Filthy Lucre Tour

Filthy Lucre was a 72-date tour by the Sex Pistols. Announced in March 1996 following speculation and criticism from the band's former manager Malcolm McLaren and a reviewer for The Times, the tour was conducted for financial reasons and named after a 1976 Daily Express headline. The setlist comprised entirely previously existing material and ran from their 21 June 1996 performance at Messila Festival in Finland to their 7 December 1996 performance at Estadio Monumental David Arellano in Chile, with their Finsbury Park appearance filmed and released as Filthy Lucre Live. Dates in Ireland were cancelled on moral grounds and their Roskilde Festival performance was cut short after the band were bottled. The tour itself was criticised by Skin and reviewers for NME, Melody Maker, The Times, The Herald, and the Los Angeles Times but praised by a reviewer from Rolling Stone, while the album was praised by Stephen Thomas Erlewine and a reviewer for The Independent.

The Sex Pistols achieved widespread notoriety after appearing on Bill Grundy's Today programme in December 1976. At the time, the band comprised Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock, with the band's manager Malcolm McLaren replacing Matlock with Sid Vicious^[1] in February 1977.^[2] With the latter lineup, the band had a UK number one album with Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols^[3] and a controversial UK top two single with "God Save the Queen".^[4] The band split up in January 1978 after a concert at Winterland Ballroom, with Rotten changing his name back to John Lydon and declining to perform any Sex Pistols songs for several years afterward.^[5] Vicious died of a heroin overdose in 1979 while awaiting trial for the murder of Nancy Spungen.^[6] After finding he had time on his hands while in Los Angeles, Matlock decided to meet Jones, with whom he decided to meet Lydon,^[1] who had mellowed on the idea of performing Sex Pistols songs again after venting his frustrations in his 1994 autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs.^[5]

The band began making arrangements to reunite in summer 1995.^[5] Speculation that the band would reunite made the 10 February 1996 issue of Melody Maker,^[7] prompting McLaren to describe the band as "being sent out like those old dray horses before they go to pasture" and David Sinclair of The Times to write that for "anyone who recalls with fondness the incandescent glory of the Pistols in their prime, [...] the idea of the band that once set out to bury the rock establishment returning as yet another revivalist cabaret act is almost too sad to contemplate".^[8] The four original Sex Pistols announced their reunion at a testy press conference on 18 March 1996,^[7] at which Rotten described Vicious as "nothing more than an empty coathanger to fill an empty spot onstage".^[9] The band made no attempt to hide the fact that they still hated each other and had reunited solely for financial reasons, with Rotten stating that the band's "common cause" was "your money".^[10] They named their tour "Filthy Lucre" after a tabloid headline in the Daily Express ("Punk? Call It Filthy Lucre") shortly after their Today appearance.^[11]

No new material was written for the tour, with the band augmenting their discography with covers of "Substitute" by the Who, "No Fun" by the Stooges and "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" by the Monkees,^[9] and rehearsals took place at Rotten's home in Los Angeles.^[12] Their first gig took place in Finland,^[5] followed by Germany and then at Finsbury Park, at which they were supported by 60 Ft. Dolls, Goldblade, 3 Colours Red, Fluffy, Stiff Little Fingers, The Buzzcocks, Skunk Anansie, The Wildhearts, and Iggy Pop.^[13] Their Finsbury Park performance was released as Filthy Lucre Live shortly after it was recorded^[14] and reached number 26 on the UK Albums Chart; around this time, Bollocks was reissued and peaked at number 45.^[3] Many of the tour's venues were significantly larger than during their 1970s run as the band had broken up before they could play any large venues.^[5]

Two dates in Ireland were scheduled, one in Belfast and one in Dublin;^[7] these were cancelled after the band were banned from playing in the country on grounds of "blasphemous content"^[15] and replaced by a performance at Shepherd's Bush Empire.^[7] A performance at Roskilde Festival in Denmark resulted in the band leaving the stage after eighteen minutes after being bottled. Some regarded the band's early departure as hypocritical given that the Sex Pistols had become notorious for misbehaving,^[16] however the journalist Denis Decay [no] was sufficiently disgruntled to drug the festivalgoers responsible.^[17] In a January 2019 NME interview, Skin of Skunk Anansie stated that she did not enjoy touring with the Sex Pistols due to the racism administered by audiences and criticised Rotten for his failure to address the matter. She also stated that her band had been thrown off the tour after she stood up to a racist fan in Adelaide who had thrown her hat on the floor and thrown beer over her.^[18]

Early reviews were not positive. Sinclair criticised their Finsbury Park performance for its "arthritic rhythm section" and its set list for "lacking depth and variety", wrote that it was "hard to ignore the element of panto­mime in the performance", and described Lydon as looking "more like a postcard-punk caricature than he ever did in his original incarnation".^[7] MJ of Melody Maker compared their Phoenix Festival performance to a cabaret show and Rotten to a "pink and green-haired Liza Minnelli",^[7] while the NME described the band as "bloated, dilapidated dinosaurs".^[19] Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote of a Red Rocks Amphitheatre performance in July 1996 that the band was not the Sex Pistols but the "Cap Pistols", mocking the "decidedly overweight and apparently out of shape" Rotten's "god-awful red, black and chartreuse outfit that makes him look either like an usher at a midnight screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or the next loony villain in a Batman movie".^[20]

Reviewing Filthy Lucre Live, The Independent favourably compared Rotten with Roy Chubby Brown and wrote that the album "springs from the speakers with more spunk and drive than we have any right to expect, sounding just as angry as a two-decade grudge should".^[21] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that the band sounded "much heavier and less revolutionary than expected" and wrote that it was "fun to hear a live performance by the Pistols that doesn't degenerate into chaos and is recorded in clean audio".^[14] Writing retrospectively, The Herald wrote in June 2007 that the band's efforts were "a bit like watching grandpa attempt to emulate Eminem after a one too may sherries on Christmas day" [sic],^[22] however Andy Greene of Rolling Stone was more positive in January 2013, describing the shows as "absolutely explosive".^[9] In August 2024, Barbara Ellen of The Guardian described the controversy surrounding the tour to that of Oasis Live '25 Tour.^[23]