CLASSIC POP MOMENTS
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“A-ha-ha, ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Those were the words that Johnny Rotten uttered as he pulled the curtain down on the Sex Pistols at their final show on 14 January 1978 at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. At the time, it looked like the famously snarly Pistols’ frontman was firing that comment at his audience, but since then, Rotten – real name John Lydon – has admitted the words were directed more at himself than anyone. “I felt cheated, and I wasn’t going on with it any longer,” he said. “It was a ridiculous farce.” Lydon felt shunned by the Pistols’ Machiavellian manager Malcolm McLaren and exasperated by bandmate Sid Vicious’ drug-induced stupor. “Sid was completely out of his brains, just a waste of space,” he said. “[Malcolm] wouldn’t discuss anything with me. But then he would turn around and tell Paul and Steve that the tension was all my fault because I wouldn’t agree to anything.”