Steve Jones

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Steve Jones, in full Stephen Philip Jones, is an English guitarist, born in 1955 in Shepherd's Bush in London. He grew up with his young mother, who was a hairdresser, and his grandparents. As a child he became friends with Paul Cook. He rarely went to school and often got into trouble with the police. Later he said that the Sex Pistols saved him from a life of crime.

Music and breakthrough

Jones is best known as the guitarist of the punk band Sex Pistols, with whom he released Anarchy in the UK in 1976. After the group broke up he started the group The Professionals with former bandmate Paul Cook. He released two solo albums, Mercy in 1987 and Fire and Gasoline in 1989, and worked with, among others, Johnny Thunders, Iggy Pop, Cheap Trick, Bob Dylan and Thin Lizzy. In 1995 he briefly formed the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, with members of Guns N' Roses and Duran Duran. In 2015 Rolling Stone placed him at number 97 on its list of the hundred best guitarists.

Influence

His guitar sound is thick and full. What seems simple at first hearing is not: he double-tracked the guitar parts, so that a wall of sound results. In School of Rock this appears as a listening tip for Anarchy in the UK, the song that shows how raw and yet carefully made punk could be.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1987Mercy
• 1989Fire and Gasoline

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 2: Youth Cultures 1950-1980^NL Reader