A short history of the whole damn lot of 'em

1972 Shepherds Bush buddies Steve Jones and Paul Cook form a band with school pal Warwick Nightingale. The original line-up play on instruments and equipment stolen by Jones, who'd had a spell in reform school as a lad and was taught to steal by his mum and stepfather.

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Jones spends his weekends at the Let It Rock shop on the Kings Road run by fashion gurus Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, vendors of bondage gear and pornographic T-shirts. Jones badgers McLaren into finding his group somewhere to rehearse. McLaren finally comes up with Covent Garden Community Centre and ropes in his Saturday lad Glen Matlock to be the band's bass player. A major priority, as McLaren sees it, is to find a vocalist. Cook and Jones each try their hand but the desire for new blood leads to Nightingale's departure. McLaren changes the name of the shop to Sex.

1975 John Lydon had moved into a squat in Kings Cross with John Ritchie (Sid Vicious) and is busking on the Kings Road in green hair and a T-shirt that says I HATE PINK FLOYD when one of McLaren's lackeys spots him. Lydon auditions for the band by accompanying Alice Cooper on the shop's jukebox. As a result of Jones' continual comments about the state of Lydon's teeth, he gets nicknamed Johnny Rotten. McLaren borrows a slogan from one of his T-shirts and re-christens the band The Sex Pistols.

Initially the Pistols work on '60s covers by the likes of the Small Faces. They also begin to write their own material. Their first venture is as support to Bazooka Joe (complete with Adam Ant) in November 1975 at St Martin's College in London's Charing Cross Road. It's hardly a success: the plug is pulled after a short set. A memorable debut, for the wrong reasons.

1976 The band slowly gain a following, sparked in part by exuberant fan Simon Barker who forms the Bromley contingent, an ardent group of Pistols followers. Violence at London nightspot Dingwalls brings an expulsion from that venue and because of their growing reputation, the Pistols are barred from playing the Mont De Marson Punk Festival in France. They begin instead to appear at London's 100 Club on Tuesday nights.

Following a brief UK tour which includes a performance at Chelmsford Prison, the Pistols headline the 100 Club's Punk Rock Festival in September. Other bands at the event are The Damned, The Clash, The Vibrators and Siouxie and The Banshees with future Pistols bassist Sid Vicious on drums. On October 8th the Pistols sign with EMI, recording their debut single 'Anarchy in the UK' shortly afterwards. On November 19^th 'Anarchy In the UK' is released.

A fateful late replacement guest slot on Thames TV's Today Programme follows. Life would never be the same again. The band arrive five minutes before going on air and are interviewed live by a smug and drunk Bill Grundy who sets about provoking them to "say something outrageous". The expletives that follow stun the early evening audience and the next day the front pages of every daily newspaper carry a picture of the band. Reports circulate of honest working men who've kicked in their TV sets and old ladies who've keeled over from strokes.

The papers haven't had so much fun since John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus and the Rolling Stones were caught pissing up against a wall. The Daily Mail launches a witch-hunt against the perpetrators of "some of the dirtiest language ever heard on television". Bill Grundy is suspended. The Mirror's headline is THE FILTH AND THE FURY. The Pistols think it's funny. EMI Chairman Sir John Read responds to the outcry by issuing a statement "We shall do everything we can to restrain their public behavior."

London becomes virtually a closed city for the Pistols as far as live gigs are concerned. Insurance companies refuse to cover the concerts and anxious promoters cancel all but three of the shows booked for December's Anarchy national tour.

1977 Staff at EMI's pressing plant are not placated by their chairman's PR bid. They threaten to strike if the label don't drop the band. In the first week of the new year, EMI caves in and obliges its workers by paying the band to leave the label. In February Glen Matlock leaves the group. His replacement is Lydon's old friend Sid Vicious, who's never played bass before.

In March McLaren and the Pistols sign a new recording deal with A&M Records, signing the contracts outside Buckingham Palace. Just days later after a Sid-induced fracas, A&M kick the band off the label, prompting plenty of hype about another large pay-off.

Two months later, the Pistols sign their third and final record deal, this time with Richard Branson's Virgin label. The Virgin Records Press Release calls the Pistols "Youth disenchanted with society and mainstream rock... Four working-class teenagers who reacted against the elitist pretensions of their one-time heroes. Since nobody else was playing the music they wanted to hear, they'd play it themselves. They sing anti-love songs, cynical songs about suburbia and repression, hate and aggression."

It is the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee and England takes to the streets to celebrate. Bunting, trestle tables, union jacks, jingoistic songs, self-congratulation and a new Tube line mark the festivities. People are yet to get pissed off with The Royal Family sponging from the state; slagging off the Windsors is still Jerry-loving treason. The Sex Pistols don't buy it. They write a song called 'God Save The Queen', a battle-cry against national complacency and very funny to boot. The country doesn't get it. The BBC bans it, saying the song is "in gross bad taste". DJ Tony Blackburn tells the newspapers it's "disgraceful" and makes him "ashamed". Despite a media blackout, 'God Save The Queen' gets to number one in the charts. Jamie Reid's sleeve design shows Elizabeth II's face with a safety pin through her nose.

The Pistols mark Jubilee day by staging a performance on a riverboat on the Thames and are arrested and charged by police who buzz them with police boats, pull the plug on the party, and charge all four with offences from obstructing the police to using insulting words and being drunk and disorderly.

Two more singles - 'Pretty Vacant' and 'Holidays in the Sun' - follow, preceding the Pistols' only official album 'Never Mind The Bollocks - Here's The Sex Pistols' which goes straight to the top of the charts on its November release, despite many outlets refusing to stock it and shops being fined for displaying promo material.

The press turn the screws. When the band don't oblige them with scandal and fracas, the papers just make it up. When The Pistols leave Heathrow for a five-day tour of Holland, the journalists report them as having "spat, vomited and swore" in the terminal building, when in fact the four bypass the place altogether because they were running late for their plane.

After a secret tour to avoid bans, the Sex Pistols' final UK performance takes place at Ivanhoes Club in Huddersfield on Christmas Day 1977. The show is for the children of local firemen, laid-off workers and single-parents and goes off well, with invitees coifing 1000 bottles of pop and a huge cake supplied by Virgin.

1978 The eight-show American tour has municipalities panicking and fans astounded/bemused. In Texas, Sid played covered in his and his fans' blood after a beer can is thrown at him on the stage. At the final date - The Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco - Rotten asks the audience "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" and leaves the band the next day. It's over. Seven days later, Cook and Jones go to Rio with McLaren to record with Ronnie Biggs, the exiled Great Train Robber.

Smacked up and depressed, Sid records a version of Frank Sinatra's ‘My Way’ and performs his farewell UK gig at Camden's Electric Ballroom under the guise of The Vicious White Kids with ex-Pistol Glen Matlock on bass. Nine months after the end of the band, in October 1978, Sid's hooker-junkie girlfriend Nancy Spungen is found dead under the bathroom sink in the couple's Chelsea Hotel room in New York with stab wounds to the belly. Sid is charged with her murder and released on $50,000 bail, which McLaren pays. Sid dies from a heroin overdose on February 21 1979 while awaiting trial.