On This Day in 1978, a Collaboration With an Escaped Fugitive Got This Sex Pistols Hit Banned by the BBC

The Sex Pistols’ post-breakup track was a controversial one.

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Months after bassist Sid Vicious and original lead vocalist Johnny Rotten left the band, remaining members Paul Cook and Steve Jones teamed up with a criminal on the run for a song, “No One Is Innocent.” The BBC didn’t take kindly to that fact, banning the track on July 13. 1978.

The men tapped Ronnie Biggs to co-write the song and perform vocals on it. Biggs is infamous in the U.K. for being part of the Great Train Robbery of 1963.

He was sentenced to prison for his part in the crime, but wound up escaping and fleeing, first to Paris and later to Australia and Brazil, per The BBC.

Biggs successfully argued against extradition from Brazil after he fathered a son with a citizen, the outlet reported.

However, he returned to the U.K. in 2001 seeking medical attention, per the outlet. Instead, according to the outlet, Biggs was arrested. He was released on compassionate grounds eight years later when he became sick with pneumonia, according to the outlet.

Biggs died in 2013 after a series of strokes, per the outlet.

The Sex Pistols’ Banned Songs

Despite Biggs’ criminal past, Jones considered working with him “a good move,” he once told Mojo Magazine.

“Ronnie Biggs rated himself as a bit of a poet, and I remember sitting in the hotel room writing the music while he wrote the words,” Jones said, per Far Out Magazine. “It was a big accomplishment, to write a song with an infamous train robber. That was a good move.”

In his autobiography, His Own Story, Biggs recalled recording the track.

“The record was made in a church studio in Rio with the priest present, who seemed very happy,” Biggs wrote, per Far Out Magazine. “We were rather drunk by the time we came to make the recording, which explains why it may have appeared a little out of tune.”

“No One Is Innocent” isn’t the only time The BBC banned a Sex Pistols track. It similarly did so, Far Out Magazine reported, with the songs “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the U.K.”

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