It had been nearly 20 years since the Sex Pistols split when the original lineup, John Lydon (Johnny Rotten), guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, and bassist Glen Matlock, held a press conference on March 18, 1996 at the 100 Club in London to announce their reunion and the Filthy Lucre World Tour.
“We still hate each other with a vengeance,” said Lydon during the conference, “But we’ve found a common cause, and that’s your money. … These are the people that wrote the songs, and now we’d like to be paid for it. Over the years every f–ker has lived off us, and we haven’t seen penny one.”
At the time, the press conference was the first union between the band before they even started p. “I was a bit bemused really,” recalled Matlock in a 2019 interview. “To be honest, none of us were 100 percent sure that it was the right thing to be doing, but we was gonna do it anyway. And that press conference was the first thing that we actually did. We hadn’t done any gigs by then. We didn’t even start rehearsing at that stage.”
During their rehearsals, the band realized that they didn’t like one another again, according to Lydon, and kept separate tour buses, hotels, and flights from the singer during the tour.
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The Filthy “Money” Tour
During the Filthy Lucre Tour, the Sex Pistols played 72 shows across North and South America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan from June 21, 1996, through December 7, 1996.
The band’s sets flipped through a set playing the entirety of the band’s sole album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, “Did You No Wrong from Julien Temple’s 1977 musical documentary on the band The Filth and the Fury, and their 1976 song “Satellite,” along with their covers of Paul Revere and Raiders’ “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone,” The Stooges’ “No Fun,” and “Roadrunner” by the Modern Lovers.
Despite the sold-out success of the Filthy Lucre tour, Lydon was more interested in getting back to his band Public Image Ltd (PiL). “I love singing them old songs because they’re very poignant and a very pertinent part of history belongs to the Sex Pistols,” he said in 2012. “If I write new songs, it’s PiL and that’s it. Occasionally, a reenactment is a fine thing. I love Civil War reenactments.”
Lydon went on to release the band’s ninth album This is PiL in 2012, followed by What the World Needs Now… in 2015 and End of the World in 2023. The latter included Lydon’s song “Hawaii,” a love letter to his late wife of nearly 45 years, Nora Forster, who died at age 80 in 2023 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2018. That same year, Lydon’s long-time manager and friend John “Rambo” Stevens also died.
2024-2025 Reunion, Without Rotten
Nearly three decades since the filth and fury of the Filthy Lucre Tour, Jones, Matlock, and Cook reunited for a series of shows at Bush Hall in London in August 2024 and played the entirety of Never Mind the Bollocks with Frank Carter on vocals. The band played for the 450-capacity room and the shows doubled as benefit concerts to help save the Bush Hall venue.
The band went ahead with the shows without asking Lydon. “We don’t talk,” said Jones in 2024. “The last time I spoke to him [Lydon] was 2008. But I wish him all the best. I really do. We had a great time when we were young, and it was life-changing for all of us.”
A decade after their ’90s reunion and tour, Lydon also went on Jones’ radio show Jonesy’s Jukebox in 2006. “Yeah, it was a good one,” said Jones. “I had a lot of fun with him. I like John. He’s a funny guy; he’s got a great sense of humor and he’s sharp. It just kind of ran its course, that whole relationship.”
Jones added, “I wish him well. He’s going out this year, doing PiL again, and I hope he does well. I know he must be in a weird place, losing his wife and his best mate.”
In 2021, Jones, Cook, and Matlock won a High Court case against Lydon over the use of the band’s music in Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols documentary Pistol, which was based on Jones’ 2016 memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. “After the court case with ‘Pistol,’ it wasn’t even worth asking John [about the reunion tour],” said Jones. “I don’t think he was interested.”
The Sex Pistols later added another line of dates in 2025 in New Zealand, Australia, Norway, and the UK, including a show at the Royal Albert Hall on March 24 benefitting the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Photo: Brian Rasic/Getty Images
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