
Living a life of crime and enduring fourteen criminal convictions he had lacked the ability to function normally until his forties. tour in 1978 for Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus said that Jones sounded like he was playing "a guitar factory instead of a guitar."īorn in London, Jones had grown up with his mother as an only child after his father had left him at the age of two. Reviewing the last Pistols show of their ill-fated U.S. Jones helped set the template for that in punk-you can hear it in the Clash and in the Buzzcocks, whose steady wall of sound and style of short fast catchy songs would also resurface in the '90s with grunge bands like Nirvana and even indie band Nada Surf, as well as many others who reflected Jones's immense and powerful influence.
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Inspired by Mott the Hoople, the Small Faces, and Roxy Music's performance of "Virginia Plain" on the British TV music show Top of the Pops, and a style that had been embedded in a long tradition from Link Wray's "Rumble" in 1958 to the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" in 1963, Jones-reacting against much that had been exemplified in the music by classic rock dinosaurs-through the Pistols reinstalled, along with guitarists such as Johnny Ramone of the Ramones, the original simplicity of early rock and roll, often using only three chords to generate a sufficient amount of stir against what was then being seen at the time as a stifling pompous virtuosity coming from progressive bands like Yes, Deep Purple, and ELP, with their fanciful technical abilities and extended solos.īut though he had railed against much of what existed at the time, he, and punk in general, had not been shy of guitar solos as long as they were economical, much like you'd hear in the garage rock that influenced it.
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In fact, Jones's secret to the success of his simple cutthroat style of guitar playing was that it was always executed perfectly, even though much of what he played came from the frustration of not knowing how to play. His guitar playing represents and reflects the band's altering of the sound of popular music. Jones's mutinous anthemic style and sound maintained certain links to classic rock, but greatly reflected the spirit of youth in Britain at the time. Significantly, much of the Pistols' musicality came from guitarist and cofounder Steve Jones, who took from the old and created something new and who, from the beginning, through his guitar playing, was a driving force that strongly shaped the band's sound. Yet their music was actually very consistent and very well played. Even though Rolling Stone magazine put them as number 58 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time, sometimes due to their anarchic presence they have been known more for their political attitudes and fashion sense than for their music. While all this may be true, the Pistols haven't always received the musical approbation they deserve. Australian bands like Midnight Oil and the Angels, and American ones like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, would not have existed as they did, or at least would have sounded very different. There probably wouldn't have been "back to basics" bands like the Buzzcocks, Magazine, Joy Division, New Order, and Happy Mondays, or even the Madchester scene, which came out of Britain in the '80s and included the Stone Roses, the Verve, and Oasis. In fact, without the Pistols, entire genres of music, including indie, electro, thrash metal, grunge, and rap, probably wouldn't have existed in the way that they did, and even much of the music of the '80s at least would have sounded completely different. Although there have been various reunions after the band disbanded in January 1978, in only a very brief period, 1976-78, the recalcitrant and pot-stirring Pistols exerted their influence. Through the final decades of the last century, and still for us today, the influence of the Sex Pistols on musicians and culture as protesters and rebels against the cultural status quo has been enormous. Perfect Sound Forever: Sex Pistols/Steve Jones On the Sex Pistols and Steve Jones
