Steve Jones: Lonely Boy Tales from a Sex Pistol

Without the Sex Pistols there would be no punk rock, and without Steve Jones there would be no Sex Pistols. As the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of punk, the influence and cultural significance of which is felt to this day, Steve tells his story for the very first time. It is a story of an unlikely guitar hero who, with his band, changed history.

Rising from the streets of Hammersmith, Steve Jones was a lonely, neglected boy living off his wits and petty thievery. He describes the neglect and abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather and how his burgeoning interest in the glam art rock of David Bowie and Roxy Music saved him from a potential life of crime. It was Steve who, with his schoolmate Paul Cook, formed Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols, the band that eventually went on to become the Sex Pistols. He was their original leader, taken under the wings of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.

From the Kings Road of the early seventies, through the years of the Sex Pistols, punk rock, and the recording of Never Mind the Bollocks (ranked number 41 in Rolling Stone magazine's Best Albums of All Time), his life was a rollercoaster. This book unflinchingly details his subsequent self-imposed exile in New York and Los Angeles, where he battled with alcohol, heroin, and sex addiction, caught in a relentless cycle of rehab and relapse.

Lonely Boy, written with music journalist and author Ben Thompson, is a searingly honest account of a man who was central to a global cultural moment. It is the story of a forgotten original, whose extraordinary journey from a life of neglect to the front lines of a musical revolution is finally being told.