Pistol Whipped: Living up to the Legend of the Sex Pistols

Steyn On-line ^ | June 4, 2022 | Rick McGinnis

[Twotone]

It's inevitable that, sooner or later, some pivotal moment in your life – a cultural or political event that changed what you did or thought – will become history. In that moment you realize not just that (a lot of) time has passed, but that your memory of that moment is wholly subjective, and open to interpretation – or misinterpretation. In my young life, that moment was punk rock, and I was naïve enough to believe for years that it was a wholly subcultural event, and hardly likely one day to become a six-part miniseries streamed by Disney. (If I even knew what streaming was.)

Actually, it became obvious that punk rock was going to be perennial content fodder years ago, somewhere between the release of Sid and Nancy (1986) and CBGB (2013), two disappointing attempts to tell the story of people and places crucial to punk history. They set the bar pretty low, and I didn't expect much until I heard that Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, Yesterday) would be directing Pistol, a series based on the memoirs of Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones; the source material was novel, and the director certainly had the credentials to transcend mere ripped t-shirt costume melodrama.

[Rummyfan]

Don’t knock Chrissie Hynde! IMHO she is a rock genius.

[crusty old prospector]

God Save the Queen.

[FreedomPoster]

I missed the Sex Pistols when they came through the old Southeast Music Hall in Broadview Plaza in Atlanta, but I saw the Pretenders in a small venue in Louisville in the Summer of 1980. They were awesome. They had just put out the self titled first album the prior December.