This is the story of a feud both rotten and vicious; a falling-out which has reached the High Court.
At stake is a payday of as much as £5 million per person — a mouth-watering sum for former punk icons the Sex Pistols, who have long complained that they barely made a quid from the music which shook the world 44 years ago.
Anyone who knows the men involved is not in the slightest bit surprised about the feud. It follows decades of slights, barbs and chilly years-long silences.
The current crisis — which by common agreement marks the very end for the Pistols — has been provoked by the question of whether their music should be licensed for use in a forthcoming big budget TV series about the band, Pistol.
John Lydon, known by his stage name Johnny Rotten, says it should not be used. He regards the idea as 'the most disrespectful s*** I've ever had to endure.' Former bandmates, drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones, insist it should.
The spat has now ended up in court as they sue him for damages and costs, and to use the songs.
The current crisis has been provoked by the question of whether their music should be licensed for use in a forthcoming big budget TV series about the band. John Lydon, known by his stage name Johnny Rotten (pictured), says it should not be used
The row kicked off in March as the Disney TV series started filming. Directed by Danny Boyle, it stars Maisie Williams, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Anson Boon and Iris Law. Shooting is now nearing completion. This week, sources close to the rest of the band claimed Lydon hasn't said what his specific objections are.
His lawyer has argued that the drama portrays him in 'a hostile and unflattering light'. And Lydon said in court: 'I care very much about this band and its reputation and its quality control and I will always have a say if I think anything is being done to harm or damage [it].'
But Jones denies the portrayal of Lydon is unflattering. His side's suspicion is that Lydon is only enraged because the series is based on a memoir written by the guitarist and he is therefore not the central character in the drama.
'John says it's all terrible but he hasn't actually engaged with any of them about what is wrong with it,' says a source. 'The point is that the show is not about him, and he likes to feel that he is at the centre of everything. That is probably what it all boils down to.'
But Rotten's former bandmates, drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones (pictured together), insist their music should be used
He may also feel insecure because the musical stars of the Pistols were very much Jones and Cook. 'John wrote the lyrics and has always had the credit for that, but he doesn't care to be reminded about the musical part of it,' I'm told.
Former punk Jordan Mooney, 66, who was a muse to the Sex Pistols in the 1970s and knows all of them, is unsurprised about the stand-off. 'John argues for the sake of arguing. He's a difficult person and I can't say that part of him has changed at all. As he's got older, he's only got more difficult — he's contrary.'
The truth is that Lydon has never been friends with the rest of the band: Jones, Cook and Glen Matlock. In fact, seldom has any group of musicians been riven by such mutual loathing.
What many don't know is that Lydon was never the kingpin of the band in the first place. He was hired in 1975 as a frontman some months after Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had assembled the group, led by lifelong best friends Cook and Jones.
Aged 19, he auditioned for the job by singing along to Alice Cooper on the jukebox in McLaren's iconic shop, called Sex, on the King's Road.
The spat has now ended up in court as his former bandmates sue Rotten (pictured arriving at court) for damages and costs, and to use the songs
The shop was the epicentre of the punk revolution, and the hub from which McLaren wanted to make 'cash from chaos' and to reflect what he called the 'blank generation' — victims of soaring unemployment with nothing to hope for. He hired Matlock, a Saturday boy in the shop, as the bassist in the band.
Matlock quickly fell out with Lydon. A laid-back grammar school boy and graduate of St Martin's School Of Art, he could not have been more different from the son of a lorry driver who lived in a squat, had been bullied at school, survived spinal meningitis and been left with a hunch and rotten teeth.
'You just had to put up with a constant tirade of bulls**t from John,' Matlock said. 'Total lies and denial. He'd say something and two minutes later he'd completely deny he'd ever said it.'
McLaren reportedly ramped up the tension between the two, and by 1977 he had let Matlock go — but not before the bassist had contributed to 10 out of the 12 songs on the Pistols iconic album Never Mind The B******s, which came out after his departure.
The thinking was that Matlock had just been too posh for the group, and McLaren's solution came in the form of his less than sophisticated replacement — Lydon's old friend, the entirely unmusical heroin addict Sid Vicious, who he had been close to since his teens.
Perhaps it was McLaren's attempt to keep the peace by balancing the Sex Pistols' warring factions, making it a two versus two contest.
Whatever the case, it was less than successful. The Pistols fell apart after a gig at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on January 14, 1978.
After performing the last song, Lydon sneered at the audience: 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night.'
Their contribution to popular culture — an explosion of hatred, disgust and self-loathing so powerful that it changed the face of music forever — was over.
The feud between them, however, endured. Lydon later explained that he felt the enterprise had become a farce. He said: 'I wasn't
