing all right under my own steam.
Later on, signing on would be seen as an integral part of the punk thing. But for me the dole was like squatting – shit I never wanted anything to do with. In an ideal world, I would’ve preferred a luxury pad where I could live in comfort with my leopardskin rug and my nice stereo. Denmark Street was still some way short of that – I do remember rats and mice being around. Malcolm even went down to Club Row pet market in the East End and got us a cat to help keep them under control.
We had to put net curtains up to get a bit of privacy because the Hipgnosis people had their art studio just across the courtyard from us. They were the ones who did all the hippie album covers for Pink Floyd. One of the guys there, Peter Cristopherson, who’d end up being in Throbbing Gristle (when he called himself Sleazy), persuaded us to let him take weird photos of the band. He had a different theme for each of us. Mine was being an escaped convict in pyjamas with handcuffs on, Paul was covered in bullet wounds and John was in a straitjacket. The only one of us who wasn’t happy was Glen, because he had to dress as a rent boy. I would say ‘if the cap fits’, but that cap actually wouldn’t fit – Glen was way too strait-laced to do anything that interesting.
As well as wearing my fingers to the bone playing along with The Stooges, I’d been focusing my criminal activities on accumulating the stuff we’d need if we were going to finally play gigs. The twin reverb amp I had from the beginning – that’s the same kind of key detail as the skinhead not wearing Brutus shirts. I went by what the Faces used, as only the best equipment was good enough for them. I always thought the reverb came from a band supporting Bob Marley and the Wailers at Hammersmith Odeon, but they didn’t actually play there till 1976 so I must’ve got that timing a bit muddled. Maybe my trusty Cloak had developed a time machine function because I can remember clear as anything lurking backstage like it was where I was meant to be, then wandering on before Marley hit the stage and just wheeling it out the back door.
It’s amazing I never got caught and given a good kicking but when people see you pushing an amp off the stage they just think you’re a roadie. Another night at the Hammersmith Palais they used to have a revolving stage with two bands on it, basically session musicians playing covers. I’d go in there wearing a big coat and then when the stage turned round I’d go round the back and snaffle whatever I could get away with. That’s where Cookie’s cymbals came from – I just took them off the drum kit, put them under my coat and walked out across the dance floor. No one thought twice about it.
The star of our first proper gig – in terms of our equipment, at least – was my huge 100W Marshall amp. We were playing at St Martin’s art college, which was conveniently just the other side of Tottenham Court Road from Denmark Street. The other band on were a pub-rock act called Bazooka Joe that had Adam Ant in (he wasn’t dressing as a pirate at that stage), and when we had a go on their stuff at the soundcheck it didn’t sound loud enough, so we crossed the road and wheeled in this giant fucking amp.
The gig was only in a small room and once that amp was cranked up it was so fucking loud it was like having a jumbo jet landing in your living room. I was so nervous that I had a couple of pints and a Mandrax beforehand to calm me down. The Mandy came on during ‘Did You No Wrong’ and I remember looking at John and leaning on him for a second as we were playing. He kind of pushed me away a little bit and at that moment I was thinking, ‘This, right now, is the best thing in the world.’ He was the singer and I loved playing in the band with him and the whole thing felt fucking great. Sadly, that feeling wouldn’t return too many times, but at least I’d always have the memory.
It’s possible that the volume was a bit much for people who weren’t on Mandrax. Bazooka Joe hated us so much that they turned us off after a few numbers and there was a fight, but it didn’t matter. Pandora’s box was open for fucking business. We did another show the next night and soon Malcolm was sneaking us onto bills left, right and centre. Because he didn’t want anyone to make the mistake of thinking we were just another new band on the pub-rock circuit, McLaren put a lot of energy into making sure we played different venues to the run-of-the-mill places other bands would play.
Whether this meant milking Glen’s contacts to get us onto the art school circuit or booking us to play strip clubs or cinemas or fashion parties or lesbian bars, we’d always turn up and do the job the same way, whatever the surroundings. Once I’d got over the fear of that first gig, I found I didn’t need the Mandrax any more. I was still so nervous I would usually throw up before each show, and I’d always have a few beers to get loosened up, but I was never drunk. In terms of playing, we were quite professional – we always did our best to make it sound as good as it could. We just wanted to do the songs – we didn’t want any fucking nonsense.
Obviously we didn’t get so much as a sniff of a roadie, so we had to hump all the stuff around ourselves. We had our own PA system that I’d nicked – I can’t remember where I got it, but it was definitely out of someone’s van. It was more or less just two big speaker cabinets plugged into an H and H head guitar amp. The amp was quite a modern piece of kit at the time; kind of transistorised, not valves or tubes or whatever they used to have before. We never had monitors – just these two speakers, the amp and a couple of mics going into it. I don’t even think we miked Cookie’s drum kit up, because if you’re playing in these small gaffs you don’t really need to.
You could see how much we were breaking new ground from all the weird fucking places we played. And the people we played with: because there weren’t any other bands around like us, we’d find ourselves playing ridiculous gigs like supporting Screaming Lord Sutch in High Wycombe. I remember standing watching him, and the whole show was just a joke. There was a bit of a row because Johnny smashed up their microphones and then denied point-blank that he’d done it, even though loads of people – including the Lord himself – had seen him with their own eyes.
Doctors of Madness, up North somewhere, that was another busy one. They wouldn’t let us use their monitors and that really gave me the hump. So when they were onstage I went into their dressing room and nicked all their wallets. And there might have been an incident under the stage while they were playing, with me shagging this big American college bird who was one of their penpals. What with all that and playing a set of our own, I was exhausted by the end of the night.
Because there was no scene for us to fit into, we had to make our own. If that meant playing a party at Andrew Logan’s fancy warehouse near Tower Bridge one night – it was all arty toffs in that crowd, no ’erberts allowed (except us of course) – and then supporting Eddie & the Hot Rods at the Marquee two days later, that was exactly what we were gonna do. The Marquee show was a funny one because quite a few people saw us for the first time that night. A guy from the NME was there and everyone got quite excited about Rotten and Jordan throwing some chairs around. What they didn’t realise was the reason he was doing it. Because we’d never played with monitors before, this was the first time he’d been able to hear himself properly. He was so shocked by how bad he thought he sounded that he totally freaked out. After that, he got more into the singing lessons Malcolm had booked him in for. I don’t think they made any difference really, and thank fuck for that, because the way Johnny sang was a big part of our sound.
There’s a little bit of Super-8 film footage Derek Jarman shot of us at the Logan thing – only about thirty seconds, but enough to get the idea. I think it’s the first proper film of us playing live, and you can tell it’s early because we all look about ten years old. I loved doing gigs like that, where there was something different. It was a lot more fun than Northern working men’s clubs where everyone except maybe two or three people at each gig took an instant fucking dislike to us. Some of these weird gaffs full of Northerners with moustaches wearing flares were terrifying, to be honest. You know those cunts ain’t gonna like you but when they start throwing things at the stage, it’s not a good feeling.
On the upside, we had started to pick up a few fans along the way. There were the Bromley people for a start, who we didn’t even think of as fans because they were totally cool and seemed on the same level as us. They weren’t Johnny-come-latelys, they were Siouxsie-come-earlies. As well as Siouxsie there was Steve Chaos (who became Steve Severin once the Banshees got going), Billy Idol, a few others. All these people were around from the beginning and it was good to have them along. They started turning up to as many gigs as they could and it really made us feel like we were getting somewhere. The funny thing was, they all seemed to come from places I’d never been to round the outskirts of London – that was what John wrote the song ‘Satellite’ about. He wasn’t talking down to them; well, he was, but they didn’t mind, cos they hated the suburban shitholes they came from even more than he did.
The most exciting time is always just before everyone knows what something is. Ask any band when they were happiest and they’ll probably tell you the greatest moments were just before they were known – when the NME do their first little interview with you and you’re driving up and down the M1 in a Transit van. That’s always going to be the purest, most genuine time, because you feel like you’re all in it together. No one knows who you are, so you don’t have that other element that creeps in later on: when you get famous, people change. We hadn’t even done a record then, but I’d love to go back in time and see the four of us, driving up to those fucking working men’s clubs with everyone spitting and throwing bottles at us.
If I’d been a kid at that time, Johnny Rotten would’ve probably been my idol the way Rod Stewart was to me five years before. He didn’t just have a fantastic look, he also had a sharp wit and a real intellect, and no one else could get close to the lyrics he was writing. Even if some of the songs took a while to find their right titles – ‘Anarchy in the UK’ started off as ‘Nookie’, and ‘No Future’ eventually turned into ‘God Save the Queen’.
I’m not trying to take the credit away from Glen for the original songwriting, but the reason he and I worked so well together was that he’d come up with something quite fiddly – the ‘fucking Beatle chords’ that drove John up the wall – and then I’d drive a bulldozer through it. You hear some complex chord progressions played exactly right and they go in one ear and out the other. Give ’em to someone who’s not too bothered about sevenths and elevenths, and all of a sudden they work on a whole other level. Glen was so polite that if he’d played guitar on our records I don’t think anyone would’ve noticed them. Once I took over the chords he’d originally written, we ended up with something that was brutally direct but not simple-minded; an iron fist in a velvet glove.
There was definitely a feeling that we were leading the pack, but a few upstarts were already snapping at our heels. Mick Jones came down to Denmark Street around the time of the auditions for a second guitarist. At the time he was dressing like Johnny Thunders or some other glam guy with the long hair and the platforms. He played along with us and it was exciting because he actually knew what he was doing, to a certain extent. The next time we saw him he’d got his hair cut and he was wearing shirts with writing all over them.
It was the same with Joe Strummer. He was in a band called The 101ers that we opened up for the first time we played at the Nashville. They were like a pub-rock thing but with more of a Fifties style to them – they reminded me of the early days of Let It Rock. I think we made him feel a bit out of date, though, cos he was converted straight away, and the next thing we knew, him and Jones were in The Clash together with Bernie Rhodes managing them.
I liked The Clash once they got going. And The Damned, Buzzcocks – even The Stranglers, though they never really got accepted because they were older. It was great to have some decent new bands around for a change. We were the tip of the spearhead, but they weren’t far behind, and I never looked down on them for starting after us. After all, there was fuck all else going on, so I never blamed anyone for gravitating towards their version of what we were doing.
It’s easy now to look back and think it wasn’t that big a deal, but at the time everyone was like, ‘Fuck yeah, I’ll have some of this.’ The feeling that everyone was falling into line behind us was really exciting, and we were totally aware of what was going on. It was like a virus that had been incubating for a long while and then all of a sudden everyone was catching it.
We couldn’t afford to let the grass grow under our brothel creepers, though, or someone else would come along and nick all the glory. The first proper studio we went in was Majestic in Clapham. Mickie Most – who was like the Simon Cowell of the Sixties and Seventies, except he actually made some good records – used that place a lot and I think maybe for five minutes Malcolm thought about us signing to his label. Or more likely McLaren just told him that so we’d get the place cheap. Either way, we were in there for a day in May 1976 and recorded three tracks. There was no time to get the full Sex Pistols wall of sound together, but it was a cool experience.
Even going there in the van was exciting, and I liked being in a proper studio from the first minute I walked into the place. I loved recording as much as – if not more than – I hated rehearsing. Putting songs together in the studio became my favourite part of the whole process, but only when there was time to do more than one overdub. For the moment, the three tracks we did – ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Problems’ and ‘No Feelings’ (which would become ‘God Save the Queen’) – came out very bland and drab. If you listen back to that demo it actually sounds like a Mickie Most production, because it’s very dry.
The guy who produced it was Chris Spedding, and I used to watch him practising with his band The Sharks in between moving sand around in a barrow and nicking Ariel Bender’s guitar at that studio off the King’s Road. He’d had a hit single since then with the song ‘Motor Bikin’’, which I’d seen him do on Top of the Pops, but he was basically a session guitarist who’d worked with Roxy Music and Nilsson, not to mention the Wombles. He was a pretty good guy to have on hand the first time we were in a studio, but we still had a way to go before we worked out how to get what we were doing down on tape.
The way we did that was through making The Spunk Tapes, which were demo versions of our best songs. We recorded them on a four-track in Denmark Street over a couple of weeks at the end of July in the long hot summer of ’76. We’d done a load of gigs at the 100 Club and a couple of mini-tours of Northern shitholes by then so we were getting pretty … well, polished would be the wrong word, but shit hot would just about cover it. The great thing about recording in Denmark Street was that the equipment was set up all the time, so there were unlimited opportunities to experiment and I could do loads of overdubs.
That was a really fun time. The only slight downside was that the geezer we recorded them with – a complete fucking hippie called Dave Goodman who’d rented us our touring PA – would later claim that everything good about how we sounded was down to him, while making a mint by selling off shit-quality live bootlegs – which showed how high his standards were when he was left to his own devices.
Another consequence of the earlier Chris Spedding session had been that this German bird called Nora came into the picture. She was Chris’ girlfriend at the time. Bernie Rhodes said he remembered her knocking about with Jimi Hendrix a few years before, so you couldn’t accuse her of having a type. Anyway, she came to see us play quite early on, we locked eyes, and the next thing I know I’m hanging out with her. She’s got a really nice flat, and it’s my first taste of the high life. She even bought me a Flying V guitar, which pissed Malcolm off – I think he saw her as an intruder. Like the girlfriend character in Spinal Tap a few years later who mispronounced ‘Dolby’.
I couldn’t see what his problem was at the time. She was a very sweet lady, plus this was at the up-and-down-the-motorway-in-a-Ford-Transit time when having a German sugar-mummy was just another little adventure. She had serious money, like real heiress dough – I think her dad owned a newspaper or something.
It wasn’t just McLaren who disapproved. Rotten resented me seeing her as well. He used to coat me off for it: ‘What are you hanging out with her for?’ If someone had told us then that he’d end up getting married to her and they’d still be together more than thirty years later, I don’t know which one of us would have been more surprised.
The order all this happened in has added to the many complexities of my relationship with John over the years, but I was no romantic threat to him in the long term. I can’t be intimate with anyone, because I’m just off looking for more. I only get attracted to strangers, that’s my thing. It’s not about making love, it’s about fucking someone in an alley, or paying a hooker – that’s what turns me on, where there’s no fucking feelings involved. Once feelings get involved, I’m done.
We did the second of the two Free Trade Hall shows around this time, which the geezers in Joy Division and loads of other Manchester musicians, including my good mate Billy Duffy of The Cult, would later say were the reason they all decided to form bands. Looking down from the stage, you wouldn’t have known Morrissey and everyone were out there. Apart from anything else, it wasn’t that big a crowd, and they just looked like a standard bunch of Northern cunts with moustaches and kipper ties from where I was standing.
Fair play to Tony Wilson, though. He was the one who had the balls to put the Sex Pistols on his Granada TV show, So It Goes, when hardly anyone else had heard of us. It was really exciting doing our first bit of telly. I remember being kind of nervous that we were going to fuck up, but luckily we didn’t. That’s the famous ‘Anarchy’ with Jordan in it, which is one of my favourite of all our TV appearances. Unlike the more notorious one a couple of months later, it didn’t go out live. Tony Wilson was a real sweetheart; it was a great shame when he died young. I guess what he achieved by helping Joy Division turn into New Order after Ian Curtis killed himself shows what a difference it can make to have a manager who wants to resolve your issues rather than encouraging you to stick the knife in.