When a reporter asked Rotten – whose real name is John Lydon – if the movie got anything right, he caustically replied: "Maybe the name Sid."Ĭox wasn't trying for authenticity. But there was controversy over the casting, then came questions about the accuracy and intent of the script. In the end, that was the story Cox wanted to tell it was a story about someone who got lost along the way. "But regardless, Sid did some very stupid and outrageous things to himself and to others – maybe because he felt obliged to act out the image he was given and perpetuated." "Maybe Johnny Rotten should have been that friend," Oldman added. At some point, I think Sid needed a friend to tell him that he wasn't a legitimate bass-guitar player, that he wasn't a rock star, that he was given the name 'Vicious,' and that he wasn't what that name implied. Sid and his group and Nancy were on some kind of big roller-coaster ride. "Well, it's been said before, but partly you die like you live. "Now why did these two have to die?" Oldman asked in the Tribune interview.
Sid Vicious was arrested at the scene and charged with her murder, only to fatally overdose while awaiting trial. Spungen had gotten him hooked on heroin, beginning a slow and awful slide toward her own mysterious death from a knife wound in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. He later sang three songs on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle – including a nearly unrecognizable dismantling of the Frank Sinatra favorite "My Way" – but the soundtrack for this largely fictionalized film arrived weeks after Vicious died. But that was long enough for Sex Pistols to go supernova, and the out-of-his-depth Vicious was simply swept along. He was in the band from only February 1977 through January 1978, appearing on just one song on their album. "God Save the Queen," one of Sex Pistols' most identifiable songs, found singer Johnny Rotten decrying the state of things by howling, " There's no future, no future – no future for you." But Sid Vicious, born Simon Ritchie, actually lived that reality. For kids, things like fashion and music are important, and I think the whole punk movement came out of this pop culture depression." "The story of Sid and Nancy grew out of that dullness," Oldman added. You could leave school with a and still not have an opportunity to work. Politically in England, the employment situation was a disaster. "The '60s offered so much more, but in the '70s fashion, music and politics were dull. "I grew up in the 1970s, and they were deadly dull and boring," Gary Oldman, who played Vicious, told the Chicago Tribune in 1987. In the end, he was as incompetent on his instrument as he was a symbol of how the punk aesthetic could devolve into pointless self-destruction. Vicious instinctively rebelled against everything, without ever growing up enough to figure out what he actually wanted. The band basically replaced him with a fan from the crowd. Original Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock was ousted during the recording of their first (and only) album. The band emerged from a period of deep malaise in England, pushing back hard against convention – and against each other. It was all so tragic the way it played out." "Sid and Nancy were terrible fuck ups, and they betrayed the punk ideal, but in the midst of all this chaos was a romantic story. I'm looking forward to getting back up there."I thought, for the times, the story was a good one to tell," Cox told Paul Rowlands in 2012. It's hard not to play a good show when the crowd are as behind you as they are up in Glasgow.
We put everything into that one as the Glasgow crowd kind of expect that and always have and it was amazing. We hadn't played live for 20 years and people really appreciated it. He said: "We played at the SECC in 1996 and the turnout was amazing. Glenn insists he had no idea how the Glasgow punters we're going to react, or if they'd even pull a crowd, but it became one of the highlights of the whole tour. Instead, they finally made it up on 1996's Filthy Lucre tour, the reunion that nobody thought would ever happen. Obviously it's a Pistols one, but not one from their heyday, as the band's date at the legendary Apollo on the Anarchy In The UK tour in 1976 was cancelled. He's no stranger to Glasgow, but looking at coming back up to play reminds him of his favourite show here.