I was rather surprised to find a documentary about the Sex Pistols shown on TV this afternoon. I pulled up a chair and watched with excitement. Mostly it was about the production of their album and their relationship with McClaren and their record labels. Glen Matlock was interviewed extensively and there was quite a bit of film devoted to his either quitting or being kicked out of the band. Curiously, there was very little devoted to Sid and very little footage of him shown at all (despite his being one of the most recognizable members of the band in popular culture). Some of the live archival footage actually seemed to have had him cropped out. What very little was said about him, especially by the band members themselves, was largely negative: “He couldn’t play,” “He was a junkie,” etc etc.
So, I ask: Did he bring anything to the band at all? He couldn’t play, he had health issues that prevented him from doing shows, he was fucked up on drugs when he was healthy, little of his playing (if any) was on the actual album, and on and on. He had a really “great” look, though, which jived well with the other members of the band, but beyond that he seems to have been pretty useless.
He was John’s best friend. I’m not sure what it was that you watched, but the part in The Filth And The Fury where he details Sid’s death is absolutely devastating.
I mean, John Lydon isn’t exactly a sympathetic, emotional type. He’s spent his life on the fringe, resenting and challenging most of the norms of his society, both because he finds them repugnant and because he knew they were out of his reach. He’s gone out of his way at times to piss off people just because he thought they deserved to have their lives upset a bit.
And he’s brought to tears recalling his friend’s life, and his own helplessness at being unable to do anything to stop what he knew was a death spiral.
Their scandalous image was their greatest asset. They weren’t famous for musical innovation or for building on what previous musicians did; they were famous for making Keith Moon and Robert Plant look sober and monastic by comparison. Sid was a big part of this.
It was one of those episodes of Classic Albums (dubbed into Chinese) about the making of Nevermind the Bollocks. Nothing really in-depth, but still pretty interesting and much better than the usual drek they show on TV on Saturday afternoons.
I have seen The Filth and the Fury, and I do remember that part you mentioned as being particularly jarring. Still, it seems like he’s one of the most identifiable members of the group, and yet the band themselves slag him off so much. Didn’t Lydon call him a “coat hangar” once, or something? Pretty odd thing to say about someone who was your friend.
I’d imagine any criticisms the other band members would have had of him were along the lines of “He was a wanker, but he was our wanker, and don’t you dare say a bad word about him.”, or at least in Lydon’s case.
This is a little like asking if Bez brought anything to the Happy Mondays. One could argue his lack of any particular talent, but you couldn’t deny he made a contribution to their success.
I don’t know who was producing whatever documentary it was that you saw, but even if it was the band themselves, they’ll almost certainly have had a director and editor who still had their own story that they wanted to tell. The band could have been perfectly loving and chatty about Sid 98% of the time and if the director and editor chose to only put in the other 2%, then that’s what you end up with.
Well, as I said, it was an episode of Classic Albums, which is more about the making of the album than anything else. Sid didn’t have much to do with the album, really. They even mentioned Matlock being brought back in as a session musician after he left he group. What’s more, what I have heard them mention about Sid hasn’t sounded very nice: pretty much that he sucked at music and was too strung out to be of any real use to the band.