Sex Pistols unload on Rock Hall

Just in case you forgot, the Sex Pistols are still anti-establishment -- even if the establishment is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“Next to the SEX PISTOLS, rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain ... were [sic] not coming. Were [sic] not your monkey and So what?” That was the tamest portion of a statement posted Friday on the group’s official website (www.thefilthandthefury.co.uk) regarding the seminal punk band’s scheduled induction into the Hall of Fame on March 13 at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

The surviving members of the Pistols -- John Lydon, Paul Cook, Steve Jones and Glen Matlock -- had been expected at the posh event but apparently balked at the idea of paying for a party in their honor.

The annual induction ceremony is the major fundraiser for the Hall of Fame. Each year, inductees are invited along with one guest, but they must pay $2,500 per seat for anyone beyond that. The cost is sometimes absorbed by record companies, but the Pistols, who made a searing but fleeting mark in rock history with just one album in 1977, do not have that sort of support.

Jones, a DJ on L.A. radio station Indie 103.1 (KDLD/KDLE-FM), declined an interview request Friday, but on his midday show made clear the group’s unified sentiment by singing these verses to open the program: “We’re not going/To the museum/You can shove it/You can have it.”

The Pistols’ attitude is expected, said Hall of Fame executive director Suzan Evans. “They are being the outlaw punksters that they are,” she said Friday through a spokeswoman.

Geoff Boucher