How the dark childhood of Steve Jones created a punk icon
The story of Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones is well-known, filled with many dark and surreal twists. He released his tell-all memoir Lonely Boy back in 2016, and it shed light on one of punk’s greatest heroes, cleverly split into three parts like a guitar solo, ‘Before’, ‘During’ and ‘After’, he told his story with great sincerity.
At the beginning of the book, Jones claims, “I’m not going to come out of this whole thing smelling like roses”, and proceeds to draw a comparison between him reapproaching his life and the scene in A Clockwork Orange when Alex has his eyes forced open.
Regardless, Jones deserves a significant commendation for how he reacted to a great crime committed against him when he was just an innocent. Despite the all-consuming factors it gave rise to, he became a vital part of one of the most influential bands of all time.
A great deal of suffering runs through Lonely Boy, but what Jones has achieved in the face of such confusing and profound adversity is more than commendable, particularly as he still grapples with the effects of the earth-shattering experiences he had when a child.
“I swear to you, all the stuff in the book, it’s not for shock value or anything,” Jones told Esquire in 2017. “It was just my life. When you do something enough, from the beginning as a kid, it really doesn’t seem that big of a deal. What I used to do seemed totally normal to me”.
When he was two years old, his father, Don Jarvis, walked out on him and his mother. However, the worst was to come, and as he revealed in his autobiography, he was sexually abused by his stepfather Ron Dambagella when he was just ten years old. Reflecting just how horrific Jones’ childhood was, he was functionally illiterate until his 40s, has 14 criminal convictions and spent a year in a council-ordered remand centre, the latter of which he said was better than being at home.
Understandably, in addition to what he describes as a cold and confusing upbringing, this specific moment of horror at the hands of his stepfather is what Jones cites as kicking off the trajectory his life has followed until the present. He regards it as the cause of his sex addiction, substance abuse and kleptomania, which all impacted his career.
Linearly, the sexual abuse led to uncontrollable kleptomania, which resulted in the famous heist of some of David Bowie’s gear at one of the Ziggy Stardust farewell shows. Despite it being a crime, Jones and the Pistols now had a chance to make it as musicians, as otherwise, they could never have afforded it, and Jones would certainly not have escaped the spectre of his childhood.
Additionally, Jones’ use of speed meant he could concentrate when learning the guitar, which made his undiagnosed ADHD dissipate. Sitting down and grappling with the six-string unlocked the door to the freedom and glory he has enjoyed since the Sex Pistols hit the big time. The consequences of this are manifold, as he was the main driving force of the band in the early days, and without him, we wouldn’t be discussing them now.
Over his career, Jones has maintained that the Sex Pistols saved him from a life of crime, which is wickedly ironic, noting the factors that led to him pursuing music as a lifestyle choice and job. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2017, Jones explained that he struggled to write about his stepfather’s abuse in Lonely Boy. He said: “The stuff about my stepfather. When your stepfather fiddles you when you’re 10, you get confused, and I was confused about my sexuality for years, when I was, like, 10 through 15. I’m 100 percent not gay at all, but it steers you in a weird direction. How do you deal with that information?”
In a 2022 interview with Classic Rock, Jones expressed that his stepfather and mother normalised his kleptomania. He said: “I don’t know why I started nicking, other than I was subconsciously unhappy with the circumstances of my upbringing, with the step-dad and my mum, who just catered to him and didn’t really care for me. That’s the impression I got as a child. And I used to see them nick in Tesco – I used to watch them put fucking things under their coat. So it just seemed normal”.
Many different and challenging factors created real energy in Jones, who did all he could to escape the environment of his upbringing and segue into what he calls the “other life” that music offered. Angry at the establishment and their elders, all for different reasons, the Sex Pistols and their punk peers changed the world with their no-nonsense music, and for Jones, his story is one of the greatest successes in all of punk.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Punk Newsletter
All the latest Punk content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.