Steve Jones has held out an olive branch to John Lydon. The 69-year-old guitarist said he has “no hard feelings” towards the Sex Pistols frontman.
Talking about making up with his old bandmate, he said in an interview with The Sun: "It could happen. I've got no hard feelings towards John.”
"It might not seem like that because I've not spoken to him since 2008. I've been sober 34 years and I've learnt a lot about how to conduct myself. I don't want resentments – it's not healthy."
The two fell out over the 2022 Disney+ TV drama, Pistol, which was based on Jones’s memoir, Lonely Boy. Lydon was against the project from the start and took Jones and the rest of the band to court to stop the use of the band’s songs in the show.
Recently, the three remaining Pistols – Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock - have toured a version of the band with ex-Gallows man Frank Carter taking Lydon’s place on vocals. Initially this was just for three gigs last year to raise money to save the Bush Hall venue in West London. But these proved so successful that the band have extended their latest comeback and are playing a number of festival shows in 2025.
In the Sun interview, Jones defended the band’s decision to continue despite the absence of Lydon. "There's a lot of naysayers out there, but the naysayers haven't seen it.
"They just think it can't be good because John ain't in it. But we did about 12 shows in England, and most of them changed their tune.
"It's great. Frank's brilliant. He's got so much energy. He does all that s*** while me, Cooky and Matlock just shovel the coal in. And it's brilliant."
As for Lydon, he was interviewed by Blitzed magazine recently and while he didn’t mention his old band’s latest comeback, he did say that he didn’t understand why anyone would "still expect" a follow-up to Never Mind The Bollocks. One of the problems would have been his diverse taste in music, apparently.
"Yeah, an audience is a very demanding thing,” he said. “They'll grab hold of you, and they won't let go of that vision of you. You can't live your life according to somebody else's illusions about you. You just can't. You've got to be true to yourself.
"For me, I've always declared I had a vast, vast record collection of music, so I was influenced in many different directions and some of them completely contradictory to each other. That was always going to shine through in any records l've put out. And so I'd say to those that were still expecting.”
'Never Mind the Bollocks Part 2'? "F*** off, you idiot. What are you not listening to?"
