What’s right and wrong in Danny Boyle’s “Pistol” series about the Sex Pistols?

“Remember, this is not a documentary“, insists in the media Steve Jones, the guitarist and founder of the Sex Pistols, about the mini-series Pistol directed by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire). This series in six episodes, visible in France on Disney + since July 6, is indeed based on his memoirs Lonely Boy, my Sex Pistols life (2017).

Rather faithful to the facts, the series nevertheless takes some liberties with reality to tell the saga of the incendiary and rebellious punk group which panicked England at the end of the 70s, before becoming an institution. We have sorted out the true from the false in the story. Needless to say that this article “spoils” the series in large widths.

Did Steve Jones really steal stage material from David Bowie?

At the start of the miniseries Pistolwe see Steve Jones, guitarist and founder of the Sex Pistols, a great admirer of Bowie, enter the Hammersmith Odeon in London, a few hours after the concert during which David Bowie put an end to his Ziggy Stardust character, and steal equipment.

This incident is authentic, if we are to believe Steve Jones who admits in his memoirs Lonely Boy, My life as a Sex Pistols having been an unrepentant thief during his youth. Tonight in July 1973, the last date of Bowie’s tour, “I walked in and took as many things on stage as I could“, including an amp, some cymbals and “the Electro Voice microphone that still bore traces of Bowie’s lipstick“. On the other hand, it is false that he was then arrested and thrown in prison for having stolen equipment from the group Hawkwind (the group of Lemmy Kilmister, future Motörhead). In fact, Steve Jones admits to being unable to remember why he was arrested… As for the vigorous defense that Malcolm McLaren gives him in court in the series, it is true but clearly exaggerated.

Did Chrissie Hynde have a long love affair with Steve Jones?

In the series, Chrissie Hynde, future Pretenders, played by the excellent Sydney Chandler, is a major character. She has a long torrid romance with Steve Jones and she even misses marrying him to get her papers (Chrissie Hynde is American).

In reality, she worked for a bit at Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s Sex store, and she had a brief fling with her guitarist friend Steve Jones. “She was shocked when she saw the series“, acknowledged the guitarist in the New York Times. “Even though my story with her wasn’t that long, I find the way it was written makes it interesting.“As for the marriage, the singer and musician never tried to marry him to settle with immigration. It was John Lydon that she asked for this service, then Sid Vicious. accepted for two pounds sterling, but it never happened.

Did young punk Jordan really take the train topless in a transparent vinyl outfit?

At the start of the second episode of the series, we see the young saleswoman of the Sex store and assistant to Vivienne Westwood Jordan, camped by Maisie Williams seen in Game Of Thronescoming from the suburbs by bike and then by train to the shop located in the heart of London, alone, in a transparent vinyl dress revealing her bare chest and triggering horrified reactions everywhere in her path.

Known for her white-haired bouffant hairstyle and bold cubist make-up, Jordan aka Pamela Rooke, who died last April at the age of 66, was a legendary figure in the punk scene. According to Steve Jones, this young woman with an inimitable style really dared to take public transport dressed in this way. This intrepid dared everything in matters of dress, to the point that he wrote in his memoirs that he had sometimes been “embarrassed to walk down the street with her because everyone was staring at us.” In 2017, Pamela Rooke told the magazine AnOther : “I didn’t care what people thought. I never needed to be accepted or approved by anyone. (…) It was about emancipation, not teasingAnd she added:The world seemed very gray, and I was determined to lighten it up a bit..”

Did Sid Vicious meet Nancy Spungen as told in “Pistol”?

The character of Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of Sid Vicious, who will later be found murdered in the latter’s room (without anyone ever really knowing if he is the author of the murder), enters the scene in the 5th episode from the Serie. During a concert, she fell in love with him and outrageously bumped into him backstage and in the room.

In fact, Nancy Spungen was not afraid and it could very well have happened that way. Except that it was John Lydon himself who introduced them in March 1977 at Sid’s first show with the Sex Pistols. “I had the misfortune to introduce him“Nancy Spungen,”a heroin addict groupie from New York“, recalls John Lydon in his autobiography Rage is my energy. “I was convinced that it was going to end very badly, but not at this point. I thought he would just spend the night with her and eject her the next morning (…) But in fact, it was precisely the ravaged and destroyed side of Nancy that he appreciated.“Not the rest of the band, and especially Steve Jones, who still remembers”the awful energy“She was giving off. Besides, it’s not true that Steve Jones, Chrissie Hynde and Paul Cook drugged her and put her on a plane to New York to get her away from Sid. However, Malcolm McLaren did hatch a plan to get rid of her, as told by McLaren secretary Sophie Richmond in the book England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage. But the plan failed and Nancy remained in England.

Was Steve Jones really illiterate?

In the series, Chryssie Hynde realizes after a while that Steve Jones, who comes from a very modest background and was abused as a child by his stepfather, is unable to read an article in the newspaper.

“I was quite illiterate“, he admitted in a podcast for RollingStone made when the series was released in the United States. When the band recorded Anarchy in the UK, he had no idea what the word anarchy meant. He only learned to read and write properly at the age of 30. “I’m not proud of it, but that’s how it was. And I never listened to the lyrics. I knew he (John Lydon) had something to say.”

Did the Sex Pistols perform a Christmas concert for children of firefighters in 1977?

In the latest episode of Pistol, we attend an improbable concert of the Sex Pistols, on Christmas Day 1977, for the children of firefighters on strike in the city of Huddersfield (North of England). The members of the most hated band in the country show their best side, giving gifts, dancing with the children to the disco anthems of the moment, clowning around to make them laugh and changing the lyrics of the songs to avoid swear words.

Yes, it happened. And this while the Sex Pistols were practically banned from concerts anywhere in England. The images, shot by Julien Temple, attest to this. “For most people they were monsters that made the headlines“, declared the director to the Guardian in 2013, during the broadcast on English TV of a documentary recounting this event with period images. “Seeing them play for seven or eight year olds was wonderful. They were a radical group but they had a lot more heart than people think.t”, added Julien Temple. “The cake was as big as a car hood, with Sex Pistols written on it.“, remembered for his part Jez Scott, in the Guardian. He, who was a 16-year-old punk at the concert, confirmed that they had omitted the swear words from the song onesiesand added:I had a yellow and pink skateboard in the colors of the cover of Never Mind the Bollocksby winning the pogo contest“. This was the last concert that the Sex Pistols gave in England.

“Pistol”, a 6-episode mini-series on Disney+ has been on view since July 6, 2022 (This series is reserved for “an informed public”. Disney has implemented reinforced parental controls allowing the creation of profiles locked by a PIN code )