Steve Jones on joining the Sex Pistols: "The only spot open in the band was guitarist, so I had to do that or f**k off"

Johnny Rotten (left) and Steve Jones perform live onstage with the Sex Pistols at Dunstable's Queensway Hall in 1976
(Image credit: Chris Morphet/Redferns)

With the recent release of Pistol, the six-part TV mini-series documenting the tumultuous, all-too-brief career of UK punk legends the Sex Pistols, we thought it'd be a good time to revisit this brief but insightful chat with the band's hugely influential electric guitar player, Steve Jones.

Frontman Johnny Rotten and especially the band's late bassist, Sid Vicious, might have gotten all of the headlines, but it was Jones' Chuck Berry-by-way-of-the-gutter riffery that powered songs like God Save the Queen, Anarchy in the U.K. and Holidays in the Sun, all integral pieces of the great punk songbook.

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Joe Matera

Joe Matera is an Australian guitarist and music journalist who has spent the past two decades interviewing a who's who of the rock and metal world and written for Guitar World, Total Guitar, Rolling Stone, Goldmine, Sound On Sound, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and many others. He is also a recording and performing musician and solo artist who has toured Europe on a regular basis and released several well-received albums including instrumental guitar rock outings through various European labels. Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera has called him, "... a great guitarist who knows what an electric guitar should sound like and plays a fluid pleasing style of rock." He's the author of Backstage Pass: The Grit and the Glamour.

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