Sex Pistols in the City

By Joe Brown (contact)

Friday, June 6, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Chris Morris

Collect ’em all!

It’s 1978, and as Johnny Rotten lurches off a San Francisco stage and out of the Sex Pistols, he taunts the crowd one last time: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Fast-forward 30 years, and the Sex Pistols are launching a summer tour, with dates in Moscow, St. Petersburg — and Las Vegas, the first and only U.S. stop on their 30-city international Combine Harvester trek. Vegas is the perfect, irony-drenched spot to start their tour. The Sex Pistols are, after all, an oldies act, the grandpas of punk, every bit the classic-rock dinosaurs they used to sneer and spit at.

And what better place than Vegas for one last cash-grab, a final rock ’n’ roll swindle?

Last seen here in 2003 on their Piss Off Tour, the erstwhile anarchists have been gleefully selling out. They’ve certainly been rolling out the product: Last year the surviving members of the much mythologized band celebrated the 30th anniversary of their legendary debut, “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols,” reissuing the album and its four singles, “Anarchy in the UK,” “Holidays in the Sun,” “Pretty Vacant” and “God Save the Queen,” on vinyl. More recently, they rerecorded “Anarchy” for developers of the video game “Guitar Hero III” (original multitrack masters of the song couldn’t be located). The ex-nihilists signed over the rights to their back catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group for use in advertising. And this month the Sex Pistols will release “There’ll Always Be an England,” a documentary of last year’s Brixton Academy shows, filmed by director Julien Temple (with an 80-minute Pistols’ guide to London). Although self-destructive scarecrow Sid Vicious famously flamed out in 1979, life goes lucratively on for the seemingly indestructible survivors, long after the Pistols imploded.

Johnny!

Named and famed for the train-wreck state of his English chompers, bug-eyed screamer John Lydon, formerly known as Johnny Rotten, recently got his teeth fixed, courtesy of a Los Angeles dentist. “I’ve just spent $22,000 on them,” Lydon, 52, has said. “But it wasn’t vanity that sent me to the dentist after all those years. It was necessity. Ill health. All those rotten teeth were seriously beginning to corrupt my system.” Lydon also confessed to stage fright and failing eyesight, and admitted his hair would go gray if he didn’t dye it. And his formerly whippet-thin waistline has widened — on the new live concert DVD, he announces to the audience: “I’m fat, I’m 50 and I’m back.”

Time may have wounded this heel, but Lydon is as cynical and media-savvy as ever: Just before launching the tour, he told the U.K. press he wants to write a song for Britney Spears to help her turn her life around. “I’d like to help out because there’s a girl who needs some help,” he said. “She’s been hurt. And hurt is the root core essence of good music.” Of course, by mentioning tabloid bait Spears, Lydon ensured that his name — and the Sex Pistols tour — would hit the top of the Google search charts.

Steve!

Guitarist Steve Jones, 52, has reinvented himself as a radio DJ in Los Angeles, hosting the two-hour “Jonesy’s Jukebox” noon to

2 p.m. Monday-Friday on Indie 103.1 FM, concocting an eclectic playlist from his personal CD collection (you can listen to a stream of the show at www.indie1013.com; U.S. punk icon Henry Rollins fills in next week while Jones heads for the next tour date, in Birmingham, England). This year Gibson created an “inspired by Steve Jones” custom guitar, a re-creation of Jones’ cream-colored 1974 Les Paul festooned with a pair of pinup girl decals, which is going for nearly $4,500 online.

Paul!

During the post-Pistols decades, drummer Paul Cook stuck with Jones, both working as session musicians for Joan Jett and others before forming their own band, The Professionals. More recently Cook, 51, and Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen (not Collins), have put together a new band called Man Raze; their debut album, “Surreal,” was released this week on VH1 Classic records.

Glen!

Famously fired for liking the Beatles, bassist Glen Matlock was replaced by Sid Vicious in the group’s most infamous lineup. (Steve Jones later claimed that Matlock never really fit in, pointing out that Matlock was “always washing his feet.”) Matlock, who co-wrote 10 of the 12 songs on “Bollocks,” now claims he quit voluntarily because of conflicts with Rotten, but he’s back onboard for this world tour. Now 52, Matlock has led two post-Pistols bands, Rich Kids and The Philistines, and last month he shared a stage with ’80s tweeny-pop star Tiffany at the Roxy in Hollywood. They performed “Pretty Vacant” — with the former mall queen on lead vocals. Matlock has said the riff was inspired by hearing “S.O.S.” by ABBA on the radio.