Roger Waters on his hate of the Sex Pistols: “It was so clearly contrived”
Alongside his many accomplishments, former Pink Floyd creative mastermind Roger Waters has made his name as one of the most opinionated men in rock music. This is to be expected of a man who used his art as a conduit for intense political commentaries on records such as Animals and The Wall. Not one for backing down, Waters has been unafraid to vocalise his thoughts on various topics, including other musicians. One band that Waters revealed his great disdain for is punk standard-bearers Sex Pistols.
Famously, the Sex Pistols were the group that led the British punk insurrection of the 1970s. Fronted by the sneering John Lydon, the band also featured guitarist Steve Jones, bassist Glen Matlock – later replaced by the murderous Sid Vicious – and drummer Paul Cook. The band made significant gains in their generation’s war against the status quo, from taking lyrical potshots at the Queen to swearing on live TV.
The typically wary Waters didn’t buy it, however. As an interesting side note, there’s always been a link between Pink Floyd and the Sex Pistols. Legend has it that the group recruited Lydon after he was spotted walking down London’s King’s Road with a ragged Pink Floyd T-shirt with ‘I Hate’ scrawled on it.
Accordingly, it’s unsurprising that Waters was never a fan of the punk’s riotous ways. “The Sex Pistols were just trying to make noise,” he told Rolling Stone. “It was so clearly contrived. You know, they were managed by a bloke who ran a shop selling silly clothes!”
Waters coldly moved on to the death of Sid Vicious and the immortalising impact that a young death can have. “And then one of them died, so you got that iconic thing that lives on. If somebody dies, that’s always good. Except for him, obviously, and his mom and dad, and [his girlfriend] Nancy; but for everybody else, it’s brilliant,” he said.
Waters’ former Floyd bandmate, David Gilmour, was more measured in his account of John Lydon and the group. He recalled: “I don’t think we felt alienated by punk, we just didn’t feel it was particularly relevant to us. We weren’t frightened by it.”
Continuing, he added: “A lot of good things came out of punk, but there were an awful lot of people leaping on it as a bandwagon, who leapt off when they’d got to the top.”
