During a recent special episode of Jonesy’s Jukebox on 95.5 KLOS, Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones was asked about stealing some of David Bowie’s gear when he was 18 years old.
He said:
“I was definitely a kleptomaniac, you know, I loved lifting stuff… And I started getting into music, so I figured good stuff to lift is musical equipment.
“Because at this point, I wanted to start a band, and I figured the closest thing I could do to be close to that music was to steal band equipment.”
Did you steal some of Bob Marley’s equipment too?
“That is kind of true, but not true. The true story is, as I remember it, it was a band who was opening up for Bob Marley, a reggae band.
“I have no idea what the name of the band was, but I remember taking the Twin Reverb from them, which was the one I ended up using, it’s completely on [1977’s] ‘Never Mind the Bollocks,’ most of it.”
You actually offered to Bowie to buy equipment back. Did he tell you, ‘Don’t worry about it, Steve’?
“I’ve been lucky a lot of them say, ‘Don’t worry about it, Steve.’ But I did actually give some money back to [Mick] ‘Woody’ Woodmansey, the drummer in the Spiders From Mars.
“He came on my show last year or a year before, at KLOS, and I made amends to him on the air live. I saved ’til it was live, he didn’t know, and I gave him, like, $300; it was only a couple of cymbals, it was not, like, a lot of stuff.”