“Pistol” is based on guitarist Steve Jones’ 2018 memoir 'Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol,” which Lydon’s attorney Mark Cunningham said depicts the frontman “in a hostile and unflattering light.' 'He must have made an informed decision to sign it and - if it is a shackle - to shackle himself.' He would not have been cavalier about that,' said Judge Mann. 'A man with those concerns would expect to be made to understand important documents that he was signing. Lydon, better known as the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, argued in July that the licenses for 'Pistol,” a six-part Disney drama about the band directed by Oscar-winning British director Danny Boyle, could not be granted without his permission, adding that the bandmembers’ copyright licensing agreement 'smacks of some kind of slave labour.'īut High Court Judge Mann ruled Monday it was 'impossible to believe' Lydon was unaware of the repercussions of the bandmates’ 1998 agreement allowing voting on a majority-rules basis during his efforts to protect the Sex Pistols' legacy.

Judge Anthony Mann at the High Court in London ruled that the band's former drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones were entitled to invoke majority-voting rules against famously snotty John Lydon to license their 1970s-era back catalogue. “Then we got Sid (Vicious), who couldn’t play bass, who looked great, he was a sweet guy, but then he got caught up in the whirlwind where he thought he had to act a certain way, like we all did really.LONDON (CN) - “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated,” sneered Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten at the exhausted conclusion of the British punk band’s final show at San Francisco’s Winterland in 1978. Forty-three years later, the notoriously wry “Anarchy in the U.K.” icon lost his legal fight against two former Sex Pistols bandmates on Monday over the singer’s opposition to their use of the trailblazing first-wave British punk band's music in an upcoming Disney series.

“It was great at first because we were overnight household names, there was some gratification from that, but in hindsight it was really the beginning of the end,” Jones said. After a live TV appearance in which several members of the band cursed, the Pistols were suddenly public enemy number one in England. With his low self-esteem, he wondered why I didn’t want to hang out with him, he took it all personally.”īut Jones knew the band with Rotten out front was something special. As much as I loved playing with John, I didn’t really want to hang out with him. “They have to get it up every night, and what comes with that is a lot of drama.

They got big egos but no self-esteem,” Jones said. “He’s a certain type of personality, like a lot of front men are, they’re a certain breed.

Johnny rotten steve jones