ASSEMBLED FOR ONE LAST BLAG: STEVE JONES, PAUL COOK, TONY JAMES AND BILLY IDOL, PUNK SURVIVORS SEEKING FUN, NOT REDEMPTION, AS GENERATION SEX.

PORTRAITS BY BILL ROWNTREE AND PAUL COX.

PREVIOUSLY, HEROIN AND HEART ATTACKS HINDERED THEIR COMING TOGETHER.

BUT, SO FAR AT LEAST, IT SEEMS THE STARS HAVE ALIGNED. “IT WAS EFFORTLESS, REALLY,” THEY ASSURE PAT GILBERT.

If the kids are united: the two halves of Generation Sex, back in the day (from left) Sex Pistols’ Paul Cook and Steve Jones, 1977; Generation X’s Billy Idol and Tony James, 1979.

Bill Rowntree/Mirrorpix/Getty Images, Paul Cox/LFI

iN SUMMER 1980, ELEMENTS OF TWO OF London’s most iconic punk bands joined forces – though not necessarily in the cheeriest of circumstances. Billy Idol and Tony James of Generation X, now trading as Gen X after the original line-up splintered the previous year, were desperately seeking a chart hit to justify the sizeable investment by Chrysalis Records in a floundering third album.

Sessions for a comeback single, Dancing With Myself, were booked at George Martin’s AIR Studios, overlooking Oxford Circus in the heart of central London. For the rhythm guitar part, Idol and James called upon their old friend Steve Jones, the former Sex Pistol who’d not long returned from a holiday in Thailand, where his growing heroin habit – acquired after his band’s messy end – had been stoked by some of the purest smack in South-east Asia. No one could have predicted the rock’n’roll chaos that ensued.

“There were bottles of methadone all over the place,” recalls Tony James today. “Steve ended up playing guitar on his back, surrounded by a ring of amplifiers. But the sound he made was just great.”

Ray Stevenson, Getty

Wild youth: (clockwise from far left) Generation X at Gibus Club, Paris, October 1977 (from left) Billy Idol, Tony James, Bob ‘Derwood’ Andrews; Sex Pistols at Dunstable Queensway Hall, October 21, 1976 (from left) Glen Matlock, Johnny Rotten, Paul Cook, Steve Jones; (insets) Gen X’s Kiss Me Deadly and Dancing With Myself 45.

“I came out of the toilet and Steve was being wheeled out on a gurney. He'd been rolling all over the mixing desk.”

Billy Idol

Equally extraordinary was Jones’s behaviour when he returned to the control room. With his Les Paul still plugged in, he climbed outside onto a window ledge and began striking rock’n’roll poses to the amusement of several hundreds of tourists below. Back inside, he then suffered a massive epileptic seizure.

“I was a fucking mess,” says Jones. “I got these codeine-based pills to help me feel normal because the smack in Thailand was so strong. I was listening to a playback and then… I don’t really remember.”

“I came out of the toilet and Steve was being wheeled out on a gurney by the St John’s Ambulance Brigade,” marvels Billy Idol, himself by then also a heroin addict. “He’d been rolling all over the mixing desk. Then he started frothing at the mouth. As he was wheeled out he said, ‘All right Bill, I’ll see you later at the club.’ What club?!”

The motorik Dancing With Myself, expertly produced by Giorgio Moroder’s drummer Keith Forsey, was released in October 1980, but stalled at Number 62. Three months later, its parent album Kiss Me Deadly failed to chart at all, effectively ending Gen X’s career. But Jones’s inspired contributions sparked excited talk of a possible Generation X-Sex Pistols supergroup.

“Billy and I talked about having two drummers, Paul Cook and Terry Chimes,” says Tony James. “But contractually it was difficult as Steve and Paul were already doing The Professionals. Also, chemically, it would have been a troublesome possibility.”