{ Lick That Riff! }

Hello everyone and welcome back to Hero Worship, after I missed one last week, oops. This weeks hero comes from an English punk band from the 70′s, and one which probably started it all. A guitarist that I think is often overlooked in the guitar industry. The band that kicked off the Punk controversy? Obviously its The Sex Pistols. And the guitarist? The influential Steve Jones.

He may not have been the best guitarist ever, but he sure was inspirational. He shown people that they didn’t need to be a Hendrix to sound good. Pretty Vacant, God Save The Queen, and Anarchy all show his simplistic yet effective guitar playing.

What Total Guitar Said:

You Know Him By His: Clumsy but undeniably infectious (and easy to learn) riffs and English punk snarl.

Greatest Moment: It’s a toss-up between the three note genius that kicks off Pretty Vacant or the equally simplistic but even more inflammatory, God Save The Queen.

Whenever people talk about The Sex Pistols, it’s rare that you’ll hear Steve Jones’ name crop up first, such was the nature of Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious’ larger than life personalities. But without Jones’ insistently hooky fretwork, The Pistols would have been little more than a snarl on a t-shirt. And considering he was still learning the guitar when he came up with the venom-loaded riffs for the album Never Mind The Bollocks… Here’s The Sex Pistols, that’s no mean feat.

These days, Jones is happy to heap praise on his white Fernandes Burny RLC-SJ Custom – thanks to a well-earned endorsement deal. But it was a different story back in the early 1970s when he would apparently rob and pillage gear from other bands. Legend tells how Jones was an attendee at David Bowie’s final Ziggy Stardust show at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, when some of the group’s equipment went missing… And Jones’ collection grew that little bit bigger. Whatever the truth of that story, Jones has obviously got a passion for expensive gear, because the image of him gripping a Custom Gibson Les Paul in front of a stack of Marshall amps has became synonymous with his name.

Following the Pistols’ well-documented implosion in 1978, Jones went on to work with the likes of Siouxsie and The Banshees, Iggy Pop (On the Blah, Blah, Blah album) , Joan Jett, and Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor, before the Pistols decided to openly cash-in on their stature with a reformation in 1996 – the aptly tagged, Filthy Lucre Tour.

While Jones has become a better technical player since The Pistols’ initial break-up, his legacy will remain the childishly simple riff that serves as an introduction to Pretty Vacant, the sub-ramones, repetition of Anarchy In The UK and the often-imitated punk blueprint of God Save The Queen.

Even though most guitarists would extol the virtues of good hard practice and complicated fretting, Jones is proof that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.

So that’s what TG had to say about the anarchistic guitarist that is Steve Jones. He might not have had the headlines of Vicious or Rotten, but he provided the chords and riffs that made The Sex Pistols become one of the most influential bands in history. Practically started a whole new Genre of music and influencing many of the bands that we listen to today. Loathe them or Love them, you can’t deny the fact that without the Pistols music just wouldn’t be the same today.

Peace x

Other Posts in the series:

• Coxon
• Hawkins
• Harrison
• Bolan
• Weller
• Valensi
• Cobain

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