Book Review: Lonely Boy by Steve Jones

If you watched the series "Pistols" on Hulu...well, you saw a whole bunch of unexpected Cinemax-tastic scenes between Steve Jones and Chrissy Hyndes - I had to jump up and close the window shades on real short notice! But what you may have also saw was that the series was based on Jones' memoir Lonely Boy. After watching the series, I had to pick up the book.

There are two overarching distinctions between the memoir and the series. The first is that the series ends right when the Sex Pistols break up, and Jones does hard drugs for the first time; the book goes all the way to the present day (or at least a couple years ago) to detail his life as a junky and illegal immigrant living in LA, followed by his eventual redemption. Secondly, after such a hard life, Jones doesn't have a lot of firm memories - even the most interesting stories he tells usually comes with the caveat that he could be remembering things wrong.

Jones' early life plays out like it's hinted at in the show. He was born to a single mother, lived his life in broken-down neighborhoods, and was put in some very inappropriate situations by his father in law. He quickly accumulated addictions: addicted to cigarettes, addicted to alcohol, addicted to sex, and eventually addicted to stealing. He was drawn to music, but displayed his love through stealing things like Keith Richards' coat and David Bowie's microphone.

Also as seen in the show, he started a band with his best friend on drums and a friend's older brother on bass. Around the same time, he started hanging out in Malcolm McLaren's shop (not yet called Sex) and pleaded with McLaren to promote his band. McLaren got the bad a gig, Jones went up to sing...and failed miserably.

But McLaren wouldn't give up on Jones - not only did he rescue Jones from going to jail for another robbery, but he also gave Jones the guitar from Sylvain Sylvain (lead guitarist of the New York Dolls) and told him to concentrate on learning that while McLaren found him a singer and songwriter. Jones played and played until he became a great guitarist, McLaren found Johnny Rotten to be the singer, and the rest is history.

One aside: Obviously there's a lot more in the memoir than there was in the series, but there are a few things in the book that would have been awesome in the show. The main one to me was how Johnny Rotten got noticed in the first place. Vivienne Westwood, McLaren's wife and co-owner of Sex, told McLaren that there's a guy named Johnny who hangs out in the store and had the perfect look to be the lead singer of the band. McLaren found Johnny, asked him if he could sing (like in the show), had him audition to Alice Cooper's "Seventeen" (like in the show), Jones instantly hated him (like in the show), and McLaren hired him on the spot (like in the show). But it continues in the book that when Westwood saw Rotten, she told McLaren that she was talking about a different Johnny. That Johnny would eventually join the band anyway...as bassist Sid Vicious.

One downside of this tale (of the story itself, not the book) for fans of punk is that it just furthers the theory that punk was just happenstance. For the Sex Pistols, Jones wanted the band to be like Bowie or Roxy Music - but when you're stuck with a lead singer who can't sing and goes out of his way to look weird, punk just kind of happens.

The band lights the world on fire, pushes out the only virtuoso in the band, Sid enters and quickly flames out, Johnny leaves, they film a movie that gives McLaren credit for everything cool they ever did, and then they break up for good. On the day after their last concert in San Francisco, Jones tries hard drugs with Sid Vicious for the first time. This is where the series ends, but for Jones his life was about to get much more complicated.

Jones chooses to stay in America for both personal as well as legal reasons - due to an outstanding warrant he'd be arrested on site in England. However, he doesn't officially emigrate to America, so he's living illegally. This wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that he becomes a full-blown drug addict as well.

The times are lean and the world passes the Sex Pistols to the side. Jones does some couch surfing for a while, then forms a few intermittent bands that don't gain much traction. He shows up on Letterman as part of Iggy Pop's backing band, but can't join the recording session for Iggy's album taking place in Spain (he was afraid he wouldn't be let back into America). Along the way he loses and uses friends, and sinks low enough for drug money to eventually be out on the streets of New York selling 8" x 10" photos of other more successful bands.

Does this have a happy ending? Sure - he eventually has enough, enters rehab, turns his life around, and hosts a successful radio program in LA (again, as of a couple of years ago - no idea if it's still playing). But it was a really remarkable trip to get there and well worth a read.

Obviously this is a must-read for Sex Pistols fans. Otherwise, it's still a good read, but you might get frustrated reading a good story only to be told at the end that it might not have happened after all. Objectively, I'll give it six out of ten hot dogs.