Touching From A Distance - Deborah Curtis

TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE –

DEBORAH CURTIS

I met Brian Eno whilst in Amsterdam as he has an apartment and studio there. I didn't actually realise it was him at first until we began chatting and then when I did realise who he was, rather than talking about Roxy Music, U2 or whoever, I got him onto the subject of the band called The Winkies that he worked with between leaving Roxy Music and releasing his first solo album.

I showed him that I had some of their songs from their John Peel session on my i-Pod and I suspect that's what made him take a liking (or pity?) to me. For some reason he asked if I'd seen Control, the film about Joy Division as directed by Anton Corbijn that had just been released? I hadn't and he advised I should, informing me that it was good and highlighting the fact that the actors all play the instruments themselves. I took his advice and watched it soon after and, of course, he wasn't wrong and it's a very good film indeed.

Years later and I've finally got round to reading Touching From A Distance by Deborah Curtis, the book on which the film is based and I'm left thinking: Am I the only one who reads it as a damning indictment of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Tony Wilson?

Deborah Curtis is, of course, the widow of Ian Curtis and in her book she not only shatters the myth of Joy Division but she destroys it utterly. In my eyes at least, if not in others. How can anyone ever again listen to Joy Division in the same way after telling us Ian 'voted Conservative as he always would do. He argued that as his wife I had to vote the same way, otherwise I would cancel his vote!'

It's not as if she's revealing that actually Joy Division weren't just playing with Nazi imagery and that they really were in fact outright Fascists but honestly, what was he thinking? What was his reasoning? Should I be surprised? I understand how the Conservatives picked up a lot of working class votes at that time (and always have done) but I'd have thought Ian Curtis might have known better? And to force his wife to vote the same as him? There's a lot of other tales that Deborah relays that are equally cringeworthy but that one for me takes the biscuit. Ian Curtis was a young Conservative. A fucking Tory!

I never picked up on things like this in Corbijn's film (if they were there at all?) but maybe that's because the Joy Division myth is so powerful that it eclipses anything else? In her book, Deborah certainly confirms such things as the importance of the Sex Pistols playing at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester: 'As if being summoned to a religious gathering' as she puts it 'After the performance everyone seemed to move quickly towards the door. It seemed as if we had all been issued with instructions and now we were set to embark on a mission.'

And then there's the smaller details such as Ian Curtis confronting Tony Wilson in a bid to get Joy Division on television: 'You're a fucking cunt you are, you're a bastard' Ian tells Wilson. 'Oh yeah,' replies Wilson 'Why's that?' 'Cause you haven't put us on television,' Ian tells him. It's the stuff of legend.

But then there's other things like Ian expecting his evening meal to be ready when he came home from work, or details such as Ian's penchant for curling up in a ball and whimpering whenever he was frightened or couldn't cope with something. Was his suicide his ultimate curling up in a ball, I wonder?

Joy Division were a construct. A fabricated story of existential despair glossing over the real story of four northern lads acting like lads before the concept of 'ladism' was ever thought of and sold as 'lad culture' by the likes of Loaded magazine.

They were the result of an unspoken collusion between photographer Kevin Cummins and his images of the band in snowy Manchester city landscapes, the production genius of Martin Hannett, the bombastic prose of Paul Morley, and the myth-feeding acumen of Tony Wilson. A few years later the same trick was repeated with Frankie Goes To Hollywood but this time with Paul Morley teaming up with Trevor Horn to paint a veil of in-your-face gay gloss over pedestrian electronica pumped up to stadium rock proportions.

Joy Division were the Frankie Goes To Hollywood of their generation and Frankie Goes To Hollywood were the Joy Division of theirs. The difference being that Holly Johnson never killed himself.

Touching From A Distance should have been the stake through the heart of the Joy Division myth as it totally shatters and destroys it but instead, via the turning of it into a film by Anton Corbijn the myth was rejuvenated and even somewhat cemented. At the end of the day, as Brian Eno said, it's a good film but in hindsight, after reading Deborah Curtis's book, it also accentuates and lends weight to Tony Wilson's much-quoted mantra of "When you have to choose between truth and legend.... print the legend."

John Serpico

The Doors Of Perception - Aldous Huxley

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION -

HEAVEN AND HELL -

ALDOUS HUXLEY

It's been a few years since I last read The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell by Aldous Huxley. A lot of water has since passed under the bridge and a lot of drugs consumed, I should declare. I'm not proud. I've not sampled every type of drug in the world, far from it, but I've done a fair share of them. But then haven't we all? It's like the scene in The Rutles movie where Dirk is being interviewed and he admits “It's the truth, I have had tea. Lots of tea. Indian tea. And biscuits.” For all that, nowadays the subject of drugs is old hat it seems, and you're considered weird if you've never imbibed. As Hunter S Thompson once wrote: 'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.'

So where does this leave Aldous Huxley? Well, don't worry, he's still a person of interest and his observations regarding his experiences with mescaline are still noteworthy.

Huxley's first trip in 1953, for example, where he becomes fascinated by a vase of flowers, a chair leg and the fold in his trousers still makes for very good observations not only on the effects of mescaline but also on art. When highlighting the sense of 'an obscure knowledge that All is in all and that All is actually each', or 'the perception of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe', Huxley points out that the same perception can be recognised in paintings by Van Gogh, Botticelli, and Vermeer. And I'd tend to agree.

What Huxley says about mescaline heightening the perception of colour is true but also of interest is what he says about man's ability to recognise colours being unnecessary to his survival as an animal. According to Huxley, man's highly developed colour sense is a biological luxury. To which I would argue against. If the world is viewed as black and white then surely this is being reductive? There is beauty and value to be found in images of black and white, for sure, but to see the world in blazing technicolour leads to an enhancement and to a greater understanding of it, does it not? And greater understanding of the world should lead to greater chances of surviving in it – as a species – should it not? Reducing the world to black and white means reduced awareness. Reduced awareness means not only a lack of a sense of beauty but also of danger.

It's a conundrum. If the world, as Huxley writes, is the universe of reduced awareness then why is there an innate yearning in us for a better world? Why is there a desire to escape – for escapism - to improve, to create? If reduced awareness is a prerequisite for our survival then why have we not remained living in caves? Why is there such a thing as 'art'? All we really need to survive is food, water, and heat – and to be able to reproduce. The same as any other living thing. Why the desire and the need in man to create? Why is there art? Ultimately, what good does it do us?

Huxley wrestles with these questions himself but finds no answer. 'This is how one ought to see, how things really are,' he tells himself during his mescaline experience. To always be able to see Infinity in a flower. But if that was the case you'd never want to do anything else because just looking and being would be enough, he realises. But what about other people? What about human relations? What about the ordinary? How do you function in a world where ordinary concerns, moral judgements, the concept of time, of selves, of cocksureness, of over-valued words and notions are an irrelevance?

The end lesson that Huxley gains from his mescaline experiment is that 'the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.' But even this is a million-dollar question because ultimately, how do we know? Viewed both subjectively and objectively, how can we know?

As I said, nowadays the subject of drugs is old hat it seems, but so too are the concerns as raised by Huxley in his book. Does it matter? Does Huxley's questions count for anything these days? If not, then why might this be? Have Huxley's questions all been answered? Have we all moved on? That, again, is just another million-dollar question...

John Serpico

Rosshalde - Hermann Hesse

ROSSHALDE – HERMANN HESSE

I've made it my mission to plough through the complete works of Hermann Hesse. Well, you only live once. Hermann who, you might ask? Ah, it doesn't matter, I reply.

First published in 1914, Rosshalde is perhaps one of Hesse's lesser known books and though not as powerful as some of his others such as Steppenwolf or Journey To The East, it still packs an emotional and intellectual punch. On reading it, my immediate thought is that it reads like an Ingmar Bergman film. Meaning, it's soul-searching, desolate and bleak but in the end wholly uplifting and resolutely deep with meaning.

Rosshalde is the name of the house where an estranged family live out their somewhat dysfunctional lives. Dysfunctional, that is, in terms of happiness. The father is an artist who lives in an out-house in the grounds of the estate while his wife lives in their mansion house, devoutly caring for their son. Their other elder son lives away at University and only comes home during holidays.

Between the father and his wife there is little communication; between the father and the elder son there is not only little communication but open hostility. The only real link between them all is the younger son, whom they all love.

From this toxic situation, however, the father produces great and internationally acclaimed art but at what price? Must the source of great art hung on the walls of the rich always have to be wrung from the anguish and sadness of the artist?

The visit of a friend from the Far East punctures the sterility of the father's life and suggests a solution: To step out into the world and away from seclusion, isolation and self-imposed unhappiness. To embrace the world. To join him in the Far East to live a fuller life, enjoying the beauty and wonder of nature and to capture it in art.

Here then is the theme familiar to many of Hesse's books, that of the question as whether to live one's life in contemplation or to throw one's self into the maelstrom of the world. The father takes heed of his friend's suggestion and decides to abandon his so-called 'family life' and head off to the Far East for a year or so, leaving it open as to whether he might ever return. This decision is arrived at after much soul-searching but rather than running away from his responsibilities he is instead facing up to everything and walking away – and right there is the big difference.

For all that, before he is able to leave tragedy occurs when his younger son is struck down with meningitis and dies. The book ends with the father about to set out on his new life, poorer and indelibly wounded by the death of his son but determined now not to waste or lose a precious hour of his life again.

Rosshalde is a classic depiction of an Apollonian and Dionysian tragedy where light clashes with dark and the real clashes with the illusory. The key is in the joining of the two opposites and that is what the father in setting off for the Far East is going for: To complete himself by living a fuller life but through contemplation still being creative – in his case, to continue to paint.

A point of interest in the story is Hesse's use of metaphor. It's the arrival of his friend from the Far East that prompts and instigates the father's epiphany but clearly this is just a way of representing the advent of what essentially is a moment of revelation, which could actually have been brought about by any number of other things. 
Hesse, in this particular story, represents it as a visit of a friend from the Far East but just as easily it could have been represented by the reading of a book, the hearing of a song, the viewing of a picture, an unplanned incident, an unexpected interruption, or even the imbibing of a drug. Which brings us neatly to Timothy Leary's supposition that Hesse may have been experimenting with psychedelic drugs and that his flashes of inspiration were being derived from this.

You can see where Leary's coming from because Hesse's moments of perception are somewhat similar to the moments of clarity that can be brought about by LSD. Aldous Huxley would have vouched for this. Apart from the books themselves, however, there is no evidence to support Leary's suggestion, which is actually quite good to know. It tells us that rather than being drug-induced, Hesse's ideas, visions and insights are all natural, which makes for even greater respect for him. Which makes for his books to be more likeable, more engaging and – interestingly – more real.

John Serpico

The Buddha Of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi

THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA –

HANIF KUREISHI

I presume everybody's read Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha Of Suburbia by now? At one time it seemed to be everywhere you turned: book shops, charity shops, haberdasheries, dentist waiting rooms. It was ubiquitous. There's no need, then, to go into any detail about it here as we all know what it's about if not by reading it then by having watched the TV adaptation. I would say this though: The Buddha Of Suburbia contains one of the best descriptions about encountering Punk Rock for the first time that I've ever read.

The character of Charlie Hero, Karim's friend who ends up as a rock star in America, is presumably based on Billy Idol? Kureishi grew up in Bromley, in South London, so would have been familiar with the Bromley contingent, the early followers of the Sex Pistols who went on to form Siouxsie And The Banshees or became acolytes of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.

In the book, Karim and Charlie go to the Nashville one night and it's there that their encounter with Punk Rock takes place. It's worth repeating:

'… at the front of the place, near the stage, there were about thirty kids in ripped black clothes. And the clothes were full of safety pins. Their hair was uniformly black, and cut short, seriously short, or if long it was spiky and rigid, sticking up and out and sideways, like a handful of needles, rather than hanging down. A hurricane would not have dislodged those styles. The girls were in rubber and leather and wore skin-tight skirts and holed black stockings, with white face-slap and bright-red lipstick. They snarled and bit people. Accompanying these kids were what appeared to be three extravagant South American transvestites in dresses, rouge and lipstick, one of whom had a used tampon on a piece of string around her neck. Charlie stirred restlessly as he leaned there. He hugged himself in self-pity as we took in this alien race dressed with an abandonment and originality we'd never imagined possible. I began to understand what London meant and what class of outrage we had to deal with. It certainly put us in proportion.

“What is this shit?” Charlie said. He was dismissive, but he was slightly breathless too, there was awe in his voice.

“And look at the stage,” Charlie said. “What rubbish is this? Why have you brought me out for this?”

“D'you wanna go, then?”

“Yes. All this is making me feel sick.”

“OK,” I said “Lean on my shoulder and we'll get you out of here. I don't like the look of it either. It's too weird.”

“Yeah, much too weird.”

“It's too much.”

“Yeah.”

But before we could move the band shambled on, young kids in clothes similar to the audience. The fans suddenly started to bounce up and down. As they pumped into the air and threw themselves sideways they screamed and spat at the band until the singer, a skinny little kid with carroty hair, dripped with saliva. He seemed to expect this, and merely abused the audience back, spitting at them, skidding over on to his arse once, and drinking and slouching around the stage as if he were in his living room. His purpose was not to be charismatic, he would be himself in whatever mundane way it took. The little kid wanted to be an anti-star, and I couldn't take my eyes off him. It must have been worse for Charlie.

“He's an idiot,” Charlie said.

“Yeah.”

“And I bet they can't play either. Look at those instruments. Where did they get them, a jumble sale?”

“Right,” I said.

“Unprofessional,” he said.

When the shambolic group finally started up, the music was thrashed out. It was more aggressive than anything I'd heard since early Who. This was no peace and love; here were no drum solos or effeminate synthesizers. Not a squeeze of anything 'progressive' or 'experimental' came from these pallid, vicious little council estate kids with hedgehog hair, howling about anarchy and hatred. No song lasted more than three minutes, and after each the carrot-haired kid cursed us to death. He seemed to be yelling directly at Charlie and me. I could feel Charlie getting tense beside me. I knew London was killing us as I heard “Fuck off, all you smelly old hippies! You fucking slags! You ugly fart-breaths! Fuck off to hell!” he shouted at us.

I didn't look at Charlie again, until the end. As the lights came up I saw he was standing up straight and alert, with cubes of dried vomit decorating his cheeks.

“Let's go,” I said.

We were numb; we didn't want to speak for fear of returning to our banal selves again. The wild kids bundled out. Charlie and I elbowed our way through the crowd. Then he stopped.

“What is it, Charlie?”

“I've got to get backstage and talk to those guys.”

I snorted. “Why would they want to talk to you?”

I thought he'd hit me, but he took it well.

“Yeah, there's no reason why they should like me,” he said. “If I saw me coming into the dressing room I'd have myself kicked out.”

Charlie was excited. “That's it, that's it,” he said as we strolled. “That's fucking it.” His voice was squeaky with rapture. “The sixties have been given notice tonight. Those kids we saw have assassinated all hope. They're the fucking future.”'

Of course, Kureishi's description is full of clichés but then wasn't Punk a re-imagining of clichés? Wasn't this the canvas scratched and vandalised for it to have new visions scrawled upon it? Punk Rock and all its Year Zero declarations, ethics and mores was cliche-ridden to the max though the big difference was that the Punk prophets didn't care. And by Punk prophets I mean not just those in bands but even more so those in the actual audience.

Kureishi's description captures a moment in time that doesn't happen that often. William Burroughs described it as a 'naked lunch', a frozen moment when you see what is on the end of the fork. William Blake described it as 'illumination'. Sartre described it as 'nausea'. Kureishi's description captures nothing less than a moment of revelation.

The only other part of The Buddha Of Suburbia worth highlighting is when Karim and his girlfriend Eleanor are at the home of the radical theatre director Pyke and his wife Marlene, and they're about to have an orgy:

'Marlene fell back on to the couch, naked, with her legs open.

“There's so much we can do tonight!” she cried. “There's hours and hours of total pleasure ahead of us. We can do whatever we want. We've only just begun. Let me freshen our drinks and we'll get down to it. Now, Karim, I want you to put some ice up my cunt. Would you mind going to the fridge?”'

Punk Rock and kinky sex. Is that all we're really interested in? Are we just perverted? Should we be seeking help of the psychiatric kind? Or is that just me?

Let's just blame it on Hanif Kureishi, shall we?

John Serpico

Under Exmouth Skies (Part 43)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 43)

Just another typical day in Exmouth...

A Moment Of War - Laurie Lee

A MOMENT OF WAR – LAURIE LEE

After being unceremoniously whisked back to Britain from Spain by the Royal Navy at the start of the Civil War in the Spring of 1936, Laurie Lee made his way back in December of 1937 by crossing the Pyrenees from France. On re-entering Spanish territory, however, he was immediately arrested on suspicion of being a spy.

During his brief return to Britain, Lee had come to understand the significance of what was happening in Spain and what it meant for the world. His journey through Spain the year before had left him with a love of the Spanish people and their subsequent plight had pulled at his conscience. His intention was to join the International Brigades siding with the Republicans in their fight against Franco and the forces of Fascism. For Lee, it was the right thing to do and his intention was honourable if not in hindsight extraordinarily naïve.

A Moment Of War is Laurie Lee's memoir of his time during the Spanish Civil War when his youthful idealism informed him of a way to a better world, only for it to be crushed like the petals of a delicate flower. So naïve was Lee at that time, he had no idea there were groups in London who could aid and abet him in his journey back to Spain and to put him in contact with fellow would-be fighters. Instead, he had made the journey by himself, setting off in the middle of winter and packing such non-essential items as books and his violin.

Patently, he could have had no idea of what or who might greet him once he got to Spain. The last thing he would have imagined was to have been arrested as a spy and imprisoned in a hole in the ground, from where everything pointed to him being executed.

By some miracle and unexplained reason, Lee was released and escorted to a barracks that acted as a collecting point for volunteers entering Spain from the north. From there, Lee gained his first real insights into the realities of the Civil War:

'Day after day, more groups of newcomers appeared – ill-clad, crop-haired and sunken-cheeked, they were (as I was) part of the skimmed-milk of the middle-Thirties... ex-convicts, the alcoholics, the wizened miners, dockers, noisy politicos and dreaming undergraduates... But what had brought us here, anyway? My reasons seemed simple enough, in spite of certain confusions. But so then were those of most of the others – failure, poverty, debt, the law, betrayal by wives or lovers – most of the usual things that sent one to foreign wars. But in our case, I believe, we shared something else, unique to us at that time – the chance to make one grand, uncomplicated gesture of personal sacrifice and faith which might never occur again. Certainly, it was the last time this century that a generation had such an opportunity before the fog of nationalism and mass-slaughter closed in... We had found a new freedom, almost a new morality, and discovered a new Satan – Fascism.'

Lee vividly describes the squalor, the degradation, the futility, misery and despair of war, whilst accentuating time and again how Franco had delivered Spain up to Hitler and his Luftwaffe as a testing ground to see what mass bombing could do to a major European country. The answer was the ancient city of Guernica and its annihilation.

As for the anarchists, socialists and communists of the International Brigades, Lee has nothing but respect:

'Public schoolboys, undergraduates, men from coal mines and mills, they were the ill-armed advance scouts in the, as yet, unsanctified Second World War. Without recognition, often ridiculed, they saw what was coming, jumped the gun, and went into battle too soon.'

It's not until near the end of his story that Lee finally gets transferred to the front-line to at last engage with the enemy, only to almost immediately be blasted by a bombardment of shellfire and then over run by an enemy charge. It all happens and is all over too quickly for him to comprehend and all that he knows is that he has killed a man for reasons he would never understand:

'I had killed a man, and remembered his shocked, angry eyes. There was nothing I could say to him now. Tanks rattled by and cries receded. I began to have hallucinations and breaks in the brain. I lay there knowing neither time nor place. Some of our men found me, I don't know who they were, and they drove me back speechless to Tarazona.

Was this then what I'd come for, and all my journey had meant – to smudge out the life of an unknown young man in a blur of panic which in no way could affect victory or defeat?'

From the hospital that he is taken, Lee is told that he's being sent back to London: '”You'd be more use to us there. After all, you're not much use to us here.”' says a doctor '”You could write about us, make speeches, paint posters – or something...”'

So Lee is sent to Barcelona where he's told to present himself to the police, who promptly arrest him as a deserter and spy, and throw him into a prison cell. Weeks later, by some miracle again, he's released, packed onto a train and returned to Britain where he would live out the rest of his life... but with an indelible stain upon it.

A Moment Of War accentuates the fact that in war there is no glory. As the song goes: War? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. War is oblivion and the ghost of mankind. War is a black hole to avoid. Fight war not wars. Give peace a chance. War is over if you want it. The dichotomy here being that however futile and inglorious war is, there are some wars that need to be fought to avoid a greater war, the Spanish Civil War being a case in point.

If England, France and America had only taken heed of the requests and appeals for help and support from the Spanish Republicans and their comrades, even if only in the form of weapons being supplied, then there would have been more of a chance of withstanding the attack from Franco and his Fascist supporters.

If only England, France and America had intervened against the amalgamating forces of Fascism as represented by Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain then the course toward the Second World War may have been altered. That's not to say the Second World War may have been averted but Germany would not have been so practised in aerial bombardment if they hadn't been able to use Spain as a testing ground.

There is no glory in war, and Laurie Lee makes that very clear. There are, however, some wars that needed and need to be fought. The Spanish Civil War was one of them.

John Serpico

Lonely Boy - Steve Jones

LONELY BOY – STEVE JONES

There's a telling sentence at the start of Steve Jones' autobiography, where he writes 'It was my shit upbringing that got the ball rolling.' The ball he's referring to, of course, is the Sex Pistols and what Jones says gets to the gist of the matter immediately, even though it's not quite the whole story. Jones did indeed have a shit upbringing, there's no denying that, but in him describing it there's no wallowing in self pity or anything of the like, it's just him telling us how it was.

What all the Sex Pistols' members had in common and what typically applies to a lot of working class youngsters was the idea that they were essentially worthless, or as Jones puts it: 'The message I'd got from my upbringing and education was that I was a piece of shit who was never going to amount to anything, and that kind of negative view of yourself can very easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.'

The point Jones makes is an important one and it tells us exactly where the Pistols were coming from: The Sex Pistols could only ever have been working class. If they had been anything else, they would not have had the impact they did. To borrow Mark E Smith's term, the Sex Pistols were the original prole art threat.

It's not, however, quite the whole story because other influences also came into play to make the Pistols such a 'success', not least the effect of Johnny Rotten's personality and Malcolm McLaren's art school background and contacts. Saying that, it was still Steve Jones' willingness to look beyond his shit upbringing that started it all. 'That's not me showing off,' he writes 'It's just a fact.'

It was the lure of music and fashion that cast Jones a lifeline and caused him to look further than his allotted place in the world. Born into a single-parent family, abused by his step-father and essentially 'brainwashed into apologising for it', Jones ended up as a career criminal, stealing anything and everything which took his fancy, including musical instruments – lots and lots of musical instruments.

Being broadminded and without prejudice, simply by hanging out at his shop Jones became a friend of Malcolm McLaren and from there the story of the Sex Pistols began, as has been documented enough times already for the need to go over again here.

As well as being a thief and in the words of McLaren in The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle film, 'a brilliant cat burglar', Jones also had – to put it mildly – an eye for the ladies. Come the Bill Grundy interview and his past experience of sexual predators (and even being a bit of one himself, as detailed in his book) Jones recognised what Grundy was up to immediately in the way he was talking to Siouxsie Sioux. “You dirty sod. You dirty old man.” Jones says. “Well, keep going, chief, keep going,” Grundy replies “Go on, you've got another five seconds. Say something outrageous.” So Jones tells Grundy what he thinks of him: “You dirty bastard. You dirty fucker. What a fucking rotter.”

And the rest is history.

The Pistols never put themselves up on a pedestal – they were pushed there – but once they were on a pedestal, what exactly did people want from them? If the truth be told, a lot of people probably wanted them to be martyrs. To be useful idiots, even? Well, they certainly got both with Sid Vicious. Johnny, on the other hand, was a little too smart to be anyone's fool, least of all Malcolm McLaren's.

In hindsight, the Sex Pistols reforming in 1996 and their Finsbury Park concert was the best thing they could have done in terms of kicking the pedestal out from under them. It certainly destroyed the myth that had built up about them. The fact that a lot of people didn't want them to reform and viewed it even as a betrayal is evidence enough. And was it such a crime to be only 'doing it for the money'? “Is it cos we're working class and that means somehow we don't have access to cash?” Johnny roared at the gathered media at the press launch for the Finsbury Park concert “Should we just stay in our horrible little council estates? Bollocks!”

Come the day of the concert, Johnny was in his element: “Let's start a war!” he called to the heaving mass of the audience. And so too in his own special way was Jones in his element: “Who wants a shag?” he called out.

Steve Jones' autobiography, Lonely Boy, certainly lays a few ghosts to rest particularly from his childhood as well as, of course, from his Sex Pistols experience. On reading it, you just can't help but to love the old rogue even if by today's terms he's a veritable rock dinosaur, especially when it comes to women.

Does he really need to let us know he had Chrissie Hynde over a bath at a party once? Do we need to know he 'took one for the team' when shagging Nancy Spungeon whilst she was going out with Sid? Do we need to know John Lydon's wife, Nora, used to be Jones' sugarmummy? Do we need to know he shagged Pauline, the girl from Birmingham as sung about in Bodies, down an alley off Wardour Street? I guess we do?

Nowadays, Jones is a resident of Los Angeles where he has his own radio show, Jonesy's Jukebox, which is actually really very good. On the not so plus side, he admits to hanging out over there with Russell Brand doing transcendental meditation. It's a reminder of what Rotten once said when asked about Neil Young's paean to him in the track Hey, Hey, My, My from Young's Rust Never Sleeps album: “I've got better things to do than sit on a beach in California taking acid,” said Johnny.

In his remark, he was highlighting the remoteness of Neil Young's world in comparison to our own and in a similar way, Jones' life in America these days highlights the gap between where he is now and where we all are back in Britain where government imposed austerity continues to crush its people and eat its children.

We shouldn't bemoan or criticise Steve Jones' life nowadays, though. After all, who are we and what gives us the right? In fact, we should instead be pleased for him because he's been through the mill and he deserves the peace he seems now to have acquired. In fact, if anything we should be thanking him for giving us one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands ever and for a lot of us, at least, for actually helping to change our lives for the better.

In buying his book, you'll be making Steve Jones a happy man. Send him nudes and you'll probably be making him even happier.

John Serpico