Everybody has a price.
When Megadeth covered the Sex Pistols classic “Anarchy In The UK” on their 1988 album So Far, So Good… So What!, they helped bridge the longstanding gap between metalheads and punks.
The cover itself has been divisive over the years, with frontman Johnny Rotten calling it “pure filth.”
Enraged by the fact that Megadeth messed up the words to the original song, Rotten refused to give the band permission to print his lyrics for their anthology compilation, saying, “They got them wrong the first time round so there’s no reason to believe they’ll get them right this time.”
One of the remarkable elements of the Megadeth version of the track is the fact that they were able to recruit legendary guitarist Steve Jones for a guitar solo. As excited as the band were to have a living, breathing Sex Pistol play on the track, they were less than thrilled when he requested oral sex as part of his payment.
When questioned about the incident by NME, Megadeth main man Dave Mustaine had this to say: “What happened was Jonesy arrived on an old English bike with a cast on his broken arm, because somebody pulled in front of him in a car and he went flying over the hood. He starts tuning up, and I ask how he wants to get paid. He goes: ‘Give me $100 and get me some suction!’.
“For those who don’t know what that is, he’s a Sex Pistol – it’s not a plunger! I didn’t have any friends who would have blown a Sex Pistol, for Pete’s sake! What am I going to call someone up like: ‘Hey buddy, can you put your sister on the phone for second?…Is your mom home?…How ‘bout your grandma?!’ So I said: ‘Look I’m going to give you $1000 and the phonebook instead’.”
Regardless of how Jones got paid, he managed to lay down the solo on the track. How he pulled that off with a cast on his arm is still a mystery.
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